Searchers ask for help in tracking down jet in Flathead Lake
By JOHN STROMNES of the Missoulian
POLSON - Were you an eyewitness to a 1960 crash of a military jet into Flathead Lake?
If so, John Gisselbrecht of the Museum of Mountain Flying wants to speak with you.
Somewhere on the bottom of Flathead Lake just west of Yellow Bay is a jet plane's wreckage. Somewhere, also deep underwater, are the remains of the pilot, Capt. John Eaheart of the U.S. Marine Corps Reserve.
Gisselbrecht wants to find those as well.
Eaheart, 30, of Missoula, had been a Korean War combat flier and was a star athlete at the University of Montana. He was on a training flight from Los Alamitos Naval Air Station in California when both aircraft and pilot plunged into the lake on the evening of March 21, 1960. He'd flown to Malmstrom Air Force Base to log training hours, then made a side trip to Missoula where he flew over his parents' and sister's homes - and then north to Flathead Lake, where the parents of his fiance, Viola Pinkerman (now Viola Lewis), lived.
An exceptional eyewitness report is preserved in the front-page story published in the March 22, 1960 edition of the Daily Missoulian. The late K.C. Pinkerman, Viola's father, saw the plane go down from his Blue Bay residence.
Viola Pinkerman did not witness the crash. She was in Denver at the time, working as a stewardess for Western Airlines. Eaheart was a pilot for Western Airlines in civilian life, and the two met through their work at the airline.
“The plane came in from the south at an altitude of 600 to 700 feet and circled Blue Bay and Yellow Bay and then backed up on a northwesterly course,” Pinkerman told the Missoulian back in 1960. “At about 2,000 feet, it went into a left turn and about a 30-degree glide downwards from which it never came out.”
Pinkerman provided a good idea of where it crashed. He said it went down about 2 1/2 miles slightly east and north of Matterhorn Point on Wild Horse Island and on a direct line between Matterhorn Point and Blue Bay on the lake's east shore.
Boats and a barge scoured the surface during the days after the crash and found some debris, including Eaheart's aviation helmet with brain tissue inside.
The brain tissue indicated he had probably ejected from the aircraft seconds before it entered the water. The seat itself weighed 120 pounds, and may have served to anchor the body.
Neither the plane nor its pilot were ever recovered because the lake depth between Wild Horse Island and the east shore exceeds 200 feet, making salvage attempts unfeasible 46 years ago.
Now, that might change.
Gisselbrecht, an aviator from Kalispell who works with the Museum of Mountain Flying in Missoula on special projects and aircraft acquisitions, said he's been interested in the fate of the aircraft since 1991. He wants to make sure the pilot and plane rest undisturbed by salvage profiteers and souvenir hunters.
“Technology is changing, and it's more and more likely someone could come in there and scoop that plane out of there and sell it for scrap,” he said.
To protect the plane and make sure the body remains undisturbed - which is also Viola Pinkerman Lewis' wish - he needs the specific location of the plane and, if possible, the location of Eaheart's remains.
Early next week, Gisselbrecht and a volunteer sonar-recovery team from Boise, Idaho, will attempt to pinpoint the locations.
“The primary purpose is to locate, to document and to register the site to protect it from salvage in the future,” Gisselbrecht said. “We will respect this and treat the site as a grave. We will not be recovering the pilot or the aircraft.”
Once he has the information - which will remain confidential - he will notify the Montana Historic Preservation Office and the federal Department of the Interior Office of National Registry. Under a federal law called the Antiquities Act, these agencies can protect the site from disturbance.
Ultimately, Gisselbrecht would like the state Department of Transportation to allow placement of a historic sign at mile marker 82 along the west shore of Flathead Lake memorializing the crash.
He said he has secured the help of Gene and Sandy Ralston of Boise to find the aircraft and Eaheart. The Ralstons have volunteered their high-tech equipment and expertise in underwater searches across the nation, including several in recent years in the Flathead and one in Whitefish Lake just a few weeks ago.
They have had some startling successes. News reports during the investigation of the Laci Peterson murder, for example, stated that the Ralstons found the location of the remains of the victim, but before officers could retrieve the remains, they were dislodged by turbulence from a passing oil tanker, and eventually washed ashore. The Ralstons also were called to Texas by NASA to find parts of the Space Shuttle Columbia after it disintegrated on re-entry in 2003.
Their boat is equipped with a special side-scan sonar system (see accompanying illustration), which Gene monitors and operates while Sandy pilots the vessel. They also use a remotely operated underwater vehicle equipped with a camera to provide deep-water photographic images.
But even with side-scan sonar to help, good eyewitness accounts are often invaluable in narrowing the search area.
That's why Gisselbrecht has sent out the SOS for people who witnessed the crash 46 years ago. All eyewitnesses mentioned in contemporaneous accounts apparently have passed away, Gisselbrecht said. Donations to defray the out-of-pocket expenses of the Ralston's sonar-equipped boat also are welcome.
“Anybody that would like to help with fuel expenses, we are not turning that away,” he said.
The Ralstons are on Lake Coeur d'Alene this week, searching for the victim of a drowning that occurred last weekend. That duty should be completed by the end of the week, and the Ralstons have agreed to come to Flathead Lake next week, basing their search out of Big Arm.
The cause of the crash has never been determined, at least as far as Gisselbrecht has been able to determine, and he made persistent requests for records from both the Air Force and the Marine Corps.
Some observers initially speculated that it was caused by “bird ingestion.” Perhaps the pilot flew into a flock of geese, causing the engine to explode.
Gisselbrecht, who over the past 15 years has combed through virtually every document available to civilians, discounts that theory as unsupported by evidence or contemporary reports. He believes the aircraft, a single-engine F9F Cougar interceptor, stalled coming out of a steep turn over Wild Horse Island and Eaheart was unable to recover in time because of his relatively low altitude, and his attempt to eject came too late for the parachute to deploy.
Mystery remains, and any reports from living eyewitnesses would be welcome, not only for locating Eaheart and his aircraft, but in verifying the cause of the crash.
Gisselbrecht's number is (406) 755-2238 in Kalispell.
Reporter John Stromnes can be reached at 1-800-366-7186 or at
jstromnes@missoulian.com
Side-scan sonar will be used to look for plane
Traditionally, underwater searches for drowning victims or missing vehicles or aircraft have been conducted using divers, underwater cameras and water-trained search dogs, often making large areas impossible to effectively search.
Recently, however, side-scan sonar systems have been developed using ultrasound technology to dramatically increase scanning quality.
In 2002, Gene Ralston, an environmental consultant from Boise, Idaho, custom-manufactured a special towing unit, or “towfish.” The custom stainless steel unit has been used to search in water as deep as 850 feet. A second, lighter aluminum towfish can be deployed in shallower water.
Information from a Global Positioning System is used to guide the boat along predetermined search lines, as well as to identify the location of any point on the side-scan image. The stored GPS information allows searchers to return to any point in the image for further investigation or recovery.
The reflected acoustic returns are processed into an image similar to an aerial photograph, which is viewed in real time on a computer monitor in the towing vessel. Typically, the side-scan sonar searches a swath 60 to 160 feet wide at about 2 mph, although other ranges can be used depending upon the size of the object being sought.
Source:
http://gralston1.home.mindspring.com
Did you see it?
Eyewitnesses to a March 21, 1960 plane crash in Flathead Lake are needed to help finally locate the plane and its pilot, U.S. Marine Corps Reserve Capt. John Eaheart of Missoula. If you saw the crash, call search coordinator John Gisselbrecht at (406) 755-2238
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Lets hope this aircraft can be found and this pilots remains be properly protected.
Robbie
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