Lieutenant Leonard Lydon’s Lost Curtiss P‑40 Warhawk
I found this story in Off the Wall: Death in Yosemite by Michael P. Ghiglieri and Charles R. Farabee. It’s about a missing aircraft (but no missing people).
Summary
It was October 24, 1941 – a little over a month before the US would enter World War II.
A flight of 19 Curtiss P-40 Warhawks took off from March Field near Riverside, California. Their goal was to fly north along the San Joaquin Valley (west of the Sierra Nevada mountain range) to McClellan Field near Sacramento.
This flight should have taken two hours and twenty minutes.
However, shortly into the flight they entered heavy cloud banks and fog.
Five of the P-40s continued on their path and made it to McClellan Field. A sixth was forced to land prematurely.
Eight others continued to follow the flight commander, Major C. E. Hughes. Upon dropping 2000 feet out of the cloud cover, Hughes was surprised to find his flight over the Sierra Nevadas rather than the San Joaquin Valley. They made it safely to Smith Valley, Nevada.
The fates of the remaining five P-40s and their pilots follow.
The badly burned body of Lieutenant W. H. Birrell and his P-40 were found the next day on the slope of 5000-foot Grey’s Mountain, south of Yosemite National Park.
Lieutenant John H. Pease bailed out after his fuel pressure dropped, oil pressure dropped, and his engine ultimately caught on fire. He ejected into freezing hurricane force winds. Then the rip cord to his parachute broke. Eventually he managed to deploy his parachute. Pease landed safely and spent the night in an unoccupied cattleman’s cabin. The next day he hiked to a ranch and was fed and taken to a telephone some twenty miles away, where he was able to report in. Pease P-40 wasn’t found until 2016. A hiker found aircraft debris and sent photos to author Tony Krizan who was able to identify it.
On November 1st, Lieutenant Leonard C. Lydon and Lieutenant Jack C. West were found alive on the slope of Barton Peak in Kings Canyon National Park. Both had bailed out and bumped into each other on the ground. The crash site of West’s P-40 is known but I can’t find details on when or how it was discovered (photos are in Mountain Secrets Revealed by Tony A Krizan).
Lieutenant Richard N. Long and his P-40 both remained missing. That was until 1959, when a pair of backpackers found the remains of both the pilot and his P-40 at an altitude of 11,000 feet near Kings Canyon’s South Guard Lake.
To this day, however, Lieutenant Leonard C. Lydon’s P-40 has not been found. It’s out there somewhere, likely within Kings Canyon National Park.
Will it ever be found? Where is it hiding?
Links / Credits
Off the Wall: Death in Yosemite by Michael P. Ghiglieri and Charles R. Farabee
Mountain Secrets Revealed by Tony A Krizan
National Parks records of World War II Plane Crashes:
https://www.nps.gov/articles/wwiiplanecrashes.htm
The Sierra Star article Only one P-40 Remains Lost:
The Sierra Star article Epic search for P-40 aircraft missing 78 years continues in High Sierra:
The Sierra Star article Aviation mystery solved: