Anchorage, Alaska – An Air Force colonel who was director of operations for Alaska Command was one of two men whose bodies were found in a small plane that crashed into a remote lake, the Department of Homeland Security said Thursday Alaska Public.
Alaska Wildlife Troopers and the Alaska Command identified the men as Col. Mark “Tyson” Sletten, 46, of Anchorage, and Paul Kondrat, 41, of Utah.
They were aboard a small plane on a training flight that crashed into Lake Crescent near Moose Pass on Alaska's Kenai Peninsula, authorities said.
Two hikers had notified the troopers that they had seen a plane crash there on Tuesday afternoon.
A Department of Public Safety helicopter and a U.S. Fish and Wildlife seaplane went to the area and found debris in the lake, but there were no signs of survivors in the water or on the shore.
An Alaska Rescue Coordination Center team that included volunteers from the Alaska Search, Rescue and Dive Team was searching the lake Thursday, troop spokesman Austin McDaniel said in an email. He said the team was using sonar, remotely operated vehicles and trained divers to search for pre-identified areas of interest in the lake, which is more than 200 feet deep in some areas.
The public safety department later said searchers found the plane in about 193 feet of water in one of the areas of interest identified Wednesday with a remotely operated vehicle (ROV). Divers and an ROV refloated the plane and towed it to shore. The bodies were transferred to the General Prosecutor's Office of the Generalitat for the autopsy.
The National Transportation Safety Board will try to find out what caused the crash.
Alaska Command, located at Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson in Anchorage, conducts national defense, civil support and security missions. It is part of the US Northern Command.
