2 Pilots With the Same Passion for Flying Shared Last Ride Together

James Rebbeck and Darrell Peeples had only recently met, but from what friends and relatives say, they could easily have become fast friends.

Rebbeck and Peeples were airplane freaks. Nearly every minute that they weren’t at their jobs, they were flying. And when they weren’t in the air they talked about their planes.

Rebbeck, a Lomita contractor, and Peeples, a Long Beach police officer, were enjoying their passion last Saturday when the homemade, single-engine plane they were flying fell into the ocean about four miles off the Palos Verdes Peninsula.

Both men are presumed dead, although their bodies have not been recovered.

The Federal Aviation Administration is investigating the crash of the Thorp T-18. FAA officials refused to discuss the investigation, but the probe could be difficult because the Coast Guard was able to recover only the plane’s two seats and a few other fragments.

The airplane, which was assembled from a kit, passed inspection when it was built about one year ago, according to FAA spokeswoman Barbara Abels. An airport employee, who asked not to be named, said the plane had been flown regularly during the last year and had no mechanical problems.

Peeples had gone to Compton Airport on Saturday intent on buying the single-engine airplane from the man who built it, said Peeples’ girlfriend, Penny Senzig. The owner of the plane, who has not been identified, regularly let Rebbeck “exercise” the T-18, and Saturday asked him to take Peeples up for a flight to familiarize him with the plane, the airport employee said.

Just before taking off Saturday afternoon, Peeples called Senzig to say that he was about to go up in the T-18 to “play dogfight” with another plane. She said that he sometimes enjoyed such aerobatics. “They would fly at each other and then bank off and fly in formation,” she said.

The Compton Airport employee confirmed that another airplane took off about the same time as the T-18, but FAA spokeswoman Abels said “there is absolutely no indication at this time that any other aircraft was involved” in the crash.

Peeples, 41, and Rebbeck, 47, headed for the unrestricted airspace off the Palos Verdes Peninsula. But, after less than an hour in the air, the two-seat craft plummeted into the ocean without issuing a distress signal, the Coast Guard said.

Rebbeck, a married father of one, was a Compton Airport regular. “Any extra time he had away from work, he was at the airport,” said a friend. “We have our little fraternity here, and everybody sits around and talks aircraft.

“Some people go to bars. We just go to the airport.”

The same could have been said of Peeples, a 6-year veteran of the Long Beach Police Department.

Evelyn Peeples recalls her son watching crop-dusters fly out behind his aunt’s house in south Texas when he was just 8. He would say to her: “Mom, someday I’m going to fly.”

Peeples paid for his own flying lessons, earning his license before he graduated from high school. He completed most of his advanced flight training on his own time while stationed with the Army in Alabama and Alaska.

He became a professional pilot in Alaska and later flew for corporate clients around the rest of the country, according to a friend, Long Beach police Sgt. John Riddle, before joining the department in 1982.

Peeples sold his beloved twin-engine Seneca about a month ago, Senzig said, because it cost too much to operate. “He couldn’t stand it,” she said. “He just had to have another airplane.”

Senzig might have spoken for Rebbeck, as well, when she said of Peeples: “He was doing what he loved when he died.”