Original subtitles

narrator: Tonight on "The Bermuda Triangle:

Into Cursed Waters"...

- Definitely an 18-cylinder engine.

narrator: In 1945, a rescue plane vanishes...

one of six navy planes that go missing in one night.

- No wreckage, no bodies ever recovered to this day.

And it set off one of the largest search and rescue

operations in U.S. history.

- There's so many puzzle pieces that we don't have.

narrator: Now the team goes in search of the real story

and investigates a controversial new theory.

- Nobody's ever figured out what that second blip was.

- All right, so we're left with a mystery aircraft.

- This potentially could be a grave site.

narrator: Following a fresh trail

of evidence from the sea...

- It's still a whole plane that should be down there.

narrator: To the swamp...

- Pretty close to the actual crash site.

narrator: In an attempt to solve the mystery

that started it all.

- [laughs]

- You got a whole new ball game.

[dramatic music]

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.

♪ ♪

Now an elite team is on the hunt...

- Dive, dive, dive!

narrator: And making big finds.

- We've discovered "Challenger."

narrator: Their secret weapon:

a wreck map decades in the making.

- These are dangerous dives.

[loud bang] - Aah!

- Any sane person would not be doing this.

narrator: Their mission: solve the mystery

of the Bermuda Triangle one wreck at a time.

- Dude, are you seeing this?

- Mother Nature is gonna take these wrecks away.

The clock is ticking.

♪ ♪

- Good morning, Jimmy. How you doing?

- Good. - Good to see you again.

♪ ♪

- Head off today to check out a target

off shore of Cape Canaveral.

We have intelligence that says it's most likely an aircraft.

- Hoping we find something out there.

Looks like it's a pretty solid site.

They've been fishing it, so this should be good.

narrator: Mike Barnette and Jimmy Gadomski

are investigating a mystery aircraft wreck

just north of the Bermuda Triangle.

It's called Mickey's Wreck.

It's named for their dive boat captain,

Mickey Gressinger, who found it by accident.

- A lot of times, these wrecks are found by shrimp boats

that drag their nets on the ground

and they snag something in their nets.

And that's basically what happened this time, I think.

narrator: Mickey's wreck and another target

called the 250 Wreck,

which the team plans to dive later in the week,

could hold clues to the greatest mystery

in Bermuda Triangle history.

♪ ♪

[indistinct radio chatter]

December 5, 1945.

Five navy bombers take off

from Fort Lauderdale Naval Air Station

on a training patrol designated Flight 19.

[indistinct radio chatter]

90 minutes after takeoff,

the planes radio in that they're lost.

Their compass is out.

Then they vanish somewhere in the Bermuda Triangle.

♪ ♪

At 7:00 p.m., less than an hour

after all contact is lost with Flight 19,

a Martin Mariner rescue plane

with callsign Training 49 is sent to search.

It, too, vanishes without a trace.

- No wreckage, no bodies ever recovered to this day.

And it set off one of the largest search and rescue

operations in U.S. history.

narrator: The loss of 6 planes and 27 men shocks the nation

and launches the modern mystery

of the Bermuda Triangle.

Authorities struggle to explain what happened.

- Yeah, you get a whole bunch of hypotheses

that come out of this, right, all these possibilities

of what could happen.

It's like having a bunch of jigsaw puzzle pieces.

And every time there's another one

that's dropped into the lid, sometimes it gets clearer,

sometimes it gets a bit more obscure.

narrator: While there are no solid leads

on the fate of the five bombers of Flight 19,

one big clue could point to the location

of the Martin Mariner.

- Everything came down to a ship

called the "Gaines Mill" that was just

sailing through that area.

And all reports at around 7:50 that night,

they saw a fireball 100 feet high

off the ocean floor that burned for 10 minutes.

narrator: Many believe that fireball

was the Martin Mariner.

♪ ♪

In a time before GPS, the "Gaines Mill's"

exact location can only be estimated.

But both Mickey's Wreck and the 250 Wreck

are in the vicinity of the witness sighting.

♪ ♪

- That'd be something that no one's ever documented.

It'd be an amazing piece of history.

- Yeah.

narrator: And it's far from the first time

Barnette searched these waters.

♪ ♪

Last year alone, he and Jimmy dove more than a dozen

other sites in the general area,

and during the course of that, made headlines discovering

remnants of the space shuttle "Challenger"

outside the triangle.

But they never found a trace of the Martin Mariner...

a fact that still nags at Barnette.

- I thought it would be easy to find

based on available information.

But I quickly found out that that's not so.

We know it's just a matter of time.

It's a process of elimination.

We're narrowing in where this aircraft is.

So to find that aircraft and finally put the mystery

to rest, we can really tell the story of those 13 men

that went out looking for their comrades.

That story resonates with me when rescuers

need rescuing themselves.

I'm definitely stubborn. My wife would attest to that.

And some of my fellow divers have mentioned

that I'm like a dog with a bone,

and I just, I gotta get to the bottom of it,

and I won't give up until I do.

♪ ♪

narrator: Mickey starts a sonar sweep

of the target area.

- Looks like two kind of clumps.

- Yeah, no, there is... but there's...

and there's more in between.

That's just little small stuff

I think you might not even be able to see.

Might be under the sand.

narrator: The intel is good.

He sees signs of a wreck here in 60 feet of water.

And then, a clue.

- There's scattered bait all throughout this whole thing,

so it's obviously more metal that's...

- Yeah, it's definitely holding a lot of fish.

I mean, there's a good mark on the bottom there.

- A lot might be buried too, I mean...

- Yeah, no, I know.

narrator: Fish are attracted to the shimmer of aluminum.

The metal can remain partially reflective

in the water for decades.

The Martin Mariner, like other planes,

was made from aluminum.

♪ ♪

- Its giving the signature of an aircraft,

so we need to get on the bottom and put eyes on it

and figure out what we're dealing with here.

♪ ♪

- Ready?

- All right, captain daddy.

- Go ahead.

- Dive, dive, dive.

[water splashing]

♪ ♪

narrator: At a depth of 60 feet,

Mike and Jimmy can take more than an hour

exploring the wreck site

since there is a low risk for decompression sickness,

or the bends, on a dive this shallow.

♪ ♪

narrator: But then, something unexpected...

♪ ♪

A fierce bottom current.

♪ ♪

- We dropped in.

We missed the wreck because we had so much current.

We were shallower, but the current

was screaming through here.

♪ ♪

♪ ♪

narrator: Mike and Jimmy struggle

to reach the target area.

And worse, there's no sign of wreckage.

♪ ♪

Until...

♪ ♪

- Whoo!

♪ ♪

narrator: Mike's discovered a World War II-era

airplane engine.

At first glance, it's too small

to be a Martin Mariner engine with only nine cylinders.

♪ ♪

- Then we started digging a little bit.

♪ ♪

As we were digging...

♪ ♪

Another row of cylinders.

narrator: There's more buried in the sand.

They count the cylinders...

♪ ♪

18, just like the Martin Mariner.

[dramatic music]

narrator: Technical divers Mike Barnette

and Jimmy Gadomski have found what looks to be

a World War II aircraft engine.

They're just north of the Bermuda Triangle,

searching the first of two targets

they hope could connect to a mystery

on the top of their list...

the disappearance of Flight 19 and, specifically,

the Martin Mariner seaplane sent to rescue them.

♪ ♪

The engine has 18 cylinders,

just like the Martin Mariner's engines.

It's possible the rest of the wreck is buried.

narrator: They continue to search.

♪ ♪

But then...

narrator: Time's up.

♪ ♪

- Found one engine. - No fuselage, though?

- Yeah.

- Definitely an 18-cylinder engine,

which is consistent with what PBM Martin Mariner had.

Several manufacturers have made a 18-cylinder engine,

so we need to basically take the footage we got

and bring it back to the team and talk to some experts

and see what they can make from it.

♪ ♪

narrator: Back on shore, while Mike plans out the next dive,

Jimmy heads to meet the team's land-based investigators

to share the intel on the engine.

Military historian David O'Keefe,

historical investigator Wayne Abbott,

and retired U.S. Air Force pilot Jason Harris

are eager to review Jimmy's dive footage.

- So we have the engine right here.

♪ ♪

narrator: Jason is resident aviation expert,

so his opinion is key.

Could the engine be from the Martin Mariner?

- We have 18 cylinders in total on this engine.

- Knowing that it has 18 cylinders,

it's likely a Pratt & Whitney R-2800 engine.

♪ ♪

narrator: The Pratt & Whitney R-2800

was a workhorse powerful enough

to keep the Martin Mariner aloft on missions

that pushed 13 hours...

critical for the plane's role in search and rescue.

♪ ♪

But there's one hitch.

- The Martin Mariner had that particular type

of engine on it, but multiple aircraft

had this type of engine.

It could have been on any number of type of aircraft.

narrator: The team needs to find more wreckage

to tie the engine to the Martin Mariner.

♪ ♪

Next, they turn to theories on why

the Martin Mariner disappeared.

♪ ♪

A Naval inquiry in 1945 provides clues

but no definitive answers.

- I think one of the big problems, of course,

with the Naval report is, usually these investigations

take a year, maybe two years.

This was out in about three to four weeks,

which means, you know,

they really rushed to get this out.

narrator: The inquiry reveals a surprise...

the navy had a favorite theory.

- The navy theory for Training Flight 49

was the idea that one of the crew members

lit a cigarette in-flight

with all of this fuel on board...

♪ ♪

Which would have caused a catastrophic explosion

of the aircraft.

♪ ♪

narrator: The cigarette theory would explain

the explosion witnesses saw from the "Gaines Mill."

But the report provides little evidence to back it up.

- Yeah, I mean, this is one of the big problems, of course.

Some of the best evidence that we've had so far

is admittedly pretty thin.

narrator: Wayne and David zero in on another detail

in the report... unexplained radar blips.

- USS "Solomons" was nearby and picked up two radar blips

at the time the Martin Mariner disappeared.

- Interesting. - And that's one that

Dave and I have talked about for a long time going,

what was the second blip?

narrator: The aircraft carrier USS "Solomons"

was also part of the search for Flight 19.

The "Solomons" radar operator had been following

the Martin Mariner after takeoff, then noted

a second unidentified blip closing in on it.

♪ ♪

The Martin Mariner drops off radar.

And it happened at the same time

that the "Gaines Mill" sees the explosion.

- Nobody's ever figured out what that second blip was.

- When you explain the idea of two radar signatures

that come in contact with each other on a radar,

then that would start leading me down the path of wondering,

was this a potential near mid-air collision?

♪ ♪

narrator: Or was the explosion really the result

of a cigarette igniting gas fumes?

♪ ♪

- All sounds like we have a lot to research

and see if we can get some more fidelity

on these different theories.

narrator: The team splits up to chase down the leads.

♪ ♪

Two days later, Mike and Jimmy are ready for dive number two.

Bottom conditions are still producing swirling sand

around Mickey's Wreck, so they decide

to head to their second target of interest.

The team refers to this as the 250 Wreck after its depth.

- We have an unidentified suspected aircraft

in about 250 feet of water that we wanna check out today

to find out what it is.

- You gotta rule out every possibility.

If it looks like an aircraft, we gotta look at it,

make sure what kind of aircraft it is,

make sure it's not associated with the Martin Mariner.

That's our job.

♪ ♪

narrator: 2,000 miles away,

Jason Harris is in Tucson, Arizona,

trying to piece together why the Martin Mariner crashed.

He's examining the last Martin Mariner

in existence for clues.

- But just to get that feeling

of what it would have been like to be in that aircraft,

how cramped the quarters are, it just changes my perspective

to understand how much was going on at any given time

while they were flying this airplane.

♪ ♪

narrator: The PBM Martin Mariner was originally

designed as a bomber...

♪ ♪

With a glass nose and multiple viewing ports

that also made it an ideal search-and-rescue plane.

But could it have simply exploded mid-air

as the navy's cigarette theory suggests?

♪ ♪

Scott Marchand, the executive director

of the Pima Air and Space Museum,

has doubts about that theory.

- If you take a look here,

these are the specific regulations

that govern smoking on aircraft operations.

- They actually had no smoking signs posted on the aircraft?

- Oh, yeah, yeah.

I mean, you know, they were all conscious of the risk,

and none of them wanted to, you know,

die in a fireball unnecessarily.

narrator: Is it possible someone broke the rule?

Just months earlier, a C-47 Skytrain blew up

when the pilot's lighter ignited an oxygen tube.

But even if someone did smoke,

Scott says Martin Mariners could take it.

- In the history of the Mariners,

there were 84 losses.

Only three were directly attributable

to fire or explosion.

So 3 out of 1,300 aircraft constructed.

narrator: But he does offer another scenario.

- We talked about the potential for crew migration

throughout the airplane possibly destabilizing

the aircraft in flight, leading to a crash.

narrator: If the crew suddenly switched positions,

the center of gravity for the aircraft

could have been thrown off,

sending the plane suddenly downward.

- It's entirely possible the ship that reported

an aerial explosion may have actually

been seeing the aircraft impacting upon the water

and bursting into flame there.

narrator: But what would cause the crew

to shift position so rapidly?

Jason thinks this may connect to the team's theory

about a close call with the second radar blip.

- And it's possible that the pilot

could have made an evasive maneuver.

And at that point, it's potential that

crew members could have come forward,

not by their own doing,

but by the abrupt movement of the controls

from the aircraft commander.

- Oh, sure, yeah, an unplanned evasive maneuver

is entirely possible.

narrator: If so, it's back to that question...

what was the Martin Mariner trying to evade?

narrator: Wreck divers Mike Barnette and Jimmy Gadomski

are unable to get back on Mickey's Wreck for now

due to offshore conditions.

So they're investigating a second target

in the Martin Mariner search area...

the 250 Wreck, named for its depth.

♪ ♪

- Throwing.

narrator: The team has intel suggesting

the target has two wings

and sits at a depth of 250 feet.

- First thing we wanna do is actually

get down to the bottom and confirm this is an aircraft.

And then the next step is, what kind of aircraft this is?

- Dive, dive, dive.

♪ ♪

- Current wasn't too bad, so we were able to scoot

next to our shot line.

- Got colder and colder, and darker and darker.

♪ ♪

narrator: The frigid temperature adds

another layer of difficulty.

♪ ♪

- So we got to the bottom, and the hook was actually

just laying there on the sand.

We had to basically find the wreck first.

♪ ♪

narrator: At this depth, Mike and Jimmy

have 15 minutes of bottom time to explore the wreck

before they need to slowly surface over 90 minutes.

If they stay down too long or come up too fast,

they risk getting decompression sickness,

also known as the bends.

narrator: But right now, they need to find the wreck.

Mike's strategy is simple.

narrator: Follow the fish,

which tend to gather around wrecks.

- All the way down, though,

I saw a fish coming up behind us.

I'm pretty sure the wreck was behind us.

♪ ♪

♪ ♪

narrator: There it is.

♪ ♪

The divers start a forensic sweep of the wreck site.

♪ ♪

But it's not what they expected.

There's nothing here that matches the Martin Mariner

or any other kind of aircraft.

It's a ship,

but which one?

Mike and Jimmy look for diagnostic features.

It appears to be an approximately

70-foot fishing trawler.

Trawlers routinely sink in these waters,

and this one is broken down

with no distinguishing features.

Putting a name on it will have to wait for another time.

♪ ♪

The dive clock goes off.

♪ ♪

- I was so confused.

[laughs] I was like, this was the weirdest plane

I've ever seen.

- We were hoping to find an aircraft.

That's not what we found.

We found a trawler that, I would say it sunk.

It's been down for a long time

'cause the hull is totally disintegrated.

narrator: Instead of wings, the mysterious structures

are the fishing boat's outriggers.

- Outriggers are basically the...

basically a big boom sticks off the side

of each side of the boat.

They would run the nets behind the boat.

Obviously this was not an aircraft.

And more so, it wasn't the Martin Mariner

we're looking for.

So we just mark this off the list, and search goes on.

narrator: Mike and Jimmy will now wait for conditions

to clear over Mickey's Wreck.

♪ ♪

- How are you doing?

- Good. - Okay.

narrator: Meanwhile, David O'Keefe and Wayne Abbott

are in Florida's interior, west of Cape Canaveral,

to chase a different theory.

A navy report notes that radar picked up a second blip

in the Mariner's airspace

just before the rescue plane disappeared.

Did the Martin Mariner collide with another aircraft,

or did it become unstable and crash

while trying to avert collision?

- So basically, if that theory is correct,

then we have two aircraft coming together.

And basically somehow, one of them ends up going down

and the other one keeps going.

- Well, I think it's plausible Training 49 saw something

and made just a very drastic maneuver

that caused it to crash into the ocean.

- Well quite surprising, mid-air collisions

are actually a bit more common than we'd like to think.

narrator: In aviation, even close calls can be deadly.

There are on average 20 mid-air collisions

and 200 near-collisions each year,

even with modern avoidance technology.

The deadliest was a 1996 mid-air collision

west of New Delhi, India, that killed 349 people.

In December 1945, the chaotic search and rescue

for Flight 19 would have been the perfect recipe

for this kind of disaster.

- All right, so we're left with a mystery aircraft.

All right, so what was out there that night?

- Well... - Well, everything.

narrator: But the official report contains few clues.

No other plane reported a close call.

None of them saw the Martin Mariner crash,

and no other planes went missing that night,

except for the five bombers in Flight 19.

- There's the one possibility, and it's a long shot.

- There's the one possibility, and it's a long shot.

What if that second radar blip is Flight 19?

♪ ♪

[dramatic music]

- So where the crash site is, how deep is the water?

- Right now, it's about 2 1/2 feet.

narrator: Historical investigators

Wayne Abbott and David O'Keefe

are in an unlikely location, looking for leads

on how the Martin Mariner vanished in 1945.

They've come to the swamps near Christmas, Florida,

chasing a theory:

that while the Martin Mariner searched

for the five planes of Flight 19,

another craft entered the rescue plane's airspace,

forcing the Mariner to evade the unidentified craft,

becoming unstable, and crashing into the ocean.

♪ ♪

Dave and Wayne are with

retired police officer Nate Ingram.

- We're pretty close to the actual crash site.

narrator: Nate believes the final crash site

for some of the Flight 19 planes

wasn't deep out to sea, but incredibly,

here in these swamps.

- Nate actually was out here a few months ago

and apparently stumbled across a wreck

that he thinks is tied to Flight 19.

♪ ♪

narrator: Nate has been researching the theories

of a legendary Flight 19 investigator,

Jon Myhre, who died in 2019.

- Jon pieced together what he thought

was the reconstruction of Flight 19

and where it went that night on December 5, 1945.

narrator: Myhre was interviewed by Wayne and David

during a previous investigation.

- Everything that we hear so far about what happened

with Flight 19 suggests that all the planes

ended up ditching together.

Why do you think that's different?

narrator: While most researchers believe Flight 19

was heading out to sea and into the Bermuda Triangle

when it became lost,

Myhre believed the lost planes were actually

headed back toward land.

- I think there's two of them crashed on land.

One of them crashed here.

- Jon's big theory when it came to Flight 19

was that after flying around without any resolution

to the situation they were in, there was an argument

that was building up.

- Damn it, we need to fly west.

If we fly west, we will get home.

- And instead of staying together

and all ditching together as one unit,

he thought that the planes actually split up.

And at least two of them ended up making it

back to the Coast of Florida.

narrator: Myhre's argument is based upon his interpretation

of Flight 19's final cryptic radio calls.

If true, that put elements of Flight 19

on a collision course with the Martin Mariner.

Could that second radar blip have been one or more

of the Flight 19 bombers trying to make it home?

Did it accidentally cause the Mariner rescue plane to crash?

And if that's the case, what became

of the Flight 19 bombers?

- Jon's theory is that the two pilots actually

made it back to Florida.

He believes that both of them ditched in a swamp

somewhere in the interior of Florida.

♪ ♪

narrator: It's a theory Nate's been chasing for years.

Now he believes he's located the Flight 19 wreck site.

♪ ♪

- This is the site? - Yeah.

- So how close are we to the site right now?

- You're actually on the wreck site.

It's about 12 feet behind us

buried in the water in the weeds.

- Being a researcher from Canada,

you know, you don't actually get out into the swampland

like this very much.

This is hostile territory.

I mean, if you were a pilot and you

had to ditch or bail out of a plane,

this is not the area where you'd wanna be.

If a plane did crash in 1945, it's highly likely

that plane and pilot would have just

disappeared into the swamp.

- I was able to go out there and search for it and find it.

We were able to go out and gather up

some of the artifacts from the crash site.

narrator: After inspecting the crash site,

Wayne and David are eager to look over

some of the artifacts Nate recovered.

- This particular canister here was recovered from the top

of the heap in the crater.

narrator: To help ID the wreckage,

the team has brought in World War II aircraft

mechanic John Mackinson.

- Well, looking at this,

this basically looks like a starter.

It's definitely World War II radial engine aircraft.

- Let's see what else you have.

narrator: John carefully inspects each piece, looking

for anything that can identify this plane.

- Maybe this will give us a definitive answer.

It's in very, very poor condition.

- Okay, this is most definitely a cylinder head.

- Okay.

- And we got a big valve here.

And looking at the cylinder, I can tell definitely

it's built by Curtiss-Wright.

And it's very distinctive by the rocker box cover.

It's a big, long oval shape.

- Layman's terms?

- Layman's terms, this is a Curtiss-Wright engine

used on a TBM.

- You kidding me? - [laughs]

- Really?

- Well, that's groundbreaking right there, gentlemen.

- No kidding.

narrator: The cylinder head is unique

to Curtiss-Wright engines,

including the 14-cylinder double radial engine

that powered the Avengers of the missing Flight 19.

It's the right engine.

But is it the right plane?

John needs to examine the rest of the wreckage to be sure.

- I could not say with, you know, 100% confidence

that this is a TBM Avenger.

I can confidently say it's an aircraft that ran

a Curtiss-Wright engine in it.

And that's what the TBM Avenger used.

narrator: It's a stunning development

that could offer the first real evidence in 80 years

to solve the Bermuda Triangle's biggest mystery

to solve the Bermuda Triangle's biggest mystery

and help validate a theory that Flight 19

had a fatal near-miss with the rescue plane

sent to find them.

♪ ♪

[dramatic music]

narrator: Wreck divers Mike Barnette and Jimmy Gadomski

are finally getting a second chance

to dive on Mickey's Wreck.

- We need to go down and get a second look

at the wreckage on the bottom.

If this is indeed a two-engine plane,

there's gotta be more down there.

narrator: On the first dive, they discovered an engine

that matched Training 49 Martin Mariner.

This time, the team will widen their bottom search

to see if they can find more wreckage.

- I think this one is the fuselage area,

and this one up here is the actual engine.

But there's scattered bait all throughout this whole thing.

So there's obviously more metal that's...

narrator: Mickey's bottom sonar is picking up

potential wreckage the team

didn't see on their first dive.

- What's the overall distance from north and south?

How big of an area are we talking about here?

- 240 feet.

narrator: As Mike and Jimmy prepare to splash in

to see if they can tie this engine to the Martin Mariner,

back on land, Wayne and David get the phone call

they've been waiting for.

- Oh, very good. Dave's here as well.

- How are you doing, Nate?

- Good.

narrator: Wayne and David suspect an aircraft wreck

found in a swamp to be from a TBM Avenger torpedo bomber,

possibly part of Flight 19, the very planes

the Martin Mariner was trying to search for

and rescue in December 1945.

Their initial analysis of the wreck

indicated the parts were a match

for a Curtiss-Wright engine,

the same used by the lost planes.

Researcher Nate Ingram has an update.

- Any luck?

- Wildcat?

I thought they only used Pratt & Whitney's?

- Really?

narrator: Curtiss-Wright did build the Avenger's engine.

But they also built an engine for a smaller plane

called the FM-2 Wildcat.

- Very disappointing to find out

that the wreckage that we found in the swamp

is a Wildcat and not an Avenger.

And on top of it, it doesn't prove John Myhre's theory.

We knew it was a long shot at best, searching in the swamp.

But I felt that we needed to take the shot.

narrator: The swamp wreck didn't prove

that Flight 19 had a close call with the Martin Mariner.

But it sure seems like something did.

For now, the mystery of the second radar blip

remains unsolved.

But 45 miles offshore, Mike and Jimmy are hoping

that they'll find the Martin Mariner

and answer once and for all how and why she crashed.

- Dive, dive, dive.

♪ ♪

narrator: But as they reach bottom...

narrator: Conditions are, again, a challenge.

- On the bottom, the visibility was not great,

maybe 15 feet.

♪ ♪

narrator: Then a shape appears.

It's a large piece of wreckage the team

didn't see on their first dive.

- So we get down there. We find this wing.

narrator: Any aircraft wreck is a potential grave site.

The team must proceed with great care.

So they decide to use a process called photogrammetry.

Jimmy circles the wreckage,

taking hundreds of still photos.

He'll process these images to create

a 3D model of the wreck site that allows

a more in-depth analysis.

- There's only part of a wing here,

and obviously, it's pretty degraded,

so it's clearly been in the water a long time.

narrator: Then another potential clue...

an unusual structure lies near the wing.

an unusual structure lies near the wing.

But what is it?

♪ ♪

[dramatic music]

narrator: 45 miles off the coast

of Central Florida...

narrator: Mike and Jimmy have discovered tantalizing

new pieces of an aircraft wreck

they suspect to be the Martin Mariner rescue plane.

- It's important to find Training 49.

It's a huge Bermuda Triangle mystery,

and we wanna put closure to that.

narrator: The team has already located

an 18-cylinder aircraft engine

and a piece of the wing.

♪ ♪

Mike swims a larger perimeter but turns up no new clues.

Any other wreckage remains buried in the sand.

- Where are the two pieces?

- Not far.

- Like 50 feet? - 50 feet, yeah, yeah.

We were able to swim from one to another.

Then I went back to the wing.

- It's definitely a section of wing.

♪ ♪

narrator: More clues are pointing

toward the Martin Mariner.

But a grizzled wreck hunter like Mike Barnette

needs firmer evidence.

- We don't have a smoking gun.

We don't know what aircraft this engine went to.

We can't rule out the Martin Mariner,

so it's gonna take a little bit more work.

narrator: One thing is becoming clearer.

The wing has military grade features.

This is a military aircraft.

That means permission from the navy is needed

for a more intensive excavation.

- We know there's other material

that has to be there somewhere, most likely buried.

Hopefully we can reach out to the navy,

get some assistance from them.

narrator: Mike begins the long process of seeking

the navy's official permission

for a fuller excavation of the site.

But the team does have one last shot

to make an ID with evidence in hand...

Jimmy's 3D model.

It may reveal a key detail that Mike and Jimmy missed

on their visual inspection.

♪ ♪

- Let me start out with the wing.

♪ ♪

About 100 to 150 feet to the south of where

we had started on that engine site.

- 100 feet from the engine?

- Very close.

- Yeah, but definitely scattered.

- How long was it?

- Exposed, I'd say about 10 to 15 feet.

narrator: Then Jason Harris spots something in the model.

- I'm really wondering what this piece of material

is right there.

'Cause it, like, has a perfectly round shape

in the center.

narrator: To Jason, this could be the remains

of a fuel bladder.

If so, that would be a major tell for the Martin Mariner.

It had both an 18-cylinder radial engine

and a fuel bladder in the wing.

♪ ♪

And Jason sees more clues in the shape of the wing.

- This area here, that looks like

it's kind of the edges of the wings.

- I do have a few photos of the Martin Mariner.

Now, when you look at this wing, Jason, what do you think?

♪ ♪

- Look at the wing. It's rounded.

- Yeah. - It's a rounded wing.

- I cannot say definitively that

this aircraft wing structure belongs to a Martin Mariner.

What I can say is that there is a possibility,

because the wing structure is rounded,

similar to the diagram of a Martin Mariner.

And it has a rounded wing structure.

narrator: The 18-cylinder engine,

the potential fuel bladder,

and the rounded wing are all features

of the missing rescue plane.

But Jason, Dave, and Wayne agree with Mike Barnett.

There simply isn't enough to make a definitive call.

- So is it possible? Yeah.

- Wow. - But...

- We don't have enough to confirm,

but we can't rule out, either.

narrator: It's been a whirlwind of an investigation.

The team has broken new ground on a provocative theory,

and the mysterious radar blip demands further investigation.

- But that's how you do research.

You pose hypotheses. You test those hypotheses.

And at the end of the day, some of them may hold water,

some of them may not.

And that's the one thing with the Flight 19 mystery

and the Martin Mariner.

There's just so much more data to be discovered.

narrator: And there's more work to be done

exploring Mickey's Wreck.

- I mean, this site bears watching,

because if we have a hurricane come through here,

it could uncover a bunch of other wreckage.

So if we can't get permission from the navy,

maybe Mother Nature can help us.

We would love for this to be a one-off dive,

go down, find the Martin Mariner.

But we've been at this long enough to realize

this is gonna be a slow, steady just struggle.

We're gonna get to a point where the last site

we dive is gonna be the Martin Mariner.

And that's what they always say, right?

It's always the last place you look.

♪ ♪