Old Military Jet Wreckage in West Milford, NJ

One of my other hobbies aside from flying is hiking. In particular geocaching. I was recently looking for more caches in the area of West Milford, NJ and came across something I couldn’t resist. It is an old military jet that crashed in the woods more then 40 years ago. One minor problem was the fact that it had snowed the night before so the wreck slightly covered. The cold weather did help getting to the site. It is a very very swampy area and most of the ground was hard and easily walkable.

The Lockheed T2V SeaStar, later called the T-1 SeaStar, was a turbojet trainer aircraft for the U.S. Navy that entered service in May 1957. It was developed from the Lockheed T-33 and powered by one Allison J33 engine. Wikipedia

It was difficult finding a reliable source for the actual history of this wreck. What I have disseminated from a few sites is that the crash was part of a training exercise in 1967 and the pilot survived the crash. Here is some info from another site:

The pilot lived, he actually flew the plane in, from South to North, it is now oriented facing Westerly……A woman in the area, who’s boyfriend at the time was a Police Officer, heard the crash, called Police Officer boyfriend, he hiked in to the site and found the pilot sitting on the wing pretty dazed, but alive…… Now as to the direction of the wreckage… the plane came in from South to North, but the wreckage lies West to East, this is because of when the engine was lifted out by helicopter, there was some entanglement and the entire craft lifted and spun before the engine pulled free of airframe. The orange paint is to mark it as found wreckage of a know crash, to help reduce reports of a sighted crash by other pilots, hikers etc…The engine was airlifted to Greenwood Lake Airport so it could be taken by larger plane to wherever they would take salvage parts, and the helicopter almost crashed from the weight and instablity of the engine load (just a side note). (waymarking)

Update: 5/2017 – I received this comment from a former T2V pilot. Great information regarding this type and this incident. Thank you Tor.

That a/c was indeed a T2V-1 (since it crashed-landed several months before the re-designation to T-1A became official). There has been so much scuttlebutt about this wreck, much of which has been based on “completely wrong guesses” . . .

This one was assigned since 1960 to NAS New York (Floyd Bennett Field) with the BuNo of 142540 – and was aka 7R-540.

Prior to 1960 it was attached to BTG-9 as 2F-XXX

[It can be seen in a photo, second from the bottom of pg 48 in Steve Ginter’s book: “Lockheed T2V-1/T-1A Seastar”- #42 in his Naval Fighter Series]

It was a “Base Flight” plane, and was used as a “flight-time builder” for active duty and (NARTU) Navy/Marine reserve pilots striving to “keep current” in jets.

On 15 July 1962, 7R-540 was on a routine training flight when it flamed out. Fuel starvation was the probable culprit . . . That a/c type was notoriously short legged.

The pilot was apparently unable to activate the ejection seat, so the plane was “dead-sticked” down to the ground near West Milford, NJ.

It was fortunate and unusual that there were no serious injuries/fatalities in this incident, since the T2V-1/T1A possessed the glide rate of a common brick.

I logged a few hours in [at least] 2 T2V-1s, during flight training in NAS Pensacola, about that same time (BuNos 144204 and 144758 in Jul, Aug 1962).

Hope this helps a bit,

Tor Welch

4 comments:

  1. Pat, Thanks for the article.

    That a/c was indeed a T2V-1 (since it crashed-landed several months before the re-designation to T-1A became official). There has been so much scuttlebutt about this wreck, much of which has been based on “completely wrong guesses” . . .

    This one was assigned since 1960 to NAS New York (Floyd Bennett Field) with the BuNo of 142540 – and was aka 7R-540.

    Prior to 1960 it was attached to BTG-9 as 2F-XXX

    [It can be seen in a photo, second from the bottom of pg 48 in Steve Ginter’s book: “Lockheed T2V-1/T-1A Seastar”- #42 in his Naval Fighter Series]

    It was a “Base Flight” plane, and was used as a “flight-time builder” for active duty and (NARTU) Navy/Marine reserve pilots striving to “keep current” in jets.

    On 15 July 1962, 7R-540 was on a routine training flight when it flamed out. Fuel starvation was the probable culprit . . . That a/c type was notoriously short legged.

    The pilot was apparently unable to activate the ejection seat, so the plane was “dead-sticked” down to the ground near West Milford, NJ.

    It was fortunate and unusual that there were no serious injuries/fatalities in this incident, since the T2V-1/T1A possessed the glide rate of a common brick.

    I logged a few hours in [at least] 2 T2V-1s, during flight training in NAS Pensacola, about that same time (BuNos 144204 and 144758 in Jul, Aug 1962).

    Hope this helps a bit,

    Tor Welch

  2. I found this post after spending some time with my father today. He was one of the pilots in this crash and I was asking him about it. He said there was a flameout at about 6,000 ft and there was no place to land safely. He was in the front seat and his buddy was in the other seat. Both were commercial pilots at the time but in the Marine Corps Reserves. The ejector seats did not work and they put out a mayday call before making the crash landing. Luckily, the fire burned out quickly and the extra fuel in the wings did not catch. Both men had broken backs and other injuries but managed to escape. I have a newspaper article from 7/16/1962 that reports this

  3. came upon this today, thought I would complete the story. I was an ADJ1 stationed at NASNY did in fact launch this flight (two crew) on a local training flight. The pilot was “flat hatting’ showing off for family over their home. They did indeed run out of fuel. and attempted to eject, they could not open the canopy, so they had no choice but to ‘dead stick’ the landing, they were VERY lucky they missed a few very large trees which would hhave ruined their perect glide to a swampy stop. They used their survival knife to break the canopy. Then proceeded tp walk out of the swamp (near Greenwood lake). We (myself and 4 others+-) were flown to the site in SH3A helicopter. The first thing we did was open the canopy with the hand crank in the cockpit!!! OOPs!) Then we proceeded to check the very empty fuel tanks. Over the next few days we removed all useful parts and equipment and went back to Floyd Bennett. Harry A McComsey ADC USN RET [email protected]

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