had been able to land in a small, flat area and that its limited radio range was being blocked by the rugged terrain in the region. Commander of the Oregon National Guard Gen. Raymond F. Olson authorized the 123rd National Guard Air Squadron to assist in the search and rescue operation, as needed, with at least 4 planes immediately dispatched from their base in Portland. The search was targeted to the vicinity of Dog Lake in Lake County due to a telephone tip from a cattle ranch employee camped in the vicinity, who reported having heard the faltering engine of a small plane shortly after 10:00 pm the previous evening. This led searchers based out of Lakeview Airport to search the vicinity of Dog Lake, where they discovered the plane's crash site about 2 miles west of the lake at 4:00 pm on October 29. The nearest town to the site of the crash was the hamlet of Bly, located 22 miles north of the nearly inaccessible, heavily forested place of impact. The crash had occurred in a mountainous region at about 6,000 feet elevation, with the hillsides heavily timbered in mature Ponderosa pine. Those originally discovering the crash site reported that the plane had cut a swath through the hillside, snapping off trees, bending the aircraft's wings at a 90 degree angle and mangling it so severely that "no one could be alive." The bodies of Snell (age 52), Cornett (49), and Farrell (41) were recovered on October 30, with darkness and rugged terrain having prevented their recovery the same day the crash was discovered. One passenger had been ejected from a door that had come open in the crash with the other three bodies remaining strapped in the fuselage, according to a member of the U.S. Forest Service party which made its way to the scene. Political succession According to the Oregon Constitution as written at the time of the crash, the simultaneous deaths of both the Governor and his heir-apparent, the President of the Senate, elevated the Speaker of the Oregon House of Representatives to the Governorship as next in the order of succession. Portland Republican Representative John Hall thus assumed the mantle of leadership. The order of succession to the governorship in Oregon was constitutionally changed in the early 1970s, to place the Secretary of State first in succession and the State Treasurer second. Footnotes External