Jul 2006 Gooney bird becomes latest dive site

On the morning of the 19th of July at 7:20 am the DC3 N782T crash landed in the ocean about a mile from the end of the runway on St Thomas. Luckily all four on board the aircraft were relatively unharmed and escaped into the sea to be picked up by a Captain Nautica tour boat the captain of which had heard the distress call.

Well it turns out we have another excellent dive site and what an interesting history is attached to this one. Like many of our wrecks around St Thomas she has a very interesting story to tell. A story that spans world changing history and particularly the history of World War II.

It appears that this particular Gooney bird was built in 1942 at the  Santa Monica CA Douglas factory, she has the construction number 4382.

She was delivered to the US Air Force, with the serial number 18344 and would operate with the mighty 8th Air Force in England with the registration 41-18344.

The Eighth Air Force carried out daytime bombing operations in Western Europe and used several airfields in England as it's base. It was commanded by Major General Carl A. Spaatz, Major General Ira C. Baker and Lieutenant General James H. Doolittle. The Eighth Air Force later became the United States Air Force in Europe.

Back then she would have been referred to as a C-47 Douglas Skytrain, and probably used to transport troops and supplies between airfields.

On the 10th of February 1943 she arrived in North Africa and probably participated in operation Torch which started November the 8th, 1942 this was when Anglo-American troops invaded the North of Africa

With the end of WWII, she was renamed as a DC-3 returned home to the USA and in July 1945 changed from Military to Civilian, and took on the registration NC47762 seeing service with ARAMCO (American Oil Company)

Back in 1945 ARAMCO was the company that had the contract to extract all that oil in Saudi Arabia. It is presumed that our Gooney bird saw service over the sands of Arabia at this time but this is not conclusive.

In 1955, she was re-registered to N722A and this is where the plot thickens!!

In 1976 she was on lease to a Malaysian airline named Pan-Malaysia Air Transport that seemed to be used as a cover for CIA operations (Not confirmed), there were not too many details on this company available (Not surprising really. Ed). When the lease was over she returned to ARAMCO, and a few years later she went back to the USA, this time to fly with another defunct airline named New Jersey Airlines (once again not too many details on this airline).

In the early 1980’s, the aircraft was presumably privately owned and seemed to be based in the Caribbean. In the late 1980’s she was purchased by Tol Air Services, a cargo company based in Puerto Rico. She gained her final registration, of N782T.

This illustrious history came to a sad end on the 19th of July when she carried out her last touchdown on the Caribbean sea, she floated for a while and then pitched over nose first and dived to the bottom of the sea. She now rests at 105 ft perfectly upright, contemplating her life that has spanned 64 world changing years.

But her history will live on as we take divers to visit her on a regular basis. she makes an excellent deep dive allowing suitably qualified wreck divers to enter into her cargo bay and swim up to the cockpit and imagine what views have been seen through those windows in the past 64 years.

To read the accident report follow the link below.

(Thanks to Miguel Cláudio for the following history of this gooney bird)