| Update Series, #9 Hello Everyone! We had a wonderful two days of working QB Nelson’s crash site. But of course if I give you the cool stuff right at the beginning, you’ll blow off reading the rest of this. But I’ll give you a hint: there’s no such thing as coincidences. Lessons Learned: Yesterday we had breakfast out. Walked across the street to the Ministry of Justice for a 10am presentation. Now I haven’t done anything wrong while in Palau, but I was nervous in the room that held all the heads of departments within the Ministry: Chief of Police, Chief of Patrol, Chief of Corrections, Chief of their DEA, Chief of Water Safety and so many more. I think I counted 30 folks with badges. And although “we don’t need no stinkin badges”, they do. And they’re the only ones with guns in the country. Except for the bad guys. The audience was very appreciative of Pat’s knowledge and love for Palau and the Palauan people. Hopefully this will lead to greater cooperation with the government when on these missions. Picked up a few things for Rebecca. Headed back to the apartment, changed into water wear and made tracks for the boat. Headed out to place some buoys on the larger pieces so we could map the debris field. There are three separate areas of debris. One close to shore that has the tail section including tailwheel, tailhook and a lot of the aft fuselage and one 50 cal machine gun. The next concentrated area is about 100 feet into the channel and includes many pieces of cylinder heads, all 3 prop blades, center wing section, a main landing gear and a small piece of the instrument panel. The cylinder heads are in many, many pieces. The impact must have been tremendous. Yesterday we thought there were only two debris locations, but today we found another small area of debris that included another 50 cal machine gun, a piece that looks like it comes from around the main landing gear, and a few small pieces of fuselage skin. And Jennifer, our novice scuba queen who has all of what, 4 dives under her belt found the machine guns. Good eyes Jennifer! But, back to yesterday’s festivities. About half way through our day, Joe our boat captain called to me when I was on the surface. He said that he found sunglasses intact in the coral. Wow. That would seem incredible considering how much the aircraft was shattered. But stranger things have happened. Well, I certainly wanted to see them and to look around that particular area. Joe pointed me in the right direction. He also told me that they looked like my sunglasses. I paddled over, and I could not find them. Someone else pointed me in the right direction and I still could not find them. I asked a few times for someone to point them out. I really wanted to see them. But how did Joe know I had Naval Aviator sunglasses? I don’t wear them much anymore. Finally, as Val was climbing out of the boat, I asked her and she said I must really want to see them. So she took me over to them. And yes, they were a Naval Aviators sunglasses. Now this gets spooky. They were mine. From the last trip. They flew overboard one day and I did not go in after them. Since they were a cheap knockoff copy of Oakley Shields, I did not think to jump overboard as we were heading out to sea. They landed right in the middle of the debris field. If I had closed my eyes and jumped in after them, we would have found QB last year. When I told everyone about this, they all remembered my glasses flying off. We also agreed that there are no such things as coincidences anymore. And here’s why. Last year, when the Marine F/A18 squadron did their missing man fly-by, they were supposed to be in the next channel to the east. Instead, they flew directly over QB when the missing man pulled out. Coincidence? And the night before that, when we all got together for dinner, The Marines ended the night with a tribute to QB by singing the Marine Corps Hymn. This restaurant overlooks the crash site and is no more than 100 yards from QB. They really were singing to him. The team now wants me to throw another pair of sunglasses into the water each day and maybe we’ll find Lt. Houle! We finished laying out our buoy field and getting GPS readings. But, we did not get an accurate map drawn before the day ended. So back to the rooms, quick change with some appetizers, courtesy of Val of course, and off we went to the Palau National Aquarium. Pat was asked to give a presentation to the Palau Conservation Society along with the Retired Persons Association and a number of Senators from the Congress. Pat was hit of course. The Aquarium is really pretty with great exhibits on the different areas of Palau. They even have a mangrove growing in a tank. Somehow, I missed the crocs. Then it was out to dinner with Joe and Esther. We went to the Carp for a Palauan delicacy: coconut and mangrove crab. Fresh if we’re lucky. The coconut crab is amazing. This crab will punch a small hole in the top of a coconut, insert a claw and hold the coconut fast, climb a tree and drop the coconut and shatter it. Then it’s chow time. Sounds like a fish story to me. But I want to believe it, so I will. After all the frivolity there, we all went home and crashed. I was so tired I could not write a single sentence of this update, or read a whole paragraph in my book. So now it’s today, the 14th. Got up a little later than normal, headed to the boat and finished up at QB’s site. The water was a lot clearer and we could see even more pieces. We all firmly believe that a lot of the airplane is buried under coral. If we were to use a suction device to move the silt and dead coral that’s around, we’d find most of the aircraft. At 3pm, we called it quits. One last thing was to briefly look around the rock island across the channel. There are still many folks not recovered and there is an off chance that this area holds another aircraft: an Avenger flown by Lt. Houle. We trolled a little bit (me holding onto a line and being dragged, keelhauled as my teammates like to say, around the area.) and found lots of scrap. Sunk boats, heavy metals, lots and lots of it. Also, during our last two days on the QB site, we found 4 anchors. Neco Marine went after two of them for their landscaping. The other two were homemade scrappy looking things. Back to the dock, over to the apartment, head out to the PPR hotel for sunset on the beach and then to Kraemers for dinner. This is the restaurant where we hosted the Marines last year who somehow knew QB would be listening. Back to the apartment, I started packing for my trip home. Joe and Esther picked us up for a night of Karaoke and disco. I left the group there, finished packing and returned to pick them up. They all came to the airport to see me off, including Joe and Esther. What a send off. Especially since the flight left at 2:30am. We’re somewhere over the Pacific enroute to Guam in the awfully early morning of the 15th. Then up to Tokyo and then over to DTW. All in one day of flying. I’ve been up since 7am and it’s 3:15 now. I am going to be one whacked out, tired lad when I get into DTW. I’ll give one more update when I can see straight again in DTW. The rest of the team has one more day together before they start heading home. They might find something and of course you’ll want to know about it. And I’m just the guy to do it. So, until I get home, signing off from 37,000 feet. Blue Skies, Flip |
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