Diver Uncovers 70-Year-Old Underwater Secret In The Pacific |
A few years back, Brandi was scuba diving about five miles offshore of the island of Roi-Namur in the Marshall Islands, when she discovered something incredible lying beneath the waves. Something that had been lying in wait for over 70 years… |
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Despite the rust, coral, and barnacles amassing on their metal hulls, the planes were in amazingly pristine condition. Amazingly, many of the planes had remained completely intact, and only a few had suffered broken tails, wings, or shattered cockpits. But Brandi could find no evidence of human remains anywhere. |
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As it turned out, this “graveyard” was anything but. These weren’t planes that had crashed during the war at all but rather the aircraft that remained after the war was over and dumped, unceremoniously into the ocean. It explained why almost all of the planes were still in very good condition but not why they were dumped… |
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After that, Brandi returned again and again. She wanted to learn more about why they had decided to dump all the planes into the ocean at the end of World War Two. “For me, diving on airplanes, especially World War Two airplanes is really unique,” she said of the experience. “Diving on shipwrecks seems normal, you expect ships to have sunk…but not planes.” |
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As she swam around the wreckage, she soon discovered that more than 150 different planes were spread out on the ocean floor, 130 feet from the surface. She began work on a series of incredible photographs of this eerie, underwater scene. It became one of her most intense and difficult projects… |
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| Seeing planes underwater is a strange sight indeed. Perhaps it’s the juxtaposition: a vehicle that is most commonly found in the sky now deep beneath the water. According to Brandi, “It feels weird to dive on them. But amazing and special too.” |
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| As she swam, she began to accumulate stunning images of planes surrounded by coral and fish. Some of them lie at odd angles, jutting vertically out of the sand or sitting on the ocean floor as if they were about to take off. Brandi’s pictures were the first opportunity the world had to see the missing planes in over seven decades… |
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