On September 2, 1983, George R. Cogar, a 51-year-old male, vanished while on a private plane over British Columbia, Canada. An accomplished computer scientist and engineer, Cogar was a passenger on a Britten-Norman Islander aircraft that is believed to have gone down in a remote area. He was not alone on this flight; he was accompanied by his brother, Tom Cogar, and four individuals from West Germany: Rolf Dieter Falk, Hans Hill, Peter Hoffman, and Otto Herman Stitz. The group, who had been friends for approximately two decades, was en route from Vancouver Island to a hunting lodge near Smithers, British Columbia, for a hunting trip. The pilot of the aircraft was also on board.
The disappearance of the aircraft prompted what was described as the largest coordinated search in Canadian history at the time. Over the course of a week, search and rescue teams tirelessly scoured a vast and rugged expanse of nearly 40,000 square miles of British Columbia's wilderness.
The intensive search effort involved numerous hours of air surveillance, but tragically, no trace of the plane, its occupants, or any wreckage was ever discovered. After extensive efforts yielded no results, Canadian authorities made the difficult decision to call off the official search. The families of the missing men, all of whom were millionaires, reportedly planned to continue the search at their own expense, a testament to their hope and determination to find their loved ones.
George R. Cogar was a notable figure in the early days of the computer industry. He was a co-founder of Mohawk Data Sciences Corporation and later founded the Cogar Corporation. He was credited with inventing the Data Recorder, a device that replaced the need for keypunches by allowing for direct encoding of data onto magnetic tape. He also developed an early forerunner of the modern personal computer. Before his disappearance, he was a significant landowner in New York state. The case of George R. Cogar's disappearance is an enduring mystery. The complete absence of any evidence, despite a massive and costly search effort, has left the fate of Cogar and the other men on board the aircraft unknown. The unforgiving and remote Canadian wilderness likely holds the final secrets of what happened to the flight on that September day in 1983.Last Seen: Sep 2, 1983
