Side-scan sonar locates jet in Flathead Lake

[LKunze]

Side-scan sonar locates jet in Flathead Lake
By JOHN STROMNES of the Missoulian



FLATHEAD LAKE - Searchers using a specialized sonar device and robotic underwater cameras Tuesday found fragments from a military aircraft that crashed into Flathead Lake on March 21, 1960.

“It looks like a good portion of the wing is there in the mud,” said John Gisselbrecht, the organizer of the search - which began Sunday, but was temporarily halted because of rough water.

Gisselbrecht conceived and organized the search, relying primarily on volunteers for the effort. He said it is time to bring closure to the aircraft tragedy, to pinpoint exactly where the plane went down for military records, and to get federal protection of the site as an antiquity, preventing souvenir hunters from salvaging the aircraft.


On Wednesday, two deep-water divers will seek the body of U.S. Marine pilot John Eaheart of Missoula, who died in the crash of the single-engine, twin-jet fighter plane. The body has never surfaced, and may still be in the cockpit, also possibly buried in the mud some 275 feet below the surface in one of the deepest areas of the lake.

Gisselbrecht and a volunteer sonar-recovery team from Boise, Idaho, found the plane debris Tuesday morning, and confirmed it was a Navy jet from blue paint on the wing and other evidence.

It was about where they expected it to be, based on eyewitness reports from 1960.

The searchers started on the outer perimeter of the target area, and systematically moved inward to the main portion of the debris field. Their first sighting of debris in the area turned out to be a big sunken log.

A cadaver-sniffing dog named Judy, who is specially trained for deep-water searches, “did an alert” Tuesday at the main debris area, Gisselbrecht said. That's where the divers will search Wednesday for the cockpit and Eaheart's body.

If the body is found, Gisselbrecht said he will immediately contact the U.S. Navy to determine if military divers will be used for the recovery effort, or if it will be left to Gisselbrecht and his team of volunteers to recover the remains.

The Navy, Air Force and Marine Corps did not conduct an extensive search for the airplane after the crash in 1960, because debris on the surface conclusively showed the pilot had been killed on impact, and deep-water recovery efforts were not feasible at that time.

Gisselbrecht said Cheryl Richmond of Bigfork, Eaheart's sole surviving close relative, has requested that his remains be recovered if possible, so he can be buried near his father. His fiance at the time of the accident, Viola Pinkerman Lewis of Yellow Bay, has also agreed that the remains should be recovered.

He said a ceremonial fly-over of vintage P-25 Neptune planes will occur over the search site Wednesday afternoon as a special observance of the occasion.

Eaheart had been a Korean War combat flier and worked as a Western Airlines pilot when he was killed. He also was a star athlete at the University of Montana.

Both aircraft and pilot plunged into the lake on the evening of March 21, 1960, while Eaheart, a 30-year-old U.S. Marine Corps Reserve flier from Missoula, was on a training flight from Los Alamitos Naval Air Station in California.

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 his fiance's parents lived.

Gisselbrecht said that with Viola Lewis' permission, the search team's headquarters is at the home of her late father, K.C. Pinkerman, on the lake's east shore. Pinkerman witnessed the crash, and related his report to then-cub reporter Dale Burk, who now owns and operates Stonydale Press, a regional publishing firm in Stevensville.

Pinkerman gave Burk an exceptional eyewitness account, republished in the Missoulian, which helped immensely in locating the aircraft.

“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. At about 2,000 feet, it went into a left turn and about a 30-degree glide downward from which it never came out,” Pinkerman said at the time.

The next day, Burk said he went out in a boat and helped search for debris from the downed plane. He said he was the first person to come upon the pilot's helmet. Brain matter in the helmet proved conclusively the pilot had been killed on impact.

Pinkerman said the plane went down 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 - virtually the exact location where they found the debris Tuesday.

Reporter John Stromnes can be reached at 1-800-366-7186 or at jstromnes@missoulian.com