Pearl Harbor Plane Still Filled with Mystery

In June, a team of students from the University of Hawaii were able to take rare images of a PBY-5 Catalina plane that had sunk during the battle of Pearl Harbor.

These images are rare due to the murky water in Pearl Harbor. Previously, there had been many attempts by archaeologists and history enthusiasts to get images of the sunken Pearl Harbor plane. But for decades, none of the attempts by dive teams had produced images of the wreck because of the bay’s cloudy waters.

The new images help piece together the story of a direct casualty from the attack.

This June 12, 2015 photo provided by the University of Hawaii Marine Option program shows the wreck of a seaplane downed during the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. New images of the plane show a coral-encrusted engine and reef fish swimming in and out of a hull. (Jeff Kuwabara, University of Hawaii Marine Option Program via AP)

In this June 16, 2015 image taken from video provided by NOAA, reef fish swim around a U.S. Navy seaplane that sank in Hawaii waters during the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. New images of the plane are the clearest taken of the Catalina PBY-5 to date, Hans Van Tilburg, a maritime archaeologist with the Office of National Marine Sanctuaries, says. (NOAA Office of National Marine Sanctuaries via AP)

This June 12, 2015 image taken from video provided by NOAA shows a U.S. Navy seaplane that sank in Hawaii waters during the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. New images of the plane are the clearest taken of the Catalina PBY-5 to date, Hans Van Tilburg, a maritime archaeologist with the Office of National Marine Sanctuaries, says. (NOAA Office of National Marine Sanctuaries via AP)