Iowa alum believes he has found Kinnick's WWII fighter

The University of Iowa alumnus who has apparently found Nile Kinnick's fighter plane, says he will donate anything recovered from the wreckage to the school.

Richard Tosaw, 77, now living in California, said Monday he believes he located the plane last week about five miles off the coast of Venezuela. The next step is to get permission from the country's government to salvage it and confirm that it is Kinnick's plane, he said.

Kinnick, the 1939 Heisman Trophy winner, was just 24 when he was killed. His U.S. Navy fighter crashed into the Caribbean Sea during a training flight in June 1943.

Critics have said Tosaw's work is disrespectful and amounts to digging up Kinnick's grave. Tosaw said he will not recover any remains, just the plane.

"He has no surviving relatives except a distant cousin who didn't mind what I was doing when I told him about it," Tosaw said. "We would like to know what happened, why he wasn't able to swim away."

Tosaw has spent 10 years and $10,000 of his own money to find the plane. Tosaw's older brother Michael played with Kinnick on the 1938 Hawkeye football team.

The plane was located using a global positioning system by cross-checking coordinates from a Navy ship operating in the area at the time of the crash, Tosaw said.

The plane is probably a few hundred feet underwater, buried in about 10 feet of sand, he said. A salvage expert would use a balloon-like underwater flotation device to bring the plane up from the sea floor, Tosaw said.

If the plane can be salvaged, it may be put on display at Kinnick Stadium or at the Hawkeye Hall of Fame, he said.

"I think it would be a good memorial," said George "Red" Frye, an 84-year-old Albia resident and former Kinnick teammate. "People are forgetting who Kinnick was."