Clive Cussler; Craig Dirgo

by The Sea Hunters II

  Rain, Black Flies, and Bogs 1984, 1997, 1998

  ONE OF THE GREAT MYSTERIES OF HISTORY IS ONE THAT is little known nor long remembered. The tale of the White Bird and Nungesser and Coli could be a story by Stephen King, all the more so since the plane probably lies within a hundred miles of his house in Bangor, Maine.

  The White Bird and its legend lay lost and forgotten for sixty years until author Gunnar Hanson researched the aircraft’s disappearance in 1986. Until then, it was generally thought that Nungesser and Coli had gone down in the middle of the Atlantic, but Hanson discovered that they had made it across the coast of Newfoundland, and then some.

  Though the sky was heavily overcast with clouds as low as eight hundred feet, there were seventeen reports from people who heard it go over. Two claimed to have actually seen a white plane heading southwest at the approximate time that it was due to reach the North American continent. What gave the sightings, or rather hearings, credibility was the fact that they were all in a straight line, so there is little doubt White Bird made it across the North Atlantic and beyond Newfoundland. Four more sightings came in from Nova Scotia. At this point, Nungesser and Coli must have cut west for the Maine coastline. The final accounts, again in a straight line, came from people living in Maine.

  The last person to hear the plane go over was Anson Berry, a reclusive fisherman who lived in the wilds alone. While fishing in a body of water known as Round Lake, about twenty-five miles north of the village of Machias, Berry heard a plane fly overhead late in the afternoon. He could not see it because it was in the overcast. The white color of the plane would have also made it difficult to spot against the clouds.

  His earwitness account became colored through the years. Some claimed that he heard the engine sputtering and then die before a loud crashing sound. Others swore he never said any such thing. The next day, he walked to a small general store and asked if anyone else had heard an airplane fly over. No one had heard anything. But one old fellow, who was a boy when he knew Berry, stated emphatically that Anson never said anything about a plane crashing.

  Because Berry was known as an honest man, no one ever doubted his story. His account also holds water because five other citizens of Maine who reported the White Bird passing over their head were in a direct line northeast of him.

  Anson Berry will forever be a footnote in history as the last man to hear the engine of White Bird pass in the clouds above. The next thirty miles along the projected course of the aircraft would have taken it over totally uninhabited, thickly forested country, speckled with lakes and spreading into a vast impenetrable bog. Several miles past the great bog, the landscape becomes populated with towns and people, none of whom reported seeing or hearing the White Bird in 1927.

  Theories abound. One has the intrepid French pilots, realizing that they can’t make New York, turning for Montreal. But that distance was too great for them to make with the fuel aboard. Or, knowing they were lost over land, they might have turned east for the coast and crashed in the sea. Another theory, backed by psychics, has them flying low and crashing into a mountain. Take your pick.

  I CONTACTED GUNNAR Hanson in the summer of 1984. At that time, he was working with Rick Gillespie of TIGRE, another group interested in solving the mystery. Having other projects on the table, I dropped the matter until a few months later, when Gunnar called me to say he’d had a falling-out with Gillespie. I asked if he would like to pool search efforts with NUMA and me. He did.

  We arranged to meet in Maine near the Round Lake area where Berry had lived. Ray Beck of Chatham, New York, also joined us, since he’d reported seeing an old engine half-buried in the ground above the Round Lake hills less than a mile from where Berry heard the plane pass. This was during a hunting trip in 1954. He generously offered the use of his vacation cabin, which was not far from the search area.

  We gathered together and began walking the hills south of the lake. As coincidence would have it, Gillespie and his TIGRE group were also searching the area at the same time. It was raining, and Gillespie stayed in the town of Machias and held press conferences, claiming the discovery was only hours away.

  My feeling has always been not to make a big deal out of an expedition until you have something to show for the effort. What was amusing was that we came, we searched, and we went home without Gillespie or his TIGRE group knowing we were present.

  We forged through the wilderness of the beautiful country while the precipitation fell in a constant drizzle. For two days, we tramped the hills, Ray Beck trying to retrace his footsteps during the sighting of the engine so many years before. Nothing was found. Discouraged and soaked through clothes and skin, we returned to the cabin and made plans to try again the following year.

  If I have learned anything looking for lost history, it is to keep an open mind and not become hung up on one theory and one theory only. Having always had faith in psychics, because they are such amiable and interesting people, and believing they see things that most of us can’t, I contacted Ingo Swann. Ingo is perhaps the world’s most respected remote viewer, a term now in use for people who imagine beyond.

  He thought the White Bird project would be an excellent opportunity to conduct a controlled experiment. His associate, Blue Harary, well known for his work in remote viewing at Stanford University, came on board, as well as a lady named Fanny from Miami, Florida, who’d worked for many years with police departments in solving crimes. She holds classes for men and women with psychic talents and thought it would be a great chance for them to hone their skills. And, since they were working in different parts of the country, Ingo felt that there wouldn’t be any danger of them referencing or tuning in to one another.

  First, Ingo sent them photos of Nungesser and Coli and their aircraft, along with a chart of the North Atlantic. His question was: “Did they go down in the ocean?”

  They all came back with a no.

  Then maps of Newfoundland, Nova Scotia, and the Bay of Fundy were sent.

  Again the answer was no.

  Next they received a map of Maine.

  This time they replied with a yes.

  He kept reducing the maps until he sent them a topographical map of the Round Lake area. Without hesitation, Ingo, Blue, Fanny, and her six students all put the plane wreck within a quarter-mile grid on the southern slope of Round Lake Hills. This struck me as amazing. Never in my dreams had I expected them all to agree on a crash site. If it were this easy for them to find lost historical ships and aircraft, future operations would all include psychic readings.

  Now it was time to check out their predictions.

  We gathered at Ray Beck’s cabin. Ingo and I met at the airport in Bangor and drove into the woods. How I managed to find the cabin during a thunder and lightning storm in the wilds of Maine, I’ll never guess. But miraculously I took all the correct turns until the lights of the cabin appeared. Ray was there, along with an old backwoodsman named Andy and two young fellows from New York City. Thunder rattled the log walls of the cabin as lightning flashed all around. It was indeed a haunted night. We sat amid the tempest, the big-time author, the renowned psychic, Ray Beck, who’d achieved fame and wealth inventing methods of plastic manufacturing, and Gunnar Hanson, a huge bear of a man at least six feet six and weighing 250 pounds. Only then did I learn that Gunnar was also an actor and had played the role of Leatherface, the butcher who dismembered bodies in the cult movie The Texas Chainsaw Massacre.

  It goes without saying that I didn’t get much sleep that night.

  For the next two days, we combed the site as directed by the psychics. Their visions indicated that the plane had become buried, so I brought along a small magnetometer, but it proved useless. There is so much ferrous geology under Round Lake Hills that the needle on the mag’s dial pegged and stayed there.

  Then a plague struck. Just as we were wrapping up the search, the infamous Maine black flies appeared. I thought mosquitoes were bad. They’re trifling compared to black flies. Two t
hings mystify me. One, how such a teeny-weenie insect can cause such an irritating bite. And two, why anyone would go to live in the wilds of Maine where they proliferate and attack. Ray Beck saved everyone a fate worse than death by passing out hats with nets that covered the head and neck.

  The resulting search came as a crushing defeat. White Bird was not there. The entire ground was covered twice, inch by inch. Not a shred of an aircraft was found. Swann and the others were stunned with disbelief. How could eight remote viewers, working in separate areas of the country, come up with the same location yet nothing be found? Could they have tapped into one another’s minds? Is the plane indeed buried beneath the rocks of Round Lake Hills? Or was it carried off and sold for salvage many years ago without the finders reporting it? There were no solid answers.

  I came up with theory number two hundred and thirty-seven. Since the White Bird had dropped its landing gear on takeoff from Paris and planned to land in the East River of New York, I figured that if they knew they were about to run out of fuel, Nungesser would have attempted a water landing. It wasn’t outlandish, considering the plane was constructed for just such an event. If this were a possibility, then they may have crashed and sunk to the bottom in any one of a dozen lakes along their projected flight course in a line beyond Anson Berry.

  IN APRIL OF 1997, I called on Ralph Wilbanks, and he and Wes Hall towed Diversity up to Machias, where we all stayed at the Machias Inn. Dirk Cussler came along with Craig Dirgo and Dave Keyes, assistant to NUMA trustee Doug Wheeler. Bill Shea also graced us with his presence. There are few people I enjoy as much as Bill. We’ve been through some harrowing times together.

  Connie Young, the noted psychic from Enid, Oklahoma, also joined the search. Connie had worked with the FBI on the Tylenol murders, with incredible results. Connie envisioned the White Bird coming down in water and drew a diagram that nearly matched Round Lake.

  We hauled Diversity over narrow, muddy dirt roads and found a little ramp on Round Lake. Local residents were dumbfounded. They’d never seen a boat that large on any of the lakes in the area and couldn’t believe we had pulled it over back-country roads. The effort didn’t come easy. Ralph had to stop often so the guys could chop off branches that hung over the road.

  Every inch of Round Lake was surveyed with both sidescan sonar and magnetometer. Wes dove on two or three interesting targets, but they all turned out to be old logs. The water, strangely enough, was not blue or green, but a dark, rather attractive brown from the tannic acid in the logs that littered the bottom.

  We found no trace of White Bird.

  The other lakes we planned to search were in primitive areas that Ralph’s boat could not penetrate. He made a magnificent effort to take it all the way to the next body of water, Long Lake, actually arriving at a crude ramp, but the water was shallow and too littered with rocks for Diversity to be launched without knocking holes in her hull. This called for plan B.

  We were lucky in meeting Carl Kurz, a local schoolteacher who was also an avid hunter-fisherman and restored rifles and shotguns. He generously offered his Zodiac boat with an outboard motor for our back-country searches.

  The rain came down as we tackled Long Lake, which stretched on the other side of the Round Lake Hills. Ralph stayed reasonably dry in his slickers and big red fireman’s hat but grumbled most of the time, while Wes seldom muttered a word. The rest of us wandered around the woods between showers, but mostly sat in the cars.

  During dinner that evening, Wes rolled out the sidescan recordings of Long Lake and examined them inch by inch. Plenty of rocks, but no sign of an aircraft or a lost fisherman’s boat either.

  Over the next few days, we searched two more lakes without success. Still no White Bird, but we had fun despite the continuous rain. Everyone had their fill of Maine lobsters. I saw one store that had lobster on sale for $2.99 a pound. Our morning breakfasts were enjoyable, as we gathered around the table at Helen’s restaurant and planned the day’s search. And then there were Helen’s scrumptious pies. If he could have, Ralph would have loaded up Diversity’s cabin with them for the trip back to Charleston.

  Dave Keyes took off early, because he was getting married and wanted a tattoo of his wife’s name.

  Craig, Dirk, Connie, and I drove back to Bangor to catch the flight to Boston and then on home. I stopped at Stephen King’s house and walked up to the front porch. There were three or four cars in the driveway, including a Mercedes-Benz sports car. I rang the bell, knocked on the door, and mugged for the TV surveillance cameras. Nobody answered.

  I yelled. “King, get out here, it’s Cussler.”

  Dead silence.

  I never knew if he was home or if I was persona non grata.

  FOOL THAT I am, I’d have probably volunteered for the rack during the Spanish Inquisition. I brought the gang back for another try in 1998. Except for Connie and Bill, the same motley crew returned. This time we were joined by my son-in-law, Bob Toft, and by William Nungesser, distant relative of Charles, who enthralled the team with stories about his famous kinsman.

  Ralph and Wes searched the lakes while the rest of us tramped through the jungles of Maine in a futile search for White Bird. And guess what? It rained the whole time. We all came back to the hotel drenched. I’ll bet the manager would have turned the air blue with four-letter words if he’d known that I dried my sneakers in his microwave.

  No matter how far we hiked, no matter how deeply we penetrated the wilderness, we always found old stumps of trees that had been cut down. It seemed that everywhere we searched, the lumberjacks had gotten there first.

  A fascinating piece of history tells us that when the early colonies were formed in the seventeenth century, Maine was like a prairie. Trees grew only in occasional groves. For almost two hundred years, the land was farmed. But over the decades, farmers began to give up the land for other pursuits, or they moved west. Eventually, the open lands became covered with a giant forest of trees. Today it is so thick that it is difficult to walk through.

  I mentioned to Carl that it seemed the entire state of Maine had been lumbered.

  He nodded, smiled, and said, “Yes, twice.”

  If that is the case, why hasn’t a hunter, a troop of Boy Scouts, or an army of lumberjacks ever stumbled on the remains of an old aircraft and the bones of her pilots? Scores of rumors and accounts of people finding an old engine have floated around for years. All have proven to be dead ends. Personally, I want to hear much more than simple engine sightings. Why haven’t they also found the three huge aluminum fuel tanks that were as tall as a man, the instrument panel, the propeller that measured eighteen feet in diameter, or the dozens of other pieces that made up the aircraft?

  If she hadn’t been found after three-quarters of a century, the odds were only worsening with each passing season. Groups of local people spend their Sundays searching the woods. Perhaps one day someone will get lucky and walk into the wreck before they recognize it. In the meantime, the stories still thrive of old-timers sighting odd things in the forest, of mysterious engines dragged out of the wilderness and sold for scrap, of aircraft remains on the side of mountains spotted from the air during World War II. None pans out.

  Either White Bird sank out of sight in a lake, which NUMA has pretty well covered, or she crashed in the vast bog that has never been entered by man or beast.

  My bet is on the bog.

  Will I ever go back again?

  I hate to give up. My NUMA team would have never found the Hunley if we had quit after the first few tries. The next step is aerial remote sensing. Even that is a long shot, but every avenue must be traveled. Someday, I’ll come back with the gang and give it another shot.

  Charles Nungesser, Francois Coli, and their magnificent White Bird lie waiting for discovery. They merit the fame for being the first to fly the Atlantic from east to west. It would not be right to leave them in an unmarked grave in a strange land. They must be found and returned to France as heroes.

  Th
ey deserve no less.

  PART TWELVE

  U.S.S. Akron

  I

  Lighter Than Air 1931-1933

  “DROP BALLAST,” COMMANDER FRANK McCORD ORDERED.

  A seaman sprinted across the short space of the control room and twisted the emergency ballast lever. Within seconds, four thousand pounds of water poured into the stormy air surrounding Akron.

  The blimp rose a few hundred feet. She was now at thirteen hundred feet and holding.

  The eight engines were pointed down and running full out—the ballast had been jettisoned. For a time, it seemed they had succeeded. Then the lightning, thunder, and gusts of winds enveloped them again. Within seconds, the rudder control wires were ripped loose, and the helm stopped responding.

  Those on board had no way of knowing, but Akron had only minutes to live.

  TWO YEARS BEFORE

  “Damn,” Lieutenant (jg) “Red” Dugan said, “you could put an entire circus in this building, with room left over for a couple of Egyptian pyramids.”

  Dugan was taking his first glance inside the Goodyear Zeppelin air dock in Akron, Ohio. The interior was cavernous, making the workers at the far end appear to be the size of insects. The air dock building was rounded at the top, with skylights in the sides partway up the walls to help with lighting. Huge banks of spotlights also added illumination, and at this moment they were being directed from the floor of the hangar up to the middle.

  A single round duraluminum ring was suspended from the ceiling of the building. It was the first of a total of thirty-six rings that would be assembled together to form a lighter-than-air ship that would measure 785 feet in length and stand fifteen stories tall when completed. The ring consisted of inner and outer circles attached to one another by an intricate spiderweb of diamond-shaped aluminum struts. Nearest the floor and inside the inner circle were a pair of humps, where the walkways through the ship would eventually be located. The entire contraption was glowing with the dull silver color of fresh aluminum.