A recent high-tech search effort in Lake Superior, Michigan, aimed at locating a plane that crashed in 1968 with three individuals aboard, unfortunately, has not yet yielded any signs of the wreckage. Utilizing an autonomous vessel called Armada 8, the search area near the Keweenaw Peninsula has been scoured with sonar readings and data collection by experts on accompanying boats.
As of Thursday, no definitive confirmation of aircraft targets has been made, according to Travis White, a research engineer at Michigan Technological University’s Great Lakes Research Center. To gather more data from potential hot spots in the lake bed, a small cylindrical device can be deployed by the team.
State maritime archaeologist Wayne Lusardi mentioned that discovered items so far have been large stones or unusual rock formations, rather than parts of the missing airplane. The Beechcraft Queen Air was carrying pilot Robert Carew, co-pilot Gordon Jones, and graduate student Velayudh Krishna Menon on a research mission for the National Center for Atmospheric Research. The aircraft disappeared after leaving Madison, Wisconsin, on October 23, 1968.
Despite seat cushions and metal pieces washing ashore over the years, the main wreckage and the bodies of the missing individuals have never been located in the 400-foot-deep region of the lake. Family members of Menon expressed their support for the ongoing search on a dedicated YouTube channel offering daily updates.
The search operations on Lake Superior are scheduled to conclude this week. If the wreckage is identified, it will not be retrieved, but confirmation of its location would provide closure to the decades-old mystery. Lusardi mentioned that further analysis of the collected data will take place in the coming weeks to potentially pinpoint interesting targets for a future expedition from Michigan Tech, dependent on weather conditions.
This search endeavor was coordinated by the Smart Ships Coalition, a collaboration of over 60 universities, government bodies, companies, and international entities with a shared interest in autonomous maritime technologies.