Search for the Missing
Four Convair F-106A Delta Dart flight interceptor aircraft in flight. The fighter jet served as the U.S. military’s primary plane to intercept attacking enemy aircraft for three decades. Maj. Vinopal piloted the jet as part of the 71st Fighter Interceptor Squadron out of Selfridge Air Force Base (now Selfridge Air National Guard Base) in Michigan. (Courtesy of the Air Mobility Command Museum)
A fighter pilot running out of fuel went missing over Lake Huron in 1966. The search is on to find his jet aircraft and him, if anything is left of his remains. Lake Huron is as deep and cold as an inland lake can be. The fish in the Great Lakes are a wide variety, and favorites of sport fishermen, especially the lake trout and speckled trout.
I wish them good luck in finding both the lost pilot and his plane, and hope to hear soon that there is a recovery of both.
Category: Air Force, Historical
Fortunately the F-106 was not slinging a live nuclear Genie as part of this exercise. Can you imagine a Palomares-type recovery op in the middle of Lake Huron?
I hope they find him. I hope his family is well.
Those deep, cold freshwater lakes are remarkably preservative. If he didn’t auger in and the bird is mostly intact, there’s a decent chance it’ll be found.
And it will probably be done by one of those reality shows.
“…narrowed down the search area to 660 square miles.” At least the haystack is smaller now. It would be nice to find out for sure the resting place for this Warrior. Damn shame it is taking the efforts of private citizens to do this search.
BZ and Good Luck Gentlemen. I Salute your efforts.
Running out of fuel or engine failure? But no “Pan” or “Mayday” calls prior to the crash?
And why no ejection if the aircraft was in extremis over the water? Ejection seat malfunction/failure? Spatial disorientation? Hypoxia? Some other form of pilot incapacitation? Or did he try to ditch the aircraft?
(Choosing to ride an aircraft like the F-106A into the water in an attempt to ditch would have been “iffy” at the best of times, even when going into a relatively calm freshwater lake. We used to talk about being forced to ditch at sea back in the day, and it was everyone’s shared nightmare to actually pull off a successful ditching, but then be trapped in the cockpit of the sinking aircraft.)
Hopefully they’ll be able to find the aircraft and pilot, and bring the pilot back home to his family. Perhaps they’ll also discover some clues as to what actually took place that led to the loss of this aircraft and pilot.
It they find the bird with the pilot still in the seat, it may be possible, even after all this time, to do an autopsy to find out what went wrong.
I sincerely hope they do find him undisturbed and bring him home.
Godspeed.
Good luck to the searchers, and condolences to the family. My dad told me a story about taking off from Wurtsmith AFB in 1961 and nearly parking a B-52 in Lake Huron. Story went something like “You’d be amazed just how bad a flock of geese can fuck up an aircraft AND the pilot. Goose shit and bird parts everywhere”.
And the Turbine said
omnomnomnom BURP!
Had birds through the engines, cockpit windscreen, all over the pilot…
I’ve told this story before but I’m not going to get too much into it again here for a variety of reasons, mostly of which, I’m in trauma therapy, rehab, and dealing with multiple diagnoses of PTSD, of which I was fighting to either accept or acknowledge. My guys that went to Iraq and Afghanistan and Uzbekistan and the like who have significant challenges and real PTSD are the ones who, in my opinion, earned it and own it. Me, I had to make the phone call to give them the speech, “By the order of the President of the United States , you are ordered to report within 72 hours …etc….
I went back to the unit and pressed on as usual. I had to make those calls a number of times with different men and women in my squadron who I supervised or mentored. I retired after 23 years and never once deployed “in theater”. I volunteered for DS/DDS and for Somalia but I always ended up as backfill to active units who forward deployed and there’s that. I was on a rapid deployment team for the better part of 10 years +. There was always our little “crew” of about 30 who were “those guys” in the squadron, until I got promoted out of that area of responsibility and aged out kinda, chasing that next strips. Sorry for the rant.
So, as I’ve talked about before, as an additional duty, in 1987, I was assigned as an augmentee to the base Mortuary Affairs team at Peterson AFB, CO.
Yeah, geese are a serious hazard and danger to aircraft.
https://www.upi.com/Archives/1987/09/28/Birds-bring-B-1B-bomber-down-in-flames/8682559800000/
She keeps her secrets, inland ocean.
In Sep 1995 the AWACS crash of Yukla 27 at Elemendorf resulted in loss of aircraft and 24 crewmembers as result of hitting an estimated 30+ Canadian Geese and shelling two engines on takeoff.
It’s crazy that something like this can happen like this
Also of interest is Northwest flight 2501
At the time this flight went down it was the largest lost of life from a commercial flight in the United States
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northwest_Orient_Airlines_Flight_2501
It happened in Lake Michigan
The aircraft is still missing
Best of luck to the searchers…fortunately, the average depth of Huron is around 200 feet….not that much of a challenge for recovery; but the 600 square miles they have to search will be challenging in the extreme.
Be glad its not Lake Superior; with an average depth of just under 500 feet and a few spots exceeding 1000 feet…..the Great Lakes will not give up its dead easily.