Plane dive

[FreediveWI]

Had a nice time out on the lake yanking that plane up. Jerry's sidescan painted a perfect picutre of it on the bottom and she was sitting pretty when we got to her- well over 50' of vis at 150'.

[FreediveWI]

Hardest part of the whole day was trying to keep occupied on the LONG drive back in- can't go to fast with a plane in tow.


The thing had only been down a bit over a month and she already had zebra mussles on her.

Here's a shot of Jerry displaying some of his excellent crane skills while doing the final yank.

Jon

[DiveCaptDean]

more pictures and details..please
deano

[Chris H]

Jon,
Did you freedive it?

neat pictures

[pink_fins]

Where was this ? Lake Michigan ?
g

[Chris H]

Gail,
That is the plane that the young man landed on Lake Michigan after running out of fuel.  I don't believe that they ever found his body.

[ethanb]

In case anyone is curious about the backstory, here's a few links:

Original story:


Guyer finds the wreck:


NTSB preliminary report:


It's a very sad story...  I'm very impressed with the recovery though.  Was this commissioned by the insurance company?  I'd love to see more photos and some of the sidescan images as well.

Ethan

[FreediveWI]

Jerry and Bob dragged down the bags to rig the lift.  I went down, with a tank, to finish up and fill the bag- just couldn't manage a freedive to 150' to rig and fill.
After we got it up to 40' I switched into my freediving gear to check on things and then attached more bags and tnaks to fill them. I had the fun part since the water was super clear and the surface temps were in the 60's. Jerry and Bob had the hard part because they were running around getting me more ropes and bags to tie in while the flies tried to eat them alive. >
The plane "flew" behind the boat, which is why some bags look like they are just foating along, and then we rerigged in the inner harbor. At that point I freedove bags and bottles down to Bobwho tied them in place- vis way really wierd, crappy at the surface and clear on the bottom.
Once we got into the river I threw a drysuit and tank on again- not because it was deep, but because I really don't like the effect river water has on my ears. :'(

Jerry did quite the job driving it in through the river and not hitting a thing on the way. He also was the "master" at running the crane to bring it up past the silos- not a lot of room on either side to play with. All in all the people on site were pretty impressed with the landing job the pilot did, usually they bust up on impact, and the salvage job bringing it back up, since they often get ripped apart at that time.

Can't tell you a thing about insurance.

Here's a quick shot of Bob rigging in the outer harbor- surface vis. was 3' and bottom vis was over 20'.

[scubert]

thanks for sharing these pix.  Looks like an exciting day out there.

[underwateraddict]

Yes, very neat. Congratulations guys and thanks for sharing the story.