FRANKFORT, Maine — About a dozen people from the region, including a group of youngsters from Old Town Aviation Explorers Post 787, searched areas of Mount Waldo Saturday for any signs of a yellow-and-white single-engine plane that disappeared 44 years ago.
Pilot Lewis “Billy” Hogan Jr. was 28 years old and working for LISAir when he left Danbury, Connecticut, at 8:15 a.m. May 2, 1972, in a new Citabria aircraft. He was expected to land at Houlton International Airport later that day, but never arrived.
His brother, Jerome Hogan of Bangor, renewed efforts to find the plane and his brother in October.
Saturday’s search effort was prompted by a tip from a Bar Harbor woman who believes she came across remnants of a plane wreck when she got lost while hiking on the mountain several years later, according to organizers of the search.
“It’s going to be a process of elimination,” Richard Bowie, director of the Downeast Emergency Medicine Institute, said Saturday afternoon as search crews started to descend from the mountain.
The nonprofit organization is using resources, including aircraft, to gather data and to help with the search for the plane in partnership with the Old Town Aviation Explorers, a development program for youths interested in aviation careers.
Searchers did find the wing of a yellow airplane, but the call numbers were different and investigators were able to identify it as a Cessna 180 that crashed on the side of the mountain in 1962, Bowie said. He said there is at least one other known plane wreck on the mountain with debris.
Hogan’s plane was marked with the call number N11655.
While some ground was covered on Saturday, additional searches are needed, Bowie said.
“It’s very aggressive terrain for searchers,” he said.