Former Apollo 8 astronaut Maj. Gen. William A. Anders, USAF (Ret.), was doing a flyby near a friend’s house when his plane crashed off the Washington State coast on June 7, according to the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB).
Mr. Anders’ son told investigators that his father appeared to be in “good spirits” when he arrived at the museum early on June 7 to do an “Orcas run,” a term he used to describe a flight around the San Juan Island archipelago, with a pass over his previous home on Orcas Island.
According to the report, Mr. Anders boarded the plane at around 10:50 a.m. and texted a family friend about 10 minutes later that he would be flying past her house at 11:40 a.m. The friend’s house is near Mr. Anders’ former home on the western shore of Orcas Island.
The friend, who was not named in the report, said the flight was “not unusual” and that Mr. Anders typically did two flybys. She said that while Mr. Anders sometimes rocked the airplane wings as he passed by, “he never performed any kind of aerobatic maneuvers.”
The friend told investigators that she heard the “familiar sound” of Mr. Anders’ airplane at around 11:37 a.m. and then watched the airplane overhead traveling north along the shoreline in front of her house.
Mr. Anders’ airplane then flew behind trees and out of view, but the friend said she could hear “what sounded like the airplane making a left turn to the south,” according to the report.
The Beech A45 plane came back into view as it headed south, but it was higher than usual over the water.
After the plane passed, the friend noticed the left wing drop and assumed it was part of Mr. Anders’s usual routine. But the wing continued to drop as the airplane descended into the water.
Another witness, who lives on the same shoreline, heard what he believed to be “a vintage airplane” and went out onto his deck to see it. The report said the witness recorded the scene using his phone.
“At the beginning of the recording the airplane was inverted with a slight nose down attitude and heading generally to the south. Over the next 3 seconds the airplane had transitioned to an almost vertical dive,” the report stated.
“By the time it had recovered to almost wings level, upright attitude, the airplane struck the water with its right wingtip, and spun across the water on a northern trajectory,” it added.
The NTSB said the fuselage was located about 1,700 feet west of the last radar target, in about 30 feet of water. Most of the wreckage was recovered in the following week and has been stored for further examination.
Mr. Anders retired from both NASA and the Air Force in 1969. The “Earthrise” image he captured, showing Earth rising over the lunar horizon like a blue marble in the vastness of space, became a powerful symbol for the environmental movement.
The photo inspired the first “Earth Day” in 1970 and was widely celebrated, including being featured on stamps and in Life magazine’s 2003 book “100 Photographs That Changed the World.”
The Apollo 8 mission, which launched astronauts Frank Borman as mission commander, James A. Lovell Jr. as command module pilot, and William Anders as lunar module pilot from Cape Kennedy at the end of 1968, marked a significant milestone as the first crewed mission to leave Earth’s orbit.
