Jet that crashed in 1955 found in Pacific near LA

[Teamcasa]

(AP) – 10 hours ago
LOS ANGELES — An amateur historian says the wreckage of an Air Force jet believed lost at sea 54 years ago with two crewmen aboard has been found off the coast of Southern California.
G. Pat Macha, who heads a group of volunteer searchers, said Monday that the plane was found earlier this month during a sonar survey for another aircraft near Los Angeles.
Macha says divers matched a serial number on the wreckage to a Lockheed-Martin T-33A jet trainer.
He believes the wreckage was a missing Air Force jet that departed Los Angeles International Airport on Oct. 15, 1955.
Macha turned over the information to the Los Angeles County sheriff's office and the U.S. Military's Joint Prisoner of War/Missing In Action Command, which would be responsible for identifying the crew members.

 

[merxlin]

Link to CNN article: Fighter jet missing 5 decades found off California coast - CNN.com

 

[Teamcasa]

Thanks Mike and Kudos to Ray Arntz of the SunDiver.
From that article:

From Texas, Fabian sent the map info to Ray Arntz, owner and operator of a southern California dive company and a fellow member of UB88.org.

Arntz and some his employees set out to search three wrecks using side-scan sonar. Two turned out to be boats. They weren't sure about the third.

"I just grabbed a tank and went down to look at it," Arntz said.

He saw a fairly compact debris field with a lot of aluminum, which indicated that it was an airplane. Then he saw landing gear.

" 'It's an airplane,' I said to myself. 'How do we go from here?' "

A manufacturer's number on a feed mechanism for a 50-caliber machine gun started him and the others toward piecing together what they had found. The engine appeared to be a jet, so he knew it wasn't the Mustang, which had a propeller motor.

By that point, Arntz said, "We know it's not what we're looking for."

The manufacturer's number indicated that it was a T-33 Shooting Star. Researching government documents, the searchers found that a T-33 had disappeared in the area.

"It just matched what we had," Arntz said. "The T-33 was it."

That was about a month ago. The searchers kept quiet about their find until family members could be notified. Macha said he spoke with a relative of one of the two crew members a few days ago.

The Air Force accident report identifies the pilots as Lt. Richard Martin Theiler and Lt. Paul Dale Smith. Theiler had 1,244 hours of flying experience, and Smith had 430.

 

[merxlin]

Missing Plane

 

[ItsBruce]

If you've got the lat/lon, I've got the boat.

 

[ScubaTexan]

Is this the same missing Air Force jet that they did a program on for the Science Channel a couple of years before?

 

[merxlin]

No. This is a new find.

 

[pluckydks]

If you've got the lat/lon, I've got the boat.

and i want to tag along