Couple Discovers Plane Wreckage in Mountains that Helps Solve 50-Year-Old Mystery

By Kayla Kunkel July 3, 2018 at 4:20pm

On June 15, 1967, a search and rescue mission by the U.S. Coast Guard turned tragic when three men lost their lives in a plane crash.

The crew was looking for a small two-seater plane that failed to arrive in Juneau, Alaska. on time. The six men aboard flight 7237 were flying toward Sloko Lake in British Columbia and were going to turn around over the lake and fly back to Alaska.

But when the co-pilot asked the pilot to turn right, the plane instead veered left and crashed into the nearby mountain.

Three men in the back of the plane were able to jump out and survive, but the other three were almost immediately engulfed in flames. Pilot Lt. Robert Brown, co-pilot Lt. David Bain, and radio operator Robert Striff, Jr. died that day.

The site of the crash remained untouched until 50 years later when Kyle and Sara Cameron decided to explore it. Kyle grew up in a family that was well-known in the Yukon aviation community and remembers flying over the crash site in Atlin Provincial Park as a young boy with his parents.

But he never knew the story behind the crashed plane; he only knew where it was located.

It wasn’t until the summer of 2017 when he finally got to see the crash up close. He and his wife, Sara, share an uncommon hobby; they like to find and explore old airplane wrecks.

“Something Kyle and I love to do is go find old airplane wrecks and make a day of it, or make a couple days of it,” said Sara. “Usually, nothing comes of it, but before you know it, you can change a family’s life.”

And that’s exactly what happened after they explored the 1967 crash site.

People warned the couple that the wreckage would be difficult to access due to the rough terrain surrounding it, but they decided to go anyways. They were able to find a safe place to land their plane just over two-and-a-half miles away on Sloko Lake.

“With a shoreline of jagged rocks, it makes it very dangerous to a parked float plane, which can pound on the bottom and potentially break a hole in a float,” Kyle elaborated.

They began the strenuous hike up to where the plane crashed. The carnage of the plane was spread out everywhere; rusted gears and cables covered the ground.

The couple spent hours picking through the wreckage. They found pens, guns, and even burned pastries. It was a gold mine of history and the couple walked away thrilled with their find.

But when they returned home, Kyle wasn’t able to get the plane out of his head. He wanted to know more about its story.

He used information they found on the tail of the plane to find out more information: Annette, HU-16E, and 7237. His dad was a aviation historian and passed down some of his knowledge to his son, so Kyle already knew that the aircraft was a Grumman Albatross deployed from the Coast Guard airfield on Annette Island in Alaska. He continued to search to learn more about why the plane crashed.

The identification number, 7237, is what unlocked the rest of the plane’s tragic story.

After learning about the death of Brown, Bain, and Striff, Kyle wanted to reach out to the remaining family of one of the men. Since Brown and Bain are both such common last names, he decided to try to find out if there were any Striffs still related to the deceased radio operator.

From his research, he knew that Striff was from Ohio, so he decided to do a basic Facebook search for anyone with that last name from the same state. He messaged each one asking if they were related to a man named Robert who died in a 1967 plane crash.

It only took three hours to get a response.

Robert and his younger brother Randy grew up never really knowing what happened to their father. Robert was 5 years old at the time of his father’s death and Randy was only 3.

“We were told there’d been a plane crash and that he wouldn’t be coming home,” Robert remembered. “The next thing I know, we’re back in Ohio and we’re going to a funeral.”

The family even receive a letter of condolence from the President at the time, Lyndon B. Johnson. They didn’t received many details about the crash and the details they did get were vague; they thought the crash happened in Alaska.

But the crash completely changed their lives. Their mom never truly recovered from the loss of her husband.

Robert said, “My whole life, I’ve always wondered if the wreckage was still there, and if it was accessible.” The brothers had done some of their own research over the years, but kept running into dead ends.

So when they received the Facebook message from Kyle saying that they had found the wreckage, they were blown away.

“I had to sit down,” Robert said. “It was one of those moments. I’m thinking, Thank God, I finally get to see this.”

After talking to the Camerons and seeing pictures of the site, the brothers noticed one specific item: remnants of a rifle.

Their mother had told them about their late father’s beloved rifle and when they saw the picture, they had hope that it was their father’s.

Robert quickly asked the Camerons if they would be willing to guide him and his brother to the wreckage in June 2018, the 51st anniversary of the fatal crash. The Camerons, of course, agreed.

When the week finally arrived, they packed up and headed to the crash site. The Camerons had come earlier and plotted a easier hike to the crash than the one they first took a year earlier.

As the sight of the wrecked plane appeared over the horizon, the Camerons decided to give the two brothers some space to explore the site on their own. It was the first of many moments on that trip that brought them much needed closure.

Robert describes the moment that he first saw the scattered plane as “surreal.”

“The more we stood there, the better I started to feel, as the weight started coming off my back. I just felt a whole lot better about the situation, because I actually got to be in the spot where his life was taken,” he said.

They decided to investigate the place where their father would’ve been sitting based on his job duties. After digging through ash and dirt, they found small mementos like uniform buttons, a pocket knife, and two steel toes from his military boots.

They also found what was left of his beloved rifle, only the barrel and the firing mechanism. When Robert picked it up, he looked towards the sky and said to his mother, “I’ve got it now.”

The crew found one more item that was absolutely chilling. Near what would’ve been Striff’s seat, they found a corroded pocket watch. When they took a closer look, the hands on the watch stopped at 2:10, around the time the plane was reported to have crashed.

When the time reached 2:00pm, the group observed a moment of silence. Robert used that time to say a few silent words to his father. They also placed a plaque under a nearby tree honoring the men who had lost their lives before heading back down the mountain.

The trip to the place where their father died provided an immense amount of closure for the two brothers.

The Camerons were just delighted that their unusual hobby was able to help someone else find answers. “We had no idea it would turn into something so great, and something so massive,” Sara said.

Robert said, “It brings new meaning to the date, being here and visiting. It’s not a dark day anymore.”

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