Warbirder
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- May 1, 2007
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My hobby is searching for WW II aircraft crash sites in FL.
One crash that has interested me for 15 years is that of a Mustang off Honeymoon Island. If you're new to Florida, our state was one of the most active in military airfields during the war. 227 training bases scattered across Florida.
All along both coasts were civilian and military crash boats always on standby to recover airmen lost in the ocean or the Gulf. There were more than 1,000 major training accidents in FL.
A few years back I talked with the captain of a military crash boat who had searched for a downed Mustang between the north end of Honeymoon and the mainland. He had no trouble recovering the pilot's body and most of the wreckage he said, but they never found the engine due to the soft sandy bottom.
He promised to meet with me and show me the chart with the exact location. He was then in his 80s, and before we could could meet he had a stroke and spent the last year of his life comatose in a nursing home.
I found a Mustang in a swamp north of Tampa and the largest piece we recovered was what remained of the Merlin engine; 5 cylinders and the crankshaft. This was a high speed vertical entry into about 3' of water. The Merlin was a V-12 weighing about 1,500 pounds. Our piece weighed about 300 pounds.
My thinking is that the Honeymoon engine is still laying there under 5 to 10 feet of sand. I don't know about the scrap value, but there are many museums interested in WW II relics, especially Mustangs. Think magnetometer.
One crash that has interested me for 15 years is that of a Mustang off Honeymoon Island. If you're new to Florida, our state was one of the most active in military airfields during the war. 227 training bases scattered across Florida.
All along both coasts were civilian and military crash boats always on standby to recover airmen lost in the ocean or the Gulf. There were more than 1,000 major training accidents in FL.
A few years back I talked with the captain of a military crash boat who had searched for a downed Mustang between the north end of Honeymoon and the mainland. He had no trouble recovering the pilot's body and most of the wreckage he said, but they never found the engine due to the soft sandy bottom.
He promised to meet with me and show me the chart with the exact location. He was then in his 80s, and before we could could meet he had a stroke and spent the last year of his life comatose in a nursing home.
I found a Mustang in a swamp north of Tampa and the largest piece we recovered was what remained of the Merlin engine; 5 cylinders and the crankshaft. This was a high speed vertical entry into about 3' of water. The Merlin was a V-12 weighing about 1,500 pounds. Our piece weighed about 300 pounds.
My thinking is that the Honeymoon engine is still laying there under 5 to 10 feet of sand. I don't know about the scrap value, but there are many museums interested in WW II relics, especially Mustangs. Think magnetometer.
