A few weeks back I went out with Bill, Stan, Jason, Dave and customers to dive the Hell Diver Wreck for the 2nd time (3rd dive). Stan took some video of the wreck which I still need to process. I converted a lot of these to black and white and I think they look appropriate for a WWII wreck... Anyway the dive was awesome as usual! I really love this wreck. It's the best wreck on Maui! We also dove the 3 anchors that same day and it was a nice dive as well... I'll post those photos later.
Here's a shot from Richard who dove with BBscuba last week. The turtle was dozing on the reef and he gently got close to the turtle for this photo op! This was taken at Red Hill dive site...
Brad had heard about a plane off the Maui Coast from a local fisherman. The fisherman shared his frustration with these "wings" the Ulua were using to hide from his nets. Brad heard "wings" and he knew something was up. Brad got the line-ups and a few days later we were out on a "play" day looking for the wreck. We all dropped down and Jose, Stan and Brad were to my left as we covered the ground looking for the wreck. I saw some structure to my right and alerted Jose the wreck was there and told him to alert the others. I continued on to the wreck and took photos before they arrived. They looked for clues to the plane type and I took more photos. A large Moray Eel is the new pilot so venture with care into the cockpit! :)
We're pretty sure it's an SBD-5 Dauntless Dougless dive bomber. Here is a link to compare the photos:
There are several different crashes on the island of Maui over the last years of the war due to training of the 4th Marine Division. Maui hosted the 4th Marine Division starting in Jan 1944 and had up to 15,000 troops based on the island. You can see some accident reports at this link. Since several different agencies are newspapers are covering this story, I will see what they find.
