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| Photo from California Diver, September 11, 2013 |
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| Avengers in flight |
I was going to dive the Navy TBF Avenger torpedo plane near
Anacapa Island as part of a National Park Service dive team and was very
excited at the prospect. Because the
wreck was about 120 feet on the front side of the island, the dive had to be
meticulously planned. We had to stay within
the NPS Diving Manual requirement which limited this mission to a no
decompression limit (air) of five minutes at 120 feet. So this was going to be what someone on board
called a “sneak and peek” dive--get in, get down, take a quick look see, come
up.
This Avenger was lost as a result of a collision during a
training mission in 1944. The pilot and one
gunner were rescued, but the other gunner was lost. The second aircraft was lost with all hands
and has never been located, as far as I can ascertain. Operational losses during training were not
uncommon. The streets of Santa Barbara
Airport bear the names of aircrew that were lost during the war when the
airport was supported Marine Corps training.
John Wayne, in the movie The Flying Leatherneck, utters a line about
being in dusty, dirty, Goleta, the community adjacent to the airport. For decades after the war, the Santa Barbara
News Press would carry an occasional story about wreckage of military airplanes
being brought up in the nets of fishing vessels in the Santa Barbara Channel.
Normally, NPS and other government divers were not certified
to dive more than 90 feet unless there was an operational need to do so. Surveillance of this wreck site established
our operational need. While we had a
general idea of the location of the wreck, we would need to locate it
first. The team would enter from a live
boat (the vessel would not be anchored).
Dropping down to 80 feet, we would swim-search following a compass
heading. Once the airplane’s remains
were spotted, we would descend as a group to the bottom, and when the dive
leader, David Stoltz, signaled that time was up, we would begin our ascent to
the surface, with a safety stop at 10 to 15 feet. I used at 95-cubic foot tank on that
dive. Otherwise, given my rate of air
consumption, the capacity of the standard 72 cubic foot tank and our dive protocol
to return to the surface with at least 500 psi might be the limiting factor
rather than the bottom time.
The dive went as planned.
Swimming at a depth of 80 feet, we could clearly see the bottom and
quickly located the remains of the aircraft.
We dropped down to the aircraft.
I took note of the time on my Seiko dive watch that had accompanied me
on hundreds of dive starting with my basic diver training. It seems that time
passes rapidly underwater and even faster at 120 feet. I did a quick swim around the site and then
used the rest of the time inspecting the fuselage, cockpit and wings. I then
heard the banging of the dive knife on Dave’s tank, the signal to gather up and
return to the surface.
As a youth, I devoured every story I could on flying,
especially air battles of World War Two.
I recalled the story, made popular in the movie Midway, of Torpedo 8 which
sustained 100 percent loss while attacking the Japanese fleet with the TBD
Dauntless-the predecessor of the TBF Avenger. A lone survivor, Ensign George Gay, escaped
his shot up airplane after completing his torpedo run and ditching. He had a front row seat for the decimation of
the Japanese fleet by American dive bombers.
My obsession with aviation led to a Bachelor of Science in
Aeronautics. I worked as a student air
traffic controller while in school and later worked on airplane flight manuals
and maintenance manuals for the L-1011, KC-135, C-130, and C-17. But the sky and sea battled for my affection
and the sea eventually won. I was
fortunate to be able to document and dive wrecks was part of my later career, first
as a Park volunteer diver, then as the Maritime Historian for the Park from
1992 to 1994, and then as a Minerals Management Service diver. I had mapped
shipwreck sites, developed a database of more than 125 vessels lost in the area
with primary source material, and produced a submerged cultural resource
assessment with the Park archaeologist, Don Morris. Along the way, I met some mighty fine people
like Matt Russel, Mark Norder, and the late Patrick Smith.
Several videos of the website by divers are available on Youtube.
TBM Avenger off Anacapa Island (TBM was the designation of Avengers manufactured by General Motors)
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