Seeking gold, divers find B-26 wreckage

Thirty miles southwest of the Sanibel Lighthouse, an eerie tableau of silence, sea life and grim reminders of death spreads across the sea floor.

Spanish mackerel rocket through a ball of cigar minnows undulating above an intact aircraft wing in 70 feet of water; 1,350 feet away, goliath grouper loaf near two massive Pratt & Whitney Double Wasp radial engines; tomtates drift slowly around the badly bent propellers, one of which is still attached to its engine, the other lying on the sand a few feet away.

A thriving marine community is on this otherwise barren section of the Gulf of Mexico only because of the anomalous hardware, wreckage of a B-26 Marauder that crashed more than 60 years ago and took the lives of six young airmen. - newspress