14 Year old crash site found in Mexico

[SASless]

Police in northern Mexico find helicopter and possible body of Texan missing for 14 years
ASSOCIATED PRESS

TIJUANA, Mexico - Police have found a crashed helicopter in the Mexican border state of Baja California and three bodies, one of which is to believed to be of Texan wildlife consultant Lloyd Kolbe who went missing 14 years ago, authorities said Wednesday.

Officials at the U.S. Consulate in Tijuana said that Kolbe's son Darren Kolbe was traveling to Mexico to identify the body, which was found in the mountains on Tuesday.

Lloyd Kolbe disappeared in 1992, while on a helicopter trip in the Baja California mountains to study a rare species of wild sheep. He was accompanied by fellow investigators Gonzalo Medina Gonzalez and Rafael Rebollar Bustos.

Baja California state police said they are working to determine the cause of the crash.

Texas governor Rick Perry telephoned Baja California governor Eugenio Elorduy to inquire about the finding, according to officials in Elorduy's office.

[MightyGem]

On a similar note, when on a short exchange with the Australian Army, I was told of an Air Force crew that banged out somewhere to the north of Sydney. The crew were recovered safely, but the wreakage of the aircraft was never found. What was found, however, was the remains of two light aircraft that nobody knew were missing!

[22clipper]

VH-MDX, a Cessna with 5 POB, vanished over Barrington tops north of Sydney in 1981 & has never been found. The only Oz mainland prang still undiscovered as far as I know.

Every so often I get the urge to round up the RotorHeads & go look for it. Then I think about the tiger country up there & what would be left of it after a quarter century.

I suppose if you die in a crash it don't matter to you if they find the remains or not. Matters a lot to family though, seen some great docos on Foxtell re the effort put into finding downed WWII aircrew, amazing persistence!

[Ascend Charlie]

There have been several massive searches for that Cessna full of cops, the last was only a year or two ago. One of the Willy SAR Hueys on the original search had a problem, necessitating an immediate landing in the nearest clear area. It was recovered by a Chinook, and after maintenance it was on a test flight, the tail rotor and gearbox departed, the main rotor separated and we lost 3 good men.

There are also a couple of Mirages in that area, but a silver tube pointed straight down at a squillion knots doesn't leave too much evidence of its whereabouts, among 200'-high rainforest trees.

[andTompkins]

Wildlife expert vanished during Baja assignment

By Sandra Dibble
UNION-TRIBUNE STAFF WRITER

September 14, 2006
http://www.signonsandiego.com/uniontrib/20060914/images/baja.gif

For more than 14 years, there have been no answers, only questions: What happened to Lloyd Kolbe, a well-respected Texas wildlife specialist, on assignment in Baja California to survey the bighorn sheep population?
Kolbe, 51, took off in his three-seat Hiller 12E helicopter on the morning of April 21, 1992, from a remote campsite on the Gulf of California. He and his passengers, two Mexican government officials, headed inland toward the rock-and-cactus studded mountains of the central Baja California peninsula and were never heard from again.
The lack of information led to rampant speculation, and the questions have haunted Kolbe's grieving friends and family members. Were the three killed by poachers or drug traffickers after stumbling onto illicit activity, or was other foul play involved? Or did they simply perish in a helicopter crash, their remains lost in a remote ravine?
Now Kolbe's helicopter has been located, along with some human remains in the Sierra de Calamajué, southwest of San Luis Gonzaga Bay, where they had taken off that morning. The chance discovery, by local cowboys, offers the first clues to their mysterious disappearance – but no explanation.
“It's been a very heavy burden to bear,” said Kolbe's son, Darren, 45, reached by telephone in Laredo, Texas. “Hopefully we have found his remains – that's our biggest hope.”
Baja California government officials announced the aircraft's discovery Tuesday, after sending a team of investigators to the mountainous area. The ranch hands found the wreckage late last month while searching for stray cattle. They reported their finding to Alberto Tapia Landeros, a Mexicali professor who has written books about the bighorn sheep and never stopped asking questions about the helicopter's disappearance.
“I always knew that sooner or later we'd find out what happened,” Tapia said. “I'm not losing faith that it will be cleared up completely.”
Baja California Gov. Eugenio Elorduy Walther has spoken to Texas Gov. Rick Perry, assuring him that the investigation “has from the start . . . been undertaken with the utmost seriousness,” according to a statement from the Baja California Attorney General's Office.
http://www.signonsandiego.com/uniontrib/20060914/images/coptercrash280.jpg
RODOLFO PATIÑO / La Cronica
The wreckage of a helicopter that has been missing since 1992 was found late last month in the Sierra de Calamajué in Baja California. The helicopter was flown by a Texas wildlife specialist who was to survey the bighorn sheep population. Two Mexican government officials were aboard the helicopter.
The wreckage is about 29 miles southeast of San Luis Gonzaga Bay and a few miles inland from the Gulf of California. The ranch hands led state officials to the site from the tiny community of Cataviña on the Transpeninsular Highway, a nine-hour trek by four-wheel drive and on foot.
The helicopter apparently landed upright but caught fire, said Francisco Javier Alcázar Jiménez, head of the Attorney General's Office in Ensenada. A skull was found about 20 feet from the aircraft, and fragments of another skull were found inside. The skull had a perforation, “but we can't say it is a bullet,” Alcázar said. Other pieces – a jaw bone, molars, two thigh bones – were scattered about, Alcázar said.
Darren Kolbe and Lloyd Kolbe's brother James flew by private plane to Mexicali yesterday, where they were met by Baja California authorities. Later, they flew to Ensenada, and Darren Kolbe provided a blood sample, which will help authorities determine whether any of the bones are his father's. Family members of the two other victims still were being located.
“The first thing we want to do is identify the remains,” Alcázar said. “The next thing is determining whether this was an accident.”
Kolbe, a resident of central Texas, was well known in hunting and wildlife circles. His friends called him Coon Dog, and for a time he owned and operated a radio station. The gregarious and divorced father of four was popular and commanded much attention, his oldest son said.
“He could take care of himself,” Darren Kolbe said. “He always liked to be heard.”
Kolbe owned the helicopter, using it to round up sheep or conduct aerial surveys of wildlife. In April 1992, Mexican federal environmental officials hired him to take a census of bighorn sheep on the peninsula. Two employees of the environmental ministry, known at the time as Sedue, were on assignment to accompany him: Gonzalo Medina González, a biologist, and Rafael Rebollar Bustos, a former federal highway patrolman.
The population of bighorn sheep on the peninsula long has been a contentious subject, with hunting advocates saying the number is larger, and those who favor a ban on hunting arguing that it is smaller.
Between 1980 and 1990, the Mexican government sold 625 bighorn sheep hunting permits, mostly to U.S. hunters, charging $12,000 each. In 1990, hunting was banned by presidential decree.
Tapia, the professor, said officials from Mexico's environmental ministry, which sold the permits, opposed the ban. They wanted to prove that large numbers of the sheep roamed the peninsula and that the species would not be threatened by hunting.
Soon after Kolbe arrived, he became confused about his assignment, his son said.
“There was another group conducting a survey at the same time, hired by the Baja California government,” the son said. “It's like they were overlapping each other.” Kolbe decided to call higher-ups at Sedue in Mexico City for clarification. On April 21, he and his two Mexican companions took off from Alfonsinas Camp. They were heading toward the nearest telephone, on the Pacific side of the peninsula, Darren Kolbe said.

They never turned up.
U.S. authorities, including the Air Force and the San Diego County Sheriff's Department, sent aircraft to the area to help Mexicans search hundreds of square miles, Darren Kolbe said. “Nothing was found.”
The family persisted, and in 1995, James Kolbe led a horseback expedition to the region, but once again they came away empty-handed.
“We never had any sort of substantive proof or realistic leads or anything,” Darren Kolbe said.
The helicopter is on the side of a mountain, near a ravine, he said.
“You could literally walk within 100 yards of this site and not see it, because of the cactus and growth and change in elevations,” the son said.
A family representative who traveled to the site over the weekend found a pair of Ray-Ban sunglasses and small binoculars similar to ones that Kolbe used, the son said.
If some questions have been answered, others persist. “It may be that they landed extremely hard, and everybody perished,” Darren Kolbe said. “But then again, what if somebody survived it, had malicious intentions, and the helicopter was burned on purpose? Maybe somebody was shot on purpose. Something that involves someone important to you, you don't want to leave a stone unturned.”

[PANews]

With reference the post about the Cessna 'full of cops' VH-MDX down since 1981. You may know that the Airborne Law Enforcement Association [www.alea.org] runs a memorial to such as these.

Do you have any idea where I can get fuller details of the lost officers for inclusion in ther memorial listing? Date, operator and the missing?

Thanks

Later - I will answer that myself...! It turns out that the crash guys were from the NSW Police Aero Club and went missing on Sunday, 9 August 1981 in a Cessna 210 aircraft 'MDX. Unfortunately that scenario falls outside the rules for the ALEA thing in that they were off duty.

[MNBluestater]

Police in northern Mexico find helicopter and possible body of Texan missing for 14 years
....Officials at the U.S. Consulate in Tijuana said that Kolbe's son Darren Kolbe was traveling to Mexico to identify the body, which was found in the mountains on Tuesday...

Not to be a pr__k but I wonder about reporters' wisdom sometimes. What exactly is there to "identify" after 14 years...shouldn't it say something like "Kolbe's son was traveling to Mexico to provide dental records, in order to identify the body....

[BlenderPilot]

today it only took me about 50 seconds to find another crashed aircraft at Toluca, but it probably was because the crash took place right in front of my eyes and I was expecting it to crash since I heard him declare an emergency . . . . :rolleyes:

One person is dead.

The house in the back was being demolished, the plane just fell from the sky in that spot, check out the propeller, no fuel or fire to be seen even though the wing broke off.

http://homepage.mac.com/helipilot/PPRuNe/XB-JVH1.jpg

http://homepage.mac.com/helipilot/PPRuNe/XB-JVH2.jpg

[rotorque]

I was part of a team searching for a P38 in PNG. We had one photo taken by an Australian airforce aircraft to reference the wreck by as well as a potential track from Wewak that the aircraft flew after being hit by a Japanese fighter prior to straffing the wewak airstrip. We found the aircraft in the photo but it didn't match the tail number that we had as part of the official report. After chatting to the locals we were told of another P38 near a village, this turned out to be the one we had the tail numbers for. A great story revolves around these two pilots and what happened etc, but a little too long to mention here. I slung the wreck out with a BK117 and it is being restored for static display in Adelaide Oz.

Bare with me here, there is a reason for mentioning the above. Whilst looking for the P38's we discovered the wreck of a B24 that was undocumented. I did a fair bit of research on this liberator after getting the tail number etc... Turned out to be Twin Nifty's that was lost supposedly due weather in 1943. At least one of the engines was dead at the time of impact and all the crew were killed. I got the official report etc from the states and have sinse made contact with at least one relative of the crew. The guy in charge of the expedition really has the job of following up this stuff and I think he has done alot more research than me. Last report I think had the 'body snatchers' headed out to the wreck site this year... could be wrong though.

Anyway, It was the most interesting thing I have done in a long time and certainly humbles you when you come across a site like that... middle of the jungle, misty, dead still, dead quiet, semi dark from the canopy of trees with little shafts of light coming through.......

I know its a bit deep, but It felt kinda good to look upon the site and know that at least one person knew where these poor buggers lost there lives.....

Lest we foret.