Pilot's remains found
Viola Lewis is greeted Saturday morning by searcher Gene Ralston. Ralston and his wife, Sandy, led the search that found remains of Capt. John Eaheart on Friday evening in Flathead Lake. Lewis had been Eaheart’s fiancee when his plane crashed into the lake in 1960. Photo by Sarah Welliver
By JOHN STANG
The Daily Inter Lake
The body of a long-lost U.S. Marine jet pilot apparently has been found at the bottom of Flathead Lake.
Clues indicate that reservist Marine Capt. John Eaheart died in 1960 while ejecting when his plane cashed into the lake after a mechanical failure, said John Gisselbrecht, one of the organizers of the search for his body and plane.
At about 4 p.m. Friday, an underwater robotic camera vehicle found parts of Eaheart's skeletal remains, largely covered by silt, about 276 feet beneath Flathead Lake's surface, Gisselbrecht said.
The remains had a deployed parachute attached to them and the bones were fractured in a way that is consistent with striking a jet cockpit's canopy, Gisselbrecht said.
The searchers have called off any underwater work until the U.S. Navy decides whether it wants to get involved in recovering the remains.
Eaheart's two closest living relatives - a pair of nieces - originally wanted to leave any discovered remains in the lake. But they later decided that the body should be recovered for a formal, private burial ceremony, said Bill Picinni of Woods Bay, a cousin by marriage to the nieces.
The nieces - Cheryl Richmond of Bigfork and another in Jacksonville, Fla., who wants to remain unnamed - are afraid that others might try scavenging the site holding Eaheart's body after the current divers leave, Picinni said.
Eaheart, a University of Montana graduate, was a Western Airlines pilot who was engaged to a flight attendant in the same company.
In March 1960, he went to Alameda Naval Air Station for his two weeks of annual Marine reservist training. As part of the training, he flew his F-9F, an update of a Korean War fighter that saw some action in the early Vietnam conflict, to Malmstrom Air Force Base in Great Falls.
At the time, his fiancee's parents lived in the Yellow Bay area. Today, Viola Lewis, his former fiancee who later married someone else, lives along eastern Flathead Lake. The searchers used her home for a base.
One evening, Eaheart left Malmstrom and flew over the Yellow Bay house. Gisselbrecht described the flyby as similar to someone driving by a friend's house, and not as a stunt. His fiancee was in Denver at the time.
The fighter flew between 900 and 1,200 feet, which was a standard training altitude for an F-9F, which was designed for close-to-the-earth combat flying. Clues indicate that the plane probably was going about 280 mph, which would have been at the lower end of its cruising speed, Gisselbrecht said.
"He was not hot-dogging or showing off," Gisselbrecht said.
The plane flew three sides of a box pattern and was headed east across the lake.
Then witnesses at the time reported a flash or explosion from the plane. The jet dived into the lake with a second explosive sound when it hit the water.
A rooster tail of water - a few thousand feet long - flared along the lake's surface. But no oil or fire spread across the surface from the second explosion.
Reviewing several clues, Gisselbrecht theorized that the jet's engine stalled - which frequently occurred with F-9F fighters. He thinks Eaheart dived to get the turbines turning enough for him to ignite the engine back to life - standard procedure for this problem.
Eaheart likely restarted the engine, which would have caused the rooster tail in the water, he said. But Eaheart's jet likely was too close to the water for him to pull up, so he tried to eject, which would have accounted for the second explosive noise with no accompanying oil slick or fire, Gisselbrecht theorized.
"He kept flying it to the very end," Gisselbrecht said.
The Navy recovered some debris and Eaheart's helmet in 1960.
Gisselbrecht, who lives in Kalispell, explores underwater plane wrecks as a hobby and has been fascinated for years by Eaheart and his lost jet.
A few weeks ago, he read about Sandy and Gene Ralston of Boise using side-scanning radar to find a drowning victim in Whitefish Lake. The Ralstons use underwater search equipment to locate bodies and other objects.
He contacted them. Last week, the group began searching for Eaheart and his jet's 42-foot fuselage with sonar, video, computer simulations and a body-finding dog name Ruby. Some cadaver dogs can sniff gases from bodies in deep water, and Ruby nudged the lake's surface almost above where Eaheart's remains were found, Gisselbrecht said.
On May 2, the searchers found an aileron - a flap on the main wing.
On Friday, they found a pair of Navy flight boots, which led them to the skeletal remains.
"We were ecstatic at finding him," Gisselbrecht said.
The searchers are keeping their underwater equipment away from the remains so they don't stir up the silt at the site.
After the remains are recovered, the searchers plan to resume looking for the fuselage.