Summary: | Lay Brothers May Be Alive: Gonzaga Religious Think Flyers Are Down On Frozen Alaskan Lake. LAY BROTHERS MAY BE ALIVE Gonzaga Religious Thinks Flyers Are Down on Frozen Alaskan Lake. ANCHORAGE, Alaska, Nov. 24. (AP) —Two planes were dispatched today from McGrath to search for Brothers George J. Feltes and Marshall Lapeyre, "flying missionaries" long overdue on a flight from McGrath to Holy Cross mission on the Lower Yukon. A year ago this month another missionary plane brought north by Brother Feltes crashed at Kotzebue, Alaska, killing two priests and a civilian pilot. Brother Feltes, who did most of piloting but was not in the plane at the time, flew another plane across the continent from New York to Seattle this summer and shipped it north. In this plane, he and Brother Lapeyre flew from here to McGrath several days ago. Delayed by unfavorable weather there, they finally hopped off on the 150-mile flight from McGrath to Holy Cross, to the southwest and about 200 miles from the Bering sea. Some Hope Felt. Brother George J. Feltes is known by the clergy and others at Gonzaga university. He was here two years ago as pilot of a plane bearing the late Father Delon from New York to ka and again last August for a day. On his last visit he came by train from Seattle after piloting a plane from the east to Seattle. When here with Father Delon, in a Diesel-powered Bellanca, he had 200 hours in le air to his credit after graduation from a San Francisco school of aviation. A brother at Gonzaga, who passed five years in Alaska, said yesterday that the flight from McGrath to Holy Cross mission usually occupies an hour and a half. It was over a range of high mountains through which the pass was high. On passing over the mountains it was not unusual to fine fog on the Yukon river side. In that event it was the practice to seek a landing up or down the river or on a lake until visibility returned. As the lakes and rivers are frozen, the landing equipment would probably be other than pontoons. In view of the practice to await clear weather, there is a belief that Brothers Feltes and Lapeyre are safe.
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