Dr. Louis Hanson, a family doctor from Durham, was killed Sunday when his antique plane crashed into the ocean near Portland Head Light in Cape Elizabeth.

Just before noon, Hanson was pulled from the water by paddle boaters and taken to nearby Fort Williams by a Sea Tow vessel, a Coast Guard spokesman said Monday. By the time he reached rescuers on shore, he was unresponsive. He never regained consciousness.

One day later, Hanson was remembered as a guy who loved flying.

“He was just a real nice guy,” said Dale Twitchell, the general manager and owner of Twitchell’s Airport and Seaplane Base in Turner, where Hanson rented hangar space. “And he loved his plane. It was the only plane he ever flew.”

Twitchell said he didn’t know where Hanson was headed Sunday, but he said the doctor flew often in the summer.

He also said engine failure was an unlikely cause of the crash. Since it was rebuilt, the engine had run fewer than 200 hours, he said.

Ironically, the 66-year-old, four-seat Stinson Voyager had been an historic symbol of aircraft safety.

Hanson and his plane, which he named “Isabelle,” were featured in a short documentary about a flight safety system in which troubled planes jettisoned their wings and floated to the ground with a parachute.

The system was removed from the plane years ago. However, Isabelle’s test in 1967 drew international news.

Surviving film shows the fuselage swaying in the air beneath a parachute. There are images of the pilot, who parachuted from the plane as he engaged the system. And there is footage from the TV crews who covered the experiment.

The system didn’t catch on.

The plane ended up at Twitchell’s in 2001, where Hanson fell in love with its old-school simplicity. He hadn’t even earned his pilot’s license nor did he know the plane’s history when he bought it, he told the Sun Journal in November 2010.

“I didn’t really know much, except that I thought it was a beautiful airplane,” Hanson said. In the late 1990s, the plane had undergone a complete overhaul, removing all signs of the 1967 test.

When its owner suggested they take a ride, eventually handing over the controls to Hanson, the doctor was sold.

“This is just a lovely bird to fly,” he said in 2010. “If there is one thing, one possession that I love, it’s this.”

He had owned the plane only a short time when an instructor suggested he check its history. Hanson searched the Internet for the tail numbers, N39443, and was shocked at what he discovered.

“I was amazed that it had this little secret about it,” he said. He also discovered that the plane had been photographed for a pilots’ magazine. The story touted the new Stinson.

Today, the plane remains beneath 60 feet of water near Portland Head Light, the Associated Press reported.

Dario Manfredi, whose father invented the parachute system first tested in Hanson’s plane, said Monday he was saddened by news of the accident. 

“Dr. Hanson was a wonderful, kind and accomplished physician whose loss will be felt by everyone who was lucky enough to know him,” Manfredi said.

The inventor, who is working on a modern parachute system,  said he wished Hanson’s plane had been newly equipped.

“In his memory, we pledge to redouble our efforts to bring this lifesaving technology to market and will not stop until the unnecessary loss of life in general aviation accidents is averted once and for all,” Manfredi, president of Aviation Safety Resources, said.

Video of the 1967 test and an interview with Hanson is at http://vimeo.com/16890371.

dhartill@sunjournal.com

Video from the Portland Press Herald