Philippine Journal

Part of the

Greatest Generation Aircraft family

of historic planes.

Day 3 of the search, 20 February, 2009

Once again we are up early, at the boat and heading to the search area by 0730. We decide to do a couple of sonar passes from the mouth of the river to the primary search area, just in case they were guessing their position too far out.  Lynn is with us today and we are picking his brain about the distance from shore, and how far out he could be and still see the Japanese boats coming out to get them.  We have about decided we are out too far. 

We begin the search 500 yards off shore in 25 ft of water.  Reasoning any closer than that the water is so shallow the plane would have been discovered and salvaged long ago.  We make a couple passes and don’t even get a ping.  Since we are back in the primary area we decide to clear the locations we marked yesterday and eliminate those areas from the list. Since visibility is horrible we decide to go over the location and mark it with a buoy then dive on the buoy.  We go over and over the area and nothing shows up.  None of the spots we marked yesterday are here today.  My frustration peaks and we decide to start again at square one.  We crisscross yesterdays search area and don’t get a single hit.  I am convinced the sonar has gone bad, so we go to one of our biggest hits from yesterday and dive on it.

Once again we employ the diver on a rope technique and start swimming big circles. We surface and find Lynn is exhausted and has banged his ribs on the side of the boat.  He is in a lot of pain and the boat is sinking again.  The frustration is mounting and I’m wishing Eddy would screw up so I could take it out on him.

We head for the beach, get Lynn settled in the hotel and call our lady to see if we can pay her a visit. As luck would have it she is home and we head over there. 

Elvira it turns out is about 90 and just as sharp as they come and eager to help us.  She tells us the story of the rescue, which cost the lives of one Phippino, and we figure out pretty quick she is not talking about our plane. We ask to see the engine and the gun, hopping to get the serial numbers off of them, but the engine was stolen and the gun is not there and we can’t get to it.  I’m thinking this is a dead end.  She does have one point that is clear.  She says our plane is not there.  It was salvaged by the locals in 1984, and I believe it to be true.  These people are very poor (most make $6 to $8 dollars a day) anything worth a nickel is scooped up and cashed in as soon as they find it.  That plane in 25 to 35 ft of water is too easy to get to. I’m sure it is not there.  So we go back to work on the HUMANINT.  If they found it would they recover and bury the MIA in town?  We go back to the Judge and his wife.  They say no.  No remains were brought in.  So our guy is still there and we saw 2 big lumps out there on the sonar that could be the engines which would be so heavy they would have to leave them.

Tomorrow we go back