Divers confirm location of wreck of WW II airplane in Newfoundland lake

In the cold, dark and deep waters of Gander Lake, N.L., a team of divers confirmed on Monday the underwater location of a Second World War airplane that crashed there in 1943. 

The plane, a B-24 Liberator bomber, was carrying four men when it crashed during takeoff on Sept. 4 of that year. All four men died. 

Jill Heinerth, an explorer in residence with the Royal Canadian Geographical Society, was part of the team of divers who confirmed the plane’s location.

“Gander Lake is very dark. The water is a red tea colour and it just absorbs all of the light, so it’s like a perpetual night dive,” Heinerth told As It Happens host Nil Köksal.

“At about 120 feet [36.5 metres] of depth, I saw the landing gear with … what appeared to be fully inflated tires. So the entire plane is upside down with, you know, wheels sticking up, basically,” she said. “And it’s kind of crumpled, but other than that, the things that we saw underwater are remarkably in incredible condition, well-preserved.”

In all, the team made six dives to the plane’s location, between 37 and 48 metres under the surface of the lake, in water with a temperature of 5 C.

Heinerth said she was “humbled by the experience” of seeing the plane.

“I mean, these are war graves. And we can’t, you know, forget the horrors of World War II,” she said.

Earlier recovery efforts abandoned

Heinerth said that the bomber experienced some sort of engine failure on takeoff.

“Something went wrong because the people that saw the crash said that the airplane sort of spun and barrel rolled three times before just crashing right into the lake,” she said. 

In the days following the crash, military divers found the wreckage and attempted to recover the bodies of J.M. Young, John G. MacKenzie, V.E. Bill and G. Ward. 

“There were early efforts to try and grapple the wreck and recover it. And in the process, some navy hard hat divers did recover one body, of Mackenzie, and they were hoping to recover the other three [men’s] remains,” said Heinerth.

A hard hat diver wears a helmet made of brass or copper, a diving suit and breathes in compressed air pumped through a hose from a boat on the surface. 

“But the wreckage slipped on this ledge, and it’s perched precariously at the point where it’s ready to sort of tumble into the depths of Gander Lake, which is extremely deep. And so they decided it was too dangerous to continue their efforts,” said Heinerth. 

For 79 years, the bomber remained undisturbed. 

Tony Merkle, one of the divers on the team, had been trying for more than nine years to find the plane’s exact location. Merkle is also part of the Shipwreck Preservation Society of Newfoundland & Labrador (SPSNL), one the organizations supporting the mission to confirm the plane.

Merkle found approximate geographical coordinates for the plane from an old report from the Royal Canadian Air Force and another member of the SPSNL, Kirk Regular, was able to do a sonar scan that showed the plane’s location. 

Heinerth said that Merkle is in contact with the descendants of the men who died, and says he will be reaching out to share images with them.

Challenges of the dive

Heinerth said that visibility at the depth of the plane is less than a metre, and even with bright lights, she and her dive partner had a hard time seeing each other.

“But we did manage to document some important spots on the wreckage that would help us to determine that this was indeed that B-24 Liberator,” she said.

They found a specific emblem on the stabilizer section of the tail, for example, as well as a .50-calibre machine gun, ammunition and instruments. 

Heinerth on Tuesday was at the home of a man in St. John’s who is restoring another B-24 bomber.

“He has literally piles of aircraft parts in his garage and in his yard. And I’m wandering through the bits and pieces, comparing them to my photographs and video to try and identify all the things that we saw,” she said.

There are plans to donate the images of the plane to the SPSNL as well as local museums, she said.

“We’re just really interested in helping to tell the story and provide people with the assets that they need to do that,” she said. 

Written by Andrea Bellemare. Interview with Jill Heinerth produced by Shannon Higgins.