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! :)
Our initial thoughts were incorrect about the aircraft type. After a few days we consulted some online resources and figured out it was a Hell Diver SB2C-1C dive Bomber...
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.
