Mission Report
Mission #04M1055A
January 26, 2004
Missing Person Search
Submitted by 1Lt Kim Kirschman
I received a call at approximately 1700 on the 25th and was tasked with assembling two aircrews for
the purpose of conducting air searches for a missing person, to begin at first light on Monday, January 26th.
Several calls were made, and enough members to form two aircrews agreed to participate. However, the
weather was not promising, and Monday morning brought with it low clouds, poor visibility, and snow, with
conditions forecast to continue throughout the day. Aircrew members were called and told to stand down.
By late morning the weather had improved substantially in the search area of New Hampton, however, and
a noon call to the mission base resulted in a request to man and fly both the Ankeny and Ames aircraft.
Another round of calls was made to Des Moines members, and once again sufficient volunteers responded
to permit using both planes. Don Reynolds, Don Cox, and Chuck Lord were assigned to crew CAP Flight
1376, while Bart Hawley and I flew as CAP Flight 1365. The plan was to meet at the Ankeny airport within
an hour. My arrival was delayed, since part of my assignment was to ferry the Ames plane to Ankeny.
Snowfall had been sufficient that it was necessary to have the hangar area plowed, and continuing poor
weather conditions in the Ames and Ankeny areas required an instrument flight and approach into Ankeny.
Both aircraft departed Ankeny for the New Hampton area at approximately1430 local time. As the weather
enroute was marginal, instrument flight plans were filed to the Waterloo airport; the aircraft then proceeded
to New Hampton in visual flight conditions. CAP Flight 1365 was assigned to search the highway right of
way and adjoining fields between Charles City and New Hampton; CAP Flight 1376 was assigned to
search an area SE of New Hampton. Searches were conducted until the light began to wane. Search
results were negative. Hawley and I landed at Charles City for fuel; the other plane landed at the New
Hampton airport. Both planes then returned to the Ankeny airport, after which I ferried 1365 back to Ames.
Snow and blowing snow in Ankeny and Ames required instrument flight plans and approaches. Each aircraft
was flown in excess of 4 hours during the mission.
Notes of particular interest:
Radio communication with Mission Base was satisfactory as the base was close to the search
area. However, the radio traffic was occasionally heavy, as at times three planes and multiple
ground teams were searching and therefore using radios;
Snow on the ground made search conditions difficult. Additionally, even though cloud ceilings
were at least 2000' and visibility was good, a heavy overcast reduced contrast, hampering
the visual search;
Winds aloft were quite strong, giving a higher-than-desired groundspeed when flying downwind;
The weather conditions at Ankeny and Ames lengthened the amount of time required to
ready the aircraft for departure.
Additional mission summary information provided by Capt Doug Jansen:
Iowa CAP was involved in a missing person search Sunday through Wednesday (January 25-28) in New
Hampton. Chickasaw County authorities contacted CAP on Sunday afternoon to say that 54-year old
Ted Leichtman left his farm home southeast of New Hampton on foot at 6:30 am Sunday. He was not
dressed for bitterly cold weather. His family told authorities that Ted had fallen on the ice earlier last week
and his wife was preparing to take him to the hospital for related complications when he disappeared.
Cold weather and strong winds hampered the search efforts, but hundreds of volunteers, in addition to CAP,
from across the state helped in the search. The STAR 1 Search and Rescue Team, Iowa Search and
Rescue, and Civil Air Patrol worked with local authorities to conduct the search. Chickasaw County EMA
posted a command trailer on site for an Incident Command Post on Sunday night. Monday morning we
opened a staging area for volunteers at a nearby farm. CAP played a major role in the Incident Command
System, providing command and control elements, communications support, management of the staging
area, volunteer registration, ground search, and air search assets. Deputy IC Lt Col Ralph Tomlinson
cut his teeth on ground branch directing by coordinating CAP aircraft, ATV's, horse teams, dog teams,
and line searches. Monday we logged in over 350 volunteers. Capt Troy Ruffin, 1Lt Roger Elliott, and
C/Maj Lief Poore-Christensen aided in conducting line searches. They each kept an eye on over 100
volunteers at a time, performing line searches over all kinds of terrain.
The mission ended Wednesday at 1:56 pm when a dive team found Mr. Leichtman in a pond that was
1/4 mile to the northeast of the Leichtman farm house. Teams had searched the pond earlier, but were
unable to see through the ice, which triggered the call for a dive team.
Iowa CAP logged over 25 hours of flight time in support of this search. Every squadron in the state and
every aircraft was tasked to support this mission. This is the first time in several years that all of Iowa CAP
was called to duty.