New Details in the Desperate Search for JFK Jr.’s Downed Plane and Its Passengers
From left: Carolyn Bessette Kennedy and John F. Kennedy Jr. in 1997 and the wreckage of his plane, found in July 1999. Credit : DMI/The LIFE Picture Collection; NTSB
“Every other narrative of the JFK Jr. plane crash ends where the plane went down,” says U.S. Coast Guard Capt. W. Russell Webster, who has written a new book. “That’s where ours begins”
By Liz McNeil
Just past 3 a.m. on July 17, 1999, U.S. Coast Guard Capt. W. Russell Webster got a call that John F. Kennedy Jr.’s plane was missing.
As the search and rescue mission coordinator for the area surrounding Martha’s Vineyard, he raced to the regional command center in Woods Hole, Mass., to launch the initial search. Over the next five days, 32 agencies, including the Air Force, Navy, Coast Guard and Federal Aviation Administration, scoured the Atlantic Ocean for the missing plane and recover Kennedy, his wife, Carolyn Bessette Kennedy, and her sister, Lauren Bessette. in what Webster calls “the largest at-sea search for a private citizen in a small plane crash in U.S. history.”
In a new book, The Last Flight, Webster and his wife, maritime historian Theresa Mitchell Webster, share dramatic new details of the desperate search. “Every other narrative of the JFK Jr. plane crash ends where the plane went down,” Capt. Webster tells PEOPLE in this week’s issue. “That’s where ours begins.”
