JEFFERY CHRISTNER'S DISCOVERY, EXPLORATION AND ARCHAEOLOGICAL EXAMINATION
OF THE ORIGINAL "BENEATH THE PLANET OF THE APES" SPACECRAFT CRASH SITE

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Jeffrey Christner writes


My son and I have been involved in the aviation archaeology hobby (Note 1) since 2007 and we’ve been to and found several forgotten locations were aviation accidents took place, many of which took place in WWII. We will document what is left at the site and will often place small memorials or american flags there too to remember those lost. I also happen to be a big Planet of the Apes fan and I’ve spent quite a bit of time reading your web site.

After reading about them filming some of the Forbidden Zone scenes from Beneath the Planet of the Apes in Red Rock Canyon State Park in California, I decided to combine my interests and attempt to locate the location where the Liberty 2 (Note 2) spaceship crashed, or rather, the location where the crash site was filmed for the movie and see if anything was left after filming. I’m sure you’re aware that there are lots of videos and web sites that detail filming locations for the Planet of the Apes movies, including several videos and such of the Malibu Creek State Park (Fox Ranch) and the areas of the beach at the end of the first PotA movie.

During my research I only found one person who documented several movies filmed in the Red Rock Canyon State Park, but they only used one photo of the crash site, and they apparently didn’t even look to see if anything was left behind after filming, and while their photo is on Flickr, it’s not something that I’ve seen posted/talked about much. I know we’re not the first ones to find this location, but I don’t know why more information isn’t out there about it? Maybe people haven’t been looking to see if anything was left after the filming was completed? Even though the site has been located before, I believe that my son and I located where the long shot of the crash site was filmed from, something which I hadn’t seen before.

In the end we used simple aviation archaeology techniques to pinpoint the filming location and you can see our results here.

I also believe we located several pieces that were probably part of the set of the crash site, including some burned pieces and a piece of tubing painted black and a piece of metal that may have been black at one time.

I’m not sure if this is something interesting for your web site or not or if you’d just like to check out the photos we took and the items we found. They are all at the link above. Keep in mind that my write up is half tongue in cheek as though the crash really happened and half factual talking about where parts of the movie were filmed.

Anyway your site is amazing! Great, great work!

Jeff Christner


(Note 1) You can see our other crash site visits here.

(Note 2) I realize this is a name coined by the somewhat new Conspiracy of the Planet of the Apes book.

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