Anybody else enjoy mysteries? I started off simply trying to identify this Grumman Goose:
Photo by Ed Coates from his collection on http://www.1000aircraftphotos.comThe thing is, I believe that this "Indonesian" registration is phony. The photo is captioned that it was taken at Long Beach, CA in June of 1961.
When I dug into it further, I found that there was a TV series called
The Islanders that was being filmed during that time by MGM for ABC. It was, like the later TV series
Tales of the Gold Monkey, a story of American pilots, in this case two of them, and their adventures in the East Indies/South Pacific. The original pilot episode was filmed around Catalina Island in December 1959 using a Goose that belonged to one of the seaplane airlines serving Catalina. Based on positive reviews and feedback from the network, director Richard L. Bare went off to Jamaica in February 1960 to start filming background and stock footage. He hired local production staff and chartered a Grumman Goose from Dean Franklin's Coastal Air in Miami.
In his autobiography,
Confessions of a Hollywood Director, Bare mentions that the Goose was
N8015E and that Coastal Air had recently bought it from Honduras, where it had been the personal airplane of the president of Honduras. He also mentioned that it had been sitting around unused for about 9 months prior to his film charter. Finally, he mentions that they fastened temporary sheet aluminum panels with the fake registration "PK-DBP" on them to cover the real registration after they flew over Cuba and arrived in Jamaica. That registration was to match the one they had already used in the pilot episode filmed at Catalina.
So, apparently, there were two different Gooses carrying the fake registration "PK-DBP". I'm pretty sure that the one in this photo is NOT the second one that Bare charted in Miami, although it may be the first one that was originally used for the pilot episode at Catalina. The second one (N8015E), after about 5 days of filming in and around Jamaica, crashed off the north shore of Jamaica and almost killed all of the cast and crew who were on board.
On February 12, 1960, Coastal Air pilot Howard A. Smith, director Richard L. Bare, actor/star William Reynolds, cameraman George Schmidt, and assistant cameraman Glenn Kirkpatrick were flying in the Goose about 4 miles off shore and at about 1,000 feet altitude when first the temporary panels with the phony registration came loose and started beating on the sides of the fuselage and then next, both engines quit at the same time, presumably due to fuel starvation.
After switching fuel tanks but still being unable to restart the engines, the pilot landed the Goose dead-stick in somewhat heavy open-ocean swells. The survivors reported that the right wing float dug in heavily and the whole right wing was torn off. The next thing that they knew, the plane had broken in half and they were thrown clear. They were sinking while still strapped to their seats, which had also broken loose. Several of them had broken legs and other serious injuries and they had lost all of their survival gear, life rafts, etc. With only a couple of seats and one wing float that had broken loose to use as flotation, they all swam toward the shore - some of them only able to use their arms!
Dick Bare mentions that the crash made news headlines around the world, but I haven't found any record of it on the Internet (other than excerpts from his book and an interview with Bill Reynolds). The NTSB accident database only goes back to 1962 and the ASN database, which does goes back even further than that, doesn't seem to have that particular crash indexed by the date (2/27/60) or the location (Jamaica).
Consequently, the Goose in this picture can't be N8015E because this photo is dated 16 months after that Goose sank to the bottom of the Caribbean off of the coast of Jamaica. So now I am trying to identify two separate Gooses - the one in this photo AND N8015E.
There is one Goose that still shows up in the FAA registration database registered to Coastal Air in Miami - as N5542A . It was s/n B-33* and its date of registration seems to fit the reported timeline, having been registered by Coastal on Feb. 27, 1959. (*Although it is listed in the FAA database as s/n 37281 - which makes no sense; that's not even a valid ex-military serial for a Goose. Serial B-74, N2579B, carried USN Bu. No. 37821 and was registered to Worldwide Aviation Distributors of Miami, but that was much later and I think it was one of Jim Confalone's operations.) According to my notes and research, N5542A had been previously registered in both Venezuela and Ecuador, but not Honduras.
The only Goose that I know for sure that was previously in service in Honduras was s/n B-49 which served as FAH-110 with the Honduran Air Force and which later became N121GL for Charles Smith in Rye, NH and later with Joel Thompson of Mooresville, NC. I believe that Mr. Thomson's son flew it to Australia via Europe a couple of years ago and had some major landing gear trouble while in Italy that necessitated some repairs in Germany before continuing on to Australia.
I have not been able to identify which Catalina Goose was used as the fake PK-DBP in December 1959 or possibly also in this photo AND I haven't been able to connect a particular Grumman serial number or alternate registration/service history to the "N8015E" that was crashed at sea off the coast of Jamaica on February 12, 1960.
Any leads or clues that any of you can provide would be most appreciated!
Login
Register
FAQ
Search
