Philippine Journal
Part of the
Greatest Generation Aircraft family
of historic planes.
Day one of the search 18 February 2009
Day one of the Search for 44-29586 starts with the incessant alarm at 0400. Showers, Breakfast, equipment checks, load the van, and depart at 0530. We are now three and a half hours (aprox 100 miles north and west of the city of Cebu on Cebu Island, PI. Yesterday was an all day effort to get here and Lynn is exhausted, trying to maintain a schedule that most of us are having a hard time with. Today we are taking an hour and a half trip across rough roads to the ferry dock. The ferry departs at 0730 and will take us to the island of Negros, where we will transfer to a van for the trip to Cadiz city.
We actually get to the dock on time but the ferry is broken and so it begins. We lounge around in the tropical sun, hunt for a breeze and a bit of shade, stay close to the others and wait. At 0930 a second boat shows up and we load up with renewed enthusiasium and get pumped for the crossing. About an hour later our hopes are dashed as word filters down that this boat won’t be going. The Philippine coastguard wants to do an inspection on it (amazing in that it looks like it hasn’t been repaired or painted since the Spanish American war).
We disembark and head back to our spots to await the next development. At this point, I’m in the “roll with the punches” mode but Brian is pissed, He can’t figure out how they get anything done and everything they do seems like the first time they ever did it.
At about 1030 another boat arrives and unloads. Once again we load up enthusiasium restored and we watch in amazement as they squeeze 3 boatloads of cargo and trucks onto the boat. Our only concern is our van that contains all the equipment we have now carried halfway around the world. Finally after loading and unloading the last 3 trucks a half a dozen times, our van comes aboard. It is resting on the loading ramp (which is also the front of the boat) and we don’t think they can close it. We think they are going to go anyway and hope for smooth seas, but at last it does close, the engines smoke and belch into life and we are off. It’s about an hour and a half crossing across gentile seas and we all are enjoying the beautiful day and tropical breeze while Lynn gets a much needed rest.
We arrive at 1:30 load up and head for Cadiz city. Another two hour excursion over the roads that are worse than Houston, and we arrive in Cadiz, and it’s not hard to figure out we are not in Kansas anymore. This place is a bit rough looking; the power surges on and off and there is guys with M-16s on the roads. (I think these are the good guys, I believe the bad guys carry AKs. We have been warned not to take any pictures) None the less our starvation takes over our survival concerns and we dive into the Jollyburger for double Yums and cokes.
Renewed we head for the dock, where our dive boat awaits. A beautiful sight, single hull about 25’ long with bamboo outriggers on both sides and a bathroom firmly mounted on the fantail. She rolls in a 2’ sea as the crew struggles to get it close enough to get Lynn, us and all our equipment on board. All loaded they poll us out of the shallow water and crap! The engine won’t start dead battery. Some banging philippe ino shouting from the bilge and away we go. We steer for the coordinates I programmed on the handheld GPS and we head for the wreck site. It’s now after 4 PM and we just want to get a quick look at the site before we lose the daylight. We arrive. On the exact spot plotted by the navigator all those years ago. The emotions of the moment are overwhelming for Lynn and it floods over on all of us as we come to grips with what happened on this spot.
Forcing ourselves back to reality, we unpack the underwater camera and lower the fish into the sea. All the way down everybody is straining to see what we were positive would be an airplane resting on the bottom. What we actually saw when the cable quit feeding was nothing. Nothing at all. So we hauled it up and looked at the fish, looked at the monitor, looked at each other, looked at each other on the monitor, then lowered it again. Again nothing. Haul it back up and go through the same drill again. This time we tied the cable to the back of the fish so it looked straight down, and there it was. The bottom, not the plane. On the black and white screen it looked just like the lunar surface. Pocked with holes totally barren of life, flat, and a perfect moonscape. We trolled for a bit realizing that to find it now would be sheer luck but we had to start somewhere. We looked for about a half hour and darkness began to close in so we pulled up the fish and headed for the pier.
Everybody felt good, we were here, the plane was here, we were on the coordinates, and we would find it in the morning.
But for today, No plane
