Ian Mackintosh

Disappeared with two others---some say under mysterious circumstances---on July 7, 1979, while flying from Anchorage, Alaska, to Kodiak Island, Alaska. The single-engine, chartered airplane carrying Mackintosh (39), his girlfriend, Susan Insole (29), and British Airways pilot, Graham Barber, took off for an "adventure holiday." Three hours later, Barber sent an S.O.S. saying the plane was losing oil pressure and power. The plane carried no life raft and no life jackets. The coastguard said that "when the plane came down there were 40-foot waves in the gulf and breaking ice." Although an air-sea search was conducted for several days, no wreckage was found and the three were presumed dead.

He was still in the employ of the British military when he began working as a writer for the BBC, therefore all his scripts needed to be approved by the government before they could be filmed. One of the scripts became the infamous "missing" episode of The Sandbaggers (1978), which was never filmed because the government determined that it violated Official Secrets Act.

On his official retirement from the Royal Navy, he was awarded the military honor of MBE (Member of the Order of the British Empire) in the 1976 Queen's Honours List for his services to the Royal Navy.

While still a naval officer, Mackintosh approached his naval superiors with a proposal for a BBC television series that would modernize the public's perception of the British navy. That proposal became Warship (1973) and, although he was still a career officer, Mackintosh was seconded to the BBC to act as scriptwriter, script supervisor and technical advisor.