Original subtitles

narrator: Tonight, on the "Bermuda Triangle:

Into Cursed Waters."

- All right, surface, this is 0-6.

- Oh, no way!

narrator: Why did a secret spy plane suddenly vanish?

- Does not appear that the pilot got out.

narrator: Did it fall prey to something in the fog?

- Four of them hit a fog bank. Only three come out.

narrator: The team investigates a phenomenon

that appears without warning.

[dramatic music]

- The clouds are building. We're going right into it.

narrator: To help write the final chapter

for an American hero.

- It's great to see Dad, you know?

♪ ♪

narrator: There is a place that evokes

fear and fascination.

♪ ♪

Bounded by Florida, Bermuda, and Puerto Rico,

the Bermuda Triangle has swallowed

countless ships, planes, and people.

But why?

♪ ♪

Now, an elite team dives in.

- These are dangerous dives.

- Any sane person would not be doing this.

narrator: Their secret weapon, a map decades in the making,

which pinpoints unidentified wrecks.

- There's all these shipwrecks out there

in the Bermuda Triangle that there's no names to 'em.

- Dive, dive, dive.

narrator: Their mission,

solve the mystery of the Bermuda Triangle

one wreck at a time.

- Mother nature is gonna take these wrecks away

and these mysteries are never going to be solved.

The clock is ticking.

♪ ♪

♪ ♪

narrator: Mike Barnette and the team

are on the edge of the Bermuda Triangle,

heading toward an underwater target

nicknamed the 540 Wreck by fishermen

because it's over 500 feet down.

It's rumored to be a plane.

♪ ♪

- I've been collecting intelligence from fishermen,

from geological surveys, historical reports

now for about 30 years.

narrator: The 540 Wreck is one of the targets

on Barnette's map that are beyond the limits

of manned dives.

- A section of my shipwreck coordinates of my database

that I have, but its unattainable

to me 'cause it's beyond my diving depth.

Its beyond 500 feet, far off shore.

♪ ♪

narrator: Until now.

♪ ♪

Working off the research vessel "Odyssey,"

the team can hit some of their deepest targets yet.

♪ ♪

The "Odyssey" is equipped with advanced multi-beam sonar

that can paint a picture of the sea floor.

- Closing hatch, looking for permission.

- Hatch coming down.

narrator: And Triton-class submersibles

that can reach depths of 3,000 feet.

- Being on the "Odyssey"

is a once in a lifetime opportunity.

Having these kinds of resources,

it was just like being on the "Calypso"

with Jacques Cousteau.

narrator: Joining Barnette aboard the "Odyssey,"

shipwreck specialist Jimmy Gadomski

and investigator Wayne Abbott.

- Not only are we going to be able to investigate

some unknown shipwrecks, but we can also dig deeper

into the bigger mystery of the Bermuda Triangle,

and what makes it so dangerous and ominous

to be in this part of the ocean.

So the "Odyssey" gives that.

♪ ♪

narrator: Based on the profile and position of the 540 Wreck,

the team is hoping it's a plane at the center

of an unsolved Bermuda Triangle mystery.

♪ ♪

February 1958, a four-member banshee squadron

from the Royal Canadian Navy are conducting

joint-training exercises with the U.S. Navy

along the Florida coast.

- These aircraft were designed as high-altitude,

reconnaissance aircraft.

They can go as high as 50,000 feet.

They were designed to be able to get high

so that they can get above enemy anti-aircraft weaponry.

So they were utilized in the battle space

in the Korean conflict to get a viewpoint from high altitude

with these high aspect cameras

to allow them to see what the enemy

might have been doing.

narrator: The squadron is on a course

to rendezvous with their aircraft carrier

flying into clear skies.

They suddenly face an intense fog bank

that materializes seemingly out of nowhere.

- With visibility at nearly zero,

the squadron leader orders evasive action

to get out of the fog.

However, as four planes go in, only three planes come out.

The Canadian pilot simply disappeared in the fog

and was never seen again.

♪ ♪

narrator: The team hopes to solve the mystery

of the missing Banshee.

- First question I ask is, "What happened?

And more importantly, you know, what happened to the pilot?"

It's what we go through as investigators of shipwrecks

and plane wrecks because it's always exciting when you find

something new on the bottom, and it's always

exciting to identify it,

but then, there's that human story.

♪ ♪

narrator: To answer these questions,

they first need to determine if Barnette's

wreck target is even real.

- Time is money literally out here.

With a vessel this size, and the crew,

and all the assets, there's a lot riding on this.

Like, by long, it's two.

narrator: Before they launch a single submarine,

the sonar team needs hard proof

that something viable is at Barnette's coordinates.

- Nothing really showed up on the screens at all,

just sand, flat bottom,

until all a sudden, we had a pool of fish.

- But surprisingly, there was nothing

with the fish.

- Nothing on S2. Nothing on S2.

♪ ♪

narrator: A large mass of fish

is often a tell-tale sign

of a wreck, but the engineers are not seeing

any structure on the bottom.

- The concern is that we're in the area

and we aren't seeing anything yet.

- The multi-beam was picking up

no hard object besides the fish.

- This doesn't actually read as a stronger density

than the sea floor.

- The technicians, I think, just basically

believed that there was no wreck at the bottom.

- I think we're going to start to seeing stuff,

yeah, right through here.

I have been doing this for decades,

and when you see something like that,

that kind of fish show

had to be holding on something substantial.

- Yeah, it's-- is it a hole or a rock?

- So even though the technicians

felt there's nothing there,

I was positive there's definitely

structure there, something there

worthy of a dive.

♪ ♪

narrator: After hours of impasse

and despite the lack of evidence on the sonar,

the team decides to take a leap of faith

in Barnette's map.

♪ ♪

♪ ♪

- We're good for launch.

Stand by to launch. Stand by to launch.

♪ ♪

♪ ♪

narrator: They're diving in an area

between the deep, calm waters of the Sargasso Sea

on one side, and the surging Gulf Stream on the other.

The clash of these two regions creates some of Earth's

most violent storms.

And below the surface,

powerful and erratic bottom currents.

♪ ♪

- Topside, this is 0-0-6. We have bottom in sight.

8-6 meters heading 3-0-0. Life support good.

- That's a perfect heading. Thank you.

narrator: The Comm room is keen to see

if Mike's hunch will pay off, or if they're chasing a ghost.

♪ ♪

They run into their first challenge,

the current.

narrator: The sub's top speed is 3 knots per hour,

but swirling bottom currents are hitting

nearly 3 knots as well.

Pilot Steve Chappelle has to max out his thrusters

to crawl toward the target.

♪ ♪

- Taking a 3-0-0 heading, which will put him right here.

narrator: The fast currents are churning up the seafloor,

but something else is clouding their view.

Lots and lots of kahalas down here or amberjacks.

- Copy, fish everywhere.

- I mean, he is just certain something's there

because of the amount of fish.

- More fish. They're coming from somewhere.

- Oh, look at the size of that grouper that just came out.

It's huge!

♪ ♪

narrator: Then Barnette spies something in the distance.

- Oh, I see-- is that a shadow

along the bottom?

Seeing the shadow in the gloom and getting closer

and the details start to pop as your mind

is racing trying to make heads or tails

of what you're looking at.

There's a wreck here.

Yeah, you see linear lines like that, that's not natural.

- It was up a little on the side--

- Yeah, there's a little clump there.

- All right, surface, this is 0-6.

- 0-6, come back.

- We are at something.

We're not sure what yet.

We're at some sort of lumpy rock formation,

lots and lots of fish. We're creeping up on it now.

narrator: At first glance, the team assumes

that this is some kind of geology

as the sonar technicians suspected,

but they move in for a closer look.

- Okay.

- Is it a plane? - No way!

- It is a plane! - It is a plane!

♪ ♪

[soft dramatic music]

- Surface 0-6, comms check.

- 0-6, go ahead.

narrator: Elite diver Mike Barnette

has proven his instincts and his intel

were right on the money.

narrator: The team is diving

on a previously unidentified wreck

on Mike Barnette's map,

located on the edge of the Bermuda Triangle,

nicknamed the 540 Wreck.

It's turned out to be some kind of plane,

but IDing the plane won't be easy.

- Ooh, feel that? - Oh, yeah.

- Oh, yeah. - Wow.

- We're being pushed.

narrator: A surging current is now 4 knots

and overpowering the Triton sub's thrusters.

♪ ♪

- So they're here now, right? - Yeah.

- This is their approach? - Yeah.

- Yeah.

narrator: Pilot Steve Chappelle

is struggling to hold the sub's position

to get a clear view of the wreck.

♪ ♪

- There is part of the wing right there, I guess.

- Wow, just-- - Yeah, we're whipping past it.

Let's see how close I can get us in there.

- Perfect.

♪ ♪

- Oh, look at what's raining down on us.

- Tons of fish. - Oh, my gosh.

- This little structure is holding this much fish.

- They love aluminum. - Wow.

♪ ♪

narrator: Barnette spots signs

that this is a military aircraft.

Here's the engine right there, one engine.

there might be another engine.

narrator: The flaps on the wing are down,

indicating this plane could have been trying

to land when it crashed.

- He actually tried to do a ditching at sea

try to slow down.

- Looks like it probably crashed nose in.

♪ ♪

narrator: Barnette begins to take in

some difficult details.

- Is that the back of the canopy?

That's the nose crunched back, and that's the top.

- Oh.

♪ ♪

narrator: The canopy and ejection seat

are still intact, which suggests the pilot

didn't get out before the plane hit the water.

- Just the chaos on the bottom

of how mangled the aircraft was

on the open cockpit and seeing the seat in there,

I mean, our first thoughts were, "Is this a grave site?"

♪ ♪

- Topside, this is 0-6.

We are currently sitting on top of the aircraft.

It looks to be a pretty dramatic crash-landing.

Does not appear that the pilot got out.

I see the canopy intact. The cockpit is intact.

Someone had a really bad day.

- Clear. Copy all.

♪ ♪

narrator: Despite the thrusters being on full,

the sub is pushed away before they can find

any additional clues.

- Yeah.

narrator: Erratic bottom currents are getting

even stronger and more hazardous.

The team decides to pull back for now.

They've got enough to know

that their find has a story to tell.

♪ ♪

- You are clear to surface to 0-3-0 meters.

We're ascending through 82 now.

♪ ♪

- Unbelievable, man. I was just following it,

but I just can't wait to hear more.

- What we found was basically a jet fighter.

It met a really tragic end.

We've got to talk to a few experts

and hit the archives.

- It's so exciting that we found this aircraft.

- It's super exciting but then also potentially sobering

knowing that this could have been a grave for someone.

- We can get Jason and Dave on this right now,

and hopefully solve the mystery.

♪ ♪

narrator: Back on land, retired U.S. Air Force officer

and aviation accident investigator Jason Harris

and military historian David O'keefe

meet to evaluate the images

the "Odyssey" team has sent from the ship.

- So we got the picture of this aircraft,

but as you can see, these photos are quite murky.

- Really comes across like a ghost, doesn't it?

What have we got? - Every aircraft is different.

narrator: Harris spots several clues in the imagery

to this aircraft's identity.

- You can kind of see some specifics

in this area of the wing, as well as the fuselage.

This aircraft is most likely a Banshee.

♪ ♪

narrator: Harris can't see enough yet to know for sure,

but if it is a banshee, it could be the Canadian plane

that flew into the mysterious fog in 1958

and was never seen again.

- Check this out, late 1950s,

a flight of Canadian Banshees on the way

to do carrier training operations.

Four of them hit a fog bank.

All four go in, only three come out.

narrator: How could a plane simply vanish in the fog?

Did the pilot lose his bearings

and crash at sea,

or was the fog hiding something more treacherous?

- What about the possibility of this fog,

you know, blanketing some sort of other weather issues

that are behind it, and he ended up flying into that?

- There are weather systems that move in so suddenly

that the briefing that you had 30 minutes ago

for the weather report is no longer accurate.

- So if that's the case, though,

what kind of weather instability

could possibly cause a plane to go down

if it's not so-called "fog"?

narrator: The Bermuda Triangle

is synonymous with deadly storms.

♪ ♪

One of the most feared is a phenomenon

called a microburst.

These storms get their name

because they are small, concentrated,

and powerful, usually less

than 2 and 1/2 miles in diameter,

but with winds up to 150 mph.

They seem to appear without warning,

and from a distance,

often look like a wall of clouds or fog.

They are responsible for at least

20 major airline disasters, totaling over 500 deaths.

♪ ♪

And they may very well be behind

many of the mysterious disappearances of planes

lost in the Bermuda Triangle.

- The thing with fog is you really never know

what could be behind it,

and it could very well be hiding

something like a microburst

that could be absolutely deadly.

narrator: The team will consider

whether the Banshee could have fallen prey to a microburst

or other anomaly. It all hits home for Jason.

♪ ♪

- In that moment when that aircraft goes

into that unannounced fog, I begin to think

about how would I respond? How would I react?

And how much time do I have

to make a decision that is gonna determine

if I live or die?

♪ ♪

- Doing just one dive on any wreck

is just more of a tease than anything else

because you have a glimpse of what you think it is,

but it really takes sometimes multiple dives

to figure out what you're looking at.

♪ ♪

narrator: But their plans may be cut short.

♪ ♪

- These storms come out of nowhere.

Before we jump, if it looks like this,

sometimes we'll call the dive because of it

if it really looks like it's gonna open up.

♪ ♪

narrator: The "Odyssey" is running headlong

into the sudden, violent storm.

- Clouds are building right now.

It's about to probably get kind of nasty out here.

Thunder in the distance. Rain in the distance.

We're going right into it.

♪ ♪

[dramatic music]

- Boom.

Count one, three, four, five, six.

That's only a mile away.

♪ ♪

narrator: On the edge of the Bermuda Triangle,

the team is on the trail of a military plane

called a Banshee lost in 1958.

It disappeared into a sudden fog

that may have masked even deadlier weather...

♪ ♪

Much like the sudden storm the team is confronting now.

- Well, right now, we've got some pretty heavy squalls

coming in from the West dead ahead

at about 30 knots of wind just now.

And you can see it's coming over the side.

[wind whooshing]

Yeah.

♪ ♪

narrator: Captain Hugh Maynard is on alert

at the helm of the "Odyssey."

♪ ♪

- Yeah, I'm staying off the deck.

- 64 knots of wind.

That's Force 11, hurricane strength.

Wind like this would lay a ship on her beam end.

If it was at night and a squall like this hit a sailing ship,

she could easily be, you know, sunk.

♪ ♪

It's really coming down now.

narrator: The next dive must wait,

as Captain Maynard steers the ship toward safer water.

- Disappointment is-- it's a common thing

we face as divers because weather is our nemesis.

You can only work with what mother nature is giving you.

You just gotta roll with it and do the best you can.

narrator: Onshore, David O'keefe

looks for clues in the type of storm

that may have caused the Banshee to crash.

They're called microbursts,

and he's about to see one up close.

narrator: Storm chaser and severe weather photographer

Jeff Gammons is an authority on the microbursts

that form off the Bermuda Triangle.

♪ ♪

- All right, here we go. Hang tight.

I wanna get back out 'cause I think

that's gonna land spout,

and it's gonna cross the main road.

- These types of microbursts, you go from calm winds to 60,

70-mile hour winds, you know, in five minutes.

♪ ♪

narrator: It's a key piece of info.

The Banshee pilots who survived

said the skies were clear.

Then suddenly, they were surrounded by fog.

- So drop of a hat, everything changes?

- Yeah, because the thunderstorm goes up,

and then it almost collapses on itself.

♪ ♪

- This is going to be quite cataclysmic, isn't it?

♪ ♪

Yeah, here we go. - So here we go.

♪ ♪

narrator: Gammons has identified

a distinct pattern that occurs ahead

of the most violent storm systems.

It's called convergence.

- As you can see, the thunderstorm heads

have exploded now right over us.

- 'Cause basically, what we're getting

is the boundary here colliding with

the boundary coming across. - That's right.

Yeah. - Fantastic.

narrator: Convergence occurs when weather fronts collide

and pile on top of each other until they reach

a tipping point.

In a normal thunderstorm, it all comes crashing down

in a column of rain and wind,

but under the peculiar conditions

found in the Bermuda Triangle,

convergence can spawn something far deadlier,

a microburst with tornado force winds

that exceed 100 miles per hour.

- So basically, the sudden nature of these microbursts

could easily be veiled by a fog bank coming in.

You go through the fog bank,

and next thing you know, you're into one of these.

- Oh, absolutely.

narrator: It suggests the wall of fog that the Banshees

flew into was actually the convergence

of two violent weather systems combining

to form a deadly microburst.

♪ ♪

Given what David's seeing, it's easy to see

how that could cause a plane to crash.

- It's one thing to be sitting there in the car

with all the latest gadgets, and you have

all the meteorological data that you need.

But being up in an aircraft, especially back in the '50s

and '60s, you have no clue when these are gonna

sort of appear out of nowhere.

Maybe this is the big monster that everybody's

been thinking about when it comes to the Bermuda Triangle.

♪ ♪

narrator: 300 miles off the Florida coast,

on the edge of the Bermuda Triangle,

the team has determined a target on Barnette's map

that fishermen nicknamed the 540 Wreck

is likely a 1950's military jet

called the Banshee.

The clues point to a Bermuda Triangle mystery.

A Banshee flown by a Canadian pilot

that disappeared into a dense fog.

- Good to see you again, Roy. - Nice to see you.

- How are you doing, brother?

- Even if you are Air Force, glad to see you again.

narrator: Jason Harris meets

with military aircraft restorer

and former combat pilot Roy Stafford

to inspect the photos of the wreck.

- I'm pretty sure we got a Banshee here,

but I think I'm gonna need a little bit of help

just identifying the specific model.

[dramatic music]

narrator: Roy is uniquely qualified

to confirm whether this plane

is indeed the Canadian Banshee.

He restored one of the last Banshees in existence

for the National Naval Aviation Museum in Pensacola.

- I agree with you. It's a Banshee.

To tell what type of Banshee it is,

it's all from the cockpit forward.

Each iteration, the Banshee had a little different

nose configuration.

narrator: Most models of the Banshee were fighter jets.

They had radar in the nose and armament for combat.

♪ ♪

Looking at the wreck, Roy can tell

immediately that this Banshee was something rare.

- Ah, down here, see that?

- Yeah, what is that there?

Those are window apertures for reconnaissance version

of the F2H. It's called F2H2P.

♪ ♪

These three apertures that you see there

are for the rotating cameras.

♪ ♪

narrator: The Banshee F2H-2Ps

were specialized spy planes with a full array of cameras

replacing the armaments.

- Roy, looking at this Canadian accident

that happened, do you know anything

about the aircraft models that the Canadians flew?

- Yeah, they flew the F2H3, which was

the first of the big Banshees.

narrator: The Canadians flew only

the fighter model of the banshee,

not this specialized spy plane.

- That aircraft was distinguishably different

than this aircraft that we're looking at?

- Oh, absolutely.

- So we can definitely rule that--

- Rule that one out. - Wow.

Once you rule out that this aircraft is not

a Canadian variant, then that puts us back

in a position to start thinking, "Well,

"who was flying this aircraft?

What mission were they actually doing?"

narrator: The plane wreck they found

was not the Banshee that flew into the fog

never to be seen again.

Instead, a new mystery opens up.

♪ ♪

This plane was American.

- Any reason why that particular aircraft,

that model for reconnaissance might have

been off the coast of Florida?

- There's easy explanation, Jason.

They were hurricane hunters.

♪ ♪

narrator: When not doing recon missions

deep over hostile territory or tracking enemy warships,

American F2H-2P Banshees

took on another dangerous task,

studying hurricanes.

The Banshees weren't the first planes to do this.

The U.S. Navy tried to track hurricanes

as early as the Second World War.

- My father was a member of the Navy's hurricane hunters.

They used to fly the World War II bombers.

They would penetrate a thousand feet or less

to go into the storm, and they would fly

all the way into the eye,

and they would take barometric pressure,

wind velocities, you know, on the fringes,

turbulence readings. It was pretty dangerous.

narrator: But the development

of the high flying F2H-2P Banshee

led to a breakthrough in storm tracking.

- Everybody always thought if they could get over the top,

then they could circle down into the eye, you know,

where the weather was more benign.

So they had two Banshees from Jacksonville

that flew above the storm and spiraled down in

and took some photographs of the waves.

♪ ♪

narrator: By flying over the top of the storm,

the Banshee gave military and civilian authorities

an unprecedented view into the most violent storms,

revolutionizing forecasting and saving thousands of lives.

- For decades, this mission that they had provided

warnings for ships at sea, our fleets,

and for the civilian populations on the ground.

These guys were heroes.

narrator: Whether the Banshee Barnette found

at the edge of the Bermuda Triangle

was lost on a secret Cold War spy mission

or tracking violent storms, Roy insists the military

would have kept track of it.

- What I would be looking for is bureau number,

which is generally a small set of numbers on the empennage,

or the tail end of the aircraft.

And that's kind of like the VIN plate on your car.

That'll tell us exactly what airplane it was.

Match hat up with the crash reports from Navy,

and you'll be able to run a complete record

of the aircraft, where it served,

its entire lifetime.

- If we get some of these pertinent details,

that allows us to solve this bigger mystery

of this aircraft accident.

♪ ♪

narrator: Back out at sea, the storms have subsided

and the team is ready for their second dive.

- All right, guests coming down.

narrator: Following Roy's advice,

they'll search for the tail section

of the aircraft and its markings

to ID the plane.

They can only hope

the vicious bottom currents

will let them get to the wreck.

♪ ♪

narrator: The team is heading back down

to the site of a crashed Banshee spy plane

in search of the clues they need

to ID this mystery wreck.

[dramatic music]

The conditions beneath the surface

appear cooperative.

♪ ♪

- 0-0-6 topside, if you are able,

could you provide an update?

- Topside, this is 0-0-6.

We have the bottom in sight.

narrator: This time the sub pilot

is able to maintain position,

giving Barnette and Gadomski a front row seat

with an excellent view.

- This is pretty amazing.

I'm gonna kind of creep over the wing,

if you don't mind, and creep up on the fuselage.

narrator: Then the team finds what they are looking for.

The tail section looms in the distance.

- Up and to your right.

- I kind of see a shadow. It's hard to say.

- Is that the tail there?

♪ ♪

That's definitely a tail right there.

- Yeah. Oh, look at that.

- The tail is sitting broken off.

♪ ♪

narrator: At last, Mike Barnette

has achieved the first objective of his mission,

to locate the missing tail of a Banshee spy plane.

♪ ♪

But after decades under the water,

does it still have markings that will

help the team ID this plane?

- The tail is sitting broken off.

And that's the rudder and the horizontal stabilizer.

Yeah, right? It just snapped off.

It just was resting down the sand.

Is there's lettering on the tail there?

♪ ♪

- Let's see what I can do here to get us--

- Oh, there's a P. Look on the tail.

- Okay. - Look on the tail.

- P1? - P1, looks like.

- That is incredible.

- It's PL. - PL? Okay.

- PL.

- And, honestly, that PL is gonna help.

That's probably the squadron.

We'll know where it took off from.

- I'm gonna let the current push me back

and I'll come around the other side.

narrator: Incredibly, paint on the tail

is still legible.

These two letters, P and L, are the air group number.

♪ ♪

- Surface 0-6, I think they got

what we need, and we're requesting

permission to surface.

♪ ♪

narrator: Back on board the "Odyssey,"

Mike and jimmy review their footage

with Wayne and underwater photographer Evan Kovaks.

- We could still make out the paint on the tail section.

Like Jimmy said, you can see this squadron

designation on the rudder, which was just amazing.

You can see the white paint, but it's also

partially obscured with sediment.

- It's amazing after all these years

that it just hasn't eroded away.

- This is the first identifiable thing

that we came up on, which looks like P and maybe an L.

narrator: The P and L is an important clue.

Some quick research indicates the plane

flew out of the Naval Air Station

in Jacksonville, Florida.

- We can almost see the entire wreck.

♪ ♪

- Whenever you see any wreck, whether the vessel

or aircraft, what were the final moments

that led to that incident? Why is this aircraft here?

And that's where I wanna look at it

from a scientific approach.

It's just a process to find out what happened to it

in it's the last moments.

♪ ♪

I reached out to the historian of actually

the squadron there at NAS Jacksonville,

and they were unaware of any event

of a 2P banshee being lost.

♪ ♪

narrator: Strangely, there are no obvious candidates

for this missing spy plane.

If there is a record of a Banshee lost

at sea in the Bermuda Triangle,

it is being kept closely guarded.

- For every setback, we just had

to re-evaluate and reposition and attack it

from a different angle.

narrator: So Barnette digs in.

It turns out this particular spy plane was a rare bird.

Of the 900 Banshees the U.S. military made,

only 89 were the F2H2P photo recon version

the team has found.

Barnette has no choice but to pull

the records for every single one

of them and dig in.

- So then it was just trying to go

through the available information

to find out of losses of this aircraft that happened

off the Florida coast.

You can rule out ones that were lost in Korea,

ones that were put into storage.

♪ ♪

So it was just a process of elimination

until we had one basically viable candidate.

narrator: The most likely suspect

was flown by an American hero who never made it home.

♪ ♪

Now Jason and Barnette want to talk to the family.

♪ ♪

narrator: The team has uncovered

a jet-powered spy plane

at the edge of the Bermuda Triangle.

They believe this plane was flown by a pilot

named Lt. Peter Mongilardi.

Jason and Mike have tracked down

Mongilardi's son, Raoul.

- I'm very interested to hear about your father.

- He loved flying. It was his passion, you know?

He was a great aviator.

♪ ♪

Testing flight suits, high altitude suits,

aircraft, everything.

Flying was his life, you know?

- I think your insight to your father's career

is gonna help us shed some light on this mystery.

I'd like to share the video we took

of the mystery wreck site. - Yeah.

♪ ♪

It turns out to be an aircraft.

It was a fairly unique aircraft as we learned

as we're exploring the site.

- Do we know what kind of an aircraft it is?

- It was F2H Banshee.

- Oh, that's very meaningful.

So my dad later flew through the eye

of the Hurricane Connie...

♪ ♪

In a Banshee,

and they were testing specific reconnaissance photography.

That was top secret at the time.

narrator: Lt. Mongilardi was one of the first pilots

to fly Banshees into hurricanes to study them.

The data the others collected helped us to better understand

how hurricanes behave, and has saved lives

in the years since.

It was on a routine flight

that Lt. Mongilardi's luck almost ran out.

- We went through all the bureau numbers

because one right here, "Stricken after an accident

"at sea on aircraft carrier, the 'Lake Champlain'

on September 24th, 1954."

And we know the "Champlain" was off Northeast Florida

during September doing carrier qualifications.

So do you know where your dad was this time period?

- Yes, he was on the Lake Champlain.

He was flying this plane, or another plane

very much like it.

And I actually have his service record.

So I have an incident report

dated in 1954 of my father

in a Banshee aircraft.

- Right there, 1, 2, 5. - Right there.

- That's the same one.

narrator: This incident report says that on September 24th,

1954, Lt. Mongilardi had just landed his Banshee

on the USS L"ake Champlain" aircraft carrier

when one of his brakes failed.

- It says, "following arrested landing."

So that basically says your dad had

a normal, safe, arrested landing

on that aircraft carrier,

and then the starboard brake failed,

and that likely was what caused him to go off the edge

of that aircraft carrier.

- And it shoved the plane over this way.

- Yeah.

- I have a photograph of this plane,

and of my dad in the plane.

♪ ♪

- Oh, it's hanging off the side.

- So it's hanging off the side.

- Wow. That's it.

- Look, the canopy is open. - It's open.

♪ ♪

- It looks like he's not looking up.

He's not waving. He's not saying, "I'm okay."

He's sort of like, "Really?" You know?

- Likely as he's realizing that he's slowly

going over the edge of this,

he's gotta figure out how quickly he's gonna get out.

That type of ejection seat, you don't eject

when you're on the ground, so he's likely

unhooking himself so that once he hits the water--

- He could just walk out on the wing.

- Absolutely.

narrator: Lt. Mongilardi was able to escape

the open cockpit of his Banshee

with the ejection seat intact,

which initially made it appear to the team

that the pilot had not gotten out.

- Matches up exactly. - Wow.

- That is crazy.

- His name is on the side of the aircraft.

- Right, Pete Mongilardi, Lieutenant USN.

♪ ♪

Well, it's great, you know?

Like, you know,

it's great to see dad, you know?

I last saw my father when I was 8 years old.

What are the odds that you guys would find, you know,

this particular aircraft?

♪ ♪

It means a great deal to me,

and I know it will to my family.

♪ ♪

narrator: Lt. Peter Mongilardi

gave his life for his country

over the skies of Vietnam in 1965.

- As professional aviators, as military members,

we talk about, "you don't leave anyone behind."

And you wanna make certain that in everything that we do,

you provide a level of closure.

And if you can provide a level of closure

to the service member, to the family,

and everyone else that's involved,

that's extremely special.

- Thank you. Thank you.

- For me, this is a way I can contribute.

I can serve those that have served,

and so it gives meaning to my diving

when you can have these kind of stories

and bring closure to the families.

♪ ♪

The luck that we stumbled into this story,

it wasn't just any old pilot.

It was a pretty remarkable pilot.

This whole story, the process has just been remarkable

'cause we started from scratch.

- It's a rare occasion that you find an aircraft

like this, and as it comes to life,

we then have a whole different level of respect

for what happened to the person,

what happened to the machine,

and what happened on that fateful day.

And to see that image and knowing

that's moments before it dropped off

the carrier to the seafloor,

and then compared to what we've seen

on the bottom, I mean, that was almost a mirror image.

Everything fit, and that's what you want.

You wanna test your theory.

You wanna poke holes in your own theory

and your own hypotheses,

and I feel very solid that we've got our aircraft.

♪ ♪