Speaker 1: The True Gash Mountains ring Elmendorf Air Force Base. They
Speaker 1: begin at Anchorage and run for hundreds of miles, getting steeper,
Speaker 1: higher and glaciated. Between here and Juno. Search planes are
Speaker 1: flying near the coast and old glaciers on the hopes
Speaker 1: of the plane detoured from the flight path to sightsea.
Speaker 1: The weather has been so bad that small planes have
Speaker 1: been limited in the areas they can search. Most of
Speaker 1: the searching has been done by the bigger air Force
Speaker 1: planes flying in twenty thousand feet very equipped with electronic
Speaker 1: locator that may be able to pick up the beeps
Speaker 1: from the locator beacon in the missing plane. One pilot
Speaker 1: was asked how the weather was in the search area.
Speaker 1: Crowds are overcast, from about three thousand in areas up
Speaker 1: to forty five hundred in other areas. Had terrible turbulence
Speaker 1: in some spots just absolutely turned the airplane upside down
Speaker 1: to quite smooth another. So it's very unpredictable. Present plane
Speaker 1: leave Major Starker. The aircraft in question left anchorage or
Speaker 1: twenty four hours ago. Have you heard anything at all
Speaker 1: from it? No, we have not. We've had aircraft searching
Speaker 1: during the last twenty four hours, and we failed to
Speaker 1: come up with any positive sightings or reports. At this time,
Speaker 1: the flight plan was over five miles if you narrowed
Speaker 1: down at all. No, not yet. The aircraft hadn't reported
Speaker 1: into any station along the way. The last transmission was
Speaker 1: shortly after taking off from Anchorage International. You don't feel
Speaker 1: that your search effort so far has cut down the
Speaker 1: areas you have left to search? No, not yet. Probably
Speaker 1: what we've done through the night is an electronics search,
Speaker 1: and they had a son emergency locator beacon onboard the aircraft,
Speaker 1: and it hasn't as yet made any transmissions. Weather in
Speaker 1: the search area has been bad, just continuing to be
Speaker 1: bad and maybe a problem for the next couple of days.
Speaker 1: From my Heart Media, this is Missing in Alaska, The
Speaker 1: story of two congressmen who vanished in nineteen seventy two
Speaker 1: and my quest to figure out what happened to them.
Speaker 1: I'm your host, John Wallzac. Dawn broke on October seventeenth,
Speaker 1: nineteen seventy two, with much of southeast Alaska engulfed in
Speaker 1: a swirling tempest of snow and fog. Dozens of planes
Speaker 1: and boats stood ready to search for Congressman Hilbogs and
Speaker 1: Nick Baggage, who had vanished the day before somewhere between
Speaker 1: Anchorage and Juno. If only the weather would clear. Terry
Speaker 1: Holiday was a pilot based in the small town of
Speaker 1: Cordova on Prince William Sound, and the next day when
Speaker 1: the search began, we didn't. I was the first responder
Speaker 1: from the Cordova side, and I only got halfway across
Speaker 1: the sound before I run into a wall of snow
Speaker 1: and I just kept working in my way or drittier
Speaker 1: as a state trooper with me. You know. It was
Speaker 1: in a beaver and floats and which give me an
Speaker 1: optional landing about it anywhere. But it was snow and
Speaker 1: really hard. The water was white covered with with snow
Speaker 1: on top of the salt water was not nice, as
Speaker 1: snow hampered much of the search effort. Attention turned to
Speaker 1: hundreds of tips that flowed in from the public, including
Speaker 1: one in particular which intrigued Air Force officials. Overnight in
Speaker 1: the tiny town of Nevada City, California, thousands of miles
Speaker 1: to the south, a man named Roy Harris had picked
Speaker 1: up a frantic transmission on his ham radio, just playing
Speaker 1: column for May Day, and they were over water, but
Speaker 1: they were close to land. He was trying to get
Speaker 1: as close to land as he could. Evidently engine problems
Speaker 1: or something. Was that my understanding what was repeated to
Speaker 1: me from that's former Nevada City Police Chief James Moon,
Speaker 1: who took reports from several local men who heard a
Speaker 1: garbled transmission of a pilot begging for help. They notified
Speaker 1: the of what they heard of the plane going down.
Speaker 1: Said they were close some islander or landing him and
Speaker 1: they were going down, and they kind of give a
Speaker 1: description of where I thought they were. And I notified
Speaker 1: the Shakramonal psoration and they came. I shut up a
Speaker 1: beating between them and the HAM operators, and they took
Speaker 1: a report. The last time, new Woman Moon spoke with
Speaker 1: Al Miller, a HAM operator and retired painting contractor, who
Speaker 1: heard the pilot say frantically, this is Alaska mobile needing assistance.
Speaker 1: The pilot told Miller he was twelve miles southwest of Juneo,
Speaker 1: battling seventy mile hour headwinds and had only eight minutes
Speaker 1: of gas left. He said he was flying Assessment three ten,
Speaker 1: the same model as the missing plane, and that he
Speaker 1: had landed earlier in the day at a remote airstrip
Speaker 1: to ride out bad weather before taking off once more
Speaker 1: for Juno. The pilot broadcasts tail number, but the transmission
Speaker 1: was garbled. Miller heard in a one and a two.
Speaker 1: Then oh my god, we're going to hit the rocks.
Speaker 1: I'm out of gas. I'm heading down. This is it.
Speaker 1: A few minutes later, the pilot told Miller that the
Speaker 1: plane had crashed near Juno. Then one final transmission in
Speaker 1: morse code, we need help. Everyone was injured but alive.
Speaker 1: In addition to Harrison Miller, at least three and possibly
Speaker 1: four other men heard the transmission. But were they telling
Speaker 1: the truth? Chief Moon believed them, so too did Air
Speaker 1: Force Major George Eldridge, who spoke with one of them
Speaker 1: by phone. The Air Force decided to fly them to
Speaker 1: Alaska after interviewing them in person. Major Henry Stocker, the
Speaker 1: search commander, spoke to the press saying that transmission was real,
Speaker 1: but that the person who broadcast it was likely a hoaxer,
Speaker 1: a quote sadistic person. For years, I tried to find
Speaker 1: the Ham operators to have died, and I can't locate
Speaker 1: the other. Four national accounts of the mysterious transmission mainly
Speaker 1: quoted Al Miller, the retired painting contractor, past that there's
Speaker 1: not much to go on. I filed a Freedom of
Speaker 1: information after requests with the Air Force, but didn't find
Speaker 1: many new details. But late last year I got some help.
Speaker 1: Tracy Liloquist, a Nevada City librarian, dug up an article
Speaker 1: that ran in the local paper, The Union, in nineteen two,
Speaker 1: which quoted Roy Harris, another of the Ham operators, that
Speaker 1: allowed me to compare Harrison Miller's contemporaneous accounts to look
Speaker 1: for inconsistencies. I only found two. First, Miller heard the
Speaker 1: pilot say he had only eight minutes of gas left,
Speaker 1: Harris heard fourteen. As for the garbled tail number, Miller
Speaker 1: heard n A one and A two, Harris heard n
Speaker 1: C twelve. Otherwise, their stories line up. In the Union article,
Speaker 1: Harris was also quoted as saying that the operators had
Speaker 1: beamed in on the signal and that it was coming
Speaker 1: from the direction of Juno. To me, though, what's most
Speaker 1: interesting is what Miller heard of the tail number. Remember
Speaker 1: this was the night the congressman vanished, before their tail
Speaker 1: number had been widely shared. Again, Miller heard what sounded
Speaker 1: like N A one A two. The tail number of
Speaker 1: the missing plane was N one eight one to H
Speaker 1: seventy two hours after the plane vanished, searchers finally caught
Speaker 1: a break in southern Alaska. Today, the search continued for
Speaker 1: House Democratic leader Hail Bogs and three other men. Weather
Speaker 1: conditions in the area were greatly improved. The four men
Speaker 1: were in a light plane which disappeared on Monday on
Speaker 1: a flight from Anchorage to Juneo. The search now centers
Speaker 1: around port Portage Pass, southeast of Anchorage. The sky turned
Speaker 1: blue around Anchorage, Alaska, and suddenly it was possible to
Speaker 1: see what storm and fog could so treacherously masked the
Speaker 1: Portage Pass. Now the rescue teams could effectively scan the
Speaker 1: most likely area of the accident from the air of
Speaker 1: the weather clares up there anywhere along the Alpine troops
Speaker 1: began reconnaissance missions into the ice and snowbound areas and
Speaker 1: onto the ice of the Portage Glacier itself. At the
Speaker 1: Air Forces Rescue Coordination Center, which has saved lives in
Speaker 1: a ten year period. Already, every effort that might help
Speaker 1: find and save the four missing men was orchis s trading.
Speaker 1: We're looking for fires either survival fires, camp fires or
Speaker 1: emergency signal fiers, anything that may indicate where the aircraft is. Uh.
Speaker 1: They are coming back now. It is now a daylight
Speaker 1: and they have returned, and they have nothing to record
Speaker 1: as yet. Congressman Boggs's tragedy was an old story to Alaska's.
Speaker 1: This was the rescue mission just this year. The Air
Speaker 1: Force was well aware that intense attention was focused on
Speaker 1: its rescue operations. The most involved spectator of all was
Speaker 1: Mrs Hale Boggs, who drove out to the Portage Glacier
Speaker 1: to see for herself the dreadful force of nature which
Speaker 1: seemed to have claimed her husband. The chances seemed slim,
Speaker 1: but Mrs Boggs said she still believed her husband would
Speaker 1: be found. Shortly before Lindy Boggs flew to Anchorage, she
Speaker 1: had received a call from President Next Time, Mrs Box,
Speaker 1: the wife of the Majority leader. Hello, Mrs Box, I
Speaker 1: know this is a very hard time for you and
Speaker 1: your family, but I wanted you to know that Mrs
Speaker 1: Lex and I are thinking about your and we're just
Speaker 1: braying that out in that snow. They're gonna they're gonna
Speaker 1: find him. Work around up there yeah. Well, we were,
Speaker 1: as you know, doing everything we can. The government said
Speaker 1: not the week that we can do it. But there
Speaker 1: every search plane is on and uh. But but you
Speaker 1: just keep your faith. Okay, you get my best to
Speaker 1: you those wonderful children. Thank you, grandchildren two okay, okay,
Speaker 1: thank you. Nixon also called Peggy Beggett. Hello, Mrs Bigitch.
Speaker 1: She is the wife of the congressman from Alaska who
Speaker 1: is missing. Hello. I wanted you to know I talked
Speaker 1: to Mrs Box earlier today that Mrs Nixon and I
Speaker 1: were are thinking of you and just talking for the
Speaker 1: best on your trip. That's uh. It was a terrible
Speaker 1: shop to all of us to read about it. And
Speaker 1: would you to your six children to that that we
Speaker 1: called from us. I know it's a tough time for you,
Speaker 1: but you know, just keep the faith. The best in Alaska.
Speaker 1: A reporter asked Major Stalker, the search commander, if he
Speaker 1: had enough manpower and aircraft. We have more than enough
Speaker 1: to do the mission. We have ten h C one
Speaker 1: thirties various configurations. They're all search qualified aircraft. We have
Speaker 1: enough cruise. We have the C A P with an
Speaker 1: abundance resource of light aircraft. We have helicopters, we have
Speaker 1: post guard. We even have a post guard cutter available
Speaker 1: to us. We have the forces necessary to do the mission.
Speaker 1: The search initially focused on Portage Pass, a narrow gap
Speaker 1: through towering, snow covered mountains just fifty miles southeast of Anchorage. Okay,
Speaker 1: I mean a little portage Pass. I can't tell you.
Speaker 1: I can't tell you how many airplane crashes we've had
Speaker 1: in Portage Pass. I can't tell you how many friends
Speaker 1: I've lost in Portage Pass. Definitely it looks very benign.
Speaker 1: But what happens is, you know, you fly to the
Speaker 1: end of turning an arm out of Anchorage and then
Speaker 1: you're gonna pop over Portage Pass into the Sound, and
Speaker 1: that thing gets sucked in with fog and it's just
Speaker 1: like flying into the black hole. Teresa Gerson, who we
Speaker 1: heard from an episode one, has been a flight attendant
Speaker 1: for nearly thirty years. In nine she was a young
Speaker 1: volunteer for the Civil Air Patrol. So in our state
Speaker 1: of extreme weather conditions, extreme weather conditions, which is something
Speaker 1: I need to talk about, is that in leaving Anchorage
Speaker 1: to fly to Juno, you fly past the largest ice
Speaker 1: field and and what happens is that the wind just
Speaker 1: roars down the glacier when we say, oh my goodness,
Speaker 1: it's gustin on the hill today. Most places that would
Speaker 1: be a hurricane or something. Here it's just a big wind.
Speaker 1: So with no in the knowing the route from Anchorage
Speaker 1: to June one, flying past this huge glacier with which
Speaker 1: makes its own weather, you can only imagine what they
Speaker 1: might have run into. The missing plane was supposed to
Speaker 1: follow a specific route V three one seven, which would
Speaker 1: have taken it through Portage Pass, over Prince william Sound
Speaker 1: and onto Juno. It's hard to fully grasp the vast
Speaker 1: beauty of Prince Williams Sound and the Fiords, mountains, glaciers
Speaker 1: and islands that fill it in surround it without looking
Speaker 1: at a map. So maybe pause for a minute and
Speaker 1: pull it up on your phone, and while you're at it,
Speaker 1: also look up Portage Pass. On the morning of October six,
Speaker 1: Donald Mellish, who had hosted a fundraiser for the congressman
Speaker 1: the night before, was driving with his two sons on
Speaker 1: his way to the Kenai Peninsula to go canoeing when
Speaker 1: he spotted a dark veil on the horizon. As we
Speaker 1: had then we dry right sorge that portage pass, and
Speaker 1: I could disturble ends along this ang along the water.
Speaker 1: They're cotinely, there's terrible winds, and they're just a boiling
Speaker 1: black mass in this sportage pass. And I thought to myself, already,
Speaker 1: tell you know, they probably didn't fly that day, but
Speaker 1: they did. And anyway, I still remember that because I
Speaker 1: had to get out for the far every f R
Speaker 1: check by loads and make sure I didn't blow the
Speaker 1: can off the top of the bar, just falling that
Speaker 1: hard that morning. Only twenty minutes before the congressman took off,
Speaker 1: an Air Force helicopter had abandoned an attempt to cut
Speaker 1: through the pass after encountering severe turbulence. In November, curious
Speaker 1: to see the pass for myself, I flew to Anchorage
Speaker 1: and chartered a small plane. At the time, I only
Speaker 1: had my crappy phone to record some audio from the air.
Speaker 1: On a clear sunny day, the passing surrounding mountains are stunning,
Speaker 1: so I see it wow, emerging from the past. I
Speaker 1: looked below and spotted the tiny town of Whittier, nestled
Speaker 1: between mountains and sea. A day later, wanting to see
Speaker 1: the pass from the ground too. I parted a trailhead
Speaker 1: near Whittier and hiked into the mountains alone. Today is
Speaker 1: November six, and I'm standing right Portage Pass in Alaska,
Speaker 1: about fifty miles southeast of Anchorage. I had all the
Speaker 1: way up here and saw footsteps in the snow part
Speaker 1: of the way, and now I don't see anything. I
Speaker 1: don't think anybody has been up here in a little while.
Speaker 1: It's twenty one degrees and I haven't seen anybody since
Speaker 1: I got here. The passes book ended on one side
Speaker 1: by mountains and a massive glacier, and on the other
Speaker 1: by Prince William Sound. Between the sound and the past
Speaker 1: sits Whittier, population two five, A town accustomed to raging storms.
Speaker 1: Whittier has fierce weather, and I really mean fierce, and
Speaker 1: snow so hard that I've several times I've seen the
Speaker 1: geese had to land because they couldn't get through the
Speaker 1: pass either. They were sitting on every light post, every
Speaker 1: every place, tree, how cars, everything else, and the snowflakes
Speaker 1: will be as big as my hands, sometimes just waffling down.
Speaker 1: Dorothea Taylor, a retired teacher, lived in Whittier for several
Speaker 1: years In the nineteen six seas and seventies, and the
Speaker 1: mounds are high on each all around. Then they're glaciated. Well,
Speaker 1: that win comes pitching in there from either side. That
Speaker 1: will come bow like crazy from the ocean side for
Speaker 1: a long time, and then uh, it will get just
Speaker 1: as much forth coming through the path and it keeps
Speaker 1: doing that trying to equal wife. That's pressure. So yeah,
Speaker 1: they have big storms, they have big snows, they have
Speaker 1: lots of rain. But when it's a beautiful day, that
Speaker 1: is the most beautiful place you ever saw. At ninety
Speaker 1: four years old, Taylor is a fearless woman. In At
Speaker 1: the age of eighty six, she garnered international attention when
Speaker 1: she saved her husband from a rampaging moose, hitting it
Speaker 1: with a shovel until it ran off. In nineteen seventy two,
Speaker 1: right after the congressman disappeared, she led a group of
Speaker 1: her students into the surrounding mountains to look for the
Speaker 1: missing plane. We regressed appropriately and we went out and
Speaker 1: then started taking up the mountain and we had then
Speaker 1: acts and lunch, whatever you need, and then we got
Speaker 1: fogged in up there. Yes, we were up there for
Speaker 1: probably an hour just sitting in place. I said, don't
Speaker 1: anybody moved, Just stay right where you are and we'll
Speaker 1: just talk and that. But we will move until the
Speaker 1: fog starts to go. About an hour later, it started
Speaker 1: to move out, but it was so thick you couldn't
Speaker 1: see anything there for that hour we were we were
Speaker 1: quite a ways up. It was very steep up there,
Speaker 1: and uh, the kids did very well, and we looked
Speaker 1: and then they cleared up and we could use our
Speaker 1: binoculars and and they're pretty good at looking for things
Speaker 1: when they live out in the bush like that, but
Speaker 1: we never did see anything. As Taylor and our students
Speaker 1: start supportage path on foot, Angus Lynn, a reporter who
Speaker 1: had flown in from New Orleans, was high above in
Speaker 1: a military plane. I hooked up with the Alaskan Air Command.
Speaker 1: They said, yeah, we can take you up tomorrow morn.
Speaker 1: I said, great, So I got on. Asked the captaine,
Speaker 1: I said, how long are we going to be up?
Speaker 1: He says, well, we got enough fuel for eight hours?
Speaker 1: And I'm thinking, oh, ship eight hours an airplane. We
Speaker 1: weren't up eight, but we were up maybe six and
Speaker 1: a half or something like. That's a long flight, you know.
Speaker 1: And uh, he said don't worry. There's plenty of there's
Speaker 1: plenty of barth bags on board. Because what it is,
Speaker 1: it's a it's a visual search. So you'd be you'd
Speaker 1: fly up. I mean you're literally doing this. You're flying
Speaker 1: up the side of a mountain and down the side
Speaker 1: of a mountain, you know, into a pass, maybe a
Speaker 1: glacial pass, and then back up and you just repeat it.
Speaker 1: As I remember, John, they were assigned areas to go search,
Speaker 1: and I mean that was all drawn out on maps
Speaker 1: before they took off. Here's where you're searching today. So
Speaker 1: it's not like they just took off on a goose chase,
Speaker 1: you know, saying we're gonna go take a look at Hey,
Speaker 1: why don't we go over there. It's not like jumping
Speaker 1: from fishing spot to fishing spot, you know, when you
Speaker 1: you're in a boat. But Lynde got back to Anchorage.
Speaker 1: He went to a library to do some background research.
Speaker 1: I said, look, I'm I'm interested in you know the
Speaker 1: history of this. Uh you know the bush pilots and
Speaker 1: plane wrex and you know private plane b sinces. Okay,
Speaker 1: I can put you something together, I said, Okay. So
Speaker 1: when I showed up at the library, there was like
Speaker 1: a you know when these fold out tables that the
Speaker 1: guy had set up for me and it was loaded
Speaker 1: with loosely you know, scrap books like this loaded. He said,
Speaker 1: this is for twenty years. He said, this is only
Speaker 1: for twenty years. And I mean I was mind boggled.
Speaker 1: I couldn't have gone through that in a week. That's
Speaker 1: how many planes had disappeared, and how many stories have
Speaker 1: been written, and how many search not for a high
Speaker 1: profile figure like uh like Bogs and Beggae, but just
Speaker 1: bush pilots that had disappeared. Unlike lynd Alan Dodds, Frank,
Speaker 1: a reporter for the Anchorage Daily News, was well versed
Speaker 1: in covering aviation disasters. That the one thing you really
Speaker 1: learned as a reporter in Alaska's how to cover a
Speaker 1: plane crash. So not long after I got there, a
Speaker 1: troop plane chartered I think it was a Flying Tiger
Speaker 1: charter carrying troops to Vietnam, crashed at the end of
Speaker 1: the Anchorage, Alaska International Airport runway, and I think forty
Speaker 1: nine people died. We were burnt up in the crash
Speaker 1: because the plane was fully loaded with fuel and caught
Speaker 1: fire when it hit something at the end of the
Speaker 1: runway because it didn't get up in time. So covering
Speaker 1: a plane crash was a big deal in Alaska. And
Speaker 1: and so you when you covered that first crash, were
Speaker 1: you there on the scene right after it went down?
Speaker 1: I not only was I on the scene, I I
Speaker 1: had been out. A bunch of us have been out.
Speaker 1: One of our, my colleagues was sitting in the Captain
Speaker 1: Cook Hotel Crowsness Bar and sort of saw the crash
Speaker 1: from the bar, which is the highest point in Anchorage
Speaker 1: at the time, and so we all scrambled out to
Speaker 1: the airport. I remember going out there was that there
Speaker 1: was a snowstorm, and I was wearing wolfers, which turned
Speaker 1: out to be nuts because I ended up getting minor
Speaker 1: frost bite. And I remember pacing off in my wafers
Speaker 1: and about a foot of snow or more, um how
Speaker 1: far off the runway the plane had gone before it stopped,
Speaker 1: and it was like a half a mile. I was
Speaker 1: putting one ft in front of the other, you know,
Speaker 1: to measure it exactly. And then I remember going into
Speaker 1: the hangar and counting the bodies. There were like once
Speaker 1: of charcoal was shrunk and combat boots on it. Was
Speaker 1: really grim and smells horrible. That experience stayed with Dodds
Speaker 1: Frank for decades, especially as he covered nine eleven for CNN,
Speaker 1: only blocks from the World Trade Center when it collapsed
Speaker 1: in nineteen seventy two. It had been his tenacious reporting
Speaker 1: to help shape the search for Box and Baggetts. Or
Speaker 1: the search the first day was in part based on
Speaker 1: my reporting because I figured I calculated what the flight
Speaker 1: pattern was, but it should have been to Juno and
Speaker 1: called every place on the ground along the way, and
Speaker 1: one of them was a little town called Whittier, Alaska,
Speaker 1: which is on the on the sea, I mean in
Speaker 1: the inland passage. But it's one big building that was
Speaker 1: a secret building during World War Two. So there's a
Speaker 1: in the middle of nowhere in the fiord there is
Speaker 1: a twelve story building that was hidden from Japanese forces.
Speaker 1: I guess to this day about half the population of
Speaker 1: Whittier still lives in a single build holding now called
Speaker 1: the Beggatts Towers. The morning the Congressman vanished, several local
Speaker 1: residents heard a plane flying overhead. According to Dodds Frank,
Speaker 1: if true, that's an important clue. No other flight passed
Speaker 1: over Whittier around that time, it would mean that the
Speaker 1: missing plane made it through Portage Pass Pass Whittier and
Speaker 1: Honor Prince William Sound. The search shifted from the Pass
Speaker 1: to the sound. So I went out in this glass
Speaker 1: those planes, which was an observer plane that used to
Speaker 1: be used during the war, and flo was really low,
Speaker 1: like fifty ft above the water depending on where you're
Speaker 1: looking with the visibility is looking for debris. And what
Speaker 1: was it like for you to be on that plane
Speaker 1: over the sound? It was It was really dramatic, and
Speaker 1: it gave me a real feel for what it is
Speaker 1: like during wartime when you're hunting an enemy from not
Speaker 1: far off the ground and flying as slow as you can,
Speaker 1: but that's still a hundred twenty miles undred, so you
Speaker 1: cover a lot of territory and you can actually see
Speaker 1: all kinds of things. I mean, you can see a
Speaker 1: a soda can floating in the water at that speed
Speaker 1: and height. So it was a pretty thorough search. I
Speaker 1: don't have any doubts that they were. The government did
Speaker 1: everything it could to try to find him. Jim Shook,
Speaker 1: an Alaska state trooper, was also searching the sound by
Speaker 1: air well. We were in the departments woman goose, and
Speaker 1: we came over the pass its lid here and began
Speaker 1: what our assigned good Church was. And we did a
Speaker 1: good search with the goose and actually came close to
Speaker 1: um an SR seventy one bloop blackboard while you were
Speaker 1: in the air. Yes, what shook spotted. The SR seventy
Speaker 1: one Blackbird was a top secret spy plane. It was
Speaker 1: a technological marvel capable of flying higher than eighty thousand
Speaker 1: feet at a speed of two thousand miles per hour,
Speaker 1: and it had the ability to photograph more than sixty
Speaker 1: thousand square miles of terrain per hour. The radio crack
Speaker 1: old with the SR seventy one's pilots giving us his
Speaker 1: position and that he would be passing from our right
Speaker 1: to our left, that he was at a higher altitude,
Speaker 1: and we acknowledged that. And I saw this small spec
Speaker 1: to the south, and then a blur goes by an
Speaker 1: aspec to the north, and of course we were in
Speaker 1: a position to see quite a distance in both directions,
Speaker 1: and the speed was blinding and close. That was a
Speaker 1: pretty interesting part of the search. But we were covering
Speaker 1: as much areas as we were assigned, plus a little
Speaker 1: bit and we were actually in a bowl and a tight,
Speaker 1: tight turn in a bowl alongside the mountains on the
Speaker 1: northern side, I think of Prince William Sound. And as
Speaker 1: we were in the tight turn to the left, both
Speaker 1: engines quit and uh. It turns out that the pilot
Speaker 1: had forgotten the transfer fuel and as we were plummeting
Speaker 1: towards here, um, he started pumping fuel from one tank
Speaker 1: to another, and the engines caught and the firewalls fob
Speaker 1: of the course, and it took both of us to
Speaker 1: pulling on the yolk. You know, I've got my own
Speaker 1: yolk on my side, and I took both office to
Speaker 1: pull out of the of the dive and we landed.
Speaker 1: We were both pretty well shook up and sat there
Speaker 1: for a while, and at the time I was a smoker, unfortunately,
Speaker 1: But anyway, we sat there and smoked, both of us
Speaker 1: for probably twenty minutes, and then took off again and
Speaker 1: continued her good search. Sure had plenty of experience in
Speaker 1: investigating plane crashes, including a very memorable one that occurred
Speaker 1: a year or two before the Congressman vanished. You know,
Speaker 1: there was a there was a plane crash of a
Speaker 1: F twenty seven, a fair child up at Pedro Bay,
Speaker 1: um gosh. Back in what was it seventy or seventy one,
Speaker 1: I was given the job of guarding the bodies at
Speaker 1: the coolest air guard base and they brought all the
Speaker 1: frozen bodies in wrapped in plastic and my fellow troopers
Speaker 1: my guardian because I was just at Breening Rookie. They
Speaker 1: turned all the one light off in that huge hangar
Speaker 1: and told me I had to turn the bodies all night,
Speaker 1: so they thought for autopsy purposes in the morning, and
Speaker 1: I was I've never been so frightened in my life,
Speaker 1: and gave me a pair of boots because they said
Speaker 1: it would be so slimy. I had to wade through
Speaker 1: the this run oh God. And of course an hour
Speaker 1: later they called me from the office and said they
Speaker 1: were just kidding. A night was over, twenty dead bodies
Speaker 1: rolling and thawing and moaning and so forth. O home man,
Speaker 1: I'll tell you that was my introduction to dead bodies.
Speaker 1: As the days ticked on, searchers still hadn't found any
Speaker 1: sign of the missing plane. The search for House Democratic
Speaker 1: leader Hail Boggs, now in its eighth to day, moved
Speaker 1: today to the Gulf of Alaska. An Air Force plane
Speaker 1: spotted debris in the gulf in an area near the
Speaker 1: flight path of the plane that disappeared on a flight
Speaker 1: from Anchorage to Juno with Bogs on board. A Coast
Speaker 1: Guard helicopter was sent to look for the debris, and
Speaker 1: it reports that the debris is orange colored. The plane
Speaker 1: on which Boggs was traveling was orange colored. Searchers spotted
Speaker 1: many other things too, including a wrecked sailboat and orange
Speaker 1: rock shaped like a plane, a school of jellyfish, a
Speaker 1: log that looked like a plane way, a smudge on
Speaker 1: a glacier, half of plastic, pale sad, a piece of
Speaker 1: orange wood, a rock slide, a discoloration in the snow,
Speaker 1: and a piece of styrofoam. Ultimately, nothing turned out to
Speaker 1: be from the missing plane, nor did any sign of
Speaker 1: it show up in photos captured by the SR Blackbird.
Speaker 1: A sense of despair started to set in. The Air
Speaker 1: Force indicated today that it may soon call off it's
Speaker 1: search in Alaska for House majority leader Hail Boggs. The
Speaker 1: plane carrying Bogs disappeared on a flight from Anchorage to
Speaker 1: Juno twelve days ago. Frustrated authorities reviewed other leads they
Speaker 1: had initially deemed less important, including some from the general public.
Speaker 1: Early on, the Air Force had detected two emergency signals.
Speaker 1: The first was weak a hundred and fifty miles northeast
Speaker 1: of Anchorage, nowhere near the planned flight path. The second,
Speaker 1: west of Juno, lasted for forty minutes, but neither could
Speaker 1: be pinpointed with accuracy. The Coast Guard had also taken
Speaker 1: a report on October eighteenth from loggers near Juno who
Speaker 1: heard a light plane passing overhead, followed by a loud boom,
Speaker 1: But the loggers had heard the sound before the missing
Speaker 1: Cessna could have made it that far. Authorities determined another
Speaker 1: dead end. Meanwhile, psychic started to flood the military and
Speaker 1: the families of the missing men with tips. Dear Mrs
Speaker 1: Hale Bottles, one letter began, the Lord showed me a vision.
Speaker 1: The missing men were twenty five miles southeast of Anchoragees
Speaker 1: said they only have a few bullets left for the gun,
Speaker 1: and they have dug a place in the side of
Speaker 1: a cliff or a mountain where the plane was forced
Speaker 1: to land, and they climb up there on a ladder
Speaker 1: to keep animals from getting to them. Lindy got other
Speaker 1: bizarre letters to including from someone who had a vision
Speaker 1: of a man in a rose colored suit and a
Speaker 1: woman who wrote that her method was quote particularly suited
Speaker 1: to the semi Arctic and Arctic areas. The military discounted
Speaker 1: nearly all of these odd tips, saved for one. A
Speaker 1: curious call the Coastguard received from a man in California.
Speaker 1: Draw a line from Anchors to Juno. The man said,
Speaker 1: head west from Juno for two hundred and fifty six
Speaker 1: point five miles, crossing Yakutat Bay and mause been A glacier,
Speaker 1: and eleven point four miles from the glacier, draw a
Speaker 1: line to the coast. Go back and forth along the
Speaker 1: line for ten miles. The plane is in that area.
Speaker 1: Two men are still alive. Investigators took this lead seriously,
Speaker 1: in part because the tipster had a military background. D
Speaker 1: FBI dispatched the team to interview him at his house.
Speaker 1: According to an FBI report, which didn't disclose his name,
Speaker 1: the man was about thirty five years old, six three
Speaker 1: and two and fifteen pounds, with dark hair and an
Speaker 1: injured left arm. Investigators described him as national extremely intelligent,
Speaker 1: but somewhat strange. He claimed he got information on the
Speaker 1: specific crash location from a friend who had access to
Speaker 1: experimental electronic equipment. It's unclear at the military double checked
Speaker 1: the spot he pinpointed, which is near Icy Bay, a
Speaker 1: remote body of water sixty five miles northwest of the
Speaker 1: town of Yakatat, but it was likely scanned in some
Speaker 1: capacity at least once by search planes. On November seven,
Speaker 1: as the search ground on, President Nixon defeated Senator George
Speaker 1: McGovern in a landslide re election victory. The missing congressman
Speaker 1: were also re elected. Two men elected yesterday probably will
Speaker 1: never take lass seats. The House Democratic lead to haild
Speaker 1: Bugs of Louisiana and Representative Nick Beggett of Alaska, disappeared
Speaker 1: in an airplane accident in Alaska three weeks ago. Barring
Speaker 1: a miraculous survival, there will be special elections to replace them.
Speaker 1: Two weeks later, as the search entered its fine old days,
Speaker 1: Nick Beget's wife, Peggy, received a disturbing letter pasted together
Speaker 1: from newspaper clippings. Your husband, Mr. Beget, an American Croatian
Speaker 1: Alaska Democratic rep, has been assassinated by our organization. He
Speaker 1: and others aboard will not be found reason criminally insane
Speaker 1: nature of his pact with American croat separatists. Next time
Speaker 1: on Missing in Alaska. These two events, in coordination with
Speaker 1: one another, actually very quickly marked I think an important
Speaker 1: turning point for chreation terrorists, this idea that there are
Speaker 1: no innocent victims. As we conclude this episode, I'm giving
Speaker 1: you four more tasks. First, help me figure out whether
Speaker 1: or not any of the HAM operators who heard the
Speaker 1: mysterious transmission the evening the plane vanished are still alive.
Speaker 1: I know that too, Roy Harris and Ac Fonts have died.
Speaker 1: I'm not sure though about the other four, all of
Speaker 1: whom lived in California, Al Miller and Victor Parker of
Speaker 1: Nevada City, Ronald Crawford of Olive Hurst, and Joe Tatum Abute. Second,
Speaker 1: the Los Angeles TV station k n x T now
Speaker 1: known as k CBS conducted interviews in Nevada City and
Speaker 1: air to report on the HAM operators on either October
Speaker 1: seventeenth or eighteenth, nineteen seventy two. I haven't been able
Speaker 1: to find a video of the report. Maybe you can help. Third,
Speaker 1: help me find out what happened to photos taken by
Speaker 1: the SR seventy one Blackbird. It's possible that they've been destroyed,
Speaker 1: but documents I obtained from the Air Force didn't make
Speaker 1: clear their final fate. If you work for the Air Force,
Speaker 1: you're welcome to contact us anonymously. Finally, help me identify
Speaker 1: the tipster who phoned in the alleged location of the
Speaker 1: wrecked plane citing information from experimental electronic equipment. His name
Speaker 1: was redacted in an FBI file I obtained, but for
Speaker 1: some reason, his phone number wasn't and it's an important clue,
Speaker 1: perhaps the only one at this point, that can help
Speaker 1: us identify him. His number was three seven eight five
Speaker 1: two four three. I'm not sure about the area code,
Speaker 1: but since he called the Long Beach Coastguard station, let's
Speaker 1: assume for now that the right one is to one three.
Speaker 1: So again, his number would have been to one three
Speaker 1: three seven eight five two four three. See if you
Speaker 1: can find that in a California phone book from nineteen
Speaker 1: seventy two. An interesting side note, by nineteen seventy four
Speaker 1: that particular number belonged to the anti abortion group Right
Speaker 1: to Life, but I'm not sure if it did in
Speaker 1: nineteen seventy two. You can reach us by phone at
Speaker 1: one eight three three m I A tips that's one
Speaker 1: eight three three six four two eight four seven seven
Speaker 1: again one eight three three six four two eight four
Speaker 1: seven seven, or you can reach us via email at
Speaker 1: tips at i heeart Media dot com. That's tips, t
Speaker 1: I P s at i heeart Media dot com. Ben
Speaker 1: Bolan is our executive producer, Paul Decant is our supervising producer,
Speaker 1: Chris Brown is our assistant producer. Seth Nicholas Johnson is
Speaker 1: our producer. Sam T. Garden is our research assistant, and
Speaker 1: I'm your host and executive producer, John Wallzac. You can
Speaker 1: find me on Twitter at at John Wallzac. J O
Speaker 1: n w A l c z a K. Footage for
Speaker 1: this episode was provided by CBS, NBC K t VF
Speaker 1: in the Vanderbilt Television News Archive special thanks to the
Speaker 1: Elmer E. Rasmussen Library at the University of Alaska, Fairbanks
Speaker 1: and Tracy Liloquist at the Doris Foley Library for Historical
Speaker 1: Research in Nevada City, California. Missing in Alaska is a
Speaker 1: co production of I Heart Media and Greenfork Media.