Owners of the research submarine Antipodes made quite a splash when they announced the discovery of a sunken U.S. Navy World War II fighter plane lying upside down on the ocean floor off Miami Beach.
The mostly intact wreck of the 1940s Grumman F6F Hellcat, built to combat Japanese Zeros during World War II, was a great find, based on a list of some 50 to 60 unknown targets the Miami-Dade County’s artificial reef program furnished to the sub’s owners.
Now, owners Stockton Rush and Guillermo Sohnlein are eager to demonstrate the 15-foot-long sub’s capabilities. They recently invited members of the media to visit the Hellcat wreck site, encrusted with marine growth 240 feet under water off Miami Beach.
“When Stockton and I started this, our vision was to help open the oceans to exploration, discovery, research and commercialization,” said Sohnlein, co-founder of OceanGate, a Seattle-based firm that acquired the seven-ton sub in 2010 that can carry five people to a depth of 1,000 feet.
“We wanted to build a private-sector alternative to government-run, deep, manned submersible programs.”
On this day, in a bumpy, two-hour voyage in three- to four-foot seas, Captain Erika Bergman and her crew towed the sub out to the wreck site behind the 38-foot trawler, HeadRoom.
Expedition leader Shane Zigler and sub pilot Randy Holt untethered Antipodes from the HeadRoom. Sohnlein and three other passengers were transported by dinghy to the sub, where they climbed down a narrow hatch and sat down in front of twin, transparent domes.
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