<p>The body of legendary test pilot Scott Crossfield was found Thursday in the wreckage of his single-engine plane in north Georgia, the Civil Air Patrol said.</p><p>Searchers found the crumpled plane shortly after 1 p.m. in the mountains near Ranger, Ga., about 50 miles northwest of Atlanta.</p><p>Crossfield's Cessna 210A had disappeared in the same area Wednesday morning while on a flight from Alabama to Virginia. Officials lost radar and radio contact with the plane at 11:15 a.m., said Kathleen Bergen, a spokeswoman for the Federal Aviation Administration.</p><p>Bergen said there were thunderstorms in the area at the time.</p><p>The airplane crashed in a gully about 10 miles outside of Ranger, Ga., in rural Gordon County.</p><p>Oris Hendrix, who live about a mile from the crash site, said she and her husband were sitting on their porch when they witnessed the crash.</p><p>"He was trying to turn and he just went down," she said, mimicking the rumbling sound the gray airplane made before it disappeared beneath fierce rain and wind. "You could tell the motor was having trouble. You could tell the motor cut off."</p><p>Rescue officials said the crash site was so remote that a bulldozer would be needed to recover the plane and a dirt road likely would need to be cut in the forest. Sheriff's deputies blocked access to the site Wednesday afternoon.</p><p>Among the small community of test pilots, Crossfield was a legend, said veteran test pilot Fred Griffith of Shelter Bay, Wash.</p><p>"This guy was a gentleman and an aviator. That's the top of the line," said Griffith, a test pilot for 40 years. "There's pilots, there's drivers. An aviator is something else. That's the best I can say about anyone in this business."</p><p>Griffith first met Crossfield at the Society of Experimental Test Pilots, an elite international group of some 2,000 active and retired pilots.</p><p>"He was a shining star, you know. I don't know anybody who was more respectable than Scotty Crossfield," he said.</p><p>Crossfield, 84, was one of a group of civilian pilots assembled by the National Advisory Committee on Aeronautics, the forerunner of NASA, in the early 1950s.</p><p>Air Force Capt. Chuck Yeager had already broken the speed of sound in his history-making flight in 1947. Crossfield set the Mach 2 record _ twice the speed of sound _ in 1953, when he reached 1,300 mph in NACA's Douglas D-558-II Skyrocket.</p><p>In 1960, Crossfield reached Mach 2.97in an X-15 rocket plane launched from a B-52 bomber. The plane reached an altitude of 81,000 feet. At the time, Crossfield was working as a pilot and design consultant for North American Aviation, which made the X-15. He later worked as an executive for Eastern Airlines and Hawker Siddley Aviation.</p><p>More recently, Crossfield had a key role in preparations for the attempt to re-enact the Wright brothers' flight on the 100th anniversary of their feat near Kitty Hawk, N.C. He trained four pilots for the Dec. 17, 2003, flight attempt in a replica of the brothers' flyer, but poor weather prevented the take-off.</p><p>As a test pilot, Crossfield was no stranger to danger in the air and frequently escaped from aircraft accidents unharmed. Once, while testing the X-15 in 1959, one of the experimental plane's engines exploded. The emergency landing of the plane broke the aircraft's back just behind the cockpit but Crossfield was not injured, according to the Edwards Air Force Base Web site.</p><p>Less than a year later in June 1960, a malfunctioning valve caused a catastrophic explosion. Crossfield again escaped injury, according to the Web site.</p><p>Among his many honors, Crossfield was inducted into the National Aviation Hall of Fame in 1983.</p><p>He was a colonel in the Civil Air Patrol. At his 80th birthday in 2001, Crossfield was still flying 200 hours per year as a private pilot-instrument rating.</p><p>The missing plane left Prattville, Ala., around 9 a.m. Wednesday en route to Manassas, Va. Search crews from the Civil Air Patrol were conducting an air and ground search along the flight path, focusing on a hilly, forested region of north-central Georgia.</p><p>___</p><p>Associated Press writers Harry R. Weber and Greg Bluestein in Atlanta contributed to this report.</p>
