#31 – Pete Kelsey

#31 – Pete Kelsey

June 15th, 2026

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Angus W Stocking (00:04.75)
This is Everything Is Somewhere. I’m Angus Stocking. I’m joined today by returning guest Pete Kelsey. Pete Kelsey spoke with us back in episode twenty of Everything Is Somewhere, and he talked at that time about his work with various history channel shows, Skinwalker Ranch and Expedition Bigfoot. And those are two topics very dear to my heart. I’m into paranormal and supposedly supernatural events. I was very glad to get Pete’s thoughts down on that.

Pete, welcome back to Everything Is Somewhere. What are you going to talk with us about today? it’s one of my favorites. it’s the story of the last missing WASP pilot of World War II, Gertrude Tommy Tompkins. And just to continue my introduction, you’re an expert in measurement technology, know quite a bit about land surveying and the application of geospatial technology in unusual parts of the world and to naughty problems…

…and also I should say you’ve always spoken of yourself and in all the time I’ve known you as a a storyteller and use the technology to tell stories. is that fair to say? spot on. And frankly, what better technology to assist a storyteller than reality capture?

All things geospatial because it, you know, it brings stories to life. It gives stories a sense of place. It’s almost cheating. Well, I did name the show Everything Is Somewhere.

Pete Kelsey
Mm-hmm.

Angus W. Stocking
So, Gertrude Tommy Tompkins. What was her service like? What makes her so interesting even today in terms of military history?

Pete Kelsey
I guess the one liner is she is the last missing female pilot from World War II. She’s been missing in action since October of 1944.

Angus W. Stocking
And, you know, that alone for a history nut like me is enough to you know, and a fan of a great story, that’s enough for me to lean in and start asking more questions and…

Angus W Stocking (02:34.082)
…gosh, I became a bit obsessed with her story. It’s almost 82 years ago now. because a couple of the circumstances of her going missing are really interesting, starting with wherever she is, she’s here in the United States. And more than likely she and her P-51 Mustang went into the water at the end of what is today Los Angeles International Airport. So she’s not in some, you know, exotic WWII location. She’s close by and she’s been missing for gosh, math, eighty two years. Almost eighty two years. Goodness. And that’s just not right.

So what a what a great quest, right? For a lot of reasons, you know. I’m Well, and the story calls out to that of Amelia Earhart, who also remains lost, but you can get it there. I mean, she was somewhere out over the ocean. There might have been a little island or there might not, and it it’s no mystery that she’s not found, because it was an extremely mysterious and remote disappearance. But the opposite is true here. We have a domestic flight disappearance. How did you get involved with Expedition Unknown, I think? how did that come about? How did you get that nod?

Pete Kelsey
Well, like I say, I I’d been really interested in her story for a long, long time. And you know, from even just from a logistical point of view, it seemed like look, this sounds pretty simple in terms of logistically mounting some kind of a search. And there have been a lot of people looking or looking for her for eighty plus years. you know, I’m just one in a long line. I came across the story, I met some folks years ago who are probably still looking. I’ve sort of fallen out of touch with them.

Angus W Stocking (04:56.002)
But to your question about getting involved with Josh Gates and the Expedition Unknown series, we were just brainstorming with the producers and I said, you know, I there’s this story of Tommy Tompkins that is is just so good. And what do you think? And, you know, to their credit, they leaned in and said this is Los Angeles. I mean, so that’s interesting. You brought the idea on to the producers…

Pete Kelsey
Yeah, well, a good story is a good story. So then it, you know, then it shifts into logistics. Okay, how are we gonna do this? How can we make it work for television? How can we make it fit within a budget? Scheduling, you know, all that stuff, because it’s it’s very different to mount a search like this for television versus doing it just as a search in and of itself because time is everything in television. you know, you got you can shoot for hours and hours, but they cut it down to like, you know, forty odd minutes to run for a one hour show.

So, you know, then the conversations began about how and what kind of gear and you know, how do we narrow the search area. And that’s where, you know, I really tip my hat to the acronym was MAST, the missing aircraft search team. These are the folks who I corresponded with years ago, and you know, they had maps and areas of interest, you know, in the water off the end of the runway.

So once we decided on, you know, where are the highest odds of, you know, success in terms of location, we went out to sea in a survey vessel actually with a couple of UUVs that’s unmanned underwater vehicles. You know, they’re not tethered, they’re just the torpedoes you see and

Angus W Stocking (07:11.116)
You launch them in the water and hope and pray that they come back ’cause they are not cheap. And then they’re using multi beam sonar and doing, you know, a lawnmower pattern with RTK GPS in about two hundred and fifty feet of water and gosh, where from there. We knew that it was a target rich environment, meaning there are a hundred years of aircraft wrecks in that area. There are more than a few. So, you know, that was another challenge. It’s like, okay, well, can are we going to be able to identify a P-51 D, specifically what’s left of it, you know, should we find it? And because among other things, I’m a aviation nut.

It’s like, yeah, I can spot a P-51. It’s a unique engine, it’s a unique set of landing gear, any of the stuff that would be left. I am really confident I could say, yes, that’s a P-51.

Angus W. Stocking
Pete, can I ask, what was the state of the search prior to the producers getting in interested in your proposal? immediately after there must have been some search for the crash and in the years since what had been done that hadn’t worked.

Pete Kelsey
Yeah. so it was October of forty four when she took off with two other WASP pilots, women, in two other P fifty ones, because they were made in Southern California. So the WASP’s mission was to ferry them to whichever coast to be put on ships to ferry it into the either the European or the Pacific Theater. So three Mustangs took off. Tommy Tompkins was in one of them, but only two were seen to come out of the fog bank above, I think it was twenty five hundred feet, and they went on to Palm Springs. Sadly, due to I hope I get this right, ’cause there are people who know this, the facts of this story much better than I do.

Pete Kelsey (09:35.022)
But as I recall, there was a four day delay due due to some paperwork screw up that four full days went by before the the Department of Defense, or it was actually the War Department back then, and I guess it is now again, to mount a search for her. And they searched everywhere. You know, of course they searched the water off the end of the runway, no wreckage.

But they also went looking in the mountains to the west or east of LA and too little too late. So she’s been MIA ever since. But all of the work done by well, let me stay on track here. So after that, there’s a long gap that I don’t have the facts for.

But gosh, early two thousands, I want to say, the MAST team, missing aircraft search team, they put together a big project. I mean, technical divers, again, I don’t have a lot of the details, but they put divers in the water. They had a list of all the aircrafts lot that had gone missing since that time.

I remember seeing a PowerPoint deck from them where divers had photographed things on the o the seafloor of various artifacts, but it did not result in finding Tommy Tompkins or her Mustang. So she remains out there. And all the data frankly points to her being in the water, not in the mountains. Because if she were in the mountains that wreck would have been found and found a long time ago.

Angus W. Stocking
So is much known about the circumstances of the crash, let’s say, was she an experienced pilot? Was this one of her early missions or it is this routine for her?

Pete Kelsey
As I recall, she was a very skilled pilot. had had hours in the P-51 Mustang. But I do recall that she the her the takeoff from what was Mines Field, now today LAX, she was delayed because she had some kind of an issue with her canopy. Her canopy wouldn’t close, I believe. So that’s the only sort of tantalizing thing. It’s like, well, you know, how would that lead to her going in the water, maybe in the fog bank ’cause she couldn’t close the canopy, maybe visibility was terrible.

I mean I could only speculate, but that is the one circumstance that the one of one witness, one of the other WASP pilots of that flight of three, spoke about and is documented in the accident report.

Angus Stocking
Yeah, super interesting. One thing that occurs to me is that this was an early flight for this particular aircraft, right? It was not a test flight, but she was moving it from one place to another soon after manufacture. Is that a fair way to put it?

Pete Kelsey
Yes. That is exactly right. Yep. So thank you for that background. And now let’s talk about your entry into the into the search. Yeah, so after Josh and the Expedition Unknown team said, Yeah, we like this, let’s do it. We deployed to Los Angeles.

They had chartered a survey vessel. We’d managed to the company out of San Diego, they’re still around. It’s a company called Orca Maritime. They provided the UUVs and the tethered geez, what’s the right acronym? UAV. So the idea was, you know, do the survey. And that would be underwater, not unknown. Right.

Pete Kelsey (14:06.968)
So the pro the workflow was (to) put the torpedo, the UUVs, the torpedoes in the water, let them do their thing. Come back, post process the data, look for any interesting hits, then go, that one’s really interesting, that one’s really interesting. Let’s go out there and put the tethered camera, the robot underwater vehicle onto those hits. and we did that at least two if memory serves.

Angus Stocking
And what tech are we talking about here? Sonar or some version of lidar or with sonar?

Pete Kelsey
Yeah. Sonar, okay. Yeah, the UUVs had multi-beam and the tethered sort of camera drone underwater vehicle had single beam.

Angus Stocking
What’s the current state of the art with sonar reality capture currently?

Pete Kelsey
Well, the current state of the art. Well, in terms of, you know, resolution, multi-beam. As its name suggests, single beam sonar just sends out a beam like that. Or straight down if you’re on the surface. Okay. Whereas multi beam is both.

So, multibeam data tends to be three dimensional, a lot more interesting. It provides a lot more context just because of that third dimension. so and actually ever since that project I’ve been a or actually I’ll even back up since we I did the Arizona in Pearl Harbor, where I was first exposed to multi beam, it’s been multi beam only.

‘Cause single beam, yeah, it’s a lot cheaper, but the value in the data that multibeam provides is so much more valuable to me as a storyteller, just because it’s that third dimension. so that I mean that’s sort of a general statement, but multibeam is where it’s at for me. You know, of course, tying that…

Pete Kelsey (16:30.19)
…to RTK GPS when you’re on the surface and then, you know, IMUs when you’re underwater, you know, all of that, the physics involved or and the engineering and it’s really impressive. Really and beyond my understanding. But when it works, it is really something.

Angus Stocking
And how what’s coverage like? How many square miles, I guess, of underwater terrain can be investigated in a twenty four hours?

Pete Kelsey
I say it depends on the UUV. It depends on the vehicle you send down. Like those things really got a lot of attention, airplay when that aircraft went missing in the Indian Ocean years ago and it’s still missing? The KAL had those UUVs, those things are huge. They were twenty feet long and three foot diameter and, you know, weigh thousands of pounds. They could stay down for days and just mow the lawn. You know, gathering data, just like an aerial drone with lidar does. Same kind of thing. the ones we used, I wanna say they had an eight hour duration in the water.

And you know, and all sorts of you know, fail safes in them, ’cause these things are not cheap. I mean, they’re wild I mean, hundreds of thousands of dollars for the ones we used. Actually I think I take that back. I think we had two of them and I think they were both a million dollars or just or maybe a little more. so the fail safes being, hey, the bat at a certain percentage of battery life left, they’re gonna automatically surface and then they’ll fire a pinger, they’ll fire a strobe light so you can find them. It’s really cool stuff. But boy, it’s nerves of steel when you, you know, put one of those things in the water and you just pray that it comes back, ’cause you know, what a catastrophic loss to lose one.

Angus W Stocking (18:58.902)
Are they autonomous?

Pete Kelsey
Fully.

Angus W Stocking
Okay. So you’re not steering them and you’re kind of out of touch with them for a bit.

Pete Kelsey
Yeah, if I remember right, you know, you they establish a really tight RTK signal at the surface, and then it’s all inertia, IMU, you know, based on that point. You know, go north for ten minutes, you know, then two ninety degree turns and come back, that sort of thing in the navigational software. But again, I can’t say I can’t overstate how impressed I am with that stuff. I wish I could use it more.

Angus W. Stocking
And I think you said about two hundred two fifty two feet or…

Pete Kelsey
Yeah.

Angus W. Stocking
Okay. And do you feel like you at least covered the most likely location for the for the cross?

Pete Kelsey
Yes. based on the data we had, absolutely. The idea is to find something. And if you don’t, it’s a little embarrassing. And were you hitting up or were you did you have things to check out? Was there some crash you know was there… I guess now pick up the story again for us. What did you see and how did you verify?

Pete Kelsey
So there were at least two, probably three, that we went out to investigate and put the camera down on. And we also had a couple of technical divers with us. And I won’t get the order right, but one of the things one of the hits that was really interesting was a vessel.

And a wood framed vessel. So it was old. And Josh, Josh is a diver, he actually you can watch it in the show. He goes down on it. He dives it and it’s like but it was, you know, as it’s coming through the merc, you know, the ribs of this vessel for a minute there looked like an aircraft wing. We were all pretty excited. but it turned out it was a vessel.

Pete Kelsey (21:26.39)
There’s a you know, he’s a funny guy and he there was actually a toilet that he he found on this vessel and he goes, Yeah, okay, there are no toilets in P-51, it’s time to move on. And then somewhere either on the second or third hit, the camera underwater vehicle saw something I recognized, which was really cool for me.

This a an aviation nerd like me, I knew what it was when I saw it on the on the camera feed. It was a oxygen tank that were used in medium and heavy bombers in World War II. So right away, you know, I’m looking at the feed going, That’s World War II. For sure. Because they and they were made in their millions. They’re made out of fiberglass. Anyway, I knew what it was.

Divers get in the water, they put a bag on it, they bring it up to the surface, and it was verified it was an O2 tank. Well, that led us to sort of go backwards. Well, the first question was did P-51 D Mustangs have those fiberglass oxygen tanks in them? No, they didn’t. So we’re like, damn, well, that’s not from a Mustang.

But the era, the time frame is right. That’s World War II. So let’s go back to the list of known missing aircraft over the last hundred years in this area and go through the list, and boom, there’s a B-25 bomber. And B-25s had those fiberglass oxygen tanks in them. So we’re like, hey, it’s not a Mustang, but that’s pretty cool. And it was it was also meaningful because when we looked into the details of that accident of the B-25, you know, a couple of guys didn’t make it. I mean, they lost their lives in that accident. So while it’s great to find something, it’s also, you know, sort of solemn, you know, it’s this this artifact marks where…

Pete Kelsey (23:41.762)
…folks lost their lives in the line of duty.

Angus W. Stocking
What’s been occurring to me as you talk about this is that the flying of aircraft from one field to another to in turn be ferried into war doesn’t at first sound super exciting, but it’s a legitimate hazard of warfare. I mean, Tommy Thompson was putting her life on the line and in the event lost her life to do this important function for ultimately a a victory in World War II, but she was part of it.

Pete Kelsey
Absolutely.

Angus W. Stocking
Was she decorated by just out of curiosity or Purple Heart or anything like that?

Pete Kelsey
Sadly, no. This is this is one of the crazy turns of the story as well. So it wasn’t until 2008 or 2009 that the WASPs were given veteran status. So while they wore uniforms, they weren’t considered soldiers and therefore didn’t have veteran status until in 08s or 09s you know, the current the administration of that time said, this is just wrong. Absolutely wrong. Because to your point, the the WASPs are totally under the radar, not as well known as they should be, they’re not as celebrated as they should be. Because if you think about it, these women had to know how to fly so many different kinds of aircraft, bombers, fighters, reconnaissance, everything. Yeah, sure. The very interesting point.

Angus W. Stocking
Yeah.

Pete Kelsey
So they historically, and just from an aviation point of view, these are some of the most talented pilots anywhere, because one week you’re flying P-51s to Newark, New Jersey. The next week it’s B-24 bombers somewhere else, et cetera, et cetera. So huge respect to these women and what they knew how to do and what they did well, all volunteers, you know, and they even did it at the time, knowing they weren’t going to get any benefits.

Pete Kelsey (26:04.17)
It just such a cool story and the fact that there’s only one of them missing, because there were something like twenty or twenty-five thousand WASP pilots, and only one of them is unaccounted for. So gotta find her. She’s still out there. We just need more UUVs, expand the search area, rinse and repeat, and we’ll find her. She’s there. Is one possibility that given the time that’s passed up, could aircraft be so broken up and maybe covered over with mud, I guess.

Angus W. Stocking
Is it conceivably unfindable now because of just conditions?

Pete Kelsey
More challenging for sure. Is it still possible? Absolutely. Because there are parts of a P-51 that would absolutely still be there. Essentially the heavy steel components, the landing gear.

Angus W. Stocking
Sure.

Pete Kelsey
Probably the most famous, if you’re an aviation nerd like I am, the most famous component of a P-51 was the Merlin engine. It was a super famous engine, really well known. Huge V12, you know, engine block that would absolutely still be there. And by the way, would light off a magnetometer which UUVs can also deploy.

Angus W. Stocking
Any prospects or plans for further work in this area?

Pete Kelsey
Not at present, but my gosh, if anybody who hears this, you know, wants to get involved. It’s what it always is, right? It just comes down to cost. We need to charter a vessel, we need to find some UUVs, we need to put them in the water, and that’s it.

So while nothing for me with this project is brewing, you know, if anybody who hears this wants to get involved, my gosh, reach out to either of us, myself or Angus. I’m sure I can speak for both of us. We will lean in. We will take the call. Sure. It’s a worthy project and quite aside from finding the burial gravesite of Tommy Tompkins.

Angus W Stocking (28:31.234)
Just a technical note, it’s an interesting test case for underwater sensing technology. Yes. Seems like a lot of good could be done there. Yeah. Pete, thank you so much for telling us that story. I’m sorry, go ahead.

Pete Kelsey
I was gonna say in and to your point about doing good, doing the right thing, there are also a lot of families out there who are associated with a lot of the other aircraft wrecks, the missing people, the missing aircraft are looking for closure as well. So one of the one of the great parts of this project is may just like what happened on Expedition Unknown. Okay, we didn’t find Tommy Tompkins in her Mustang, but we found an artifact from a B25 where folks lost their lives. I mean, so there are a lot of other people who might say, hey, you know, I’m looking for a son, a grandson, I don’t know, a family member who’s been missing for a long time.

I’d like to get involved. And by the way, if you happen to find a P-51, that’s you know, that’s great. So there’s there’s a lot of, I guess, synergy, maybe that’s the right word, in a project like this, because there are a lot of aircraft to be found and a lot of people looking for closure.

Angus W. Stocking
Well, from your lips to God’s ear, and I hope that happens. Thank you for sharing that story with us. Pete, what projects do you have coming up listeners might be interested in?

Pete Kelsey
This is that frustrating time of year when the shows that I’ve been working on, everybody’s in a conference room deciding whether or not there’s gonna be another season. You know, hatching out budgets and schedules and yada yada. So in terms of the things I’ve been working on for a number of years, it’s I’m in a hurry up and wait scenario. some of the things that I’m developing on the heels of the Alcatraz project, I’m talking with the National Park Service about doing some…

Pete Kelsey (30:47.872)
…additional iconic hit historic preservation type of work. I can’t I can’t drop names just yet, but I’m excited about it. They’re gonna be if they get the green light it’s gonna be it’s gonna be really, really cool. Well I hope it works out and I hope we can hear about that in the future.

Angus W. Stocking
I guess for now thanks again and good luck on all your your ventures and Godspeed in your travels.

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Angus: Thanks for listening to this episode of Everything Is Somewhere. I certainly enjoyed speaking with Pete Kelsey again. And if you enjoyed this episode, be sure to look up episode twenty of Everything Is Somewhere, where Pete talked with us about Skinwalker Ranch and Bigfoot. Good times.

As always, I welcome feedback. You can send me feedback directly at angusstocking at gmail.com or anonymously at amerisurv.com slash podcast. You can follow me on X or Twitter at twitter.com/Surveying

Last but not least, if you enjoyed this episode, I hope that you will subscribe to the podcast on iTunes or Spotify or rate the podcast or the episode. Finally, if LinkedIn is your thing, I hope that you will reach out and connect with me. I’m easy to find. There is only one Angus Stocking.

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