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Who: Sir Ian Mackintosh - British novelist, writer, creator the television series, The Sandbaggers, and writer for the series Warship
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Total Persons on Board:Three - Mackintosh, and two other - Graham Barber, pilot
- Susan Insole, the daughter of a English cricket player
When:The evening of July 7th, 1979
Weather:Cold and windy - with 40-foot seas
Flight Route:Departed Anchorage, Alaska, bound for Kodiak, with an overflight of Whittier
Area Believed Crashed:Several miles northeast of the Woody Island VOR near Kodiak
Reason for flight:Pleasure
Type Plane:A Socata Rallye 235GT, registered as N302RA
Search efforts: While still over the Gulf of Alaska, and nearing Kodiak Island, their plane's engine failed, forcing a water landing some 45 miles from shore. Two US Coast Guard C-130s, two helicopters, and a Coast Guard cutter were dispatched immediately to the area reported by Barber in his distress calls, but no sign of the plane, or its occupants, were found. The search continued for three days.
Controversy: Given that Ian Mackintosh was a former Royal Navy lieutenant-commander, and long been rumored to have been a spy, his disappearance has been seen, for some, as a cover story for his insertion into some larger plot against the "Evil Empire". Although the "Cold War" is over - no trace of the plane, or its occupants, have ever been found. In 2012, author Robert G. Folsom wrote about MacKintosh's life and disappearance in the book, The Life and Mysterious Death of Ian MacKintosh: The Inside Story of The Sandbaggers and Television's Top Spy.
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