The home-built airplane that plunged and disappeared into Lake Superior more than two weeks ago emerged as hardly recognizable pieces of debris on Monday following work by divers and other rescue personnel.
Wreckage from the 137-foot-deep site, about a mile off Brighton Beach, was pulled to the surface about 2 p.m. Suspended in the water under two large orange float bags, it was towed into McQuade Harbor shortly before 6 p.m., completing a job that began June 9 with the recovery of the only presumed victim of the crash.
“Unless you knew what you were looking at, you’d have a difficult time knowing it was an aircraft,” said Capt. Tom Crossmon of the St. Louis County Rescue Squad.
Divers found the plane in two large pieces - one included the landing gear, and the other held the engine and cockpit. The pieces were fastened together and raised to the surface in one trip by inflated buoys.
Rescuers first attempted to raise the wreckage on the same day they recovered the body of Georg Obersteg, the pilot of the four-passenger, single-engine Lancair IV airplane. Initial attempts were abandoned when choppy waters kept rescuers from getting an adequate hold of the aircraft, and plans last week fell through when one of the divers was unavailable because of a family emergency.
Crossmon said Monday’s weather made the mission “worth waiting for.”
“Things went extremely well,” he said. “The weather cooperated nicely - flat, calm seas. The fog wasn’t an issue at all. It couldn’t have been a better day for weather.”
Crossmon also credited the quick response by searchers - debris was located in the water several hours after the June 7 crash - for expediting the recovery.
About two dozen rescuers from the St. Louis County Rescue Squad and Superior/Douglas County Dive helped in Monday’s mission.
The National Transportation Safety Board is investigating the cause of the crash.
Recovering the plane was critical to helping determine the crash’s cause, NTSB investigator Jim Silliman said Monday evening at McQuade Harbor after a crane lifted the wreckage out of the water and placed it on a trailer. It was later taken to a county building.
Silliman said the efforts of the local crews were fantastic.
“Going out there, it really showed their professionalism and pride,” he said.
