What good is an airplane without an engine, doors or seats?
Under 35 feet of water, plenty.
On the east side of the dam at Thurmond Lake, 20 miles northwest of Augusta, a stripped-down six-seater rests on the bottom, about 75 yards from shore.
People still talk of a crash, but it was no accident. The plane was sunk on purpose and cemented in place 20 years ago next month, a man-made reef attracting fish and scuba divers ever since.
Orange flags striped in white bob with the wind as divers disappear below the waves. It's a common sight from the deck of the Thurmond Lake Visitor Center, where divers gear up before making the short swim out to the plane. The flags caution boaters to keep their distance.
"Any given weekend, you're going to find a group of divers there," said Andy Davis, a diver and master trainer from Evans. "When local conditions are good, I have run into divers from Atlanta, Savannah, Macon, Columbia, Greenwood and Orangeburg."
Most head for the plane, but there's also a sunken ski boat nearby and several large boulders to navigate to.
The lake reaches depths of 180 feet, but the plane, at just 35 feet when the lake is at full pool, makes for an easy dive, said Summer Young, a diver who works at Neptune Dive & Ski in Augusta.
"It's great to acclimate new divers. It's often their first open-water dive," she said.
Experienced divers get their kicks there, too.
"The guys who have been diving there over there for years have put things there for people to find, like plastic flamingos and stuff," she said. "They even put a toy skeleton down there."
Many of those experienced divers will return to the lake next month to celebrate the anniversary of the plane's sinking. It just might not be the experience they remember.
"This spring and summer have been the worst for diving than we've had in a long time," Mr. Davis said. "The lake levels shot up over a matter of months."
The water has risen 7.5 feet since last July. Rapid rainfall tends to stir up muck, so a dive lately has felt like a swim through mud puddles. A few weeks ago, visibility was just six to eight feet, Mr. Davis said.
"Last year it was 10 feet, sometimes 20 feet," he said.
The plane also offers a spot for technical training and underwater navigation.
"You can't always afford to go to Florida or the Caribbean, but you can keep your skills current," Mr. Davis said.
It was for all those reasons that the plane was submerged. Getting it there, though, took some work.
The morning of Aug. 26, 1989, was cloudy and hot.
Johnnie Poole, the president of the now-defunct Augusta Dive Club, had worked for a year to get permission from the Army Corps of Engineers, which manages the lake.
Mr. Poole was, at the time, the dive chief for Columbia County Rescue and was an aviation technician at Bush Field airport.
He heard that one of his customers, Zipper Robbins, was in the process of stripping several Mitsubishi MU-2B turboprop aircraft for parts.
Mr. Robbins donated a few of the remaining fuselages to fire departments, which used them for training.
Mr. Poole asked for one, too.
"We talked about the perfect dive training spot at the lake, the dam access on the South Carolina side, and hatched the idea for another artificial reef," he said.
The hull was stripped of insulation, hydraulic and fuel lines, and anything else that could snag or puncture scuba gear.
Mr. Poole engineered a lift to support the plane as it sank.
The dive club had to rig a tow that would pull the plane the 1 1/2 miles across the lake from the closest double-lane boat ramp.
Mr. Poole welded 55-gallon steel drums into logs he positioned under the wings. He rigged valves from borrowed shop air hose and scuba air tanks.
That way, he said, "I could start, stop or even reverse the sinking."
A flotilla with officials from the state Department of Natural Resources and the Corps of Engineers followed the boat for the long, slow tow.
A photographer from The Augusta Chronicle shot photos from a helicopter.
The dive club warned TV and radio stations, yet Mr. Poole said some were tricked by frantic phone calls reporting a plane crashing into the lake.
It sank in less than three minutes. Divers dumped 400 pounds of bagged cement to anchor the plane to the rocks.
"Sometimes people tell me they think the plane has moved, but I've been back and it hasn't," he said. "It'll be there for another 100 years.
"We did this for keeps."
Reach Kelly Jasper at (706) 823-3552 or kelly.jasper@augustachronicle.com.
GO DIVE
A reunion dive to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the plane's sinking will be held Aug. 22. Call (706) 868-5274 for more information.
ONLINE EXTRA
Last July, scuba diver Bill Carman and two friends filmed a video underwater in Thurmond Lake. Although the water is murky, Mr. Carman, a school teacher in Dublin, Ga., captured the eccentric humor of divers who had visited the wreck and left behind treasures for other divers to find, like this toy skeleton. Watch the video at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EIYhdtU4EZ0
HOW DID THEY DO THAT?
On Aug. 26, 1989, members of the Augusta Dive Team "launched" a turboprop plane into Thurmond Lake. They hoped the plane, stripped and donated by a local aircraft broker, would serve as an artificial reef to attract marine life and divers.
TOW THE PLANE: Mr. Poole's lift supported the plane as it sank. Previous experience trying to sink a plane taught him a thing or two -- namely, not to float a plane on a water bed mattress filled with air and attached to barrels. The club rigged a tow to pull the plane 1 1/2 miles across the lake.
DUMP THE PLANE: Johnnie Poole, the club's president, welded 55-gallon steel drums onto logs that he positioned under the wings of the MU-2B Mitsubishi. He rigged valves from borrowed shop air hose and scuba air tanks to stop or reverse the sinking if need be, and state officials followed to ensure safety.
ARTIFICIAL REEFS OFF CAROLINA COAST
Off South Carolina's coast, artificial reef development is managed through the state Department of Natural Resources.
The reefs are constructed from materials ranging from various forms of scrap to specifically designed structures. Steel-hulled vessels are the most commonly employed scrap material in reef construction, with more than 100 having been sunk off the state since 1969. Other materials recycled include steel and concrete bridges, concrete culvert pipe, steel dry dock work platforms, ex-military aircraft and intercontinental ballistic missiles.
Given the unpredictable availability of suitable scrap materials from year to year, managers have begun to rely more heavily on designed reef habitat structures.
Source: www.dnr.sc.gov
The Augusta Chronicle ©2010 Morris Communications, LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Kelly - It's obvious that you are still suffering from the loss of your father and still hold anger at the dive company - 28 years later. What must have been a tragic event for you and your family is understandable cause of grief. But holding all that in for 28 years is not healthy. You should seek professional counseling.
God did not give us wings, yet we jump from planes and off bridges. God did not give us gills yet we dare to go where we were no intended to be. This weekend we are racing across the water and 200 mph and the video of a boat flipping is on the internet. Anyone who does these events understands the risk. You're father wanted to dive - no one told him he had to. Accept his choice and you will start to understand why we do the things we do in this life.
My prayers go to you and hope you finally can find peace.
Mr. Poole - If you need more flamingos for your dive wreck, please visit us.
Diving is a relatively safe sport as particpants must complete training and certification before they can engage in the sport. The focus of training is orientation to the gear required, safe diving practices, emergency management and development of skills necessary to engage in this sport. This training separates it from other sports. It is safer than fishing, swimming, golf and tennis. The National Safety Council weighes in in this report:
http://www.dtmag.com/Stories/Dive%20Skills/10-99-feature.htm
Kelly, please seek professional counseling. Grieving is fine, but this amount of hostility after 28 years is a little much. I seriously doubt that the one publishing the photo even knew about your Father.
Also Kelly, I'm sure the Neptune Dive and Ski you deride in your message is not owned by the same folks as 28 years ago. I can say without any hesitation that Ron and his family who own and operate Neptune Dive and Ski are some of the most classy, customer oriented, safety conscious folks I've met in Augusta. Ron and all of the other instructors are top-notch and I'd trust any of them with my life. I have no idea what happened to your father or what 'lack of an appropriate air tank' means. But I am absolutely certain the current NDS had nothing to do with it.
Ms. Evans:
I am sorry for your loss, BUT it is both negligent and wrong to post invalid information.
I have been diving for 30 years with Neptune Dive & Ski, and I know both the previous and current owners well. I can state with absolute certainty that NDS has never lost a diver on any trip, much less an initial open water dive which are always instructor supervised.
SCUBA diving, with proper training and proper equipment, is safer than driving a car. There are also multiple levels of advanced diving (e.g. cave, wreck, search and rescue, mixed gas) which require specialized training and equipment and should never be attempted by a beginning diver.
The instructors and staff at NDS are highly professional and passionate about what they do. Their divers are extended family. No student certifies until they are properly trained and the only way to fail is to quit because Neptune will keep teaching them as long as they show up. The store only rents equipment to certified divers from qualifying certification programs that are recognized worldwide.
I don't know the circumstances of your father's death, but I can confidently say it did not involve Neptune Dive & Ski.
I wish you well.