The XP5Y was a seaplane meant to be the ultimate air carrier.
[Josh] Why do you wanna find this plane?
It's one of a kind. I mean, literally.
Two prototypes, one scrapped, one in the ocean.
We are seeing recently declassified footage
-of the crash. -Is that the coast?
[man] It looks like it is.
[Josh] So we may have a geographical marker here.
Entirely possible.
[man] Oh, there's something there.
-Could be a big engine sitting down here. -Could be.
Wanna go diving?
Okay, let's rock and roll.
[Josh on radio] It feels like the shape of a weight.
This is an aircraft, Bran.
Don't look down. Don't look down.
You're in. ROV's in.
Okay. Let's see what it sees.
Just passing 300 ft.
That looks like it could be a plane.
Is that a star?
That's a navy star right there.
Well, in case you're wondering why I'm floating in the Pacific ocean
just off the coast of San Diego,
I'm not just here for a swim.
I'm here because this is the last known location
of a top secret experimental, record breaking airplane,
a massive aircraft known as the XP5Y.
Commissioned at the end of World War Two,
the conveyer XP5Y was bigger than today's 737
and could carry more than a hundred servicemen,
or 24 tons of cargo,
all while landing on the water.
This flying boat wasn't just huge though.
She was fast,
smashing transcontinental records
and paving the way for the age of the jumbo jet.
Only two prototypes and 11 service models were built.
After the war, all were scrapped, save one.
Nearly 70 years ago, during the daring test flight
in the skies above, the last surviving XP5Y
suddenly went into a free fall.
Thanks to courage and quick thinking,
every member of its crew successfully parachuted
out of the dying aircraft.
They landed here in the Pacific where they were rescued
by a US Coast Guard helicopter.
Speaking of which...
A little help?
[men speaking indistinctly on radio]
Hey, man, thanks for the lift.
[man speaking indistinctly on radio]
I'm in. I'm in!
So, while all the men were rescued,
the XP5Y wasn't as lucky.
She disappeared beneath the waves
where she's been lost for nearly three-quarters of a century.
But that, may be about to change.
This plane is the only one of her kind.
Nothing short of a priceless aviation relic.
How and why she crashed is a mystery,
but a new clue has been recently declassified,
giving explorers their best chance yet
to find this lost treasure.
The hunt for the secret seaplane is on.
Let's punch it.
[pilot] Confirm.
My name is Josh Gates.
Hello!
Explorer...
Here goes nothing.
...adventure...
[exclaiming]
Oh, this is a long way down.
...and a guy who ends up in a very strange situation.
I'm alive! For now.
With a degree in archeology and a passion for the unexplained,
I travel to the ends of the earth
investigating the greatest legends in history.
Ready to rock and roll.
This is Expedition Unknown.
My journey begins far from the waters of San Diego.
And of all places, Oregon, here at the Evergreen Aviation Museum.
If you love flying, this is paradise.
From honoring the birth of flight
to cutting edge stealth fighters and space rockets,
this collection of aircraft is awe inspiring.
But there's one plane here that could be a big help
in learning about the vanished seaplane.
And I do mean, big.
Wow.
Say hello to the Hughes H-4 Hercules,
better known as the Spruce Goose.
A one of a kind American icon
built by the eccentric genius Howard Hughes
during the second World War.
Here to tell me how the Spruce Goose
is going to help me find the XP5Y
is the museum's long time aviation expert Bud Varty.
Welcome aboard.
-Man, thrilled to be aboard. -Good to see ya.
Is it okay if I'm just speechless for a few minutes?
I'm an aviation geek, so I have seen a million pictures
of this plane.
It is so much bigger in person.
Josh, the wingspan on this aircraft is 320 ft.
A full football field well into each end zone.
And maybe the craziest thing about this plane,
-it's painted so that it looks metallic. -Right.
[Josh] But it is called the Spruce Goose for a reason.
[Bud] It is a wooden aircraft. It is the largest wooden plane ever built.
It is the largest seaplane ever built,
and it is the largest propeller driven plane ever built.
In short, it's large.
Huge.
Would you like to go up to the cockpit?
-That's possible? -We can do it.
-Oh, please. -Let's go.
I might cry. I might cry.
I will go over here. You have a seat
in Howard Hughes' pilot's chair.
-No. -Absolutely.
-Really? -Yes.
-Come on. -That's what we're here for.
Oh, my word.
[chuckles]
Howard Hughes sat right here?
This is where he sat and everything you see and touch is original.
-Unbelievable. -Yeah.
Okay. Why?
Why build a seaplane that is this big?
[Bud] First part of World War Two,
we were losing a lot of ships from German U-boats
as we tried to get supplies across to Europe.
We had to do something about it.
It was proposed that we build a fleet of giant flying boats.
[Josh] In 1945, the navy put out a request
for an enormous seaplane, able to soar over submarines
and avoid bombed out airstrips by landing on the water.
The race was on to build a prototype design
and the Spruce Goose was Hughes' contribution.
But adjusting for inflation, this $300 million Goose laid an egg.
The navy rejected his proposal because it was too big,
too slow and too expensive.
But it did fly.
-One time, 1947. -One time.
Although the war had ended by the time he'd finished building the Hercules,
on November 2nd, 1947, he took it into California's long beach harbor
where Hughes surprised the press in attendance.
[man on radio] It's 70. It's 75.
And comes the moment... and I believe we are airborne.
We are airborne, ladies and gentlemen.
[Josh] The Spruce Goose flew albeit just above the water
and for a mere 30 seconds before returning to its hangar
never to fly again.
So even though this behemoth made it off the water,
he never got that navy contract. So who did?
Convair, one of his competitors.
They built the XP5Y.
Right, this is the plane that I'm looking for.
-Exactly. -The lost seaplane.
Exactly.
The XP5Y was a seaplane meant to be the ultimate air carrier.
Now there are none of them left,
but we do have the next best thing for you here.
-You do? -We do.
[Josh] The next best thing is one of the XP's predecessors,
a smaller model that already had ten years of service
when the navy put out the call for a new super seaplane.
Josh, this is the Convair PBY Catalina, a workhorse from World War Two.
[Josh] And so, Convair gets this contract from the navy.
-They beat out Hughes... -Yes.
...and so what do they do? They modify this design?
They took this aircraft and supersized it.
-And that's the XP5Y? -You're right.
[Josh] The XP was a 64 ton colossus
with a 139 ft fuselage and a wingspan about
the size of the Statue of Liberty.
Powerful enough to take off from a dead stop in water
in 30 seconds, the twin turbo prop engines
were especially efficient at moving air,
saving enough fuel to make the XP capable of
carrying an entire unit of troops across the Atlantic.
When converting for use as a flying tanker,
it was the first aircraft to refuel four planes simultaneously in mid-air.
And that's not even close to all of the XP's accomplishments.
It set two world records. The first was endurance of a seaplane,
-of over eight hours on one tank of gas. -Wow.
The second was cross country, six hours, 403 miles an hour,
a record that still stands for a seaplane.
And that's about what it takes us
-to get across the country today. -Yes.
So the XP is clearly a great plane.
What happened to it?
Well, we were in the jet age. The plane was huge.
The navy just decided to move on.
-Okay. -They scrapped them all.
Literally scrapped them?
Except for one, which crashed off the coast of San Diego in July of 1953.
[Josh] On July 15th, the prototype seaplane
helmed by navy test pilot Don Germeraad
was flying off the coast of San Diego.
And then, quite suddenly, it plummeted out of the sky.
And why did that plane crash?
Josh, we just don't know.
The navy said nothing, Convair was null on the subject,
the crew was sworn to secrecy.
-Okay. -But we've done some digging
and we have uncovered a recently declassified
accident discussion memo from Convair...
-Okay. -...where they actually interviewed the members
-of the crew. -Wow.
And Josh, here's the report. It's the only first hand account we have of the crash.
[Josh] According to the crew's testimony in the document,
nine crew men plus pilot Don Germeraad
were asked to test the limits of the plane,
pushing it to 340 mph,
when the aircraft suddenly shuddered
and the instruments went haywire.
Germeraad was unable to control the pitch of his aircraft.
Which began a series of zooming climbs
and abrupt dives.
Thinking quickly, he diverted the seaplane over the water
to avoid crashing into San Diego.
And made the decision to abandon ship.
He instructed the other nine men
to jump out of the doomed prototype at 10,000 ft of altitude
where they parachuted into the ocean.
As for Germeraad, he made sure everyone else was out
before bailing himself at 2,000 ft,
which was 500 ft below the limit for his chute.
Fortunately, it opened in time.
The seaplane crashed into the water
while all ten of its crew were picked up by Coast Guard search and rescue
having miraculously survived a historic plane wreck.
And the plane?
The plane sank about six miles west of Point Loma.
-About? -About.
Point Loma sits near the entrance to San Diego harbor
and without GPS, the estimate was that the plane sank
about six miles west of the point.
But nothing was ever found there.
And since the plane was traveling in excess of 300 mph
and flew erratically for 20 minutes before crashing,
the true location of the target is a mystery.
But there is something else that just came to light
that might help us find it.
Okay.
What do you got?
Josh, welcome to the Evergreen theater.
Wow. Should I have brought popcorn?
We watching a movie today? What are we doing?
[Bud] Well, sort of. Actually, we have something pretty spectacular.
We are seeing recently declassified footage of the crash
of the XP5Y in 1953.
-The crash? -The crash.
The one and only.
Where was this footage?
It was in an archive in San Diego
just gathering dust and it just recently came to light.
And it shows the actual incident?
Absolutely.
Who filmed it?
There's a navy chase plane up there and they filmed the whole thing.
Can we see it?
We can. Roll the footage.
Okay, Josh, the man on the right is the pilot,
Don Germeraad.
-[Josh] So this is our guy, the main test pilot. -Right.
Getting prepared for the flight, I'm sure.
Josh, the entire malfunctioning crash took about 24 minutes,
but only one minute of the film survives.
[Josh] All right. So our plane is where?
-[Bud] It's about upper center. -There it is.
-That's the XP right there. -Yes, that's it.
[Josh] And it looks like it's climbing?
[Bud] Well, it looks like it's going up and down.
At this point, he had lost control of his elevators,
he was oscillating up and down
and soon you will see, he'll take a dive down
and we think that is the final...
-[Josh] Right, it's starting to turn. -...dive straight down.
[Josh] It comes straight down.
-[Bud] And then you'll see the crash. -Whoa!
[Bud] Splosh right there.
[Josh] Look at that huge spray of water.
[Bud] That was a huge aircraft.
And there we think is the pilot.
He was probably the last one out.
[Josh] Wow. I just can't-- Look at the disturbance in the ocean though.
[Bud] Yes.
-[Josh] Big crash. -Big crash.
Now, Josh, I mean, they'll show the film again.
I want you to focus on something different this time.
Okay.
[Bud] Josh, look past the plane. What do you see?
[Josh] Is that the coast?
[Bud] It looks like it is.
[Josh] So we may have a geographical marker here?
[Bud] Entirely possible.
And if it could be cleaned up, we might be able to pin point
-exactly where that plane is. -You may have a marker.
Can I borrow your film?
You got it.
Hey, thanks, man.
-This is incredible. -A pleasure.
[Josh] This film is a game changer,
giving us our first clues to locate the vanished aircraft.
To pin point where the XP crashed,
a forensic video investigator can compare the coastline
off San Diego today to the footage from 1953.
The only problem?
Getting aerial photographs for the comparison.
I head from Oregon back down to San Diego
where luckily, I recently made some new friends
who might be able to lend a hand.
-[pilot 1] ...complete. -[pilot 2] Roger that.
Okay, let's rock and roll.
So somewhere underneath us in the bottom of that ocean
is the XP5Y.
Now we just gotta find it.
Okay, we're coming out past Point Loma here.
We can see the lighthouse.
That's where these guys were rescued after the accident.
Coast Guard picked them up, brought 'em in there to the lighthouse station.
I'm in a Coast Guard Jayhawk helicopter
searching for the XP5Y, a historic prototype seaplane that crashed
somewhere off the coast of San Diego in 1953
and has never been found.
We're about to photograph the coastline
so a forensic video analyst can compare it
to recently discovered footage of the crash
and hopefully pin point the location of this missing aviation legend.
One of the real challenges here, of course,
is figuring out exactly where that plane was.
These guys were flying at 115% of the capacity of this aircraft.
So over 340 mph, that means that
every ten seconds they were in the air,
they're covering a mile.
So this crash went on for more than 20 minutes
as this plane oscillated up and down.
They could've covered a huge amount of distance in that time.
[pilot 1] We're currently 6.4 miles west of the coast.
So the distance is correct.
Copy that.
Now if I wanna get a better shot,
can I get out of this seat?
Absolutely. You can connect your gunner's belt here
to one of these deck rings.
-Good to go. -Okay, gunner's belt attached.
I'm coming out of the harness.
Don't look down. Don't look down.
With a nylon belt connecting me to the chopper,
I angled myself toward the edge of the open door
to take hundreds of photos of the coast.
Free view of Point Loma there.
Let's see what we can get here.
I think we look a little too close to shore here.
Let's try to move off a little bit further on the next pass.
[pilot 1] Roger.
[Josh] We take run after run at various altitudes
and distances from the coast
to try to get a close match for the crash footage.
Oh, it's real good. Right in there.
Okay, good pass. Let's try to get a little further out
and maybe a little higher up.
[pilot 1] Roger.
All right, guys, we got a ton a footage here.
I think we got it. We're ready to head back when you are.
[pilot 1] All right, we'll head back. Thanks.
The chopper returns to Terra Firma,
landing at the nearby US Coast Guard air station.
While my team takes the photos to a forensic investigator
to begin analyzing the data, I've found another researcher who claims
he might already know where the lost seaplane is hiding.
And here in San Diego, there's only one place to meet
if you wanna talk about navy airplanes.
Kansas City Barbecue, the legendary watering hole from Top Gun.
That's right.
I'm having a Maverick moment.
Joining me in this target rich environment
is an award winning wreck hunter
whose team has discovered over 15 sunken planes and ships.
Brett Eldridge.
Brett.
Josh.
-Nice to meet you, man. -Nice to meet you as well.
I hear you're a guy who knows a lot about wrecks.
I do know a lot about wrecks.
-So I've come to the right man then. -I think you have.
I have a funny feeling we have a joint interest in a particular wreck.
-The seaplane, the XP5Y. -Yeah, XP5Y.
Why do you wanna find this plane?
Because it's one of a kind.
-I mean, literally. -Yeah.
Two prototypes, one scrapped, one in the ocean.
Yeah, there is only one of these planes.
One. Anywhere in the world.
Okay.
So I understand you might have a lead
-as to where it is? -Let me show you.
So what we're looking at here is some bathymetry data.
[Josh] This is the topography of the bottom of the ocean off the coast here?
-Right off the coast of California, yes. -Okay.
And right here, you can see a little unique bump.
[Josh] Something's there.
[Brett] Something is there.
I've worked on a lot of imagery data.
But there's something about this one
that sticks out to me.
-Okay. -It could be aviation related.
Big enough to be the whole plane?
No, not big enough to be the whole plane.
But you know, when airplanes hit the ocean, it's like hitting concrete.
-Right. -And things break off of them.
So this very well could be a piece of debris from the XP5Y.
Maybe an engine.
-It's about the right size. -Okay.
And are there any charted wrecks at that location?
There's nothing that we know about in that location.
Nobody's ever looked at this.
What's the depth on it?
-This is about 60 ft deep. -Okay, so it's diveable.
It's diveable.
I think we need to go investigate that.
Do you wanna come dive in with me?
Are you asking me to be your wingman?
-You could be my wingman anytime. -There it is.
There it is. All right.
You got a boat?
I got a boat and I got some dive gear.
Is it a fast boat because I do feel the need.
The need for speed.
Yeah, okay. I'm gonna do this all day if we don't get out of here.
Should we go buzz the tower?
-Let's go do it. -All right.
Take me to sea or lose me forever.
Brett, come on.
Fresh out of Top Gun references,
we cruise almost an hour out onto the Pacific to Brett's target...
where we gear up...
and drop in.
[Josh speaking]
[Brett speaking]
[Josh speaking]
The bad news is that there's a strong current here
and these waters are a known great white shark breeding area,
which I guess I'd feel slightly better about
if I could see them.
This is quickly turning into a dangerous dive.
If we lose this guideline, we could be carried by the current
far away from our boat.
Not to mention, we're descending on a blind collision course
with an object that could be anything.
[Josh speaking]
[Brett speaking]
[Josh speaking]
[Brett speaking]
[Josh speaking]
[Brett speaking]
[Josh speaking]
[Brett speaking]
[Josh speaking]
[Brett speaking]
[Josh speaking]
[Brett speaking]
[Josh speaking]
In the waters off of San Diego
salvage expert Brett Eldridge and I
are looking for the wreckage of a top secret aviation prototype that crashed nearby.
The only one of its kind that's still in existence.
We found a plane, but is it 'the' plane?
[Josh speaking]
[Brett speaking]
[Josh speaking]
[Brett speaking]
[Josh] Whoo!
Okay, that was a challenge.
-Epic. -Epic.
But maybe some of the worst visibility I've ever had in a dive.
The only way I knew there was a wreck down there
is I smashed into it with my face.
Yeah, exactly.
-But... -It's definitely a wreck.
-You can tell the rust,
-you can tell the debris. -Yeah.
It's a plane.
Definitely single engine, yeah?
Yeah, for sure.
Having said that, I didn't see an engine or a propeller.
No, neither did I.
But you could tell the shape of the cockpit.
-Yeah. -And you were pointing out this kind of,
the way-- It seems like it kinda tapered in the back.
It goes back to like a little point, right?
Yeah. That might be enough diagnostics
to figure out what it is.
But yeah, we weren't gonna be reading serial numbers off that.
-No, no, for sure not. -No.
-Nobody knows that plane is there? -No.
-Nobody. -Us and the guy who put it in the drain.
Yeah, exactly.
So there's a mystery down there.
It's not the XP5Y.
Not the XP5Y. Not big enough.
But another story.
So should we get out of this water before a great white shows up?
Yeah, let's get out.
-[laughs] You're first. -Let's do it. Come on.
Using our hazy footage,
Brett is going to do his best to identify the plane.
We'll reconnect later, but while he begins his research,
I moved the investigation back to shore
to the Point Loma lighthouse.
After the XP5Y's pilot Don Germeraad
and his crew leapt from the plummeting plane,
this is where all nine men were brought by Coast Guard search and rescue.
Today, I'm at the lighthouse with a very special visitor,
Paul Germeraad, the pilot's son.
How old were you when this happened?
I was probably six years old at the time.
Were you aware on some level that your dad had a dangerous job?
Yeah, I was aware that he had a dangerous job.
-Yeah. -I could always tell easeless
by looking at my mom.
There'd be some days where she was just off.
Wouldn't say anything but you could just tell
she was off and when my father came home that night,
he got a very long hug.
-[laughs] -Wow.
[Josh] When did you realize not just your father had
a dangerous job, but kinda what he had done
in this particular accident?
-He made sure every other guy got out and checked the plane. -Yes.
And when you look at the footage of the crash,
it's kind of remarkable that anybody survived,
let alone everybody.
My father was, I'd say, a really modest person.
If he was standing here talking to you today,
I don't think he'd be telling you he was a hero
or anything like that. That was just part of the day's work.
I did bring with me a report which came from
-one of the guys that was on the flight, Bud Davies. -Okay, yeah.
[Josh] Um, so he was the flight engineer on the flight
and this is the statement that he made
after the accident. You wanna read this?
-Sure. -Regarding your dad.
Uh, so Bud wrote, "I opened my chute.
I was, by far, the highest chute
and I could count seven others.
One was missing.
It had to be the captain
because that's the kind of guy he is.
I spent 18 years in experimental flight test,
but I've never flown with anyone who demonstrated
more cool proficiency, bravery and consideration for his crew
than Donald Germeraad."
-Chokes me up to read it. -Yeah.
Does that square off with your dad would you say?
Yeah.
-That was him? -I think he would've said the same
for the other men that he was flying with.
-Right. -Yeah.
I feel very honored to be able to tell part of your dad's story.
-Well, I appreciate it. -Just a little part of it, yeah.
And I hope very much that this plane gets found.
-Yeah, I got my fingers crossed for what we find. -Yeah.
What a pleasure.
-Thank you so much. -Yeah, great to meet you.
Yeah.
[Josh] The bravery and the humanity of Don Germeraad
is an inspiration to keep searching for his missing plane.
And there's momentum to be had.
As I leave the lighthouse, I get word that we have
the results of the forensic analysis
of the coastline images that I shot earlier.
I head to the nearby San Diego Air and Space museum
built to honor the region's contributions to aviation.
Inside, I find investigator Mike Primeau,
who has more than a decade of experience
in forensic video and image analysis.
Michael.
-Josh. -Hey, man.
-Nice to see you again. -Good to see you again. How have you been?
-Doing well. How about you? -Good. I'm great.
So based on what we sent you, based on whatever you were
able to do with the original film,
were you able to help narrow down the search?
I was doubtful when we started.
But through image enhancement and methodology,
yes, we were able to uncover class characteristics
that normally to the human eye wouldn't have been detectable.
Meaning we may be able to figure out where this plane crashed?
Geographically, yes, absolutely.
All right, that's huge.
So take me through it. What did you see in the footage
and what did you find?
The very first step is we analyze the unknown.
-Right. -Which is the film.
As we're watching this video, it's shaky, there's noise
involved from the degradation of the film.
And the camera is trying to follow this aircraft.
-Right. -As it pans to this scene,
we see pretty clearly some sort of ridgeline.
Yes.
That was my first impression too.
-There's something behind this plane. -Yes. Absolutely.
[Josh] So there's our unknown mountain ridgeline.
-[Michael] Yes. -Okay.
And in order to see these peaks more clearly,
we equalize the contrast.
[Josh] Right. And we can see them quite clearly here now.
[Michael] Yes.
Based on the images that you sent us that you had captured,
directly behind Point Loma, this appears to be
the Otay mountain ridgeline.
The Otay mountain ridgeline? Okay.
And so we think that this could be
-the top of Otay mountain? -That's correct.
[Josh] Okay, that's huge. We may not know exactly
where we are in relation to that peak,
but we certainly know we're not
-fifty miles up the coast. -Absolutely.
So the question is, can we get any more specific
as to where this plane might've crashed?
I think that we can.
Josh, let's go ahead and look at the footage.
Yeah, we're back to the crash footage here. Where am I looking?
So as you're watching the video,
as the camera pans around the plane,
there is a perpendicular line that was detected
amongst what looks to be like a shoreline.
This perpendicular line is strange.
Oh, this is what you're talking about here.
-This dark line here? -Correct.
[Josh] By carefully enhancing the footage
Michael has found a unique feature,
a dark line that resembles water
jutting inland from the coast.
And within that water what looks like a sliver of land.
So is there a place that matches this?
There is. Just north of Point Loma in the ridgeline,
a place known as Mission Bay.
Mission Bay is a manmade 2,000 acre saltwater inland
developed in the late 1940s as a recreational waterpark
north of Point Loma.
You can very easily make a case that
that's exactly what you're seeing here,
that that's the entrance to the harbor and the river
and that this, over on the left is Mission Bay itself.
The artificial islands and waterways of Mission Bay
are clearly a close match to the historic footage.
So if that is Mission Bay,
then where's our plane?
Somewhere between Mission Bay and Point Loma.
Which is a distance of how far?
Approximately six miles.
Okay. That gives us a real bounding box
-on either end. -Yeah.
[Josh] The original search area focused on the waters off Point Loma.
But this analysis of the crash footage
draws us six miles north to an area between
four and eight miles from shore.
This is a big deal because it gives us
an actual targeted search area
which is something that we've never had
in this investigation for three-quarters of a century.
Right.
[Josh] And so somewhere in that six miles
by four to eight miles,
-there should be a plane. -There should be a plane.
That's huge.
-Thanks, man. -Thanks for the opportunity.
Incredible.
We may be closer than ever to finding the XP5Y,
but searching this much ocean is still a daunting task.
And I'm going to need some help.
I link back up with under water investigator
Brett Eldridge who leads me down a local dock
to meet renowned marine surveyors
Dave Carlisle and Chris Catalano
of Orca Maritime.
So for this case we have some really cool new forensic data.
So I'm hoping you guys have some awesome technology on board
that can help locate this plane.
We do, Josh. We have some pretty powerful sonars.
We have a multi beam sonar, we have a side scan sonar,
we have the vessel sonar
as well as a ROV capable to do a thousand feet
with high definition cameras.
[Josh] Okay.
-So that plane's down there. -We're gonna find it.
-Let's go do it. -I like his attitude.
Let's go to sea. Come on.
The boat speeds out to sea toward the search zone
established by our photo analysis.
And before long, we're parked right in the middle
and deploy Orca Maritime's impressive sonar
to scour the sea floor.
-So our sonar unit is up and running. -Yep.
We're in the right spot here based on the forensic data.
That's six miles off shore behind the Otay mountains there.
So what do we do?
So now we're gonna make a track,
then set up a grid for Dave to follow.
I'm gonna create a long lane
and then I'm gonna duplicate it.
-Okay. -Then Dave will follow those lanes.
-So we just zigzag back and forth? -Yep.
-Okay. -Mowing the lawn.
-Exactly. -That's right.
The more times you pass, the more data we get.
Perfect.
Okay. So how long is this gonna take?
It's gonna be a while.
He didn't even give an amount of time.
It's a bad sign.
-Should we take a nap? -Yeah, okay.
We'll be on the deck.
All right. I'll call you when I need ya.
Here we go.
Covering our entire search zone takes long tedious hours.
Time which Brett and I use to maximum productivity.
[sea lions barking]
What can I say? We're becoming one
with San Diego's other sea mammals.
[sea lions barking]
Okay, guys, we got data.
Oh, I think we got something.
Okay, here we go.
Here we go.
Okay, so, what do we got?
Well, we processed all the data and I think we got some things.
-You do? -Yeah.
All right, what do we got?
-So this is the first one. -Ooh.
Oh, there's something there.
[Chris] Let's take a look.
[Josh] I mean, that is a clear sandy bottom
with some piece of wreckage on it.
I'm with a team conducting a sonar sweep
of a newly established search zone near Mission Bay, California,
looking for the secret seaplane known as the XP5Y,
the only one in existence.
Now the crew of Orca Maritime has found a promising hit
on the ocean floor.
That's definitely interesting.
-Yes, that's debris, right? -That's debris.
[Josh] There could be a big engine sitting down here.
I think we have to check that out.
-So that one's a for sure. -Let's mark that.
What else you got?
The next target, I kind of put together a 3D model
to kind of see where things stick up off the bottom.
And you kind of see it stands out, yeah.
And you can see there's something
that's sticking out off the bottom, about five feet.
-Five feet off the bottom? -Yeah.
So these spikes that we see coming up,
that's wreckage rising off the bottom?
That's... that's what I'm hoping, yeah.
[Josh] And this is over a larger area here,
so this may be a bigger piece of wreckage?
-Yeah. -What do you think? Is that a plane?
It could be a plane. I'm feeling good about that.
Well, certainly, size wise, this is the biggest thing we've seen.
This was the deepest, at 660.
Six hundred and sixty feet?
-Yeah. -Okay.
[Josh] So we've got really interesting targets here.
Absolutely.
-You wanna go diving? -Uh...
-It's a little deep for me. -[laughs]
Me, too.
At nearly 700 ft deep, these sonar hits
are out of reach of even technical divers,
but Dave has a solution
as I learn when we approach the first target.
So we're about how far off this target?
We're about a hundred feet off the target.
Approaching it quickly.
[Josh] We hover over the sonar anomaly,
then bring out the star of our show.
This is our vLBV 300.
Let's talk about it. What's on board here?
All right, so the main point of interest is gonna be
our forward looking sonar and that's gonna paint
a pretty picture of what we hope to be a plane when we get down there.
So this has its own independent sonar system on board?
[Chris] That's correct. We have two functioning cameras,
two work lights. We have six vector thrusters.
We have a grabber arm if we need to recover something.
Should we see if that's what happens?
-[chuckles] Sure, let's do it. -Let's do it, come on.
-All right, going in. -Going in.
You're in. ROV's in.
Okay, let's see what it sees.
Here we go.
Our robot is away.
Next stop, the bottom of the ocean.
Okay. So the ROV's got side of the line there
and so now it's just descend, descend.
Yep. Now it's the waiting game, yeah.
Now our thrusters are up to about 70%.
So I don't wanna go too fast. I don't wanna lose a line.
So just passing 300 ft.
Yeah, we're about halfway there.
[Josh] Okay.
-We're right about 400 ft now. -Yep.
[Chris] Coming up on 400 here.
[Josh] It looks cold and dark.
Definitely looks dark.
It's a little spooky down here.
There's something about watching ROV footage live
that's actually really exciting because
it feels like a horror film, like anything could come out of that darkness.
[Chris] Five hundred feet.
[Brett] There's bottom right there.
-[Josh] Yep. Oh, there it is. -There it is.
-Boom. -[Brett] We got crabs.
-Some crabs. -They're crabs. Lots of 'em.
Wow, look at that.
If the ROV feed is a horror film,
then I guess these are the monsters.
Hoping to find the monster of a plane wreck next,
we continue scanning the bottom.
So far a lot of little divots in the sand
but nothing associated with any debris.
No, not yet. I didn't see anything that would indicate plane debris yet.
[Josh] Something right here for sure.
[Brett] Yeah, you could definitely see something there.
Bright, big bright return. Something sticking up off the bottom.
So that's almost dead ahead of us.
[all exclaiming]
Something there.
-There's definitely something there. -Is that wreckage?
This is clearly not an entire aircraft,
but could this be a piece of something?
Could this be a part of a wing that's ripped off?
[Brett] Yeah, there's nothing specific
that screams airplane, but it's definitely manmade
-and it's definitely a debris field. -But it's manmade.
And it feels like a frame.
It's also hard to know if that netting or that cloth is part of this thing.
I mean, some of it's under it.
-Yeah. -Could that be...
Part of the debris? Or did it get there after?
You know, the other thing that we often see with airplanes, Josh,
is cables and wires running everywhere.
Which we don't see.
-We don't see any of it here. -That's right.
I mean, that could be...
That could be a hundred things.
And even going all the way down there
hundreds of feet, putting a camera an inch away from it.
-You still can't tell. -You still can't tell.
[Josh] That's how hard this is.
The debris in both, size and composition
is inconsistent with aviation wreckage.
We catalog the find before moving on
to the second sonar target
which Brett believes could be large fragments of an aircraft.
We arrive at the next target as conditions begin to get choppy.
Once in position over the coordinates,
we send the ROV down into the deep.
So we think this target's in nearly 700 ft of water, right?
[Chris] Six-eighty.
[Josh] Here we go. We're coming down on it now.
640 ft we're at?
Man, you can hardly even see that guideline anymore.
Fighting some tough conditions today, Josh.
[Josh] Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Oh, that current is just moving down there, isn't it?
She lost power?
Yeah, we lost power.
Did the outside go out?
-[woman] Yeah, it's off. -Did we blow a fuse? What happened?
Did everything shut down? Did that shut down?
Yeah. In the...
-Flip it off. -All right.
Is it a fuse?
Yeah.
With the ROV more than 600 ft below us,
everything suddenly goes dark.
That ROV's just adrift right now?
Yep, it's drifting with the current right now.
Okay.
I mean, we have no communication whatsoever with that thing down there.
It's the right side, Dave?
-Um, check the breaker on the panel. -Sure.
This is not good because the ROV's now sitting down on this wreck
without power, and so he'd get caught up in the wreckage, so.
Let's see if we can get a new fuse in here.
The crew is cool under pressure
and scrambles to replace the fuse
before the ROV gets snagged.
[Chris] Well, the panel's good, Dave.
[Josh] Okay, we're coming back up.
[Brett] Yeah.
[Chris] Okay, we're rebooting.
[Brett] It's nerve wracking.
-Totally nerve wracking. -Yeah.
All right, here we go.
Hold on to your butts.
That's a Jurassic Park reference.
Doesn't matter.
Here we go.
-We got lights. -We're back up.
[Chris] Let's see if can get a sonar image, maybe.
We're at, like, 645 ft, so we're above it.
And we're not snagged on it to the tether?
[Chris] I don't believe so.
Great news. Okay. Great.
With the power once again flowing
and the ROV fortunately unscathed,
we resume our path toward our sonar target.
[Chris] Some fish.
[Brett] Fish. That's always a sign of a wreck.
All right, sonar, do your thing.
What do you see down there?
Oh.
-Something up there. -[Chris] Yep.
-[Josh] Something big, right in front of us there. -[Brett] Look at that.
[Josh] There is something huge right there.
I got a really good feeling.
Oh, look at that.
That looks like it could be a plane.
[Brett] That could be a plane.
-A big plane. -Just look at the wings.
-The tail. -You can see the props.
You can see the prop right there.
Look at the size of that wing.
[Brett] Big.
That is definitely an airplane.
[Josh] This thing looks really intact.
[Brett] It's totally intact.
What in the world is it doing down there?
[Josh] So those growths are, we think in the cockpit area?
[Brett] I think we're coming up on the prop.
-Oh, there it is. Whoa, right there. -Is that a star?
That's a navy star.
That's a navy star right there.
It's a navy plane.
-Guaranteed. -Holy [bleep].
Look at that!
[Josh] While hunting for the lost XP5Y,
I actually got the chance to fly one.
Sort of.
So this moves? This is a simulator?
It is very dynamic, but it's not anything you can't handle.
-We'll see about that, but... -All right.
We are ready to go.
All right.
[man] All right. Everything out of the pockets.
Why do things need to be out of my pockets?
[man] It's a dynamic ride.
People keep using that word, dynamic.
Okay. Oh, boy.
[Bud] You will start from the air.
Okay. Oh, okay.
Okay, and I'm flying.
Oh, she got some kick. She got some power.
-[Bud] It'll move. -Okay, hold on.
Let me just straighten this.
This thing really actually goes over, doesn't it?
[Bud] It really does.
We are upside down.
-[Bud] Yes, we are. -Okay.
I gotta just--
Whoa!
Oh, okay.
How am I doing, Bud?
Oh, here we go. Everything's fine.
But there's no sick bags in here, are there?
All right, Josh, this is where I get off.
[laughs] Oh, Bud, that's good.
Bud?
The guy jumped.
[Josh] That's a navy star.
[Brett] That's a navy star.
Dude, unbelievable!
In our search for the lost XP5Y prototype,
it appears we've made a major discovery.
A US navy plane almost 700 ft below the surface.
Do you know how rare this is
to see an airplane this deep underwater
completely intact?
[Chris] Oh, we got some ID numbers.
-[Brett] Oh, oh! -[Chris] Right here.
-It says one, two, zero-- -[Brett] Ending four-two?
One-two-zero-four-two.
Do we have numbers on the XP5Y?
I don't even know if there would be. It's experimental plane.
This is a navy plane. I mean, that's--
Well, a hundred, guaranteed.
They're big wings, but it doesn't look big enough.
The fuselage doesn't, right?
The XP5Y fuselage is huge.
-Huge. -This looks narrower.
Yeah, for sure.
But this isn't a small plane. This isn't like some little combat plane.
No, this is bigger than that.
But how is there a navy plane sitting down there
that's not our plane?
There's no record of a large navy plane
lost out here at these coordinates?
Nope, and nobody's ever seen this before.
The physical characteristics of this wreck suggests
that this can't be our plane,
which raises an important question of its own.
-What the hell is it? -Here's what I'm thinking.
Big engine, huge wings.
Probably carrier based single pilot.
If I had a hazard guess,
I would go with a Skyraider.
[Josh] The Douglas A-1 Skyraider went into service in 1945,
a carrier based torpedo bomber that served in every US conflict
between WWII and Vietnam.
It's possible this plane was once piloted in battle.
[Brett] We might be looking at a Skyraider.
Which there's no record of one of those out here.
This is a mystery.
This is a total mystery.
We're gonna figure out what this is, for sure.
-[Brett] We have to. -[Josh] Yeah.
[Josh] It's a historic discovery of the best kind,
one that may tell us a story we've never heard before.
We steam for port to put the remaining puzzle pieces
of our investigation together.
Our search for the XP5Y has led to not one,
but two previously uncatalogued wrecks
now rediscovered off the coast of San Diego.
After extensive research, Brett was able to identify
the make of the first plane we found in our near zero visibility dive.
The sloped fuselage was a telltale sign
of a Grumman F8F Bearcat.
The Bearcat was a carrier based fighter
that was only operational between 1944 and 1952,
making our find an aviation geek's version
of stumbling across a Mickey Mantle rookie card.
And as for the plane we filmed with our ROV,
the tail number confirms it
as a Douglas A-1 Skyraider.
Records indicate that in 1963,
this Skyraider was one of 50 transferred from the navy
here in San Diego to the US Air Force
First Special Operations Wing
based in Hurlburt Field, Florida.
There, it was used to train pilots
for the escalating Vietnam War.
But how this plane returned to California
to lie in 700 ft of water is anyone's guess.
Meanwhile, the XP5Y remains at large,
a testament to our ability to build big
and accomplish the seemingly impossible.
Since the birth of flight,
aviation innovation has advanced
one aircraft at a time and testing those planes
has required heroes like Don Germeraad and his crew.
The plane they leapt from is still out there
and with an ever narrowing search zone,
I have no doubt will soon be found
to take its place in the great Pantheon
of extraordinary aircraft.