Let’s Keep It RealThe official response came back three long hours later. And with it, what had looked like a remarkable historical discovery turned into something very different. According to military records, the aircraft had not been listed as missing. It had been officially recorded as destroyed.
Under sealed U.S. archives, the plane had been written off in 1944 after, according to the official account, crashing into the sea because of a mechanical failure during a transfer flight from a base in Iceland. The six-man crew had been declared dead. Their families were notified, and the case was closed.
But the records were wrong. The plane had not gone into the sea. It was here, frozen in ice above the waterline, largely intact and with its hatch open. While headquarters reviewed the information, the divers made a second descent.
This time they had a specific assignment: get inside the fuselage through the open hatch. The clear ice in that area was thin enough to make it possible. They broke through and entered the dark interior.
The cockpit was almost completely blocked by dense old ice. But the cargo and passenger sections were partly accessible. That was where the divers found the first truly intriguing physical evidence.
Several sturdy metal boxes were strapped to the inside walls of the fuselage with standard military tie-downs. They were ordinary Army-style containers for that era. Most of the locks were still shut tight.
Only one box had been opened—and it was empty. What had been inside it, why only that one had been opened, and who had done it became the quiet topic of conversation on board. The theories came quickly.
Maybe someone on the crew had survived the crash landing and grabbed what he needed before leaving the aircraft. That would explain the open hatch. But it did not explain another strange detail. One diver, while checking the tail section, noticed the wall of the fuselage near the exit.
The ice there was thinner, and through it he could see something scratched directly into the metal. It was clearly not a factory marking. Someone had written on the inside skin of the aircraft by hand, using a sharp object.
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