Down to Earth

At the Center for Land Use Interpretation, an exhibition surveys eleven aircraft crash sites in the western Mojave Desert, which since the dawn of the jet and space ages has been the principal place for testing experimental aircraft.

At the Center for Land Use Interpretation (CLUI), in Los Angeles, the exhibition Down to Earth: Experimental Aircraft Crash Sites of the Mojave surveys eleven aircraft crash sites at the intersection of lofted ambition and terrestrial tragedy. All sites are located around the Edwards Air Force Base, in the Mojave Desert north of Los Angeles, which since the dawn of the jet and space ages has been the principal place for testing experimental aircraft.

For the CLUI, these crash sites represent the meeting of the apogee of American technological sophistication, with the perigee of failure. The crash sites presented in the exhibition were selected from over six hundred that have occured in the western Mojave Desert, and cover the range of experimentation and advancement of aircraft over the past 70 years of jet-propelled flight.

All the flights presented in the exhibition were expected to return, and instead they crashed outside — in the public realm —, where they remain as accidental monuments to one of the most advanced forms of technology and human endeavor.

Top: Site of the 1955 X-10 experimental jet plane crash, near El Mirage Valley, south of Edwards Air Force Base, California. CLUI kite photo, 2012. Above: Site of the 2009 F-22A fighter plane crash, northwest of Harper Dry Lake, California. CLUI balloon photo, 2012

The exhibition is based on the work of Peter W. Merlin who, with Tony Moore, founded the X-Hunters Aerospace Archeology Team, a team of American experts on locating crash sites of experimental aircraft. Merlin and Moore have studied and documented aerospace accidents and incidents for more than 25 years, and have located and visited more than 100 crash sites of historic aircraft from Edwards Air Force Base and Area 51.

Site of the 1963 NF-104A Starfighter crash, north of the town of Mojave, California. CLUI kite photo, 2012

Through 1 April 2013
Down to Earth: Experimental Aircraft Crash Sites of the Mojave
Center for Land Use Interpretation (CLUI)
9331 Venice Blvd., Culver City, Los Angeles

Site of the 1995 X-31experimental jet plane crash, west of Boron, California. CLUI kite photo, 2012

Down to Earth

At the Center for Land Use Interpretation, an exhibition surveys eleven aircraft crash sites in the western Mojave Desert, which since the dawn of the jet and space ages has been the principal place for testing experimental aircraft.

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