Rest in Peace John Denver
I was diving in Monterey when his plane plunged into the ocean killing him.
We watched in horror as his plane went straight down, nose first into the shallow water, and sharp rocks.
Wow, that’s tough to see something like that (meaning be there when it happens)- you never forget it. It’s actually an interesting story about the plane he was in- it’s called a Long EZ- it’s a home built experimental design that he bought second hand (in other words, John Denver didn’t build it himself)- the fuel selector between the tanks in the wings was a poor design and was behind him, so to select the other tank you had to unbelt and reach over your shoulder (so not a lot of maneuvering room in a tandem airplane)- he may have been concentrating on this and lost sight of the orientation of the plane causing the crash.
This explains it very well:
He apparently had a drinking issue and lost his medical certificate to fly but continued to fly anyway, but, he was not intoxicated on the day of his crash.
The builder of the Long Eze that John had just bought had moved the fuel selector behind the seat. John knew this could be an issue after flying the plane the previous day. Before his fatal flight he talked to a mechanic at Monterey aviation about trying to make the selector easier to reach. The fix they came up with was a pair of vice grips on the switch to allow him to reach it easier. Unfortunately when he took flight he only had about 10 gallons of fuel onboard. As he was flying along the coastline on his way back to the airport his engine sputtered as he was running low on fuel. The theory is he reached back to find the fuel selector to switch tanks and at the same time pushed against one rudder pedal while trying to reach it. The plane was fairly low over the water and it rolled severely and pitched down before he could recover he hit the water. He was over the deep reef as we called it, just off Coral Street in Pacific Grove. The reef was about 60 feet down. I used to dive there quite a bit.
He was a gifted pilot and flew everything from his own Learjet years ago and owned a Christianson Eagle Biplane aerobatic aircraft. Unfortunately he did not use really good judgement that day. I spent a little time with John in Aspen many years ago at his Windstar Foundation. Buckminster Fuller was there also at the time. A group of us built a small Geodesic Dome on the property.
The news reported that he went down in otter cove, when he actually went down just past coral street at what they call “sewers” or the older dive books called the bone yard.
I still have a couple small pieces of his plane with the red/white stripe that washed up on the shore.
