Background
It is getting to be that time of year where I start writing the posts for dives that I did during the year but never had time to document. I recently saw the articles about the team that found the Skyraider off the coast of Florida (nice job!) and I reminded me about the dive Tyler and I did earlier this year on the Skyraider that is in shallow water here locally.
Tyler wasn’t the first to find the wreck, but the location was secret and he spent quite a while hunting for it before he finally tracked it down. I first dove the wreck back in May 2021 and documented it then.
After the dive on the SBD Dauntless to build a photogrammetry model back in July, we were looking for a second dive and didn’t want to do anything deep. My project list had included going back to the Skyraider to see if we could maybe get better photos if the sand had been blown out. We decided to head over to see what we would find…
Skyraider Revisited
My plan was to build a photogrammetry model of this wreck. When we got there, the wreck was still mostly covered in sand. It also had some moving seaweed which would not make the job any easier. I shot a ton of photos and tried to get some really close and some farther away hoping that the Metashape software would be able to piece together a model.
The water, as usual, was green as ever which is obvious in the photos and the model.
After I worked on the SBD project, I decided to give the model of the Skyraider a shot. I used the “incremental photo” approach to building it just to see what would happen. To my surprise, pretty much every photo ended up aligning — even with the seaweed (btw, it is nowhere near as bad as on the Yukon which is still a pending project).
Below are some screen captures of the model (again, you can clearly see the green color and I didn’t bother trying to correct it) and a link to the on-line model.
The most obvious feature are the gun barrels in the wings and the portion of the engine that is out in front of the fuselage and off to the port side a little bit.
Below is a link to the online model for anybody that wants to explore it:
Summary
The Skyraider is an interesting wreck; however, given that it is in shallow water and has been pretty beat up and is largely buried by sand, I have no intentions of returning again.
