Expedition Unknown S12 | E8

Intro

[NB: I want to set the record straight: Tyler Stalter was the person who came up with the whole idea for this episode and he also found and identified the Bearcat target that we dove during filming. The filming date got moved around and Tyler couldn’t participate due to work commitments. We filmed multiple scenes that mentioned him and they were supposed to give him credit, but they did not. I am disheartened and disappointed. It was a fun experience, but Tyler deserves the credit and did not receive it.]

We have kept this relatively quiet.

Back in fall of 2022, we were contacted by a producer on Expedition Unknown after they ran across our blog post on the Sea King that we originally thought might be Helo 66. They were researching a possible episode on Helo 66 and wanted to talk to us about it. We spent quite a bit of time with their team. They were working with an underwater maritime technology company that was building AUVs that could search really deep locations to potentially locate the actual Helo 66 wreck. For many reasons, that didn’t work out and they mentioned that they would like to work with us and asked if we knew of anything else locally that would be interesting and had yet to be found or identified.

Tyler, the unending fountain of local wreck history and information, mentioned the XP5Y Experimental Aircraft that had crashed off the coast of San Diego. The Expedition Unknown (hereafter simply EXU) team did some more research and decided that it would make for an interesting episode and we were off and running.

This is a story about what it was like to film the TV Show.

XP5Y

A bit of history on the XP5Y will help set the stage for why it is an interesting target to find. In 1943, two aircraft manufacturers joined to form Consolidated Volte Aircraft Corporation, later just “Convair.” It was the product of Volte Aircraft Corporation and Consolidated Aircraft which built the B-24 Liberator (18,000 built) and the very successful flying boat, the PBY Catalina.

WW II saw extensive use of flying boats for patrolling and bombing (hence the PBY designator) and at the end of the war, the Navy wanted a large version of the PBY Catalina and PB2Y Coronado. They issues a request for a larger version in 1945 and Convair answered with their proposal. The Navy purchased an experimental version and designated it the XP5Y-1. The ended up building only two of these aircraft for testing. It ended up resulting in the short production run of the R3Y Tradewind but there were a lot of bumps and bruises along the way.

It is really hard to express how big this airplane was but the wingspan was 145 feet which is essentially 1/2 a football field.

Given that there were only two of the original XP5Y experimental prototypes built, one has to ask: what happened to them?

One of them ended up being scrapped. The only other one in existence? Crashed off the coast of San Diego during testing — hence our interest in finding it. It is really the only one in existence. The crash of the prototype happened on 15 July 1953 while they were testing high speed flight. The airplane started to “porpoise” and they had to ditch it in the ocean. All 11 crew bailed out and abandoned the aircraft and survived the crash. They later attributed the problems to a failure of an elevator torque tube.

Below is the declassified accident report:

There was another airplane getting ready to do some tests when things started to go haywire and they actually re-routed that airplane and the whole accident is caught on film. The EXU team spent some extensive time working with that grainy film to see if we could help pinpoint the crash location. Below is the grainy original:

In any event, it is a very interesting wreck to try to locate given that it is the only one in existence.

Filming

The plan was to work with Orca Maritime to conduct some scans with an AUV and then send down an ROV on anything that might be a viable target. We were also going to dive with Josh Gates on a target that Tyler had. We originally had dates set for Feb 2023 to do the filming but Tyler and I had warned the EXU team that SoCal ocean conditions can be extremely unpredictable in February. As most local divers know, we did end up having a horrible winter season (summer wasn’t much better) and we had to cancel the shoot and move it to May.

The very unfortunate part of that change was that Tyler had to work and couldn’t participate in the filming even though the whole episode revolved around trying to locate the wreck of an airplane that he suggested.

I ended up spending four days in San Diego working with the EXU team, Orca Maritime, and of course, diving on the Marissa with Josh Gates. Below is a summary of each our filming days along with some fun photos and my thoughts on what it was like.

Day 1 | Scanning with Orca Maritime | Thu, May 18 2023

We all met up early in the morning at one of the docks on Coronado Island to board the R/V Bethnic Cat which is purpose built for conducting ocean scanning. I would definitely like to have that boat and all the equipment. 🙂

We filmed multiple sequences of Josh & I boarding the boat from the dock and then we got underway to see what we could find using some of the cool toys that Orca has on-board.

“The Conversion Ratio”

During some of the downtime while the crew on the Bethnic Cat were doing their job and we were waiting for results, I was talking with Josh and I asked him “what is the conversion ratio for filming?” He looked at me funny so I went on the further explain my question: how much “real time” does it take to get a minute of “TV time” on an episode. He looked at me deadpan and said “I don’t even want to think about that.” 🙂

A couple hours later he said to me “We usually schedule 6-7 days for filming an episode” to which I asked “how much time does an average episode run?” He basically said 42-45 minutes depending upon the episode, commercials, etc. Assuming a 10 hour workday (which, quite honestly after my experience on-site was actually probably low), that would be 65-ish hours for a 45 minute-ish show or about 1.45 hours per minute.

And that doesn’t include editing time, pre-production, etc. To which I said “TV ain’t cheap” and Josh quipped back “you should see the ratio for a full-blown action movie.” True.

Day 2 | Diving on the Marissa | Fri May 19, 2023

This was, by far, the most “interesting” dive that I have done in a long time — and not for the reasons you would think!

First of all, they had more equipment than a crew of technical divers — and that is saying a lot. Of course, most of that was cameras, sound equipment, etc.

We were planning to go dive a target that Tyler had and we weren’t sure what it was. Unfortunately, Tyler couldn’t be there due to work and I had also asked Lauren Martin to help out so she was on the boat.

Lauren took a few pictures of Josh and I discussing our plans and doing the “we’re going on an epic adventure” pose. 🙂

We got to the site and put the downline down. Since the target was only 60 feet deep, I asked Lauren to go take a took to make sure we were on the target before we all got suited up and cameras in the water, etc. Lauren jumped in and after a while I noticed her bubbles moving around quite a bit and pretty far away from the downline. Hmmmmm.

After 15-20 minutes Lauren came back up and said “the visibility is literally zero and I couldn’t find the target.”

We knew that something was there. We decided to reset the downline just in case (but Lora never misses) and then both Lauren and I would go down. We both splashed a short while later — and she was correct. It was the worst possible visibility I have ever seen (and I’ve been in some pretty gnarly situations with near-zero visibility).

We traced the downline to the end and didn’t see or feel anything. We looked around a bit and were getting ready to tie in a line to the downline when I decided to start tracing the line back since there was a fair amount of line laying on the bottom. As we were tracing the line back, we literally bumped into a metal object which turned out to be the fuselage of an airplane (although it was really hard to tell that at the time).

We went back up and gave Josh “the good, the bad, and the ugly” of the situation. After some discussion, we decided to dive it anyway and proceeded to dive the wreck and take some GoPro footage. Below is some footage I took on my GoPro which will give some sense of just how bad the visibility was. You can that at about 15 seconds into the video, the visibility really deteriorates. You can also see Josh next to me in a full face mask for parts of the scene. Note that this clip is sped up 8x.

On a different dive with somewhat (not a lot) better visibility, we have confirmed that it is another F8F Bearcat and I will write up a separate post on that wreck.

Day 3 | Scanning with Orca Maritime Pt 2 | Sat May 20, 2023

We had another day planned to do a deeper dive on some of the potential targets that the Orca Maritime team had discovered. We were putting their Remote Operated Vehicle (ROV) into the water to see what each of the targets was. We headed out of Coronado and the might of the US Navy was on display with plenty of warships lined up on the piers.

The water was an amazing blue color and I was just dying to get in to do some diving but it was too deep for anything I could dive. The standard procedure is that the Orca team would drop a very heavy weight with a white line on the target and then get in position and turn on their GPS system to keep the boat in place. They would then put the ROV in the water and follow the white reference line down, with the camera and the on-board sonar, until they arrived at the bottom. Once on the bottom, they would use the forward looking sonar to look for debris areas and then navigate to those and look with the cameras.

We spent a long day looking at targets with the ROV and didn’t get back until 6pm or so. We found some very interesting debris fields and one nearly intact and very interesting airplane (but it is beyond dividable depths). I might be able to write something up on that mystery at a later date.

Due to the late hour, the EXU team had arranged for pizza for everybody and we ate in the room they had requisitioned from the hotel for all of their equipment. It was fun to hang out with the film crew.

And I thought I traveled “heavy.” They definitely bring a ton of equipment on their shoots!

Day 4 | “Top Gun” Bar aka Kansas City Barbecue | Sun May 21, 2023

This was probably the funniest film day. Of course, we were looking for a Navy plane, so Josh had to film a scene at the world famous Kansas City Barbeque which was prominently featured in a famous “Great Balls of Fire” piano scene from Top Gun.

We arrived early and chatted while the crew setup lighting, props, etc. It is truly amazing the amount of work and detail that go into shooting a single, quick scene. Logos had to be covered, props put up, and the bar had helped bring in “extras” so that the bar and restaurant weren’t empty. They were given free beer & champagne so by 10 or 11am the “extras” were feeling pretty good. 🙂

This was the scene where Josh first meets me. We filmed our scenes, with, of course, many many takes for each part. I definitely don’t have the patience to do Josh’s job! Of course, Josh had to include a bunch of corny Top Gun references. 🙂

We wrapped up around noon and then had lunch together out on the patio before I left back for home.

But, there was one last photo I needed to get of Josh and I outside this famous location. 😉

That’s A Wrap

For those who knew about the filming, I was often asked “how did it go” or “did you have fun” or “what was it like?”

It was pretty fun. My only disappointment is that my “wingman” Tyler Stalter had to work and couldn’t be there. After all, it was his idea to look for the XP5Y and he and I are a team.

I developed a lot of respect for how hard it is to film a TV show like this. We were usually heading to location at 7am and getting back to the hotel around 5pm or 6pm. The film crew definitely work very hard. Josh Gates is a really nice guy, we had a lot of fun nd interesting conversations, and I enjoyed spending time with him and hanging out.

We’ll see where this leads….

References

The Short, Storied History of the Convair XP5Y/R3Y Tradewind

Wikipedia article

Bureau of Aircraft Accidents