Josh Gates Finds an American Plane Wreck Underwater | Expedition Unknown | Discovery

Hey Josh, we have one final target we need to interrogate, and what’s special about this target? We think it’s a plane.
You do?
Yeah, but your hope is that it’s American.
Why?
We don’t know much about it, so we’re going to go down and fully document it, do photogrammetry on it, and collect as much information on that site as we can.

So, for folks who don’t know, photogrammetry—basically you’re going to take a huge amount of photos, high resolution, that you can stitch together?
Yeah, so hopefully if we can get more data, we can put the pieces together and figure out which aircraft this is.

Okay, yeah, let’s dive in.
Let’s do it!

Alright, come on…
[Music]
We make our way to the coordinates and deploy the shotline.
If we can positively identify the plane as American, it would be historic—the first U.S. wreck ever found in Truk Lagoon.

Okay, passing 30 ft.
Hey Josh, you see that dark patch down there?
I see it. That’s a plane.
What’s left of it?
The state of destruction here is extensive. This is night and day from that zero we saw. This plane is really, really broken up.
Yeah, it doesn’t even look like a plane, does it?
There are 42 missing American planes in the lagoon. The question is, could this twisted pile of metal be one of them?

What am I looking at here, Josh?
This is the canopy of the aircraft. What’s left of it.
Right, this is the transparent cover over the cockpit.
Yeah, see these thick areas on the side here? This would have been the rail of the canopy, and this thing is thrown about 20 feet from the body of the wreck. Must have been such a violent impact.

The debris field is littered with metal, most of it pancaked to the ocean floor, except for one telltale object.
See the prop jaw?
Yeah, it’s about all that’s sticking up.
This thing was spinning when it hit the water.
Most definitely.

Anything diagnostic here on the propeller?
Oh, right here, Josh. See these three bolt patterns between the two propellers?
Yeah, I can see them.
Yeah, this is really diagnostic of an American Hamilton Standard propeller.
The Hamilton Standard propeller had three bolts securing each blade. It is a designed fingerprint that allows us to ID our suspect.

So wait, does that mean what I think?
Oh yeah, no question about it.
We’ve got an American plane here, Jay.
This is the first American plane found in Truk.
Honestly, mark this.