B-17 Bomber in Calvi, Corsica

Earlier this summer, I saw an interesting opportunity developing. My boss wanted to do more scuba diving, and I felt that I could facilitate this finding dive locations in all of the places we go. I have thus been named the boat's unofficial dive master. 

It is pretty hard finding dive sites. The scuba diving sport is just not set up for people in our situation. Typically, you travel to a destination, rent the gear, have them guide you out to the locations they personally know about. No one ever shows up with their own tank and compressor, therefore there is no infrastructure for this type of operation. Dive operators don't want to give you information, they want to take you themselves. So I scour the internet looking for dive sites and GPS coordinates for them. We never fully know what to expect when we get down there.

Our first dive of the summer was a hard one to beat. On June 16th, we had anchored Galileo off of the town of Calvi, Corsica. It was a beautiful place with snow capped mountains, quaint town, and the old citadel posted on the point. 

 

It wasn't the first dive I found, but all of the sudden the words B-17 wreck came up on a search. It gave GPS coordinates and when I plotted them, I found we were within a half mile of the wreck site. Arwyn, Phil (my boss) and I suited up the next morning and Alec did the overhead assistance for us. The plane rested in about 90 feet. We could not see it from the surface and it was not marked. Initially we did not find it on the bottom, but turned to search offshore and found it within 4 minutes or so. You can hear me flipping out when I first saw it. It was extremely cold down there. I got an appropriate wetsuit after this one. I was so cold afterwords that I was violently shivering and couldn't think straight. Below is a 7 minute video. I cut it down from around 30 minutes so I hope it's not too long for you. 

I looked up the story of this plane the night after the dive, and I have never been touched so deeply by a history.  They were on a bombing run to attack the railroad yards in Genova, Italy when they were attacked by German ME 109 fighters. I read a transcript from an interview with the pilot who said that they were damaged and couldn't hold formation, which made the fighters focus on them. The were able to shoot down 3 (some sources say 4) fighters before American fighters arrived on scene  and got them out of the jam. The radio officer, left waist gunner, and tail gunner were shot by the fighters and died. Tragically, en route to Corsica, the tail gunner called on the intercom and managed the words "I'm dying." They had two engines out when arriving in Calvi when they discovered the runway to be too short to land. At that point the third engine failed leaving one running. The pilot said "I decided we'd ditch in front of the citadel. No one died in the crash.  Below is a picture of the crash site just after the plane sunk. The crew is being rowed in and you can still see the oil slick on the water.

 This is the crew posing for a picture in the Citadel just after the wreck. The pilot Frank Chaplick, a small town Minnesotan, was shot by a Japanese Zero in the leg during pearl harbor as he was running out of the barracks, was shot down in North Africa, and then again here in Calvi. After this time, the Army Air Corps sent him home. It was his 37th bombing run in Europe. He went on to be an air traffic controller at Boston Logan and never flew again.