Investigation of a
U.S. Navy PBM-3

MAHS volunteers located the crash site in May of 1996 using a fishfinder and published LORAN numbers.   A year later, a side-scan sonar image taken by Marine Sonic Technologies, Ltd., of White Marsh, Virginia, showed the wreckage in some detail.

As seen below, the nose of the aircraft appears at the top of the image, the open cockpit and flight deck area lie below that along with the surviving wing structure, and the fuselage extends back toward the tail.   The object in the upper right is believed to be part of the empennage or tail assembly.

Dives were conducted on the wreck in October 2000 to compare the surviving structure to design plans in order to confirm that the aircraft is indeed a PBM-3 and to determine whether it's configuration is that of a PBM-3C or PBM-3S (the PBM-3C was rigged for general combat, the PBM-3S for ASW).

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