Not all wrecks are hidden. Just 100 feet off a highwa northwest of Las Vegas, drivers whiz past the remains of an Air Force P-39 fighter taht nosed in during a 1945 training flight, leaving behind radio parts, a blackened fuel bladder and the end of a machine gun. High-school teacher G. Pat Macha, of Hawthorne, Calif. There, he stmbled upon the wreck of a C-47 transport that still had parachutes, clothing, and other pesonal effects. There are great stories associated with them.
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Curtiss P-40 Tomahawk that survived the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. The plane later crashed in Hawaii on a training flight. The Curtiss-Wright Historical Association in Torrance, Calif., recovered the wreckage in 1985 from the Koolau Mountians, and then found town other Tomahawk crash sites high in California's Sierra Mountians. In a Torrance Airport hangar, the project team is rebuilding the plane with blueprints and pieces, using what it can from the crash sites. The pot of gold for an aviation archaeologist is an airplane's data plate, showing its serial number and other vital information.