Missing Hellcat/P-17 offshore Anclote

[Salmonboy97]

HELLCAT Clearwater

The remains of this airplane, claimed to be a World War II Hellcat, sit in 25 feet of water on a sand bottom about three miles off the northern tip of Anclote Key. We haven't located any historical information on how this plane crashed, but she has remained fairly intact.

According to historian, Dale Sanders, this is not a Hellcat but may be the remains of a P-17. Bring your camera for this one; the plane is especially nice to photograph or video.

Basic shipwreck information for this section of this site was taken from the book Florida Shipwrecks by Daniel Berg.

Question:
Does anyone know if this plane still exists? I have a set of GPS coordinates but a bottom finder didnt find it as well as two divers on a 5 minute sweep of the bottom.

If you have any other GPS or current knowledge about this wreck please let me know. I have a 23' boat to be able to survey any new coordinates provided.
Over the next few months I plan to do more extensive searches and research.

 

[GulfCoastdiver]

I would like to find and dive that also.

 

[Missdirected]

You may want to check with Aue_Mike he may be helpful then again maybe not. I'd also give DiveBandit a try. He did some side sonar stuff with the aquarium and may have some info on it.

 

[DiveBandit]

I've heard of this wreck. Unfortunatley, I've never been able to find it, and from what I understand, neither has anybody else. My guess is that being such a small light aircraft, it has probably been long sinec broken up and sunk into the sand.