#024 – Skymaster Down – One Lost Airplane, 44 missing people.

Documentary filmmaker Andrew Gregg has made many films in Canada’s North often examining some of its great secrets.  But there is one very puzzling story that has eluded him for years– what happened to the US military Skymaster plane that disappeared over the Yukon more than seventy years ago?  No trace of the plane or its 44 passengers has ever been found.   Their families are still waiting for an answer.  Gregg examines this fascinating aviation mystery in his latest film SKYMASTER DOWN which premieres on documentary Channel on Sunday, January 16 at 9 p.m. ET/PT.   

Skymaster #2469 in Alaskan Hanger. Circa 1950

Did Skymaster #2469 crash into a lake on January 26, 1950?  Did the plane slam into a mountain or get buried in a glacier?  An aircraft that large just doesn’t vanish.   

One of four crashed search planes from 1950. Crashed near Haines Junction, Yukon Territory.

Over 500 planes are known to have crashed in the Yukon but the Skymaster is one of only a few that’s never been recovered.  It was on a routine flight from Anchorage, Alaska to Great Falls, Montana. Nothing should have gone wrong. For a few weeks after the disappearance US Air Force planes searched but soon gave up.  The US military has since shown little interest in finding the plane.  That has certainly hasn’t pleased the passengers’ relatives.  

In SKYMASTER DOWN viewers will meet those relatives still awaiting news all these decades later. Among them is Judy Jackson whose mother was pregnant with her when her father Clarence Gibson took that flight.   Jackson even went to the Yukon to see the vast landscape where her father vanished.  “I walked out there one morning by myself,” Jackson told Gregg, “looked around all those mountains and I thought, ‘Oh Daddy, what happened to you?’  To just have something to bury beside my mother—that’s what I would like to have for her.”   

 Especially poignant is the case of Robert Espe—his pregnant wife Joyce was the only woman on board, travelling south with their toddler son.  Espie spent the remainder of his life trying to find his wife and child.   

A determined group of Yukoners have never given up.  Among them was Gerry Whitley who flew over the rugged, mountainous terrain for years in search of clues.  “Skymaster was my passion,” he told Gregg.   

Never officially asked to join the search for the plane were the First Nations people who inhabit the area.  Among them was Albert Issac  who reported hearing a loud bang and saw a massive snow slide around the time the plane went missing,   US Air force officials never contacted him.   Issacs’ granddaughter Mary Jane Johnson speculates that if the local Indigenous population had been recruited to join the search, the Skymaster would have been found. “They would have had a better chance of covering the area than a plane,” she notes.  “They were the best of the best of the hunters.”

 Will the mystery of Skymaster ever be solved? “The biggest thing is that we should never forget,” Gerry Whitley told the filmmaker. “We search until they’re found.  As Yukoners, it’s something that has to get done.”

SKYMASTER DOWN is intriguing look at a very baffling aviation tragedy and is also a very human story about the people who vanished and those still awaiting closure.   It’s another dramatic documentary about Canada’s North that’s bound to captivate viewers.  

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NOTE:   Subsequent broadcasts on documentary Channel are at (at ET)  midnight and 3 a.m. on the night of January 16.  On Tuesday, January 18 at 9 a.m., 2 p.m., 7 p.m.; Sunday, January 23 at 8 a.m., 1 p.m. 6 p.m.; Friday, January 28 at 9 p.m. ET/PT.

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SKYMASTER DOWN is written and directed by Andrew Gregg who co-produced with Deborah Parks.  It is made by Skymaster Productions in association with documentary Channel.  Senior director documentary Channel is Sandra Kleinfeld and production executive is Jordana Ross.  

SKYMASTER DOWN is made in association with Canada Media Fund, Rogers Cable Network Fund, Ontario Creates, Yukon Film Incentive Programs, Rogers Telefund, Government of Canada, and Ontario Media Development Corporation.

MEDIA CONTACT:  David McCaughna davidmcc2@gmail.com  416-859-1004

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“Trapper Dan your Renaissance Man”