The Navy is on a mission to recover one of its worst warplanes from the ocean floor

Those who know military aircraft don’t have many kind things to say about the Douglas TBD Devastator. The WWII-era carrier-based torpedo bomber was “not effective,” according to analyst Norman Polmer; and known as a “suicide coffin,” according to historian Barrett Tillman.

Only 129 were built, between 1937 and 1939. And in the Devastator’s most famous combat outing, The Battle of Midway in 1942, 41 of the bombers proved unable to score a single successful torpedo hit and only four would return safely to their carriers. Nevertheless, the bomber “ranks among the most significant aircraft in U.S. naval aviation history,” according to Navy officials. They note that it was the service’s first all-metal plane to feature the low-wing semi-monococque shell structure; the first carrier-based plane to have hydraulic folding wings; and, despite its underwhelming effects on target, it played an important role in key WWII battles.

The Devastator’s combat losses and limited production run has also made it one of the Navy’s most desirable pieces of history. In a rarity for it, the Navy has greenlighted a project to haul one of the sunken aircraft from its resting place in Jaluit Atoll in the Marshall Islands, according to a January announcement.

“Devastator Rising” will be a collaboration between Naval History and Heritage Command, the Air/Sea Heritage Foundation, and Texas A&M University’s Center for Maritime Archaeology and Conservation to recover a plane known as Bureau Number 1515. It would be the only Devastator ever recovered and preserved, and would be a flagship exhibit at the future National Museum of the United States Navy, to be located in Washington, D.C.

According to Peter Fix, an associate research scientist in the Anthropology Department at Texas A&M, the memorandum of agreement to raise this particular plane to the surface follows years of collaborative monitoring and analysis work, including multiple trips to assess and evaluate various sunken aircraft. Eventually, the team zoomed in on two located aircraft just 400 feet apart on the ocean floor in the Marshall Islands.

A U.S. Navy Douglas TBD-1 Devastator (BuNo 0279, “6-T-3”) of Torpedo Squadron 6 taking off from the aircraft carrier USS Enterprise, 19 May 1942. During the Battle of Midway, 6-T-3 participated in an attack on the Japanese aircraft carrier Kaga on 4 June 1942, with crew Ens. Edward Heck and Doyle L. Richey, ARM3c. It was one of only four VT-6 planes that returned to the Enterprise. (National Archives and Records Administration)

“Both these aircraft ditched in the lagoon at Jaluit when they realized they were not going to be able to get back to their carrier or make the rendezvous point,” Fix told Sandboxx News in an interview. The crew members survived the ditching, in February 1942, and while they were captured by Japanese sources and served time as prisoners of war, they all made it back to their families when the conflict ended.

Of the two planes, 1515, while deeper underwater, has been better preserved and appears easier to recover, Fix said.

“It’s been 20 years of monitoring and assessing,” he said. “It’s not an easy place to get to. You don’t have a lot of bottom time. It is very remote, so you can only do so much at a time. So we would go and answer questions, ask more questions, answer as much as we could.”

Recovery of the Devastator will require obtaining permissions from the Republic of the Marshall Islands to undertake the endeavor and fundraising to cover the considerable cost. With a set timeframe of 10 years to carry out the work, the goal is to raise the plane to the surface and then transfer it to a conservation lab at Texas A&M for preservation prior to the display in the museum.

“The Navy is the owner of the aircraft, because a country never gives up the flag of its vessel, and these are still considered by the United States flag vessels, or state craft of the United States,” Fix said. “So we wouldn’t go forward without a plan that included them heavily, and they are great partners to work with.”

Ownership and permissions to raise sunken naval aircraft have been a point of controversy in the past. In 1999, a dispute between the Navy and collector Doug Champlin over the recovery of a Devastator off the coast of Miami made headlines when the Navy opposed Champlin’s plans to bring it to the surface. A district court judge initially ruled that Champlin, who paid $75,000 for rights to the location, owned the aircraft. But in 2000, the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals reversed the decision, saying the Navy owned the plane instead. Ultimately, the work to recover the Devastator was never undertaken.

Related: Inside the recovery of MIA Americans from a secret jungle base

A U.S. Navy Douglas TBD-1 Devastator (BuNo 0325, “6-T-4”) of Torpedo Squadron 6 (VT-6) from the aircraft carrier USS Enterprise (CV-6) making a practice drop with a Mark 13 torpedo on 20 October 1941. All three of the plane’s crewmen are visible in its cockpit. (Naval History and Heritage Command)

The difficulty of preserving a plane that’s spent decades underwater once it’s brought back to the surface may help explain why the Navy hasn’t undertaken the full recovery of a Devastator before, even as it’s fought to keep others from doing the work on their own.

“In a very remote part of the Pacific Ocean, we can’t just fly a plane onto the atoll, pick up and recover the plane … and then bring it back to Texas,” Fix told Sandboxx News. “We have to find an alternative route, and in that whole process, we have to protect the aircraft from degradation. Once it reaches the surface, we’re responsible for making sure that it’s going to be stable all the way back to Texas, where we can do a lot more work on it. That’s perhaps the biggest challenge.”

Notably, there will be no effort to restore 1515 to pristine conditions. Rather, officials said, the plane will be displayed “as-is,” with damage and weathering, albeit with measures taken to preserve it for long-term display.

While the Devastator was considered by many to be obsolete by the time it rolled off the production line in 1939 – too slow with its top speed of 180 knots to keep up with other fighters and weighed down by the heavy Mk-13 torpedo it carried – the story it tells is significant to the development of Navy aviation capability. Despite its drawbacks, the aircraft performed well at the Battle of Coral Sea, helping to sink a Japanese light carrier and taking relatively few losses.

And as the Air Sea Heritage Foundation points out, even amid a dismal performance at Midway, the Devastators contributed to the battle’s ultimate victory.

“Their relentless attacks kept the enemy’s ships on the defensive, taking evasive action, while delaying the launch of a counterstrike against the American fleet,” the organization said in a description of the Devastator’s legacy. “Additionally, much of the Japanese fighter cover had been drawn down to sea level and forced to expend most of its ammunition in dealing with the torpedo threat … [U.S. dive bombers] swept down almost unopposed and, in a stunning reversal of fortune, quickly reduced three out of four Japanese carriers to flaming wrecks.”

The recovery mission remains in the planning phases. A timeline for next steps has yet to be announced.

Feature Image: The Douglas TBD-1 Devastator, Bureau Number 1515, has remained submerged off Jaluit Atoll for more than 80 years. (Naval History and Heritage Command, Communication and Outreach Division)

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