HAWTHORNE, Nev. im — A plane carrying 35 persons back to Soiithern California after a night of Nevada gambling vanished Tuesday in the mountainous desert of the California-Nevada border some 200 miles north of Los Angeles.'An all-day ground hunt in a drizzling overcast produced no clues, and only one search plane was able to get aloft.The DC3 propeller-driven craft ]jast.X£poii£dLioutiikely. by radio over Mina, Nev., at 4:05 a.m. shortly after taking off from Hawthorne.The search did not get under way for nearly six hours.Gene Kropf, public affairs officer at the Federal Avia-I tion Administration's regional office in Los Angeles, said the plane was due at Bur-bank, Calif., at 6:05 a.m. Following routine procedure, the FAA initiated a communications check at 6:41 a.m.Kropf said at 7:52 a.m. the FAA called the operators, the Mineral County Airline, doing business as the Hawthorne Nevada Airlines. "We were told by a man who called himself manager of the line that the plane was safely on the ground in Long Beach," he said. "At 9:51 a.m. the line called us back and said the plane was overdue. We notified Hamilton Air Force Base which coordinates air rescue and search operations."
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