Plane remains found in Folsom Lake attributed to 1986 crash, not fatal one in 1965

When an underwater survey company discovered an abnormally-shaped object 160 feet below the surface of Folsom Lake earlier this month, some thought it might end a nearly 60-year search for a plane that crashed in 1965, killing four people.

But, on Tuesday, the authorities in Placer and El Dorado counties attributed the wreckage to a non-fatal 1986 plane crash.

The discovery came from Seafloor Systems, a company that uses sonar technology, early last week while employees were testing remotely operated vessels on the lake.

The company’s hydrographers, Jeff Riley and Tyler Atkinson, were testing unmanned survey vessels and came across a submerged plane on a lake bed, according to a news release. Live-feed sonar images appeared to show wings, a fuselage and tail section from a small aircraft approximately 160 feet below the surface, the release said.

At the time of the discovery, it was believed that the plane was from the fatal 1965 crash. Only one body was recovered from that incident that claimed four lives.

The company contacted both the Placer and El Dorado sheriff’s offices Friday, said Eric Ray, Seafloor System’s marketing director. According to Ray, law enforcement officials were both impressed with the find.

Seafloor Systems primarily uses hydroacoustic sonar equipment, Ray said. The equipment sends pings from a transducer on a manned or unmanned boat.

On Monday, dive team members from both counties partnered with Seafloor Systems to capture more images of the plane. Those pictures determined that the plane was from a more recent crash that was “reported and investigated with no fatalities,” said the Placer County Sheriff’s office in a news release.

The company, which was founded in 1999 by John Tamplin, wasn’t looking for anything in particular. Ray said they were simply going through the motions and testing a product they developed.

For hydrographers, who map the seafloor, Folsom Lake poses some unique challenges that have continued to impede recovery efforts.

When initial searches for the downed plane were conducted in 1965, Placer County Sheriff William A. Scott said the plane was believed to be in about 100 feet of water, and recovery efforts are becoming slim, the Sacramento Bee wrote in 1965.

A search for the plane was resumed in 2014 as a couple, Gene and Sandy Ralston, who were specialists in sonar assisted the El Dorado County Sheriff’s Department, according to The Sacramento Bee.

The search was later suspended, the Bee wrote, as El Dorado County sheriff’s officials said some interesting areas in the lake were identified, but the sites were inaccessible with near-zero visibility and heavy concentrations of silt.

“History shows Folsom Lake was initially like there’s a town under there,” Ray, with Seafloor Systems, said. “So it’s almost as if you were to fill up a town like El Dorado Hills or Cameron Park with water. So there’s a lot of rock, there’s a lot of dirt, so that does affect recovery efforts.”

Ray said the company’s sonars, depending on the model, can penetrate the silt in the lake, which is how they found the plane. The silt, however, can still muddle images if the hydrographers put a camera, for example, on one of their remotely operated vehicles, and they have to wait for it to settle, Ray added.

The drought helped with that a little. At the end of last month, Folsom Lake contained just 361,000 acre-feet of water, or 37% of capacity. The only other time the water levels were this low was in 1977, when it had about 303,000 acre-feet of water.

In their release, Seafloor Systems said the drought made it easier for the sonar system to paint a clear image of the downed plane.

With the 1965 plane still missing, sheriff’s officials say the families of those who died in the crash aren’t seeking further information.

“The relatives of the deceased from the 1965 plane crash do not wish for others to search for the plane or remains,” the Placer County Sheriff’s Office wrote in their statement Tuesday. “They would like the final resting place for their family to remain at the bottom of Folsom Lake.”

Ray added that Seafloor Systems will not disclose the location of the submerged plane because both the families from the 1965 and 1986 crash don’t want people looking for the planes.