It was a very chilly, breezy Thursday with a cold front in the process of moving through the state bringing snow to the higher elevations. In the southern part of the state, our area of interest, the winds were blowing out of the SW at around 15 knots, with gusts to 25 knots. There was a scattered cloud layer at 5,000' (lower than many mountain peaks) and another scattered cloud layer at 15,000'. Snow had fallen on some of the higher spots.

Shortly before 1:00 PM, a group of four Phantom F-4D's took off from Nellis AFB and headed northeast toward Caliente for a routine training exercise. At 1:09 PM, while in the midst of abrupt maneuvering, one of the Phantoms lost control and crashed 7 miles southwest of Caliente. The occupant of rear seat managed to eject at 500' AGL, and his parachute only fully opened just as he was impacting the ground. He sustained minor injuries as a result. The occupant of the front seat apparently made no attempt to eject (or attempted too late) and was killed on impact. Rescue helicopters were scrambled from Nellis, and the surviving crewmember was recovered around 2:00 PM. Unbeknownst to the participants in this unfortunate drama, an equally unfortunate (and much more interesting) drama was in the process of unfolding not very far away.

Walter L. Ray, an employee of the CIA, but ostensibly civilian pilot for Lockheed, was in the midst of what has been termed "a routine test flight" of the very secret Lockheed A-12, out of its hidden home at Groom Lake. The particular craft Ray was flying was known as "928", a shortening of its official tail number of 60-6928. To its owner, the CIA, with the usual "spook-speak" it was also known mysteriously as "Article 125" (Lockheed's production number). As far as the A-12 fleet went, it was relatively middle-aged, with 335 hours spread over 202 flights.

At some point in his flight (or perhaps several), Ray was to have hooked up with an aerial tanker for refueling. For reasons not yet publicly known, Ray was unable to accomplish this. It could have been some sort of fuel transfer problem, or maybe the tanker was unable to keep the rendezvous. In any event, Ray consulted his gauges and determined he had enough fuel to return safely to Groom Lake. But he was wrong....dead wrong. What he didn't know was that his gauges were reading more fuel than there really was.

He was no more than 10 minutes from a safe touchdown, descending through 50,000' around Mach 1.5, .....when his engines just quit. He would have quickly attempted restarts, perhaps using his entire supply of TEB starting fuel, but to no avail. The suspicion in his mind by then was probably that he was out of fuel, and there was no way out of this other than ejection.

He reduced the speed of the A-12 as it descended to around 350 knots. He had been in constant communication with the ground at Groom, and notified them he was ejecting at 45,000'. At exactly 4:00 PM, Ray smoothly parted company with 928 and began his descent.

The way the ejection system worked on the A-12 (and likewise in the later SR-71) was not as most people would imagine. After ejection, the pilot remains strapped in his seat, and the seat releases a small drogue parachute to both slow and stabilize itself. Then, upon reaching some much lower, preset altitude, the seat releases the straps and the pilot is forcibly shoved out of the seat by the tightening of what are called "butt-snapper" straps. They are under the pilot's butt and force him up and out of the seat, hence the name. After that, the pilot's parachute opens automatically, and he completes his descent. The system was pretty well thought out, and was designed to safely recover pilots from extremely high altitudes, even if they were injured or unconscious.

As Ray passed through 16,000' the system attempted to work as advertised, but something went very wrong. As the butt-snapper straps tried to force Ray off the seat, his parachute backpack jammed under the seat's headrest. There are two reasons why this may have occurred, or perhaps it was a combination of the two. Ray was a short guy, and to ensure a good fit in his seat, the headrest was modified and extended further down. Another story says that some screws in the seat were installed incorrectly, and were protruding, contributing to the jam.

Why Ray couldn't manually extricate himself is not known. There's no reason he should have been unconscious. Perhaps he was partially out of the seat and that set the whole mess spinning wildly, disorienting him. Sadly, after what must have been a truly wretched ride, Ray and the seat impacted the side of a mountain peak near 6,000' and was killed instantly. Ray and the seat bounced maybe a hundred yards down the steep slope, finally coming to rest against a large cedar tree. At almost the same instant, 928 impacted the ground some distance away. After that, all was silent.

Meanwhile, back at "the ranch" (one of the everpopular nicknames for Groom Lake), the scramble to mount a rescue/recovery effort had begun. Unfortunately, there was only a little over an hour of daylight left by that time, and portions of the area were obscured by low clouds, so there was not much that could be done. This was in the days before night vision and FLIR. First thing next morning, Friday, January 6th, the aerial search began in high gear. The plane was quickly found as it's a pretty big item, but Ray was another matter. The searchers were obviously looking for a parachute, as they knew he had ejected. But the seat, with its small drogue chute, nestled under a cedar made for a very difficult visual target and searchers spent all day fruitlessly hunting for any sign of Ray. It wasn't until the next day, Saturday, that they discovered his body. A recovery team was dropped at the site where they cut a small clearing for a helicopter landing zone. They brought Ray and the seat down the slope and wisked them out of the area.

At the A-12 crash site, a perimeter was established and the site secured. Dirt roads in the vicinity were blocked off by armed guards and heavy equipment was brought in. For over a week, large trucks rolled out of the site, carrying pieces of 928 back to Groom. Then, the spot was evacuated, the guards withdrawn, and silence again settled over the scene. It remained this way for 30 years, quiet and alone, visited only occasionally by misguided range cattle.

Then I got this silly idea.....