UPDATED: The National Transportation Safety Board has completed a preliminary investigation into the crash of Ted Smith's single-engine Cessna. The federal agency puts the site of the crash at 4,386-feet on the side of a mountain above Pass Fork Creek to the west of the 3,160-foot summit of Rainy Pass. That is mile to the west of the NTSB's original Simpson Pass report.
The NTSB report says the ceiling -- the bottom of the could cover -- in the area at the time of the crash was reported at 4,400-feet. Veteran pilots familiar with the pass, a tricky portal through the Alaska Range, say the new information only makes the crash more confusing. Pilots transiting the Pass in bad weather usually fly closer to ground level to maintain good visual contact with the ground. Here's a simulation of what it looks like to fly the pass. The NTSB investigation is continuing.
Journalism is a sometimes ugly business when it does what it is supposed to do and tells the truth, because the truth is sometimes full of ugly realities.
One of the ugly realities being ignored at the moment -- especially by some in the journalism business spoon-fed the news by the public relations mouthpieces of the private sector and the propagandists of government -- is that the March 4 crash of a single-engine airplane that killed retired Anchorage Police Department Sgt. Ted Smith, who was the pilot, and two passengers did not happen in the Rainy Pass in the Alaska Range as first reported by the Alaska National Guard.
Despite what you may have read earlier or heard lately on the TV "news," which is sometimes news and sometimes just make-believe, the wreckage of Smith's plane wasn't found "near the 4,000-foot level of Rainy Pass." The wreckage, according to the National Transportation Safety Board, is on a mountainside in the Threemile Creek drainage on the the route to Simpson Pass, about 10 miles to the northeast of Rainy Pass.
Specifically, the crash site is almost five miles due east of Rainy Pass at the head of an unnamed drainage that ends in the 5,000-foot peaks that separate Threemile Creek from Pass Creek, which is the entrance to Rainy Pass. An NTSB investigation into why the plane crashed there is now under way. The agency will eventually make the official determination as why the plane went down.
It is possible Smith was trying to fly over the mountains that rise to more than 6,000 feet in the area. Icing while trying to fly over these mountains in February 1968 was said to have been the cause of the crash of a Cessna 185 that killed three employees of the Matanuska Electric Association and touched off one of the biggest searches in Alaska aviation history.
"To clear the area he was over at the site of the crash, (pilot Mason) LaZelle would have had to be at 7,000 feet," John Shaw, the commander of the Palmer Unit of Civil Air Patrol told the Mat-Su Valley Frontiersman at the time. The newspaper reported Shaw's belief "that the plane encountered a super-cooling effect, which he describes as a phenomenon of weather well-known to Alaskan pilots. There can be no warning for this type of icing as to its intensity, he says.
"'Assuming this to be the case, I think that in a matter of seconds the aircraft became so loaded with ice that it was no longer able to maintain flight; that it entered into a vertical descent as a result of ice loading and air foil distortion, and fell like a rock for 3,000 feet. It appeared to have struck the side of a high pinnacle and rolled perhaps 1,000 feet down the mountain side, coming to rest near the bottom of a valley at an elevation of about 3,100 feet.'"
The official NTSB ruling on what happened in the 1968 crash is not readily available. The NTSB online catalog of past accident investigations only goes back to 1992, which leaves Shaw's speculation as the only explanation at this point readily available to explain the 1968 crash.
And icing is what could have happened. It could have happened to Smith's plane, too. Icing is a problem in Alaska.
But pilots and others familiar with the Rainy Pass area say there is another possible explanation, one the authorities to date have clearly tried to obfuscate. Smith was by all accounts a good and honorable man, and it is understandable if people want to protect his reputation. But even good and honorable men make mistakes, and there is nothing good or honorable about bureaucrats trying to twist the facts to disguise what likely happened.
Alternate explanation
People who've spent time in the air above Rainy Pass or on the ground there have a theory as to why Smith's plane crashed. It has been much discussed among pilots and others since the true location of the crash became known.
There is no reason the theory should be hidden from the general public.
If you plot the location of the crash on a map (62.14.47N, 153.09.27W) the likely cause of this crash jumps out so clearly you almost want to cry. It is only worse if you know the terrain well.
The Threemile drainage is the first opening to the right in the mountains that parallel the broad pass that opens up as one travels northwest from Puntilla Lake along the Iditarod Trail toward Rohn, Farewell, Nikolai, McGrath and other points north. It is what pilots and Iditarod snowmachine riders call a "sucker pass."
Threemile Pass can be pretty easily mistaken for the Pass Creek valley, which is the second opening into the mountains on the right as one heads north up valley from Puntilla. Pass Creek is the start of the route that leads to Rainy Pass.
Rainy Pass is the standard route followed by pilots flying visual flight rules (VFR) from Puntilla to McGrath or on to Takotna, which is where Smith was bound. A pilot who mistakenly turns into the Threemile Creek valley thinking it is Pass Creek -- something that has happened not just to pilots but to snowmachine riders as well -- is headed into danger.
Mistaking the two valleys is an easy enough thing to do, too, especially in bad weather. If you make the mistake on a snowmachine doing 20 mph, it's no big deal. I've made that mistake. I was thankful I was on a snowmachine because if you make the same mistake in an airplane doing 100 mph, the danger is huge. And it is a sad fact of life people make mistakes, all people. Mistakes are a part of being human. If Smith and two others are dead because of a human mistake, the tragedy is no worse and no better.
Talking about the mistake, or even the possibility of it, might, however, serve a purpose in saving the life of someone else. The danger of flying into Threemile is something of which every pilot headed for Rainy needs to be aware. Every pilot. The bureaucracy could have done dozens, maybe hundreds, of pilots a service by being honest from the get-go about where Smith's plane crashed, and maybe even being honest about how such an accident might happen.
Instead, people tried to hide the facts. When asked to confirm initial reports the plane crashed near Simpson Pass not Rainy Pass, Alaska National Guard spokeswoman Kalei Rupp emailed that she "just talked to the RCC (Rescue Coordination Center) again. They don't have any more information other than what they already released to me." She referred questions to an earlier press release which wrongly reported the crash location as "near the 4,000-foot level of Rainy Pass."
Personnel in the know at RCC refused to answer questions. The media is largely stuck with this system today. In large part, government agencies order information funneled through spokespeople whose job is not to provide the best factual information available, but to convey the official narrative. Ever since former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin made common the phrase "lamestream media," there is has been much talk about the shoddiness of reporting in this country.
There is unfortunately little discussion of the PR agents and propagandists who daily feed the media in a system that has come to be driven by the former, not the latter. And the problem just gets worse every day. The PR folks and the agents of government once felt beholden to at least appear to try to get answers to reporters questions. Now, they are usually more interested in making sure they stick to the story their bosses want told or, in this case, keeping bottled up the story nobody wants told.
As much truth as is warranted
In this case, that story involves the possibility an esteemed, retired member of APD might have made a navigational error that led to his death and that of two others. To try to avoid this, government officials were even willing to overlook what they had already reported from Rainy Pass. That being that "aircraft from the 211th Rescue Squadron and an HH-60 Pave Hawk helicopter from the 210th Rescue Squadron launched from Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson in Anchorage with Guardian Angel pararescue teams ... searched for approximately eight hours before returning to JBER (Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson) for crew rest.
"'Nothing was spotted, nothing was heard last night," (Senior Master Sgt. Robert) Carte said. 'Yesterday we conducted what is called a 'hasty search,' extensively looking in areas along the projected flight route known to cause problems for aircraft. Today, we have moved into the 'extended search' in which we have given grid assignments to search aircraft and are searching in a systematic manner."
Nothing was spotted because searchers were looking in and around Rainy Pass, but the downed plane wasn't there. It was on the other side of the 5,000-foot-tall ridge that separates Pass Creek from Threemile Creek.
Pressed on the discrepancy between the "official" location of the crash and that being described by others in the Rainy Pass area, Rupp's response was this:
"I asked for clarification on the crash site; the crew hadn't yet gotten back to JBER and the RCC just reiterated that the crash location was at the 4,000-ft level of Rainy Pass based on information they were given and topography maps showing elevation curves. It sounds to me like they know exactly where the crash site is located and are giving the location of that site with as much detail as is warranted."
So either the ANG's Pavehawk helicopters, outfitted as they are with some of the world's most sophisticated avionics, can't tell exactly where they are, or someone had decided public information now constitutes not the factual location of a crash as easily plotted by latitude and longitude on a map, but a location with "as much detail as is warranted."
Who then decides what is warranted? Is there one standard if a no-name pilot crashes near Simpson Pass, and another if a retired and distinguished member of the APD crashes?
I feel for Smith's family in this case. I hope that the NTSB investigation finds some explanation for the accident other than that he flew into the wrong valley. But I'm deeply troubled by the idea that if one of my neighbors had flown their plane into Threemile Creek and crashed, the bureaucracy would have handled this differently. I find it hard to believe the crash site for Joe Pilot would get the "as-much-detail-as-is-warranted" treatment.
But at least Brooks, whose job is to provide information, tried to provide some, albeit inaccurate. That put her ahead of the executive assistant to Anchorage Police Chief Mark Mew who claimed not to know anything about the crash. Smith, she claimed, was retired, and all the people with whom he worked "are on the other side of the building." Yes, and never mind that his brother is a deputy chief for whom she also works as executive assistant.
Begging for scraps
This is how our system of American democracy works. You wonder why so much of what you read today is "lame?" Dig a little deeper into how the whole system works.
One of the first things you learn as a journalist, sadly, is that public officials can seldom be trusted. It's more than a little depressing. You would think that they would be the people who would be most honest in the interest of making democracy work, but they aren't. They spin things all the time. The reasons why are endless: to try to protect friends, to try to protect reputations, to try to make themselves look good, to simply make their lives easier, even to avoid having to ask difficult questions of coworkers.
One could probably make an almost endless list of reasons not to tell the truth. I can't.
I know the crash of Smith's plane is a sad and horrible tragedy. But it isn't made better by trying to distort the location of where it happened. The truth will come out eventually in this case. It usually does with aircraft accidents. The NTSB has, like some left in the journalism business, built its reputation on telling the truth no matter how difficult that might be. I've been on a first-name basis with a few NTSB investigators over the years. They all bought into the idea that truth matters. Some of them were willing to risk their jobs to see the truth was told.
I wish the same could be said for journalists. Too many of them are willing to join the PR armada and do whatever necessary to hang onto their new, higher paying job selling the official narrative.
Ever watch the "reality show" Alaska State Troopers, with its regular and obvious distortions? It's more of the reality of how the bureaucracy works than a lot of Americans might want to believe.
Now, let all those who think the truth doesn't matter throw the first stones.
Contact Craig Medred at craig(at)alaskadispatch.com