Surviving dogs, a backcountry rescue: Story of deadly plane crash in Idaho retold

Yahoo

3 days ago

For former U.S. Forest Service smokejumper Wayne Williams, the best part of reading an Idaho author's recent book was finding out what happened to the dog at the end.
Williams was one of the first responders who helped rescue survivors, recover the deceased and clear the wreckage of the June 1979 plane crash chronicled in the book 'In Selway Shadows: Last Flight of 148Z,' written by Richard Holm, a backcountry pilot based in McCall, and published in March.
Williams, a U.S. Forest Service smokejumper, spent the first night at the scene of the crash camped beside the dog, Bess, a retriever-German shepherd mix who'd sustained a fractured leg when the plane went down in the Selway River. After the dog was evacuated the next day by plane, Williams never learned what happened to her.
Holm tracked down details — like what happened to Bess — by poring over documents and interviewing witnesses, including the two survivors of the crash to create the most complete account of the event, which killed 10 people.
Holm's book offers a look at life before the flight, the crash's impact on survivors and the victims' families and the ways a wilderness community rallied to recover the wreckage from a near-impossible crash site. It also details an investigation that shows how this became the deadliest aviation incident in Forest Service history.
'It's a tragic story, but it's also one of a lot of heroism,' Holm told the Idaho Statesman in a phone interview. 'The larger story is made up of all these incredible smaller stories that are just truly unbelievable.'
Holm first heard about Flight 148Z while working on a book about the history of Idaho's backcountry airstrips.
But the topic 'kind of fell in my lap again,' he said, through a friend he'd met in his research — Cindy Bartholf, a former archaeologist with the Nez Perce National Forest near Grangeville in North Idaho. Bartholf contacted Holm in 2016 about an airplane data tag that a Florida man had 'returned' to the forest. He said he found it in the Selway River in the fall of 1979 during a rafting trip and believed it to be from Flight 148Z.
Bartholf was puzzled with the data tag, which was stamped with information that identified the plane as a U.S. Army Air Forces and Douglas Aircraft C-47A. Flight 148Z was a different type of aircraft, a Douglas Aircraft DC-3.
Holm suspects the artifact is authentic. The two aircraft were similar — the C-47A was used in World War II as a military plane, while the DC-3 was considered its civilian equivalent. In his book, Holm said Flight 148Z could have been built as a C-47A during the war and converted to a non-military plane used by the Forest Service.
Regardless, the aluminum tag sparked his interest in the crash. And Bartholf was the perfect contact. Her father, Art Seamans, led the Selway-Bitterroot Wilderness's Moose Creek Ranger District in 1979. He had ordered the ill-fated aircraft for a training that was planned at the remote ranger station.
Bartholf and her mother and sister were slated to be on Flight 148Z.
'Fortunately, we flew in on an earlier flight, on a Cessna 206, with a local air service,' Bartholf told the Statesman in an email. 'Knowing that we could have been on the plane has and will forever haunt me. God had a different plan for us.'
When the DC-3 took off from Grangeville on June 11, 1979, it carried 10 passengers, two pilots and two dogs. All the passengers sat along the lefthand side of the plane, while cargo was arranged on the right.
One of the survivors, then-17-year-old Moose Creek assistant station guard Bryant Stringham, later told Holm he recalled watching the scenery of the Idaho wilderness from the windows across the aircraft as his beagle, Beetle, seemed agitated and cocked his head back and forth at the engine across the aisle.
Holm said halfway into the 30-minute flight, the pilots noticed an issue with the engine on the left side of the plane, which had overheated. The pilots turned it off, he said, knowing the airplane was certified to fly on a single engine if it had to.
Within about a minute, the right engine exploded in front of the passengers' eyes and fell away from the plane. The pilots fought to land the plane in the Selway as rafters and hikers — including a Spokesman-Review photographer who snapped a famous photo — watched its descent.
Only three people made it out of the plane: Stringham; helitack firefighter Charlie Dietz, 26; and Nez Perce National Forest engineer Andy Taylor, 59. Taylor died of injuries from the crash as Williams' smokejumper team administered first aid at the scene.
Both dogs, Bess and Beetle, also survived. Beetle was found by a hiker and returned to Stringham, who, after helping the other two surviving passengers, went for help. He rode on horseback to the Moose Creek Ranger Station before being put on another plane back to Grangeville with Beetle.
The Army National Guard airlifted Dietz, who was badly injured in the crash, by helicopter to Spokane. The smokejumper team had settled down to camp for the night, and some of them sheltered Bess and built a fire to keep her comfortable. A helicopter took Bess back to Grangeville the next day. It was the last Williams heard of the dog until he read Holm's book.
Bess had belonged to Catherine 'Tykie' Hodgin, who was flying out to staff the fire lookout at Shissler Peak. Hodgin died in the crash. Bess was treated for a fractured leg and adopted by Hodgin's friend and ex-husband, Dan Hodgin, Holm said in the book.
That day, Williams' smokejumper team was told to return to base in Missoula, Montana. But Williams and four others asked to stay.
'We didn't have any idea what we would be up against, most of us,' Williams told the Statesman in a phone interview.
He remained in Moose Creek for a week, initially recovering aircraft debris but soon recovering the bodies of the victims.
He worked alongside employees from other Forest Service districts, including Moose Creek, where many of the victims were already well-known. The remote area was one of few wilderness districts in the Forest Service at the time, and the primitive requirements there forced employees to work closely and forged a deep sense of pride in their work, Williams said.
The wilderness proved especially challenging when it came to removing the remaining wreckage of the airplane from the fast-moving Selway River.
Officials leaned on two Moose Creek employees who had built many of the primitive-style bridges in the wilderness area, for a solution. Holm said the pair crafted 'block and tackle' pulley systems that helped lift both aircraft engines, the tail and the wing from the river.
Holm's book delves into the Forest Service investigation that identified what went wrong with both engines — a series of 'very poor maintenance' and other repair and inspection errors for which no individual or agency ever took responsibility, Holm said.
He wove the technical aviation story alongside the stories of the people who were lost, those who survived and the dozens more who were impacted by the crash.
Williams and Bartholf said they were taken back to June 1979 as they spoke with Holm, and again when they read 'In Selway Shadows' and saw the incident from other perspectives.
For Bartholf, it was an emotional journey that reminded her of summers spent on the Moose Creek Ranger District with her family. She shared documents with Holm that her parents had saved, including funeral programs, letters to victims' families and her father's handwritten manifest for the flight.
She said it was 'surreal' to read about her family's experiences but applauded Holm's ability to bring Moose Creek to life and show the human element of a story that, until now, had only been told in bits and pieces.
Williams said he recently met with another smokejumper from the crew that responded on the day of the crash to discuss the book. The men talked about how the book brought back details they'd forgotten in the decades since the crash, and taught them things they never knew — like what happened to Bess.
'It was in some sense sort of enlightening in one way and sort of sad in another,' Williams said. 'I know more now about the people who died on that aircraft than I did on the day the rescue took place. The book introduced me to those individuals who I'd never known.'