Other links of interest:
(This was a story about a WAC pilot that went missing, most likely
over Santa Monica Bay while transporting a P-51 from what is today
LAX, or Los Angeles International Airport. There were rumours of
a film to be done on the topic.)
Memory assists in the search for lost plane
Frank Jacobs was 12 when he saw an aircraft plunge near LAX.
Could it have been WWII pilot Gertrude Tompkins and her P-51D?
http://www.aircraftwrecks.com/articles/dailybreeze/dailybreeze2.htm
Aircraft Wrecks in the Mountains and Deserts
of the American West
http://www.aircraftwrecks.com/index.htm
Another story that might be of interest:
Pilot reaches deep to plumb mystery of Montana crash
Tuesday, May 23, 2006
By Bryan Gruley, The Wall Street Journal
POLSON, Mont. — One March evening in 1960, Capt. John Eaheart of the U.S. Marine Corps Reserve set off from an Air Force base in Montana in a Grumman F9F Cougar fighter jet.
[snip]
When a local man, John Gisselbrecht, heard them (the stories) in 1991, “It drove me nuts,” he says. Though the aviation buff knew neither the pilot nor his family, he set out to find Capt. Eaheart. His quest ended this month off the southeastern shore of Flathead Lake.
[snip]
According to 1960 newspaper accounts and a Navy report made public this month, Capt. Eaheart flew directly over Mrs. Lewis’s parents’ home at an altitude of 500 to 1,000 feet. He banked hard left toward Wild Horse Island then left again, angling toward shore, when his plane nosed downward into the lake at 7:25 p.m. Mrs. Lewis’s father saw the plane go down.
The crash left a light oil slick on the water and the smell of jet fuel in the air. Witnesses reported seeing two splashes and a long rooster-tail of water. After a few days, the Navy, Marines and local police gave up their search, which Mrs. Lewis, then 30, had watched from the shore.
http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/06143/692450-84.stm