Just what makes a plane be there one minute and then not the next. That’s what has puzzled the NTSB for the last 18 years as well as some air traffic controllers. It was Halloween night 1991 when radar controllers could hardly believe what they had just seen. A restored Navy F9F-8T Cougar Piloted by retired Marine pilot John Verdi and Co pilot Paul Lukaris had just received permission to climb from 25,000 feet up to 29,000 feet. As they did so, the blip air traffic controllers were watching vanished from the radar scope. As the controllers scrambled to double check their equipment, attempts were made to contact the aircraft. The Jet departed Houston Texas for Tallahassee Florida with their finial destination being Fort Lauderdale. The aircraft owned by World Jet Inc had been flown out to Texas so a perspective buyer could look it over. He had decided against the purchase and the jet was being flown back to Florida. The US Coast Guard medially scrambled two aircraft positive they would be able to locate the plane. On the ground questions remained. How could a plane be tracing across the sky one second and then not then next. No calls for distress ever came from the aircraft and no radar return had been picked up descending to the ground. Something which the Coast Guard found unusual. The aircraft last known position was 10 miles south west of Louisiana. Soon up to 10 aircraft were searching for the missing plane. As pilots flew a grid type search pattern looking for a clue to the planes fate, officials from the NTSB started their investigation as well. Based on two witness reports, the marshy area’s of Cameron and Vermilion Parishes were searched. The reports placed the aircraft closer to the coast than previously thought. White lake, Grand Lake and the Rockefeller Wild Refuge were also search with not sign of the aircraft ever turning up. Just what did happened to the Grumman Navy trainer jet. Why were no distress calls ever received and why was there no debris field ever located. It is hard to imagine in this day and age of a plane just simply vanishing in mid flight as if it never existed with out ever locating a trace of it. That’s is just what happened in this case. Great care is taken in restored vintage aircraft, even that much more with vintage jets and it is almost un heard of one vanishing and never being found. So much care, time and energy goes in to preserving them. While vintage jets do crash and loss of life occurs, it strange not to ever locate one that has gone down that was tracked by radar. It would seem logical at that altitude, that if something had gone wrong that Verdi and Lukaris would have had time to send a distress message.  It would also seem reasonable that if the jet had tragically exploded that some kind of debris field would have been located. All the NTSB had to work with is the aircraft records, the pilots records, the planes flight path, it’s last know position and that there was some thunderstorm activity in the vicinity of the planes last location. With so little to go on more questions remained than answers. All the NTSB could do was state that some kind of catastrophic event occurred leading to demise of the aircraft and it’s crew. It listed the cause as undetermined, leaving friends and family with out any answers to the fate of the jet and it’s crew.