The Wheat Thin Bomber Incident

The Wheat Thin Bomber Incident took place during Semptember of 2005 when Steve Swan, who would later be dubbed "The Wheat Thin Bomber" for his role in the event, dropped around a half dozen message-bearing boxes of Wheat Thins out of his Cessna 172 airplane into the thorofare region of Wyoming in an attempt to communicate with his hunting camp on the ground. The incident has become a popular aspect of local folklore, and has recieved a great deal of publicity in local literature, such as the Yellowstone Tribune, "A Gaper's Guide to Jackson Hole," and the Togwotee Dispatch.
The Incident
The Wheat Thin Bomber Incident began in early September when Steve Swan and his companions, Dan Ballah and Robert Swan, headed into the thorofare area of Wyoming's Rocky Mountain region for a week of elk hunting. Swan would later reminisce, "In hindsight, I should have put the same message on each one of the boxes, instead of writing one message that crossed all of them, but at the time I was short on time, short on sleep, and short on clear thought. Not to mention short on elk. I could have been bad if I would have written 'I found / lost horses / and will not / be long in / coming back' and the others had only found the second, third and fifth boxes."<ref name="one"/> Dan Ballah would later reninisce, "Wheat Thins? For two hungry guys in backcountry? Why couldn't you drop chicken instead!?"<ref name="three"/>
Aftermath
Due to its relatively high visability, the Wheat Thin Bomber Incident elicited a good deal of interest among other hunting camps in the vecinity at the time<ref name="three"/>. Dan Ballah came up with the title "The Wheat Thin Bomber" to describe Swan's role<ref name="three"/>, and under this name the tale spread steadily by word of mouth over the weeks and months to come, eventually reaching the wider public with a story in the Yellowstone Tribune about the incident<ref name="three"/>. It succeeded in capturing the public's interest, and has been featured in a number of publications, especially tourist guides and compilations of local lore<ref name="two"/>, since that time.
Steve Swan did eventually make it back to his hunting camp that year, and even managed to fill his elk license in days that followed.<ref name="three"/>
 
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