A few months ago, I was studying Mt. Timpanogos on a map—one of my favorite ways to pass time—when I noticed something unusual. One of its peaks was labeled Bomber Peak. That name stuck with me. I vaguely remembered hearing about a B-52 crash in the area years ago, but something didn’t seem right. A B-52 was far too large and complex for this terrain.
So I did what I always do when a historical thread catches my attention—I started pulling on it.
At first a casual search ended up down a rabbit hole of research that took me through military archives, old newspaper clippings, Ancestry.com records, and more hours with ChatGPT than I’d care to admit. The truth emerged piece by piece: not a B-52, but a B-25, a twin-engine bomber that crashed on the mountain on March 9, 1955. The details were murky. Some sources mentioned an Air Force flight from Great Falls, MT to Riverside, CA. Others described wreckage high in a wildflower meadow that hikers still stumble across today. There was bad weather, miscalculated altitudes, disorientation, a list of the crew members. But stark and sanitized.
That uncertainty led me to file a records request with the U.S. Air Force, and this week, after weeks of waiting, the response arrived—313 pages stamped “unclassified.”
The report is dense with technical analysis—coordinates, weather conditions, flight plans—but it doesn’t answer the question that lingers most: How did this plane end up behind Timpanogos when it should have been in front? It seems impossible.
The B-25 stopped to refuel at Hill Air Force Base and took off again into bad weather on an instrument flight plan. Coming down through the Salt Lake Valley, the crew would have known that flying anywhere near the Wasatch Range at less than 12,000 feet was dangerous. The peaks along the front demand altitude just to stay in the clear, especially in winter conditions.
And yet, 18 minutes after departing Hill AFB, the aircraft slammed into a high alpine shelf on the back side of Mount Timpanogos. The flight path defies explanation. How it slipped up American Fork Canyon and made its way across the back northern shoulder of Timp is anyone’s guess. Was it a navigational error? A misread instrument? A last-minute attempt to gain altitude? Whatever the case, the crew never had a chance to recover.
When I told my wife about the report, she asked me something that stopped me for a moment: Why do you do this? Why do I spend hours, days, weeks digging into these obscure historical events? What is it that drives me to request records, track down old newspaper clippings, and study the lives of people who died decades ago?
I had to think about that.
The truth is, I’ve always been drawn to stories that have been forgotten or left incomplete. There’s something about history that feels personal to me, as if these events aren’t just in the past but still echo in the present, waiting for someone to notice. I get fixated on the missing pieces—the gaps between official reports and human experience. Who were these men? What were they thinking in their final moments? What did their families endure when the telegram arrived? It’s not just about answering a question. It’s about remembering.
What strikes me about this crash is how the past lingers in unexpected places. The wreckage site, though weathered and scattered, still exists—hidden among one of the most photographed meadows in the Wasatch. Every summer, hikers pause to take pictures of wildflowers, unaware that just beneath their feet, metal fragments tell a different story. A story of five men who never made it home.
So, why do I research things like this? Because history isn’t just facts and dates—it’s people. It’s loss and consequence. It’s the weight of a moment that mattered to someone, even if the world moved on. And sometimes, it’s worth pausing to look back, to pull on the thread, and to remember.
