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Photo Courtesy of the National Park Service All that's Left: The wreckage of a Beech 77 Skipper lies in the waters of Lake Meredith. The two-seater went down in 1984 and only recently became visible as the lake's water dropped to record-low levels. Found at Last Effort under way to recover plane, victims of crash LAKE MEREDITH — A small plane that crashed into Lake Meredith in 1984 was expected to be pulled from the lake Wednesday morning.
National Park Service employees had expected to recover the bodies of the pilot and passenger from the plane's wreckage on Monday, but NPS officials said that process was slowed because of equipment failure. As of Tuesday night, no bodies have been found at the crash site. Rozanna Pfeiffer, spokeswoman for the National Park Service at Lake Meredith, said the NPS crew was at the crash site, in the lake north of the RR boat ramp at Harbor Bay, all day Monday. The NPS crew eventually cut through the bottom of the fuselage of the inverted plane and began removing sand from the cockpit late Monday. Pfeiffer said late Tuesday that the National Park Service had permission from the National Transportation Safety Board to remove the plane because of dropping water levels. The park staff, she said, was concerned that low water levels would make it difficult for salvage vessels to reach the wreckage. A barge from the Lake Meredith Marina will be used to recover the plane. Pfeiffer said the wreckage would be moved to the Borger airport where it would be examined by aviation officials. Pilot Steven Lampe with passenger Larry Lucas took off from Tradewind Airport in Amarillo in 55-degree weather under clear skies about 1:30 p.m. Jan. 28, 1984, but failed to return. In 1984, a spokesman for the Civil Air Patrol said, as the CAP launched a search effort, that Lampe hadn't filed a flight plan, but he had told airport officials that they would return in a couple of hours. Pfeiffer said the incident report filed at the time of the crash indicated that Lampe was 25. News reports from the day said Lucas was 23. Tradewind officials described Lampe as an experienced pilot with about 200 hours of flying time. A six-day search of the lake after the crash failed to locate the plane, although a nose wheel and hydraulic lines were found in the lake the day after the plane was reported missing. CAP officials reported intermittent emergency transmitter signals, but they faded before the aircraft could be located. A week later a leather jacket was found floating in the water, but officials could never determine whether it belonged to one of the men on the plane. Last Friday, John Ware, who was canoeing with his father and sister Allison, and Greg Daley, all of Fritch, notified park employees that they had found a plane on a sand bar near Harbor Bay. Ware said the plane was inverted with only its belly showing. Cindy Ott-Jones, Lake Meredith National Recreation Area superintendent, said Monday that the receding water level in the lake revealed the fuselage and part of the tail of the plane. She said the plane was upside down, filled with sand and entangled in mesquite branches. Jones, who surveyed the site Saturday, said the plane was in two to four feet of water. She said sand filled most of the plane's cockpit. Pfeiffer said Tuesday that the park service was still awaiting investigators from the NTSB and the Federal Aviation Administration. Jones said NTSB and FAA officials and a representative of Beechcraft are expected to be on the scene this week. Former park service officials said there had been previous attempts to locate the wreckage. In the late 1980s, Lampe's father brought in a miniature submarine and hard-hat divers, but the search was about three miles east of where the wreckage was found Friday. Armando Lujan with the NPS Fire Department said that, as the lake waters have receded, he's seen motorcycles and cars that had been left in the lake, but he'd never seen the airplane. The lake level Friday when the wreckage was found was officially 47.33 feet. In 1984, officials said it was slightly more than 87 feet. E-mail
comments about this story Posted: June 5, 2008
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