November 20 1963 a few days before the death of JFK this happened over the skies of the Gulf of Mexico near Key West,Fl.This article caught my attention.Looking up records on the internet of plane crashes in the LaGrange,Ga area during the 1960's I found this which never had I heard before.An U2 spy plane flying on a mission over Cuba crashed and the pilot was from LaGrange,Georgia.This is a newspaper report of the incident.
Wreckage of Pilotless U-2 Located
KEY WEST, Fla - (AP) The wreck of a U-2 plane was found Thursday on the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico. But its cockpit was empty, holding out hope that its pilot Capt. Joe G. Hyde Jr., might have survived the crash.
Presumably returning from a mission over Fidel Castro's Communist Cuba, the high flying reconnaissance aircraft suddenly vanished from radar scopes at 10:32 AM. Wednesday, some 40 miles northwest of Key West and 188 miles north of the Cuban coast. It was there that debris was sighted Thursday morning by the searching Coast Guard cutter Nemesis. By 11:30 A.M. divers from the Navy salvage vessels Petrel and Shrike were on the wreckage in 100 foot-deep water and had confirmed that the pilot was not in the cockpit. At La Grange, Ga., Hyde's home his mother clung desperately to the belief that her 33 year-old son was still "living somewhere."
Navy and Coast Guard planes and surface craft plunged into a search for the pilot. But a Navy spokesman said, "I don't hold much hope for him."
The Navy denied a rumor that a parachute had been sighted. Both the Defense Department and the Strategic Air Command headquarters at Omaha, Nebraska said that there was no evidence that the sleek one man plane which flies at admitted heights of 75,000 feet had met with hostile action over Cuba.
