It was supposed to be a routine flight, nothing out of the ordinary.
The SA-16 Albatross was scheduled to leave Mountain Home Air Force Base in Idaho on January 24, 1952, and fly approximately 700 miles before returning. The Air Force plane never made it back, crashing into a mountain in Death Valley, California.
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Thankfully, the six airmen onboard, including a former World War II pilot, parachuted out of the aircraft’s back door before the moment of impact. Two men sustained non-life-threatening injuries upon landing, so they stayed behind while the others departed in search of help.
When they found it, a secret that the United States military and government guarded closely was revealed.
A Joint Air Force-CIA Operation
CIA/USAF Albatross 1952 Plane Crash Site, Death Valley
At the time of the crash, Cold War tensions had built steadily since the end of WWII. Concerns about the spread of Communism were real, and the upper echelons of American government strived to thwart it.
One way in which they responded was creating the Air Resupply and Communications (ARC) Service, a joint operation between the Air Force and CIA, in 1951. Under the arrangement, the military service provided aircraft and personnel that the CIA used for “unconventional warfare support” to thwart Communist influences worldwide. The mission did this through various methods, including inserting and extracting special operators into enemy territory.
The Air Force established three main ARC Wings: the 580th, 581st, and 582nd. The doomed SA-16 Albatross belonged to the 580th. The purpose of its final flight was to practice maneuvering the aircraft at night. The Albatross was over Death Valley when one of its two engines malfunctioned, according to a 2024 article from SFGATE, a digital news website based in northern California.
At the time, the plane was 11,000 feet in the air. The crew tried to rely on its only remaining workable engine, but the Albatross struggled to maintain altitude. With a mountain lurking straight ahead, the airmen determined they had no chance to avoid the impending peaks.
So they bailed. As the men descended out of harm’s way, the plane scraped a summit, clipped a ridge, and came to rest on a mountain in the western part of Death Valley.
A Perilous Nighttime Hike
The crash occurred at 9 p.m. local time, so nearly complete darkness shrouded the four airmen as they left their landing spot. The only light they noticed was 14 miles away at a place called Furnace Creek, SFGATE reported.
The temperature that night was approximately 40 degrees, meaning the airmen avoided the suffocating heat that is synonymous with Death Valley. There were other obstacles, though. They lacked knowledge about hiking in that area, and doing so in low visibility increased the chances of something going wrong.
What’s more, the valley contained marshy areas. Airmen had to be careful in some areas where a thin layer of salt covered pools of mud. If a service member broke through the salt, he risked sinking knee deep into the muck.
Undoubtedly in shape, the Albatross’ crew forged ahead. The SFGATE article did not mention whether they encountered dangerous situations along the way, but they reached Furnace Creek at about midnight.
They alerted park rangers, who went back to retrieve the two injured service members.
‘Bizarre in a Post-Apocalyptic Way’
Because there were no casualties, the accident could have been much worse. If it had not happened, however, the existence of ARC Wings (or how the Air Force and CIA were involved) might never have come to light.
The Air Force began to dismantle the Air Resupply and Communications Service in late 1953. One tangible reminder of ARC Wings remains there in plain sight.
When the Air Force dispatched a three-person investigative team to the crash site 6,500 feet up in the mountains, only one of them made it there. The stamina required to complete a hike to such elevation is next level, even for physically fit individuals.
The service left the wreckage there, possibly because “there was nothing left worth salvaging,” Death Valley historian Kimberly Selinske told SFGATE.
In 2026, the fuselage remains as much a curiosity as it is a relic from our nation’s Cold War past.
“The whole setting for it is just bizarre in a post-apocalyptic way,” Abby Wines of Death Valley National Park told SFGATE. “It’s kind of on its side on a slope. It’s extremely steep.… When you’re looking through and over the plane, there’s this desolate, open space where there’s nothing but the valley and mountains as far as the eye can see.”
