Aircraft wreckage sold due to tourist encroachment

A wreckage of a plane, that has been lying in Sauðanes Airport in Langanes since the plane crashed there in 1969, has been sold. The aircraft was moved to the other side of the country to its new owners on Friday.

The aircraft, a Douglas R4D-S, dates from the time of the American garrison at Heiðarfjall mountain.

The wreckage was transported more than 700 kilometers to Eyvindarholt under Eyjafjöll mountains. The wings were also sold and transported under the Eyjafjöll mountains over two decades ago, according to Ágúst Marinós Ágústsson, a farmer in Sauðanes.

The sale process was a long time coming, but when Ágústsson first advertised the machine for sale, Langanes-municipality wanted to have a right of first refusal. The municipality had set a deadline of another year to complete the purchase, Ágústsson said.

“When it came to the sale, the local government wanted to exercise the right of first refusal and it was accepted, but there was a dispute, so the deal went south,” Ágústsson tells mbl.is, concluding that the plane was sold south.

The move was a hell of a deal

Ágústsson says that it was a hell of a deal to move the plane to the south of Iceland.  A new owner had earlier brought three specialists with him, and they tore the plane wreckage in half and the hull off the top of the wings.

On Friday, the work was finished, and two “trailers” from the south arrived with a tractor on one of them to collect the aircraft.

“I have two tracktors with loaders and one elevator. We took two devices to each end and stringed slings underneath, and then we could lift this up and pull the crossbeam from underneath with a one-way tracker. Then we could lift the rear end of the body of the aircraft up and the car backed underneath,” Ágústsson tells mbl.is.

“Then the wing piece had to be strung upwards so that the protruding parts of the engines were facing downwards.”

He says that by then the height on the freight was quite high, or about six meters high. They had to saw off a part of the wing to lower the freight. Still, the plane needed an exemption permit to move the plane because of its height.

“They could not go to the road by Öxi because of low power lines. They had to take a predetermined route while driving south. Everything was done in agreement with RARIK Iceland State Electricity and the Road Administration,” he says.

80 people to the wreck in one day

The reason for the sale has been that the tourist traffic around his farm has increased dramatically in recent years. The biggest number of people who walked to the wreckage in a single day is 80 people.

“At the time I was bringing in the hay all day long and could see to the site of the airplane when I was working in the field. But it is a constant rush through all the months of the year. Many times groups have walked into the halfgrown acres and green grasslands, looking for a way to find the wreck,” he says.

He says no one was forbidden to walk to the wreckage along the runway and no tourist fees were ever charged for it.

“We put up signs to guide them along the right path. Also, we put a private road on the drive to the stable, and this dramatically improved the traffic.”

Does not really work well with farm operation

In the chamber by the wreckage, Ágústsson has put mares foaling. It was the best place to shelter the animals.

“One of these mares was foaling on May 13 and there was no vegetation yet. When the foal was two days old about 30 travelers arrived that day, and the mare stood in the corner all day long without recourse to the hay. At ten in the evening I asked two French girls to let the mare in to get the hay, which they gladly did. However, everyone can see that farming with animals does not go well with this tourist traffic, which is why I got rid of it.”

He says that he kind of misses seeing the airplane as it has been a fixture in his life all this time. He even used it as his playground as a child.

“My old mother was so excited to get all of the kids out of her hair, that she made us sandwiches so we would stay there most of the day.”

The stolen sign

In September 2016, the American couple, JoAnne and Russ Sims visited the aircraft at Sauðanes. He is the son of the captain, Russel W. Sims, who crashed the aircraft in 1969, Two people were on board, but neither og them was hurt.

The couple’s business was to anchor a sign on the the wreckage of the plane as a memorial to Russel. Thus Russ Sims wants to credit his father and his role in the Cold War, but Russel Sims was was a senior officer in the Allied Navy where he began his career at the age of just 17.

Morgunbladid told this story at the time.

“We riveted it well on the floor, there was nothing to get it off the ground except with a crowbar. It got to be left alone for over a year, but some tourists ripped it off and left with it,” says Ágústsson.

“The plane will be on display in the south, and some have said that it is not worth seeing it there because its history is here, up north. I just say that the story is not over, and it has now reached an afterlife. You could say that the cross-country move is much more accomplished than the clumsiness of the pilots in destroying it back in the day.”