![]() ![]() Propeller from a TBM/F-1 Avenger torpedo bomber, as photographed by a remotely operated vehicle Accounting Agency, which handles attempts to recover servicemen’s remains. Once the aircraft’s debris fields have been archaeologically surveyed, the project team gives the data to the U.S. In this case, Colbourn tells Military Times, records showed only two Dauntless dive bombers lost in the area searched.Īfter identifying wrecks, researchers determine which service members were piloting the vessels during a given battle. Typically, the team compares historical records of aircraft that went missing during military operations to debris recovered in a specific region. The exception is the propeller, usually sticking out.” “Most of them are piles of metal that don’t rise very far off the bottom. “When these aircraft crash into the water, they don’t look like aircraft anymore,” Mark Moline, expedition leader and director of the University of Delaware’s School of Marine Science and Policy, tells Dylan Gresik of Military Times. ![]() But the researchers aren’t surprised that the planes went unnoticed for so long. Truk Lagoon’s numerous sunken Japanese ships, some of which still hold airplanes and trucks, make it a popular scuba diving destination, according to Live Science. Divers and robots carrying cameras investigated the area further and found debris fields littered with the aircraft’s remains at depths of between 100 to 215 feet. Using an autonomous robot that completed repetitive sonar scans of the ocean floor, the group surveyed about 27 square miles of the lagoon, identifying signs of unnatural debris in 61 sites. The research team conducted four expeditions between April 2018 and December 2019. © University of Delaware / Courtesy of Dr. The punched holes of the split-panel dive brakes from an SBD-5 Dauntless dive bomber are visible resting on the floor of the lagoon near the main debris site. “And that was actually where we ended up finding this airplane.” “We were able to line up this piece of the puzzle with this other piece of the puzzle, in order to say, ‘OK, let’s focus our search around this ship,’” says Colbourn. planes, which can be difficult to pick out among the array of coral-covered debris found at the bottom of Truk Lagoon.Īs Project Recover historian Colin Colbourn tells Live Science’s Mindy Weisberger, the gunner saw a Dauntless dive bomber fall while firing on a Japanese transport ship, which also sank. More than 50 Japanese ships and 230 total aircraft, 30 of which were American, were lost in the depths of the lagoon during the skirmish.Īn airplane gunner’s account of the operation helped Project Recover spot the U.S. Seventy-six years ago, the body of water was the site of Operation Hailstone, a two-day Allied air assault on a Japanese naval base. The team discovered the two SBD-5 Dauntless dive bombers and one TBM/F-1 Avenger while searching Truk Lagoon in the Chuuk State of Micronesia, per a statement. military aircraft lost during a February 1944 battle in the conflict’s Pacific theater. Researchers from Project Recover, a joint endeavor of the University of Delaware and the University of California, San Diego, that aims to “find and repatriate Americans missing in action since World War II,” recently located the wreckage of three U.S. ![]()
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