Two TBD Devastators found!

stoney

stoney

SOH-CM-2023
I know this is not really a CFS2 item, but I found this interesting. Two intact TBDs were found in shallow water on the bottom of Jaluit lagoon in the Marshall Islands. Tighar is working with the U.S. Navy on a hoped for recovery. This link has some cool underwater video of both planes and a Kawanishi H6K5 flying boat:
http://www.tighar.org/Projects/Devastator/tosave.htm
 
Thanks for the news report. The raid on the Marshall Islands was one of the first offensive actions against the Imperial Japanese forces after Pearl Harbor.

I've always liked this painting. It portrays an attack on Wake Island on 24 February 1942, another early raid prior to the Coral Sea battle.
 
Recovery of the two would be nice since there are no TBD left.
 
These would be from Yorktown's Raid on Jaluit in Feb of '42. They fought some really nasty storms all the way to the Target and 6 A/C failed to return. These two TBD's were spotted by the other returning A/C after they ditched.
 
This Raids while not as Important as Military effectiveness they made a World of difference in giving us hope that we can hit Japanese back at a time when the Japanese military had the upper hand in the war.
 
THIS IS AMAZING!!! Wouldn't it be AMAZING to see a pair of TBDs fly again, just like the Thunderbolts in Tennessee? We'd better keep up with THIS project; this is TOO important to be left by the wayside...:amen: :woot:
 
I may be mistaken, but I believe the recovery of these aircraft have been bogged down by the U.S. Navy. The Navy claims that the Devastators are navy property and can not be tampered with. (Don’t know if the crews were recovered; this may be a factor in the Navy’s position on the matter.) Even Sen. John McCain wrote letters and lobbied in an effort to recover the planes. Nothing, so far, has persuaded the Navy from changing its position.

 
The Navy loves its airplanes - so much that it still retains ownership of all of them, even those that have been marine life sanctuaries for 60+ years. If a private salvage crew attempts to recover a USN plane to restore (or sell to somebody who will) they will incur the legal wrath of the Navy. So the Navy will probably fiddle-fart around until the two Jaluit TBD's are reduced to their basic elements. :mad:
 
Does any body know what happened to the crew? If the TBD's were in the lagoon they were probably captured. Jagd, that picture makes a great wallpaper.
 
I know they were captured. As to their fate after that I do not know.

UPDATE:
Lt. Harlan T. 'Dub' Johnson did survive and later became Adm. Johnson

According to Pacific Wrecks "All the crew members survived, and were taken prisoner by the Japanese, and spent the rest of the war in captivity and survived the war."
 
Hern,

If you want the full resolution picture of the Devestators over Wake Island, send me a PM and I'll send it to you. Then it will make an even better background. I use it from time to time on my computer too.

I've been on Wake several times during my career. It's a refuling stop for troops bound for the Orient going the Central Pacific route on military aircraft. I like that route better than the SEATAC to Alaska to Japan to destination route that I normally go when flying on commercial airliners. The coral in my fish tank is from the reef and beach on Midway.
 
TARPSBird said:
The Navy loves its airplanes - so much that it still retains ownership of all of them, even those that have been marine life sanctuaries for 60+ years. If a private salvage crew attempts to recover a USN plane to restore (or sell to somebody who will) they will incur the legal wrath of the Navy. So the Navy will probably fiddle-fart around until the two Jaluit TBD's are reduced to their basic elements. :mad:
Click to expand...
Yup, the US navy has a real attitude problem to salvaging aircraft - and these guys even want to salvage them FOR the Navy museum.....
 
This link covers the Navy's position, such as it is:
http://www.history.navy.mil/branches/org12-7f.htm#scope
Doug Champlin's comments about his attempts to salvage a TBD off Florida are on the web somewhere, I can't find 'em right now. I wish the Navy would adopt a more common-sense approach to salvaging aircraft, similar to that of the Air Force. They even refused to give up possession of a SB2C which had been repeatedly used as a fire-fighting hulk, then dumped in Lake Washington. That's mentioned in the link above.
 
God i hope someone gets one of these birds back into flying condition, wouldn't it be great to have a bird like this come back extinction
 
Very cool stuff! Restore one of those babies, maybe leave the other one in her watery grave! I always thought the TBD was classic beauty.

GR
 
Late catching up on this thread. Thanks Jagdfleiger, but it works just fine the way it is. The Navy lost quite a few off the USS Wolverine up in the Great Lakes and they are just sitting there too. :frown: Don't you just love beauracrats?
 
Wow, if there were TBDs in the Great Lakes, they would probably still have the paint on them! But they could be deeeep...

GR.
 
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