Ship Rescues Plane Donated By Group Here

A seaplane, donated by a St. Louis group for Catholic missions in South America, is expected to arrive in Tampico, Mexico, tomorrow aboard a German freighter. The freighter pulled the plane from the Gulf of Mexico after it was forced to land at dusk Saturday.

The six-seat plane, which cost about $47,000, was en route to Belize, British Honduras, from New Orleans, said a spokesman for Wings of Hope, the organization that donated the plane. Its ultimate destination was Iquitos, Peru, where it would serve 75 missionary posts over an area of 80,000 square miles of jungle.

The spokesman said the pilots, the Rev. Guy Gervais and Brother Thomas Dwyer S.M., were uninjured and that the plane was only slightly damaged. The United States Coast Guard reported that the plane went down 200 miles northwest of Campeche, Mexico, after its radio equipment failed.

Father Gervais is head of the mission at Iquitos and would fly the plane on its missions, the spokesman said. Brother Dwyer, an instructor at the University of Pittsburg, was to return by commercial airliner before Jan. 8. Wings of Hope was organized last year by a group of St. Louisans interested in aiding South American missions.