Craig, AK Float Plane Crashes On Take-Off, Apr 1969

EIGHT DIE IN CRASH OF KETCHIKAN PLAN.

Ketchikan, Alaska (AP) -- Eight persons were killed, but a ninth survived when a plane plunged into the sea shortly after takeoff from a logging camp on the west coast of Prince of Wales Island, 80 miles northwest of Ketchikan Saturday.
State police said the pilot had picked up a passenger at the Sawyer-Reynolds Co. logging camp at Deweyville. They said the single-engine float plane was about 200 feet high when it nosed over and dived into the water about 300 feet offshore.
A spokesman for Simpson Air Service, Ketchikan, which owned the plane, identified the dead as ALFRED M. WHITE, 31, Ketchikan, the pilot; GARY M. BARDELL, 26, Saohomish, Wash., another pilot who had just joined the company and was on a familiarization flight; DIAMA K. SMITH, wife of the postmaster at Port Alexander on Baranol Island 50 miles west of Deweyville, and her 5-year-old daughter, SUMMER; CHARLES W. HALE, 27, Ketchikan, a logger at the camp, THEODORE K. SPRAGUE, 56, and RICHARD M. EVERMAN, 49, both of Ketchikan, partners in a drilling company. The latter two had been working at the logging camp.
The identity of the eighth was not immediately available.
A diver recovered seven bodies from the wreckage. Two persons, including the lone survivor, LEO BEMINGHOFF, 57, a prospector from Port Alexander, were thrown from the plane.
BEMINGHOFF was listed as in serious condition at a hospital in Ketchikan.
The cause of the accident was unknown.

The Daily Sitka Sentinel Alaska 1969-04-21

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Researched and Transcribed by Stu Beitler. Thank you, Stu!