Kinross Township

Kinross and the Aircraft That Went into the Lake

On 23 November 1953 an F-89 interceptor was scrambled from this Michigan base after an unidentified return over Lake Superior. Radar tracked both, they closed — and merged into one. Then the single return went away, and the aircraft, with Lieutenant Felix Moncla and Lieutenant Robert Wilson aboard, did not come back. The search found neither wreckage nor bodies. The Air Force later said the target had been a Canadian transport; Canada replied that it had no aircraft in the area. In 2006 a private expedition announced it had found an intact F-89 on the bottom; the photographs turned out to be a fake, which the organisers admitted. The crash site has still not been found.