No official ID available for pilot of Monday's fatal crash

A screenshot of Donald Bartholomew's Globe Swift GC-1B from 1946.

As of Friday morning, the identity of the pilot who died in Monday's crash was not yet known.

Sheriff Dan Coverley said the circumstances of the crash made it difficult for investigators to confirm the identity of the deceased.

The 1946 Globe Swift GC-1B involved in a mid-air collision at 9:47 a.m. was owned by Donald Bartholomew, according to the tail number transmitted shortly after the crash.

According to the Douglas County Assessor's Office, Bartholomew owns a hangar and small runway at Pine Nut 2 just east of Ruhenstroth.

Respected aviation blogger Juan Browne of the Blancolirio Channel on YouTube said Thursday that Bartholomew was the pilot.

Browne said he spoke with the instructor pilot of the Civil Air Patrol Cessna that collided in mid-air west of Minden-Tahoe Airport.

He said Bartholomew “built and modified Swift aircraft for many, many years, primarily at his factory there at Pinenut Airport southeast of Minden.”

According to Browne, the CAP Cessna was on a mandatory 12-month check-ride flight with a flight instructor and another pilot at headquarters.

A flight replay shows the Civil Air Patrol plane circling the airport before turning to the south-southeast and colliding with the Swift.

Browne said the pilot told him they heard a radio message from the Swift shortly before the collision.

“That caught their attention because that was roughly where they would be shortly,” Brown said in the video.

The two men in the CAP aircraft searched the surrounding skies for the Swift, but could not find any automated surveillance transmission data that would indicate the Swift's location, Brown said.

“As they continued their turn into the wind, they did not see the (other aircraft) until they collided with the Globe Swift,” Browne said. “After impact with the Swift, the 206 began to shake violently and … one of the three propeller blades was missing from the engine.”

Witnesses told dispatchers Monday that they saw an explosion and that the other plane fell into a field between Highway 395 and the airport, where it was burning when emergency crews arrived.

According to Browne, the flight instructor was able to land the Cessna safely using a dead stick approach.

A spokesman for the Civil Air Patrol told The Record-Courier the organization could not comment on the collision.

The crash was the second in less than a month, after one man was killed and another seriously injured in a crash during takeoff on August 20.

Pilot Randal G. Abraham of Redwood City, California, was identified as the man who died in the crash that injured Gardnerville resident Brant Wood.

A preliminary report from the National Transportation Safety Board said the Lockwood Air Cam, flown by Abraham, appeared to have trouble maintaining level flight shortly after takeoff.

The NTSB and the Federal Aviation Administration are investigating both crashes.