Five months later, long search for fliers ends

As published in the Aug. 1, 1968 edition of the Mat-Su Valley Frontiersman

A five month search for three Matanuska Electric Association employees came to an end last Sunday.

Their remains, identified by John Shaw, commander of the Palmer unit of the Civil Air Patrol, and Rod Dunn of the Alaska State Troopers, were found in the wreckage of the MEA plane, a Cessna 185.

The three men, general manager Mason LaZelle, electrical operations superintendent Phil McRae, and electrician Ales Fuller, had left Palmer the morning of Feb. 27 on a flight to Unalakleet with a stop scheduled at Nulato, a Yukon River village that had asked assistance in checking a generator.

LaZelle filed his flight plan and took off from the Palmer field heading west. No further message was ever heard from the plane.

Their disappearance touched off one of the biggest searches Alaska has ever known, but with no success until Wednesday, July 24.

On that day, an Anchorage area pilot, Mort Clement, flew to the Palmer field, and, announcing his intention of joining the search, asked the Palmer CAP for an observer.

Cyril B. Wood of Palmer volunteered. Later that day, the two men spotted what they first thought might be a band of sheep but on closer investigation proved to be the scattered parts of a white and red plane.

The wreckage is located about 128 miles from Palmer, south of the Cathedral Mountains (also known as the Needles). Simpson Pass is in the next canyon, a few miles away. The plane was exactly on course, according to Shaw.

On Thursday, Loren Wiederkehr and Shaw in Wiederkehr’s Super Cub, and Paul Huppert in a second plane, flew to the site of the wreck. Shaw, while he felt it was the long-sought plane, could see no identifying numbers.

The following day, Shaw and Trooper Dunn rode to the crash area in a U.S. Air Force helicopter, which was unable to land or hover but flew by the wreckage.

On Saturday, an attempt to enter the area in a U.S. Army “Huey” type of helicopter was unsuccessful because of weather; but on Sunday a break in the weather early in the afternoon brought the “Huey” back to the scene. This time, a landing was made and Shaw and Dunn were able to positively identify the plane and the remains of the three missing men.

On Friday’s flight, Huppert and Wiederkehr flew cover for the helicopter; on Saturday, Huppert, Wiederkehr, and Cy Wood; and on Sunday, Huppert with his son jerry.

Shaw praised the assistance he and Dunn got from the helicopter crew, who were Army pilots and Vietnam veterans.

Shaw, a Palmer attorney and pilot, describes what he believes happened:

On the morning of Feb. 27, a trapper named Fenwick, who lives near the west fork of the Yentna River, sighted a white and red Cessna 185 at about 10 a.m. This was unquestionable a valid sighting, says Shaw. The plane was on course, flying at about 5,000 feet and climbing.

To clear the area he as over at the site of the crash, LaZelle would have had to be at 7,000 feet, according to Shaw. The attorney believes that the plane encountered a super-cooling effect, which he describes as a phenomenon of weather well-known to Alaskan pilots. There can be no warning for this type of icing as to its intensity, he says.

“Assuming this to be the case, I think that in a matter of seconds the aircraft became so loaded with ice that it was no longer able to maintain flight; that it entered into a vertical descent as a result of ice loading and air foil distortion, and fell like a rock for 3,000 feet. It appeared to have struck the side of a high pinnacle and rolled perhaps 1,000 feet down the mountain side, coming to rest near the bottom of a valley at an elevation of about 3,100 feet.

“The wreckage was scattered over an area of two or three acres. Death for the three men would definitely have been instantaneous.”

LaZelle’s watch, which had a day indicator, had stopped on Feb. 27, the attorney noted.