Plane still draws divers 20 years later

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.