Code of the Wild

This is one of the greatest unsolved mysteries of the 20th century.

Their plane's down out there somewhere.

We gotta get out to where you found this.

It's been 46 years. It could be anywhere.

We're looking for a needle in the world's largest haystack.

Look at that. Wow.

****

Nobody has ever been there.

Right there. We might have something right here.

We are the Keefer brothers.

Look at that.

I'm Casey Keefer, the history buff.

When it comes to unexplained mysteries, I go digging for evidence.

Dog-tag, brother!

And I'm Chris Keefer. I use my love of technology to get us closer to the truth.

It's the end of the Earth there, buddy.

The world's greatest secrets are hidden in the most treacherous places.

And there's no place we won't go in our search for answers.

This is our Code of the Wild.

Now, this is Alaska.

Dude, it's a whole different world up here.

What if we actually find it?

We could have a massive discovery on our hands.

I know if our dad was missing for 46 years,

I'd want somebody to find him.

On October 16th, 1972 at 9:00am,

a twin-engine Cessna took off out of Anchorage,

carrying Alaska Congressman Nick Begich

and House Majority Speaker Hale Boggs.

They were destined for a campaign rally

three-and-a-half hours away in Juneau,

but they vanished into thin air.

The federal government launched a search-and-rescue mission

that lasted 39 days and covered a vast area of land and sea,

and they never found one trace of the doomed plane.

The pilot and the passengers were all declared dead

and foul weather was blamed, but not everybody believes that.

To this day, a lot of people speculate

that the Congressmen were killed to protect other people's secrets.

Others believe that they fell victim to the Alaska Triangle,

which is a massive tract of land that's believed to be a hotbed of magnetic anomalies

that has led people astray for centuries.

Over a thousand planes have either disappeared

or inexplicably crashed in the Alaska Triangle.

Now, 46 years to the week

after the Boggs-Begich ill-fated flight,

we're headed to Alaska to find out what really happened.

Luckily, there's a new lead that could blow this case wide open.

In the summer of 2018, a fisherman down in Prince William Sound

pulled up a piece of metal out of the water

with markings on it that looked like it could be from the Boggs-Begich plane.

If it is, in fact, from the doomed Cessna,

we may finally find out if the crash was from bad weather

or something more sinister. Here in Alaska to check it out.

Our first stop is the little port city of Whittier.

They call this place the gateway to Prince William Sound.

And every summer, thousands of tourists show up here,

but this time of year, it's a ghost town.

All that's left right now is a couple of hundred diehards like Scott Menzies,

who's the fisherman that pulled this piece of metal out of the water.

He thinks this could be from the wreckage.

And if it is from the wreckage, that means we could actually find this thing today.

How's it going, guys? You must be Scott. I am Scott.

We could be mere hours away from finding out

if it was the Alaska Triangle or something more sinister.

So, what's the story, man? You got something for us?

I do. Yep, I do.

We got this. Just a small piece of what looks like an airplane.

Wow. That is a lot smaller than what I was thinking.

This is what was in that picture? That's the whole thing.

Well, pictures can be deceiving.

I'm thinking we're walking into an actual wing of some sort.

He's got a little piece of metal. "Check this out. Here's your metal."

Scott, you've got to tell me what makes you think this is from the Begich-Boggs plane.

A bunch of friends kind of talking about it.

Seemed like it could be, you know, something,

so posted on a forum... Wow.

..and it snowballed into, "What if it was the Begich-Boggs crash?"

It's got some similarities. Yeah.

The plane that Boggs and Begich were in had an orange stripe on it.

Definitely looks like it's from a plane.

Could it be from that time frame or not? We've got a way to test it.

That'd be great. I'd be interested to know.

Cessnas are made with the lightest-weight materials possible to keep costs down.

Today, they're made with all kinds of composite materials,

but back in 1972, they were made with aluminium.

In order for this piece to be from 1972, it's gotta be made from aluminium.

And I've got just the tool to tell me what it's made of.

This is an X-ray frequency gun and it's gonna give us

the actual elemental composition of that right there, so...

The gist of this thing is that we can use it to test the composition of different materials,

and if we can match the numbers up with what aluminium is,

then we definitely know we're on the right track.

There it is, right there.

So we've got... 2117.

That's an aluminium alloy. Boom, it's aluminium.

Wow. That is awesome. So, the exciting news is

it could be a plane from that era. But the bad news is

we don't know if it's actually that plane.

Now all we gotta do, we gotta get out to where you found this.

Can you get us out there? Absolutely.

I know exactly where I found it. Let's do it.

If Scott can take us back to the spot

where he pulled this piece of metal out of the water,

we actually might be able to find this thing today.

Beautiful boat. This is the jam, right here.

Scott's bringing along his friend Sam Marino,

who's got a solid setup for a boat, lined with sonar technology which can help us.

The Prince William Sound is about 100 square miles,

just off the coast of southern Alaska.

It's as shallow as 500 feet in some parts,

but in others it's almost 3,000ft deep.

And with today's technology, we can actually go deeper

and see clearer than ever before.

So, you were here fishing and just pulled it up? Yup.

This is around the area. Right over there.

Well, let's use the sonar at that spot

and see if we can't locate something bigger.

All right. Let's do this. Sounds good.

Sonar technology actually sends out a wave signal that shows objects underwater.

Right here. Right here. What's that? Off the bottom.

Um, this is just a bunch of fish.

It can't tell us exactly what an object is,

but it can give us a really good area to look.

OK. So, right there. This one? Yup.

Yeah. OK. Right off the bottom, right there is a mass.

It's pretty big. Yes. That is big.

Could it be an airplane? It could be.

Hard to say for sure from up here. OK.

Yeah. Get the ROV out and see what we can see.

Because you can't see exactly what things are,

we brought along the OpenROV.

Scott, we're putting your theory to the test here.

This is an underwater drone.

High-resolution imaging, I mean, the whole nine yards.

This thing is sweet.

HD lens right here, got headlights.

Bam. Hit you in the headlights. Man, with the headlights.

Chris is gonna be steering off that remote right there.

hold on to that cable,

cos if you lose it, you've got to go in and find it. Right on?

All right. Here we go. Get this in the water.

OK, we're in. All right. It's gotta go right.

Get her over. All right, let's go. Let's dive.

Unwrap, Scott.

I'm going down. I'm diving down.

What do you think?

The visibility right now is just terrible.

Low visibility. Let some more out. You're diving.

Here we go. Yeah. I'm diving, baby. Let's go.

How deep are you? I'm going all the way to the bottom right now.

There's nothing. Nothing? Like, I'm seeing nothing.

Right here, right here, I might have something right here.

I went by so fast.

Right there.

Hang on. You see that? Yeah.

Wow. Look at that.

It's creepy.

What is that? I don't know.

It could be some sort of twisted, bent-up metal frame.

Yeah, I can see it. That is incredible.

It looks like wreckage from a plane. Yeah, it is.

Unbelievable. That actually looks like a wing.

Look at that right there. Wow.

That right there. It's everything. Look at that.

Yes! I mean, I'm shaking, dude.

Here's the thing, though. The Cessna 310 is a twin-engine plane.

It's gonna have an engine on either wing. So, that wing's got no engine, so...

Sucks, man. Yeah, I get it.

The Cessna 310 that Boggs and Begich were last seen in

had propellers on both wings.

The more we look at this wreck, the more the pieces of the puzzle just don't add up.

It's obvious that there were never propellers on the wings of this thing.

So, sadly enough, we're gonna have to rule it out.

Let's get it in. Scott, you got our cable there? I sure do.

All right, bring it up.

I don't know what the heck that was, but it wasn't a Cessna, I can tell you that.

All right, here it comes. I got it.

Good? Yeah. OK. Coming up.

We've got enough footage that hopefully

somebody in Alaska can identify this wreck.

For a second there, I thought it was gonna be the plane,

but, it just got my heart roaring.

I know. I was fired up, but that just wasn't the plane.

This is a stark reminder of just how dangerous

flying in this part of Alaska can be.

Now we need to dig deeper into the official explanation of the crash.

So in order to do that, we're headed an hour upstate to Anchorage.

Feels good to be back in Alaska, doesn't it?

Yeah, it does. I like the city. I just like the mountains more.

I know you're jumping for joy to get in the mountains,

but we're here. We got a job to do. Yeah.

We're here to meet with Art Fox.

Now, Art Fox isn't just an aviation expert,

he was also personal friends with the pilot

of the Boggs-Begich plane, Don Jonz.

Chris and I are investigating

the 1972 disappearance of the Cessna 310.

And you took part in the search? Yes.

Biggest search ever had been in Alaska.