The Airplane Monument
Trail in Cuyamaca has far-reaching views from its Japacha Ridge vantage
point, as well as a memorial that marks “the site of one of the most
sought after crash sites in U.S. military history,” wrote Alexander D.
Bevil in the Journal of San Diego History.
After climbing
uphill nearly 800 feet, the trail reaches the monument: A bronze plaque
at the base of a battered, stone-mounted Liberty V-12 engine reads “In
memory of Col. F.C. Marshall and 1st Lt. C.L. Webber who fell at this
spot Dec. 7, 1922.”
The
two military officers had left North Island in a twin-seat Army
DeHaviland DH4B model biplane early that morning, Webber, 26, sat at the
rear-seat controls with Marshall, 55, the forward-seat passenger on a
fact-finding inspection tour of cavalry posts throughout the Southwest.
Marshall was a decorated World War I veteran and Webber was an expert
pilot in what were still the early days of aviation.
Their crash
would also become associated with several notable people who went on to
play major roles in U.S. military aviation history, Bevil said.
During
a two-week period in July-August 1922, Webber and his co-pilot, 1st Lt.
Virgil Hines, logged almost 4,000 miles in a DH4B exploring and mapping
potential air routes.
“Arguably, the most historic use of DH4Bs
occurred on June 26, 1923, when North Island Army pilots Virgil Hine and
Frank W. Seifert made the first successful aerial refueling from their
plane to that of fellow pilots’ Lieutenants Lowell H. Smith and John
Paul Richter beneath them.”
Within just two months, Hine,
Seifert, Smith and Richter were all establishing new world flight
records for distance, speed, and duration, including flying some 1,250
miles over San Diego for 37 hours and 15 minutes, using in-flight
refuelings.
All of these pilots had tried to help locate the
crash site of Webber and Marshall when the two failed to reach their
destination on that Dec. 7.
“By Dec. 17, the search for Webber
and Marshall had evolved into the largest combined air and ground search
in U.S. military history during peacetime,” wrote Bevil.
But it
wasn’t until May 4, 1923, that the wreckage and the pilots’ remains were
discovered by local rancher George W. McCain when he was riding on
horseback along Japacha Ridge.
Read more here: http://www.utsandiego.com
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