The Forgotten Search for a North Island Plane

Local award-winning historian and preservationist Alexander D. Bevil will use historic photographs and maps to reveal a forgotten chapter in North Island’s early military history: the search for missing pilot 1^st Lieutenant Charles L. Webber, and his passenger, Assistant Chief of Cavalry Lt. Colonel Frances C. Marshall. The search, which lasted from December 7, 1922 to February 1923, was the largest and longest combined air and ground search in American military history during peacetime. The presentation will also focus on the leadership role Rockwell Field’s pilots and observers played flying outdated aircraft over forbidding mountain and desert terrain from San Diego to Tucson. It will also discuss the role these men played in recovering Webber and Marshall’s remains, and the erection of the first of two monuments in their memory at the crash site. Two of these, base commander Major Henry “Hap” Arnold, and Texas-based pilot Major Theodore C. Macaulay, would later play key command roles during World War II. After the war, Major Macaulay would serve as an active and well-respected member of the Coronado Civic Club and a local bank branch manager.

A graduate of San Diego State University with a Bachelor’s degree in History, Alexander D. Bevil is an award-winning local historian. Before, during, and after his 20-year tenure as a California State Parks historian, he worked diligently trying to save historic resources both in and outside the California State Parks system. Based in San Diego, he has evaluated numerous historic resources in California State Parks throughout southern and central California ranging from stone-built mountain cabins to “lost” towns. His favorite projects, however, involved investigating historic military resources, especially “lost” aircraft crash sites.