'The holds of some of these ships are actually filled with Japanese airplanes and trucks,' said Colbourn. Many of the big Japanese ships - oil tankers and merchant vessels measuring hundreds of feet long - that were sunk in Truk Lagoon in 1944 have since become overgrown with coral and are now popular destinations for divers to visit. They found debris fields with remains of the three aircraft at depths from 100 feet to 215 feet (31 to 66 meters), according to the statement. Sonar scans identified potential airplane debris, which the scientists then investigated more closely by deploying divers and robots equipped with high-definition cameras. Underwater surveys, conducted by Project Recover from April 2018 through December 2019, covered close to 27 square miles (70 square kilometers) of the sea bottom in Truk Lagoon.

'We were able to line up this piece of the puzzle with this other piece of the puzzle, in order to say, 'OK, let's focus our search around this ship.' And that was actually where we ended up finding this airplane,' Colbourn said. (Image credit: United States Navy Museum of Naval Aviation) Navy Grumman Avengers torpedo bombers flying from the USS Intrepid in 1944. The historians quickly realized that pinpointing the location of that sunken ship could lead them to the wreckage of the lost bomber, Colbourn told Live Science. serviceman - an airplane gunner in Operation Hailstone - who mentioned in a memoir that he saw one of the Dauntless dive bombers struck just as he was firing at a Japanese transport ship, which also sank. One lucky piece of information came from a U.S.

Researchers suspected that the planes sank in Truk Lagoon based on interviews with Chuuk islanders, official reports and memoirs from survivors of the battle, said Colin Colbourn, lead historian with Project Recover. Launched from the American aircraft carriers USS Enterprise and USS Intrepid during Operation Hailstone, two Dauntless dive bombers and one Avenger torpedo bomber were among the missing U.S. military craft and personnel, combining data from official records, eyewitness accounts and underwater search technologies such as sonar, thermal cameras and diving robots, according to the project's website. Since 2012, Project Recover has conducted underwater searches for missing U.S. The mission to find the planes was led by scientists and volunteers with Project Recover, a partnership between researchers at the University of Delaware Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California San Diego and the BentProp Project, a private organization of divers, aviators and historians dedicated to finding WWII service members missing in action in the South Pacific.

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