A ambitious high-tech quest No traces have yet been found in Lake Superior of a plane that crashed in 1968, killing three people conducting scientific research.
An autonomous vessel was launched Monday into a portion of the vast lake where the Beechcraft Queen Air is believed to have crashed off the Keweenaw Peninsula. The Armada 8 is sending sonar readings and other data to experts tracking it on boats.
“We have not definitively determined at this point that the targets are aircraft,” Travis White, a research engineer at Michigan Technological University’s Great Lakes Research Center, said Thursday from a boat.
The team can drop a small cylindrical device overboard to capture images and collect more data from potential hotspots on the lake floor.
“What we’ve seen so far are large stones and unusual rock formations,” said Wayne Lusardi, state maritime archaeologist.
The plane carrying pilot Robert Carew, co-pilot Gordon Jones and doctoral student Velayudh Krishna Menon took off from Madison, Wisconsin, on October 23, 1968, headed for Lake Superior. They were collecting information on temperature and water radiation for the National Center for Atmospheric Research.
Seat cushions and bits of stray metal have washed ashore for decades. But the plane wreckage and the men’s remains have never been found. That part of the lake is 400 feet deep.
“We are following the search with great excitement. Good luck!” Menon’s family said in a message on a YouTube site that posts daily video updates.
The mission on the lake ends this week. The wreck would not be retrieved if found, but confirmation would at least solve the mystery.
“There’s a lot of post-processing data to be done in the next few weeks,” Lusardi said. “At that point, there may be potential for targets that look really, really interesting, and then we can bring in a team from Michigan Tech later in the month if the weather permits.”
The search was organized by the Smart Ships Coalition, a partnership of more than 60 universities, government agencies, companies and international organizations interested in autonomous maritime technologies.
