For years, Babs Mikel didn’t know the true story of what happened to her father, John H. Gaines, on the morning of Nov. 15, 1955.

Gaines and 13 other passengers inside of a U.S. Air Force Military Air Transport Service aircraft took off from Burbank, Calif., headed toward Groom Lake (or Watertown Strip as it was known then.)

The personnel aboard weren’t just random military personnel. They included military staffers and civilian subcontractors, engineers and technicians, en-route from Burbank (location of Lockheed’s Skunkworks), to work on the secret U-2 program at Groom Lake where the first U-2 test flight had taken place three months earlier.

But they never made it to their destination, as the plane hit the top of Mt. Charleston in Nevada, leaving behind a pile of debris easily seen from the air. Only military personnel were allowed access to the crash site, and guards stopped newsmen and cameramen from continuing to the crash site.

The story of the crash wouldn’t have been told but for the efforts of Steve Ririe.

Ririe hiked Mt. Charleston often and noticed the debris from the crash site. His curiosity led to spending a lot of time digging up information on the crash itself, and the establishment of the memorial.

According to his web site, coldwarmonument.org, in 1955, the official word for the public was this was a business flight to the Atomic Energy Commission’s Nevada Test Site. It wasn’t until the accident reports were declassified that the 14 dead were identified as U-2 designers.

Through Ririe’s research, he learned the plane that crashed was a U-2 reconnaissance aircraft, which warrante

d a classified distinction. Information about the crash itself became declassified around 2000. Early versions of the U-2 were involved in several events through the Cold War, being flown over the Soviet Union, China, Vietnam, and Cuba.

 

Mikel was 3 months old when the crash occurred, and her mother, Wilma Gaines Tillman, was 23. Wilma met John, when he was stationed in Florida, at Florala’s annual 24th of June Celebration.

“They had just moved to (Burbank) California because he had just gotten stationed in Area 51, which is what it boiled down to,” Mikel said. “The whole story was that he had come home to help her move to another apartment because they rented a one-bedroom apartment and were moving to a two-bedroom apartment.”

Mikel first learned the true details about her father’s death through her aunt, who called her one Sunday afternoon to say that someone would be calling family members of those who died there.

The lady, Marian Kennedy, told Mikel at the time that her father was in the secret service.

“What he was in was called air intelligence,” Mikel said. “The 1007th Air Intelligence Group with the U.S. Air Force. He was a lab tech, and in all of our conversations, I got them to realize that he wasn’t in the secret service.”

Mikel said her mother told her that Gaines had been in the Air Force, but gotten out. After not being able to find a job, Gaines reenlisted in 1954, a year before the accident.

Mikel said the timing of learning about her father was ironic.

“I was 3 months old,” she said. “I knew nothing of him. I have recently come across a picture of he and I together.”

Mikel said she was in awe when she got her hands on the picture.

“It has been so long,” she said.

Even though Mikel didn’t know her real father, she said her step dad, James H. Tillman, was wonderful.

“I’ve had a wonderful existence, but it would’ve been a lot different growing up in California or Tennessee, or wherever,” she said.

Mikel will get the chance to recognize her father on May 29, when a memorial to the Silent Heroes of the Cold War will be dedicated in Mt. Charleston, Nev.

“I just think it’s wonderful that they are doing it,” Mikel said. “It’s been so many years. I went many, many years not knowing what had happened, other than he was involved in a plane crash. Come to find out, everything was classified and that’s why we didn’t know. I knew he hit the top of a mountain outside in Las Vegas, but that was pretty much all I knew.”

Mikel said that she, along with her husband, Dwight, and her mother will fly out on Tuesday to Las Vegas to be able to see the Hoover Dam and visit the strip.

Mikel said she doesn’t know what to expect at the memorial.

“Just to be and know that these men are finally being recognized is kind of an honor for them,” she said. “It’s going to be an interesting trip. I don’t know what to say, but it’s just an unexpected thing. It’s just been something that’s been there in the background all of my life. To finally see a recognition of what happened is great.”