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With a model of the B-29 in the foreground, divers Gregg Mikolasek, left, and Melody Gritz tell reporters Friday outside Las Vegas City Hall how they found the plane that sank in Lake Mead on July 21, 1948. Photo by Gary Thompson. As seen through a hatch that the five crew members used to escape, the B-29's cockpit appears preserved in freshwater. PHOTO COURTESY IN DEPTH INTERNATIONAL INC. Click above for enlarged image. Graphic by Mike Johnson.

Saturday, August 10, 2002
Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal

Divers reveal how plane found

Wreckage discovered of B-29 that sank in Lake Mead in 1948

Deep-water divers revealed Friday how they found and photographed the wreckage of an unarmed B-29 bomber that sank in Lake Mead, solving a mystery that had baffled adventurers and search teams for 54 years.

Gregg Mikolasek, a Henderson dive instructor and survey consultant, said he was alone when he discovered the wrecked plane about a year ago while trolling a sonar device behind his 17-foot-boat.

"I just about jumped out of my boat," he said, describing his excitement when the image of the B-29 Flying Fortress appeared on the instrument's display screen with its wings and fuselage intact but missing three of its four engines.

The bomber, which had been modified for an atmospheric research mission, looked like a grayish-brown cross hugging the floor of the lake's Overton Arm, about 300 feet below the surface. That's where it has rested undisturbed in freshwater since the crash on July 21, 1948.

The plane's pilot, Capt. Robert Madison, scientist John Simeroth and three others escaped through cockpit hatches before the 99-foot-long plane submerged 12 minutes after it clipped the lake's mirror-smooth surface at 250 mph. The impact ripped three engines off their mounts, and the fourth caught fire as the plane skipped through the air and then plummeted into the lake.

Two life rafts carrying the five, including 1st Lt. Paul Hesler, Staff Sgt. David Burns and Sgt. Frank Rico -- who suffered a broken arm and was briefly trapped in the plane -- were spotted by a commercial airline pilot. The TWA pilot instructed local airport authorities to conduct an aerial search after a C-47 pilot in the area noticed dye marker that the crew had put in the water. The five were rescued about five hours later by a boater.

In an interview that Mikolasek's team videotaped earlier this year, Simeroth described what happened as Madison, a World War II combat pilot, steered the plane above Overton then leveled it out so Simeroth's instruments could collect low-altitude measurements for a solar study before returning to an airfield in Central California.

"The pilot said, `Just look at that lake. There's not a ripple on it anywhere. That thing is just a mirror,' " Simeroth recalled Madison as saying.

"He kept going down, and I thought that was as close as we were going to get ... I got out of my seat and looked. He said he wasn't going to get that close to it ... and we hit the water," Simeroth said.

After locating the plane with sidescan sonar -- a device that uses sound waves to image objects on the bottom of lakes and oceans -- Mikolasek teamed with expert technical diver Melody Gritz and about a half dozen others to develop a plan to reach the wreckage. They made their first descent on Sept. 16, 2001.

"It looked man-made, almost like a cinder block ... It looked like a hole surrounded by something bright," Mikolasek said.

But as his eyes adjusted to the darkness, he could make out parts of the massive plane.

"Once my eyes got focused, I realized we had come down right on the cockpit of the bomber," he said.

"The first thing I saw and touched was the pilot-side escape hatch from which all the crew members had escaped from this sinking plane 54 years ago. The feeling was just incredible."

Gritz remembers looking through the cockpit and seeing Mikolasek. "All I could see was smiles and bubbles."

Before Mikolasek had located the wreckage with sidescan sonar, Gritz and her father, former Army Green Beret officer, military diver and pilot Bo Gritz, of Sandy Valley, had made a goal to find the wreckage as a project for their "daddy-daughter dates," she said.

"He also helped out by doing triangulations in fly-overs with his aircraft," she said.

Melody Gritz said divers sometimes had to spend hours decompressing after spending a few minutes on the bottom. They used special gear and multiple tanks with high-performance regulators. Backup equipment was lowered down with them in case of an emergency.

"If you looked at us with our gear on. we looked like someone from outer space," she said during a news briefing outside Las Vegas City Hall.

Conditions at the depth of the wreckage are not recommended for recreational or even some experienced divers.

"It's very deep. It's very dark. It's very cold down there," she said.

On one dive about six months ago, the team used custom-made lights designed by team member Alan Bruns to photograph and videotape the wreckage. The battery powered light racks were vital to documenting the aircraft and its tail, No. 45-21847.

Mikolasek said the team is cooperating with the National Park Service, which will consider the submerged wreckage for inclusion in the National Registry of Historic Places.

A Park Service spokeswoman said the agency will send a team of archaeological divers from the agency's Submerged Resource Center to assess and document the site.

The precise location of the wreckage is being kept secret to protect it and prevent recreational divers from getting injured trying to reach it.

"We believe very strongly the plane should be preserved in place as is," Mikolasek said. "We do not want to see anybody hurt. We do not want to see it stripped."