| P-MAN XVI Update # 28 - Newly discovered shipwrecks. Once more to the Corsair. 10 April 2014 Split, split ops today. Governor Perry addressed a joint session of the Palauan National Government and a number of our BentProppers went to the capitol to hear him speak. I wasn't in attendance so we'll need to wait for someone else to post to the BentProp website their review of the event. We had a small contingent still working on Police Hill. Some more clearing was done and we're getting a better impression of how the land looked back in 1944-45. Still no firm evidence yet, but once again, we're in the long game on this one. I was the only BentPropper on the water this morning. Somebody has to pay the bills around here. I joined Eric, Mark and Shannon from Scripps/UDel to dive the northern channel leading in from the east into Palau Harbor. One of the reports from the war was of a downed B-24 near an "east west channel." And looking at geographic features from the air while being shot at makes some of the reports subject to interpretation. Today, we can look at Google Earth and see a lot of things that we could call an east west channel. So we have to dive them. Eric and Shannon used the Navigator to really search the middle of the channel while Mark and I searched in the notch on the southern side. The channel bottom ranges from 35 feet to 90 feet in depth. But the visibility was really good and we didn't have to go much below 60 feet to see the bottom in places.
I saw one tire. A bunch of starfish. A lot of sand. But I did get to see Mark's underwater light in action on some coral.
Although the wind was really blowing, the wave action inside the protected harbor wasn't too bad. We elected to assign the rest of the channel search to BentProp on another day. From the REMUS vehicle, there were a few 'interesting' things we saw in our last evening review. So we went to the southern side of this whole area and went down with the Alien Finder. We found what we saw on the SSS images, but they were just coral outcroppings. We did see some interesting 'cabbage' coral prior to coming up.
Somewhere in this area there is a report of a plane down. Not exactly sure where, but if we can find a lead, it will help narrow the search area.
The plan for the afternoon was to go out to the Corsair with Governor Perry and Marcus Luttrell. I finally met Marcus at Neco Marine during the lunch break. The camera does not do him justice. He is still a lean looking SEAL. A big man. His very public story is compelling. It was going to be a pleasure to dive with him. Unfortunately, as we experienced out in the harbor, the wind was up and in the wrong direction for diving that site. Unlike the harbor, the Corsair site is 6 miles out from the harbor. Still inside the barrier reef, but not enough to tame the waves. The wave action wouldn't bother Marcus, but it would not be fun for the rest of us so the Corsair was put off until the next morning. But we didn't have any targets to dive on. Rather than burn daylight waiting for us to get targets, the Texas contingent went out in their boat to explore Palau's beauty in areas that were not so rough. We went over to Coral Reef to see if we could develop targets. We got Mark and Paul to go over some SSS files and decided that our best bet was to finish off the channel that we had started earlier in the day. The plan was to start at the mouth of the channel and ride the last of the incoming tide to help speed up the search. Me, Dave, Rick and Casey would take the southern side of the channel and Joe, Pat, Derek Mark would take the northern side. Oops. We got in the water late and had to swim up current to do our searches. Our first clue was that all the fish were pointing into the harbor when they should be pointing out, and the string corals were acting like weather vanes in the wrong direction. So this was more exercise than we usually want to do. And once again, we saw not much. I saw a shark and some starfish. There was a glimmer of hope when Joe found some cloth at the bottom, but it turned out to be a pair of pants. Pat thought initially he found a parachute, but it turned out to be sail material. For our next dive, a few of us popped down on a point target Mark saw in the SSS files. It was just coral.
When we were all done, we headed back to port. We debriefed the day back at the house, got cleaned up and went to a Palauan hosted dinner at The Palau Cultural Center. The dinner was to welcome The Perry family: Governor Perry, his wife Anita and his daughter Sydney, The Luttrell family: Marcus and his wife Melanie and RV and Terrie Burgin. Pat as BentProp founder got an honorable mention as well. And so did Robin Hogg, Billy Cantrell's daughter.
A lot of Palauan society came out for this. There of course was some speechifying. The speakers included the President of Palau, Speaker of the House of Representatives and Governor Perry. Gifts were exchanged and it was announced that by Joint Proclamation of the OEK (the national government), Governor Perry was made an Honorary Citizen of Palau. Then the meal started and we were treated to all sorts of Palauan foods. Very good and lots of it. We were given a demonstration of traditional boys and girls dancing. And music by a Palauan duo rounded out the night. A good time had by all. We did a quick mission scrub and Scripps has found four ships that were sunk close together. And it appears that no one else knows they're there. 11 April Early get up for everyone. Well, not everyone. Those going to Police Hill got to sleep in just a bit more. But since the Corsair dive pooped out yesterday, we put it on for this morning. Early. Unfortunately, Governor Perry developed some ear problems from the dive he did yesterday so the Texas contingent wouldn't be joining us. But the production crew still wanted to go so we accommodated them. We left pretty close to on time from the dock and we planned to gear up in a protected area. The sea state was still pretty wavy. I can only imagine how much rougher it would have been yesterday. When our little armada of boats formed up, we headed out. The sea was rough and knocked a few people off their feet. Okay, it knocked me off my feet. It did calm down a little over the Corsair, but the ocean was not flat there either. However, we knew it was going to be a good dive. We had a sign.
We got out on station at the correct lat/long and Joe dived in to place a buoy on the Corsair. No need to put this many divers down at one time to search for something. Joe popped his sausage and The BentProp divers went down. We had one last moment for Billy Cantrell by having a group photo taken with this Corsair as the backdrop. Once that was done, the film crew came down and did their thing.
While the film crew did their thing, BentProp went back up to the surface. Pat lingered down there as they wanted to get some footage of him and the airplane. He came back up and hung on the side of the boat for awhile. Casey got geared up again and asked me to do the same. Our new dive plan was for three minutes, at five feet.
Mission Accomplished. Pat was scheduled to go back to port, change into his jungle clothes and join RV Burgin and Governor Perry for some work up at Police Hill. One of the scheduled items was a Cleared Ground Demolition of some of the munitions they've collect. RV was given the change to make something really go boom again. When I saw him driving off from Neco at the end of the day, he had that little kid on Christmas morning look on his face. His high powered smile overwhelmed the car. However, Pat thought it better to stay calm and not rush around so he stayed on the boat much to the delight of the film crew because that meant they could capture him on the B-24. However, before we left, we had some guests to get onto the Corsair. The CAT Team came out in their boat (I know what you're thinking. 'Hey Flip. Aren't these Air Force guys? Do they even have boats in the Air Force?). Some of their members got scuba qualed just so they could dive with us. But we had one tactical error. Someone didn't get the memo to keep the sausage on the Corsair until the CAT team splashed in. Although we put them out right where the last divers surfaced, they had drifted enough to miss the mark. We'll have to bring them back another day as this is a protected site and we cannot give away the location without the Palauan President's approval. And we had to stick to our timetable for the day. However, we knew the B-24 would not have as much wind and waves and we could anchor over it so they came with us to that dive site. It's also protected by Palauan law so this would be everyone's chance to see it. We got in and I led the way for the CAT team. Rick came along with us and Dan took up the rear to keep herding us forward. We didn't want to linger too long as the film crew was going to follow us for their shot sequences. I didn't get any good enough photos from the B-24, but I did get this:
Before we left the B-24 site, we found out that the Texas team was still not dive ready, so we went back to port to grab a snack and then went back out to see one of the ships that Scripps/UDel found. It appears this is a steel framed, but wooden hulled ship. Pat found evidence of a bomb explosion going inward and burnt wood. It could be that the airplane we're looking for, that went in 3/4 of a mile from this location, after a 20 degree bombing run at mast head level might have been attacking this ship and its sister ships that are down within 1/4 of a mile. We haven't seen a rivet of this airplane, but maybe this is the first bread crumb in the trail.
These ships are not very deep, but nobody else seems to know about them. The reason we were on a tight schedule is that we were invited onto the R/V Roger Randall Revell for a tour and heavy pu pus. R/V stands for research vessel and is a NOAA ship operated out of Scripps Institution of Oceanography. Most of the Scripps people make scientific deployments on her each year. The ship has a crew of 21, can accommodate 39 scientists and cruises the world's oceans conducting experiments of all kinds. The touring party would consist of BentProp, Scripps and University of Delaware.
Evan from Scripps flew his octocopter off the fantail and flew to the delight of all. After our tour, we had a light meal and had a scrub brief with Scripps for what they saw in the SSS files. Looks like we do not have any targets for tomorrow. I had to leave the brief early as Mark Swank had an early evening flight out. We'll miss Mark. He could not stay in Palau very long, but he certainly helped reveal more about the Police Hill execution sites. Everyone else departed the ship when the brief was over. Pat took Nell to the airport for her oh-dark-thirty departure. That must be one of those father-daughter things. Rick Smith and Josie Ling departed as well. Rick couldn't give us much time this year, but he was full on when he was with us. Robin Hogg left also. She is ecstatic about her father's send-off and I think we'll hear more about her before too long. - Flip All photos © Flip Colmer2014 |
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