Founded by Clive Cussler, the National Un-derwater and Marine Agency (NUMA) is a non-profit, volunteer foundation dedicated to preserving our maritime heritage through the discovery, archaeological survey and conser-vation of shipwreck artifacts. It was 10:51 PM Central Time on June 23rd 1950 when Flight 2501 passed over Battle Creek, Michigan. Captain Robert C. Lind picked up the radio mike and turned to his co-pilot Verne F. Wolfe as he nodded his agree-ment with the ETA figures. Lind then notified Northwest's Air Traffic Control Center at Chi-cago that they were flying at 3,500 feet and he estimated passing over Milwaukie at 11:37 PM. Northwest Airlines Flight 2501 had left laGuardia airport at 7:30 Eastern Time that evening bound for Seattle, with a scheduled stopover in Minneapolis. On board, along with Lind and Wolfe were stewardess Bonnie Ann Feldman and 55 passengers, comprising 27

women, 22 men and six children. All were looking forward to a long, but fairly comfortable journey.

Flight 2501 was a Douglas DC-4 airliner with four Pratt & Whitney, R-2000 "Wasp" engines. These re-ciprocating piston, propeller engines could power the converted World War II C54 transporter to a maxi-mum airspeed of 280 miles per hour. Since leaving LaGuardia and heading west into clear skies the plane had performed flawlessly and the flight had passed safely over Cleveland and continued west to-ward Minneapolis, a major hub for Northwest Airlines. Weather reports prior to departure had predicted storms over lake Michigan later that evening and as the plane reached the lakeshore at 11:13 PM Cap-tain Lind, once again keyed the mic to air traffic control:

Dr. Pete Millar | My Day with NUMA

Image 1 | NUMA

Image 2 | Northwest Airlines DC-4

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"ATC Chicago, this is Flight 2501, requesting permission to descent to 2,500 feet, over." The reply crackled trough the static;

"Negative on that Flight 2501, other traffic descending through that level. Please maintain your altitude and continue on your present heading, over".

Chicago ATC waited for an acknowledgement that never came. Moments later Flight 2501 disappeared from the radar screen and Lake Michigan claimed another 58 souls.

It was May 9th almost 59 years later that I got the email from Ralph Wilbanks. The title just said "Let's Survey." The good stuff was inside:

"Pete, we are in South Haven for about 10 more days. Who knows what the weather will bring but it you can you are certainly welcome to come up and spend a day on the boat with us. Maybe you will bring us luck. We have not found the plane but have found 2 shipwrecks so far this year. Keep in touch. We have a house rented and an extra bedroom for you if you can make it. Ralph."

I think it took me about 5 seconds to find my phone and speed dial Ralph's number. Plans were made and on Sunday 10th I jumped in the car and drove the 120 miles to South Haven. I'd met Ralph 2 years earlier at a Clive Cussler convention in Charleston. It was there that I asked him if he would write a chapter for a book called Diving With Legends that I was putting together. Initially Ralph was reluctant, claiming he just wasn't worthy to share print space with the likes of Jacques Piccard and Stan Water-man, who had already signed on. But thankfully I managed to persuade him and boy am I glad. As many of you know, Clive Cussler is the famous author whose books tell of the adventures of Dirk Pitt and the National Underwater and Marine Agency (NUMA). For many years NUMA was just part of Cussler's fic-tional world but a number of years ago Clive actually set up NUMA for real. Ralph has been part of the

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Image 3 | Confederate Submarine H. L. Hunley by Conrad Wise Chapman

organization and been involved in the numerous wrecks they have discovered in the intervening years. Ralph is probably most famous for finding the CSS Hunley. The Hunley was a Confederate submersible that demonstrated the advantage and danger of undersea warfare. Although not America's first subma-rine, the Hunley was the first submarine to engage and sink a warship, the USS Housatonic on 17 Feb-ruary 1864. Unfortunately, although the Housatonic sank with the loss of five crew, the Hunley also sank with the loss of it crew of eight. Its final resting place remained a mystery until Ralph and NUMA discov-ered it in 1995. I arrived at the house around 7 PM, met up with the other NUMA guys; Captain Steve Howard and Jim Lesto, and waited for Ralph and David Trotter to show up. David is another contributor to the Legends book and has been called the Great lakes "Lord of the Wreck Hunters" and for good reason, he has probably discovered more wrecks in the Great Lakes than anyone else. The book "Shipwreck Hunter" by Gerry Volgenau is about his exploits and I heartily recommend it. David is also a member of the non profit organization; Michigan Shipwreck Research Associates (MSRA) and having known Ralph for years, occasionaly joins him for a day or so during the survey. NUMA's involvement with the search for Flight 2501 came about in 2004 when Clive Cussler learned that MSRA were also interested in finding the wreck. Like Cussler, though on a smaller and more local scale, the five-member team of West Michi-gan based MSRA is engaged in locating lost vessels and solving historical mysteries in the waters of Lake Michigan. Cussler contacted MSRA and proposed a joint venture project to research and search for the remains of Flight 2501. For the past five years Ralph has headed up that search. Ralph has his own Marine Survey company; Diversified Wilbanks and every year he trailers up his boat; the RV Diver-city, and he and the NUMA team survey another area.

Image 4 | David Trotter and Ralph Wilbanks

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About 5 minutes later, Ralph and David arrived and after handshakes and greetings we headed out to dinner in a small restaurant in the village. As would be expected we got to talking about the book, the other contributors, the search for Flight 2501 and wreck hunting in general. I'm not sure I ate much that evening as I just sat with my mouth open in awe as these two amaz-ing characters recounted a number of fascinat-ing exploits. This was Dirk Pitt stuff but in real life. One thing Ralph did say was that it was Clive Cussler and his son Dirk who were the reason that he got to do what he did. If it were not for their interest and support he would not be looking for these historical objects. "We are just the tools, they are the important part."

You only need to look at the wrecks that Cussler and NUMA have discovered and the expeditions they have been on over the years to see where Clive Cussler's real interest lies. The list literally reads like a who's who of historical ships. NUMA discovered the RMS Carpathia, the ship that rescued 705 survi-vors from the Titanic and which was later torpedoed by a German U boat. They also found the Mary Celeste. Known throughout history as a fabled mys-tery ship, she was found sailing off the Azores in 1872, ghost-like with no one aboard. NUMA's first shipwreck expedition was in 1978 and it was in the English Channel for the Bonhomme Richard. 31 years later they are still looking for it and that is where Ralph was heading later on in the summer. Clive Cussler, if nothing else, is persistant. When we returned to the house, I gave Ralph a copy of the latest preview edition of the DWL book and we talked some more about some of the achievements and adventures of the other contributors. Then talk turned to watches. Ralph was wearing

his Doxa SUB 300T Reissue but he went to his room and returned with a 1984 Rolex Sea-Dweller. Both were beaten and scarred but run-ning like champs. He told me how he had saved up for a long time to buy the Rolex and up until he got the Doxa it was his daily wear. If only those watches could speak, I'll bet they could tell a few stories. The next morning we woke at 5:30 and headed down to the boat. After unpacking gear and loading it on board we cast off and headed into the narrow channel and out into lake Michigan. The sun was breaking as we left the coastline far behind. It was a beautiful morning and the lake was almost flat calm. We had almost 20 miles to go to the search grid, so I sat back, looked at the diminishing shore and just let the

Image 5 | RMS Carpathia

Image 6 | DOXA 300T Reissue and Rolex Sea-Dweller

Image 7 | Early morning start

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world slide past. Lake Michigan can quickly become a very harsh mistress, but at that moment she was like a mill pond.

With a GPS confirming our location, it was time to hook up the magnetometer and side-scan sonar. Both of these "fish" fly over the ocean floor picking up magnetic anomalies and painting a sonar picture of the seabed. The height off the bottom is controlled purely by the boat's speed.

Interesting comment made by Ralph and echoed by David was that if I fell in, I'd better keep floating until they came back for me, because the boat wouldn't stop or else the instruments would become very ex-pensive anchors. The boat kept moving as the guys launched the fish and played out the cables. As soon as the 200 meters of cable was out, Steve piloted the boat to the start of the grid pat-tern and once set up, switched on the autopilot. The autopilot ties into the GPS and a program called Hypack which controls the autopilot and also establishes the survey lanes. It records the boat track, steers the boat on the proper line and records the positions, targets and mag data for processing later.

And so we began to "mow the lawn" as Clive Cus-sler would say. It consisted of scanning strips of seabed approximately 500 feet wide and two miles long. The speed of the boat which was be-tween 3 and 4 knots kept the fish at a height of

Image 8 | Dawn breaks

Image 9 | Jim preparing to deploy the fish

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approximately 70 feet above the bottom. The mag actually sat at about 7 feet below the sonar. The depth of the lake at the search grid was around 250 feet and the bottom was pretty much flat over the whole area.

During the survey we talked about the life of a shipwreck hunter. Ralph summed it up quite succinctly; "all through life we are driven to succeed. Pass exams, do well at school, strive for a better job and in general, try to win at whatever we do. Shipwreck hunting is all about failure. Around 95% of the time we never find what we are look-ing for. But for the 5% of the time when we do find it, it makes up for the other 95% of failure."

Image 10 | Reviewing the data stream

Image 11 | Sidescan Image of a sunken hull

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One of the things we did find this trip was what looked to be a sunken hull. It is amazing how well objects show up on the side-scan sonar. First seen, though, is the hit from the magnetometer, then the echo picture starts to get built up. One of the things that amazed me was the shadow cast by the sonar. Take a look at the image below and you will see what I mean. The hull is clearly recognisable and lying partially on its side. David said that there were a number of possibilities. It was most likely an old barge which could have been deliberately sunk out in open water. Old and past its useful life, it was an easy way to dispose of it. The other possibility was that it may have been under tow and got caught in a storm and started taking on water. The only thing the crew could do would be to cast it off from the

main ship and let it sink. As this was a wreck of no historical significance, Ralph didn't go back and scan it from the other side. Something he would do with a legitimate target. I asked Ralph and the guys just what they would expect to find if we did come across the wreck of Flight 2501. The day after she went down, search parties found some debris floating on the lake, but it was in very small pieces. This suggested some kind of mid air explosion. I got the feeling, reading from the re-ports that the plane disintegrated pretty well. However, that probably isn't the case. It turns out that even

Image 12 | Ralph runs a tight ship!!!!

Image 13 | Pulling the gear

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if there was a mid air explosion of say the wing fuel tanks, the tail and cockpit sections would likely remain pretty well intact. Also the engines would still show up as fairly big indications, both on the magnetometer and the sonar. And so the day pro-gressed. We sailed back and forward. The sun was shinning and the Lake Gods were kind to us with a flat, calm ‘Sea State’. It really was a perfect day. Every once in a while the sonar would show a feature on the bottom, but they were small natural outcrops

or rocks. There was never anything that came close to being plane wreckage. I had hoped that maybe the luck of the Irish would have kicked in and today would be the day. Unfortunately, only Dirk Pitt has that kind of luck. The day ended with the grid pattern complete but no Flight 2501. Ralph and the guys went back and continued the survey for another week. In the end they never found any of the wreckage. This was to be their last survey. After five years and hundreds of square miles of search patterns without even a nibble at the wreckage, the time had come to call it a day. One of lake Michigan's mysteries will continue to remain a mystery.

As we shook hands and said our goodbyes Ralph handed me something. A broad smile creased my lips and I thanked him. It was just so cool and I'd like to tell you what it was but I can't for one simple reason. It is very rare and Dirk Pitt would want one. Ralph says he can't have one because Dirk gets all the good stuff; the women, the cool jobs and the cars. He's not getting one of these. Let's call it another of Lake Michigan's mysteries!

Image 14 | Scanning in progress

Image 15 | NUMA

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