AUTHOR’S NOTE: The two most deadly years for people on or near Tustumena Lake were 1965 and 1975. This series examines the tragedies of those two years. A similar version of this story about a 1965 Cordova Airlines crash into the lake first appeared in the Redoubt Reporter in April 2012.
Speculation about the cause of the Cordova Airlines crash into Tustumena Lake on Sept. 4, 1965, centers on the fallibility of the human senses in certain conditions and on the need, therefore, to trust one’s instruments.
The National Transportation Safety Board investigation of the crash determined the probable cause to be that the pilot had “misjudged distance and altitude … (under) adverse weather conditions.” Given the conditions, in other words, he should have trusted his eyes less and his dials more.
The pilot was 29-year-old Bob Barton — with brother, Bill, owner of Barton’s Flying Service out of Anchorage. Bob Barton had 5,184 total hours of flying experience, including 403 hours in the type of plane, an Aero Grand Commander, that he was piloting that day.
Barton had been a Cordova Airlines pilot for seven to eight years, flying previously out of Cordova, Gulkana and Yakutat. After the crash, he would leave behind a wife named Sharon and a six-year-old daughter named Sandra.
Barton began in Homer, where, between 7 and 7:30 a.m., he received his two passengers. The first was a 27-year-old North Kenai construction worker, Raymond M. Puckett, who had been living for the previous six years with Mr. and Mrs. Tony McGahan of Kenai and had been a secretary to the Kenai Volunteer Fire Department.
The second passenger was a 41-year-old civil engineer and land surveyor, Harold Howard Galliett Jr., a key figure in the Anchorage Utility Company and under contract at that time to work on a water-and-sewer project for the City of Kenai. A qualified navigator himself, Galliett, who was returning to Kenai from Homer where he had been attending a meeting of the Homer City Council, sat in the left front passenger seat immediately behind the pilot.
Under heavy overcast and with the temperature at about 50 degrees, Barton took off for Seldovia, where he received his final passengers, a married couple named Antonio and Martha Cuerda. Antonio was a 68-year-old native of the Philippines who had spent many years in the commercial-fishing business in Port Graham. His wife, 36-year-old Martha, whose maiden name was Mumchuck, was an Alaska Native who had lived her entire life in Port Graham.
Poor visibility forced a one-hour delay in Seldovia. Then, before lifting off the runway at 9:16 a.m., the pilot opted to change his route to his final destination, the airport at Soldotna.
The alternate route called for Barton to fly east, past Homer, and up Kachemak Bay, then turn north to ascend the Fox River drainage. Following the river upstream past its headwaters would lead the plane directly over a low rise and then down across the eastern end of Tustumena Lake and onward to Soldotna.
But the approach to the lake presented a problem: Because it was flat calm, the lake surface appeared like a giant gray looking-glass, and because the cloud ceiling sat only 300 feet above the lake, Barton dropped down perilously close to the water, where at best the horizon line may have been little more than a thin line of trees several miles away.
“These lakes in Alaska, these glacial lakes, when it’s calm like that,” said Galliett, “are a giant trap for the unwary aviator because when you get down close to the water during that kind of weather, you can’t tell how high you are just by vision — the water’s so flat and mirror-like. So you really have to watch your altimeter. If you don’t, you’re in trouble. And I think that was a large part of the accident.”
In his official statement after being rescued, Galliett said the first contact between plane and lake surface “was not violent.” He compared it to “a rough seaplane landing,” adding that it was “rather smooth for a crash.” Barton, he said, handled the plane well and kept it going straight.
“Then when it might have nosed over, the pilot, to prevent this, ground looped the aircraft 180 degrees to the left, and the right wing hit the water and kept the aircraft upright,” Galliett said. “For some seconds we couldn’t see out because of spray and water running off of the windows.” The plane did not bob up and down, the engines stopped, and there was no noise at all, he said.
After that, however, the action was swift.
The plane, with its wheeled landing gear, was not designed for water. It began to sink. The time was approximately 9:40 a.m.
“Almost immediately water started to come through the floor boards,” Galliett said. “I tried to open the left door first by using the normal handle. Then I reached over and tried to use the emergency release, but I guess the door was jammed closed.” He tried slamming into the door with his left shoulder but was unable to budge it. At the end of this day, the only injury that Galliett would sustain was a bruise on his left shoulder from trying to jar open that door.
After Barton and Puckett managed pop open the hatch on the right side, Puckett exited quickly, stepping onto the unmoving propeller aid his climb onto the right wing. Galliett helped the Cuerdas climb out, Martha first, followed by Antonio.
Galliett then shrugged off his jacket and climbed outside, too. Inside, with the cabin of the plane nearly half full of water, Barton grabbed seat cushions to serve as flotation devices and hurled them out the door, instructing the passengers to take them for safety.
Each of the Cuerdas took a cushion, as did Puckett. Galliett saw another cushion in the water and beginning to float away from the aircraft. He dived off the wing and swam to retrieve it.
“About this time, the aircraft nosed up, and the plane sank from beneath the other three passengers and pilot,” Galliett said. Barton, he added, appeared to have no cushion and could consequently barely keep his head above water. When they all began to swim for their lives, no sign of the airplane remained on the glassy surface, the shoreline lay almost exactly a mile in the distance, and it was not quite 9:45 a.m.
Harold Galliett, the sole survivor of a 1965 Cordova Airlines crash into Tustumena Lake, is seen here raking his lawn in 1958. (Photo courtesy of the Galliett Family Collection)
