Divers prepare to plunge into Santa Monica Bay, where Gertrude Tompkins is believed to have crashed her fighter plane. Photo: Gertrude Tompkins
By Bob Pool The Los Angeles Times
An ambitious, five-day undersea search of Santa Monica Bay for the last missing Womens Airforce Service Pilot from World War II ended Saturday with the whereabouts of Gertrude Tompkins’P-51D Mustang fighter plane still a mystery.
But divers found the wreckage of two civilian planes — a light aircraft and a helicopter, they announced Saturday evening. In April, while doing a preliminary search for Tompkins, they discovered an Air Force T-33 jet trainer that had been missing since Oct. 15, 1955.
Tompkins was ferrying the newly built fighter plane from Los Angeles to Newark, N.J., when she disappeared Oct. 26, 1944.
Searchers and members of Tompkins’ family had been hopeful that one of a dozen "tantalizing" targets found on the sea floor off El Segundo might be her aircraft.
Of the wrecks found Saturday, the light aircraft was about a mile offshore and the helicopter about four miles farther, said G. Pat Macha, a member of the search team.
"We hope to identify them next week," Macha said. "We’ll search again for Gertrude Tompkins. We’re going to use sophisticated magnetometry next time."
Read more at The Los Angeles Times
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