Warbird Information Exchange

Fellow WIXers--

Knowing of my interest in aviation history, a friend of a friend has sent me photos of wreckage recently pulled up from Monterey Bay off the northern coast of California in hopes of determining the individual source aircraft (or type). Unfortunately, my personal knowledge/expertise drops off pretty rapidly after World War Two and these items look to date from the early Jet Age (after mid-1956 for sure). I'm posting here in case the WIX community can pull a few more clues from these images that will point in the right direction.

The wreckage was discovered by a team from the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute (MBARI). Sonar sweeps of the area revealed no sign of the fuselage/wings and it is speculated that the salvaged components were dragged from the main body by trawler nets.



The biggest, most distinctive piece has the appearance of a jet engine .. or at least part of one.







There are some part numbers stamped into the outer casing that may prove helpful ...



And some surviving nomenclature on associated high pressure hose as well ...







Another researcher has uncovered this page from an old parts catalogue that sheds a little extra light ...



If anyone has additional insights that might help determine exactly what we're looking at, please post them here and I will pass it along.

Thanks in advance!

Just looking at the shell...J47?

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I figure if you wanted my opinion on items unrelated to this forum, you'd ask for it.

The cylindrical part is a jet engine combustion chamber. The six holes in the end are where the fuel nozzles would be installed. The small holes around the walls allow pressurized air in to control the flame front inside the chamber.

looks like a T-33 engine
you should post your question over to the wreck chasing message board at http://pacaeropress.websitetoolbox.com/

The combustion chamber is 100% from a J-57. This should narrow the field down. F-100, F-101, F-102, U-2 , F-8, B-66 all used the J-57. Things like 707's and B-52's used turbofan variants of the J-57 and I suspect the combustion cans would be the same although if something that large were to have gone down, there would be more of it left.

Based on an image search for "J57 engine", I would agree with "One-O-Wonder" that the combustion can is from a J-57.

As for the aircraft type, it would be something that had hydraulic speed brakes (blue and yellow hose/tube markings are for hydraulic systems, and the speed brake part is printed right on it).

That might not narrow things down too much, given the number of aircraft that flew with J-57s!

From the great oracle of serial numbers, the Joe Baugher website:

Vought F8U-1 Crusader 143704 crashed in Monterey Bay Sep 23, 1957.

Just a starting point for the saavy...

This may be one for the WIX record books.

2 hours and 52 minutes for Propsrule to ID the combustion chamber.

3 hours and 7 minutes for One-O-Wonder to declare it to be from a Pratt & Whitney J57 (JT3) engine.

Based on this information, I also ran a quick image search on Google that turned up this cutaway scale model of the powerplant in question ...



Lo and behold, look at what we can see highlighted here ...



And now superimposed on a reoriented image of the recovered item ...



Maybe the wreckchasers will be able to help us narrow down the potential candidates. There can't have been that many operational losses over Monterey Bay. Though I suppose it could also have been from a target drone. Or there may even be an instance where an engine dropped off in flight, but the aircraft and crew landed safely. We don't know (yet). It's all part of the fun.

Check out CheckSix posting a great possibility while I was typing my last reply!

Someone ought to find out if the pilot is still around and let him know his plane has been found.

That assumes the locations from the news articles, and the engine's, match up.

Being it's likely a navy wreck, I hope the folks got permits from them before hoisting the wreckage up.

Working off the assumption the plane is correct, a quick Google search suggests he is still alive, and living in Virginia (not too far from me, too!)

The hose should have a manufacture date stamped on it. Modern aircraft hose has a "Q" date, like 4Q99 would be 4th quarter of 1999. Old hose may be different. I see there's a number "5512" on the recovered hose, maybe it was manufactured December of 1955.That would be in line with the Crusader crash.

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Todd Brewer
A&P/IA & Inventory Manager-Purdue University Flight Maintenance

Exactly. I've passed along all of this great info and asked if the wreckage was found anywhere near "18 miles southeast of Monterey." That will tell us if we're on the right track. Obviously, when I hear back, I'll let you all know.


I know what you mean, but there it's a bit of a "Catch 22." No one would know it's a likely Navy wreck if the items had not been recovered for closer inspection. Given that MBARI has a good working relationship with the USN and NOAA's Office of National Marine Sanctuaries through their past efforts on the wreck of USS Macon and its Sparrowhawks, I don't expect NHHC/UAB will raise any objections in this instance.


How cool. If we can nail this down, the MBARI team may well want to follow up with him.

The one problem I see is that 18 SE of Monterey is dry land...
Newspaper reports are notorious for giving bad location data - but this is perhaps one of the more-appalling examples.
I'll see if I can fish the accident report out of the navy archives to better narrow down the actual crash site.

Chris at Check-Six.com