|
Hi Ray.
Speaking of B17 bombers, my group and I have
located a B17 that crashed into a lake east of Lake Wales here in
florida.
We have sidescanned and magged it. The lake is very
shallow. About 10 ft at it deepest. The water is like tea from the
tanic
acid though and the visibility is about 1 ft. We
could dive it right now but almost everyone in the warbird recovery team has
a
cold. I'm totally stuffed up with the ole green
stuff in the sinus's and coughing up the same thing. The water in the lake is
about
52 degrees right now so none of us are in a hurry
to dive it until it warms up a bit and everyone gets over their winter
colds.
We hope to bring up some pieces for museum display.
Some guys like the sunken galleons. And some along with me like the
civil war ships, but sunken planes and subs are my
real passion. I've been on one hunt for a german midget susposedly
sunken
for target practice off Edgmont key after the war,
but without success finding it. Been on two other gulf of mexico dive
searches for sunken WW2
fighter planes without success. But this time we
have found one. We saw debri all over the place on sidescan but no idea of the
real
condition until we actually dive it and get REAL
CLOSE up to it to inspect it. Should still have the guns on it. It caught on
fire from a faulty oxygen line in
the upper gun turrent. The co pilots face was badly
burned fighting the fire. Fire got out of control and everyone parachuted
out
but the unmanned plane circled around and hit
one of the guys's chute and deflated it and killed him. 10 bailed out but for
some reason only 5 survived.
Eyewitness's said it exploded in the lake when it
crashed and that later the Army Air Corps came out and blew the tail up because
it was
sticking above the water. But she is all there. Not
sure how large the debri field is yet, but what we have seen, I expect it
to be pretty scattered.
We have the crash report from Maxwell air force
base's archive division. Hope to bring up parts for a static relic museum
display.Our group
is called the Warbird Recovery Team and we are the
aviation archaeological branch of the Florida Aviation Historical Society. A
little off the sub
topic, but still underwater!
Bill Akins.
|