WWII-ERA CRASHES LURE ‘WRECK CHASERS’

            By Linda Helser

            It’s not like anyone would remember the lonely young war bride from Scotland who put a gun to her head in a Mesa motel room and tragically pulled the trigger. 

            After all, it’s been 54 years since the June 29, 1945, day when Henrietta Ellis took her own life after learning that her husband’s B-24 Liberator crashed in the rugged Arizona desert. 

            Trey Brandt, however, can’t get her out of his mind. 

            Two months ago, while exploring the 1945 crash site, he found her husband’s dog tag imbedded in the dirt.

             “It’s really sad what happened to her,” said Brandt, a 29 year-old beverage salesman whose passion is tracking down long forgotten wreck of World War II military aircraft.  “It’s really sad.” 

            Brandt learned of Henrietta’s story after a paper trail led him to the place where her husband, 2^nd Lt. Hesler Ellis, died, about 7 ½ miles east of what is now William Gateway Airport in Chandler.

             “I’m a wreck chaser,” Brandt said.  “Some people call us aviation archaeologist but I prefer ‘wreck chaser,’ and I spent about six months in the library researching World War II military aircraft crashes.”

             Using vintage newspaper reports and U.S. Army Air Forces accident records, Brandt determines generally vague crash locations and then spends his weekends hiking to the remote areas in search of the exact site and any remnants.

             “Some guys like to golf,” Brandt said.  “I do this.  It’s just my hobby, and it combines things I love like hiking and camping.”

             Fortunately, the Scottsdale bachelor is wreck chasing in Arizona, a state where he’s not likely to run out of dig sites any time soon. 

            “Arizona became a major hub for training bases during World War II because of its clear skies, open spaces and 365 days of sunshine each year,” he said.  “It was a great place for training.”

             Bill Rummer, operations director at Champlin Fighter Museum in Mesa, said that Arizona was a prime training location for “everything from basic flight training to advanced bomber training.”

             Some of the primary airfields Brandt said were utilized included Kingman, Luke, Williams, Falcon, Thunderbird, Marana, Yuma, Dateland, Davis Monthan, and Douglas.

             There were a great number of aviation accidents, as well.

             I figure there were easily 250 to 275 military air crashes occurring within the state between 1941 and 1945,” Brandt said.                   

            That number sounded plausible to Rummer. Who added, “Literally tens of thousands of pilots cycled through Arizona during that time.” 

            Typical aircraft lost during training missions included B-17s, 24s, 25s, and 29s; P-38s, 39s, 40s, and 51s; BT-13s and AT-6s. 

            “They were like basic trainers and small fighter planes,” Brandt said. 

            But during the war there was very little time and less money to recover any mangled machines. 

            “Their main focus was flying and training and they had no manpower or time to go haul off the wreckage,” Brandt said.  “They took away the bodies and any surviving bombs and guns.”  And they left the rest for scavengers, who arrived on the scene postwar.

             “Most of those planes were removed in the 1950sand 1960s by the military, Forest Services or aluminum scrappers,” Brandt said.

                        Generally, however, only large hunks were worth taking.

             “And the very small pieces you’d never know were there until you stumble upon them were left behind,” he said.

             But Brandt, who’s long been fascinated with World War II, isn’t always successful in locating the wrecks.

             “I’ve been up the wrong mountain more than once,” he said, “and sometimes I’ve looked for a wreck four, five, or six before I found it.”

             And sometimes, he never does find it.  Out of the 70 he’s searched for in the past six years, he’s managed to find 60.

             Once he does detect a site, however, Brandt tends to be fortunate in his findings.

             Some of his discoveries include tarnished hat and cap badges, medals, coins, engines, canopy doors, headphones and lots of bent and twisted metal.

             “If I find dog tags I try to return them to a family member,” he said.

             When he discovered Ellis’ tag, he launched into a search for any surviving family.

             Instead he found a death certificate and a short item in The Phoenix Gazette

newspaper briefly outlining how the childless Henrietta was found in her motel room, dying of a self inflicted bullet wound.

             Through another 1945 newspaper article, Brandt learned that Ellis had been survived by an aunt who lived in Phoenix.  Not only was he able to track down the aunt’s son, Calvin Brice, but also Ellis’ 99 year-old mother, Josephine Hoffman, who now resides in Phoenix with Brice.

             Last Monday Brandt returned the long lost dog tag to Brice and Hoffman.

             “It’s been laying out there in the desert 55 years, so it shows dog tags were made of pretty good metal,” said Brice,  who plans to store the tag with other wartime mementos of his deceased cousin. 

             But Brandt has more tags to return.

             Three years ago he found one for Frank T. Byrne, whose hometown was New York City.  Byrne, along with 18 others, perished in a 1944 Christmas Day crash of a C-47, 15 miles southeast of Quartzsite. 

            “It would be neat to find a home for it,” he said.

             Sometimes less personal items he finds are donated to vintage aircraft restorers.

             “I knew this guy was looking for a tail wheel,” Brandt said.  “So when I found one I donated it to him.”

             Brandt, however, isn’t the only wreck chaser out there, searching the mountains and flatlands of Arizona.

             At least two others, veteran chaser Robert Kropp of Mesa and Bob Lasher of Prescott, frequently search, sometimes joining forces with Brandt.

             Even a Web site (www.fadedcontrails.com) has been created by Brandt to discuss and exchange information on crash sites.  And currently, a California aviation archaeologist, Craig Fuller, is compiling a book on Arizona settings of World War II wrecks.                    

             “The fun part for me is to go out and hike around and try to figure out how a plane hit or why it hit and how close it came to making it over the peak,” Brandt said.

             But there’s another aspect he would rather not dwell on.

             “It’s tragic to think that a lot of young lives ended out there,” Brandt said.  “A lot of those guys were like 18 to 20 years old, ad they never had the chance to grow up and have children.”

Copyright © 2003 Arizona Aircraft Archaeology