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Found it here:
http://www.missoulian.com/articles/2006 ... news01.txt
Searchers locate pilot's body in Flathead Lake
By VINCE DEVLIN of the Missoulian
Capt. John Eaheart is coming home.
The Marine pilot's remains have been located at the bottom of Flathead Lake, 46 years after the jet he was piloting crashed in deep water there, and will be brought to the surface for burial.
John Gisselbrecht, the Kalispell man who spearheaded the quest to find the wreckage and Eaheart's remains, located in 275 feet of water, was thrilled Monday to report to Eaheart's family and one-time fiance that there was no evidence that pilot error contributed to the crash.
“I've heard the lake lore, the urban legend that painted Capt. Eaheart less than favorably,” Gisselbrecht said Monday at a news conference at the Museum of Mountain Flying in Missoula. “I've heard everything from that he was a thief who had stolen the Malmstrom (Air Force Base) payroll and was headed to Canada, to the story that he was showing off for his girlfriend by flying low and busting the sound barrier.”
Instead, Gisselbrecht said, all evidence points to catastrophic engine failure after Eaheart, on a training flight from Los Alamitos Naval Air Station in California in his F9F Cougar interceptor, did a fly-over at his future father-in-law's home on Flathead Lake.
A one-time University of Montana basketball great - the Grizzlies' defensive player of the year award is named for him - and Korean War veteran, Eaheart was a full-time pilot for Western Airlines and a member of the Marine Corps Reserves when his jet crashed on March 21, 1960.
Following the press conference, Gisselbrecht laid out the most likely scenario of what happened that day.
After Eaheart flew over the home of K.C. Pinkerman, father of his fiance, Viola, he took the jet out over the lake at an altitude of 900 to 1,200 feet at a low-end cruising speed.
The single-engine jet fighter probably suffered compressor failure - it was a problem common to this type of plane.
“When that happens, the pilot is supposed to put the plane in a 30-degree nose-down path,” Gisselbrecht said. “It gets the turbine fan turning and can restart the engine.”
Eye-witness accounts suggest Eaheart was successful in re-lighting the engine. And that he even got the nose back up.
But there wasn't enough room.
“The tail hit the water,” Gisselbrecht said. “There was a rooster-tail a mile long. It effectively turned the jet into a jet ski.”
Not only was Eaheart not showing off for his fiance, who was in Denver at the time, he couldn't have broken the sound barrier at that altitude without breaking the windows of hundreds of cabins along the lakeshore, Gisselbrecht said.
“He was in an aircraft prone to compressor stalls,” Gisselbrecht said. “This is a Marine who stayed at his post until the last possible second. It doesn't get any more honorable.”
Once the tail hit, Eaheart knew the flight was finished and most likely tried to eject himself from the cockpit, Gisselbrecht said.
But this was in the days before cockpit canopies were jettisoned high into the sky, he added. The ejection button simply unlatched them. It was assumed the plane would be pointed down for a pilot to hit the button, and the wind would carry the canopy away before the pilot was launched into the sky.
With the nose up, there was no wind. Eaheart probably was ejected into the canopy.
“It's more likely he was dead before he hit the water,” Gisselbrecht said.
Eaheart's remains were found Friday evening in an area where a search and rescue dog, a black Lab named Ruby, indicated they might be.
“There's a process for a decomposing body, and under water, it is slowed considerably,” Gisselbrecht said. The process emits gases, and the gases rise to the surface.
They searched in the location where Ruby got excited, biting at the water.
They still weren't sure they had found Eaheart, though. As Gisselbrecht noted, “There are a lot of people missing in that lake.”
A remote-operated vehicle deployed at the bottom of the lake in the area first found a Navy Marine Corps flying boot.
“We looked around, and did find remains,” Gisselbrecht said. They immediately ceased the search and took their video evidence to the Lake County deputy coroner.
The team that found the remains spent the weekend informing Eaheart's family, Viola Pinkerman Lewis and the U.S. Navy.
The Navy will decide whether to send its own team to recover the remains, or whether to have Gisselbrecht's team do so, possibly under Navy supervision.
The Navy will decide later this week, Gisselbrecht said.
Eaheart's great-nephew, Jay Ranstrom of Missoula, represented the family at the press conference. He said the family decided to have the remains brought up, and a private funeral and burial would be held later.
Vi Lewis, the one-time Western Airlines stewardess and Eaheart's fiance in 1960, was present with her husband Escoe as well. Originally skeptical of the search, she said now she's glad her one-time fiance has finally been located.
A seven-day search in 1960 recovered Eaheart's helmet, which had brain matter inside it, indicating the pilot was dead.
But because of the depth of the water and the technology available then, the plane was never located and a body never recovered.
Gisselbrecht became interested in the flight of Capt. John Eaheart in 1991 after hearing some of the tall tales associated with it.
His search involved a sonar-recovery team from Boise, Idaho, Gene and Sandy Ralston, who have been involved in several well-known investigations, including the Laci Peterson murder, and many other people.
Asked how much of his own money he's spent on this quest, Gisselbrecht said it didn't matter.
“Money wasn't the issue,” he said. “This was about restoring a Marine's honor.”
Reporter Vince Devlin can be reached at 523-5260 or at
vdevlin@missoulian.com
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