Frank Hublou and John Schottenheimer were thankful to walk away after Hublou’s 1946 Republic Seabee seaplane flipped over and sank into Lake Tahoe on Thursday.

“I never thought something like this could happen,” Hublou said.

Both men were on hand at about 7 p.m. Thursday as the plane was pulled out of the water by a Hummer and onto Ski Beach in Incline Village, about eight hours after their plane took on water right after landing on Lake Tahoe.

Hublou, 71, is a veteran pilot with more than 45 years of flying experience and multiple FAA certifications.

The Carson City resident flew missions for the Air Force during the Vietnam War and was out for a morning excursion with fellow Carson resident Schottenheimer, 62, when the two landed the plane on Lake Tahoe. They touched down about one mile off Burnt Cedar Beach in Incline at about 10:30 a.m.

“We had just been tooling around for about 20 or 30 minutes, and I was sitting in the water when I noticed my left pontoon was sitting a little lower in the water than the other,” Hublou said. “And as I looked at the pontoon, it kept going down, and then it kinked. At that point, it opened up like a can and started taking on water.”

Hublou and Schottenheimer decided they would drive the plane back to shore for repairs. That wasn’t the case, however.

“I thought that once the pontoon sunk in, the wing would float and we’d be able to get back to shore,” Hublou said. “But the wing started taking on water, it’s not sealed or anything, and then I could see what was coming.”

What was coming was a complete rollover of Hublou’s plane – both he and Schottenheimer found themselves inside the upside down aircraft, which was taking on water.

“When it was apparent the plane would roll, I put in a mayday call to civil air patrol and called 911 on my cell phone to let them know we were out there,” Schottenheimer said. The call was recorded at 11 a.m., local rescue officials said.

The two managed to use the seat cushions from the plane as flotation devices until tourists in a rented boat pulled them from the water.

The North Lake Tahoe Fire Protection District’s rescue boat, Marine 16, worked from shortly after 11 a.m. until about 1:30 p.m. trying to pull the boat ashore at Ski Beach. Capt. Steve Alcorn of the NLTFPD said the boat pulled the plane until it began taking on water and sinking. Then, Alcorn said he needed to cut it off for fear it would pull the boat under.

High Sierra Marine Inc. took over and completed the plane’s arduous journey to Ski Beach with two crane-equipped boats. A diver inflated airbags inside the plane, which brought it to the surface, before the boats worked in concert to flip the plane over.

Then Incline resident Carl Cooper, who watched the crash unfold from his boat and drove out to the scene, used a winch attached to his Hummer truck to pull the plane from the water. That’s when an IVGID bucket loader hitched up to the plane and pulled it farther onto the beach – the culmination of eight hours of work.

Allen Kenitzer, a regional spokesman with the Federal Aviation Administration, said the accident still is under investigation, and a report on why the plane flipped and sank may not be available for weeks or months.

The plane was disassembled Friday on the beach.