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Paul Allen marks Memorial Day in a deep-sea way

Lexington shipwreck
An image captured by a remotely operated vehcile from the R/V Petrel shows the barrel of a 5-inch gun on the USS Lexington. (Image courtesy of Paul G. Allen. Copyright Navigea Ltd.)

It’s traditional to revisit the gravesites of America’s fallen warriors on Memorial Day, but billionaire philanthropist Paul Allen is adding a non-traditional twist.

Today the co-founder of Microsoft is highlighting the work that he’s funded over the past couple of years to document the wrecks of historic warships — and not only U.S. ships, but naval vessels that flew the flags of Japan, Italy and Australia.

A newly unveiled website celebrates the exploits of the Petrel, Allen’s research ship, and its remotely operated vehicle. But more importantly, it celebrates the sacrifices made by the crews of such venerable ships as the USS Indianapolis, the USS Lexington, the USS Juneau and the USS Helena.

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Shipwreck sleuths document WWI sub’s remains

Stern torpedo tube
A remotely operated vehicle uses its robotic arm to inspect the stern torpedo tube of the Australian submarine AE1. (Image courtesy of Paul G. Allen, Find AE1, ANMM and Curtin University / © Navigea Ltd.)

Score another undersea revelation for the crew of the Petrel, a research vessel backed by Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen.

This time it’s the AE1, Australia’s first submarine and the first Allied submarine loss of World War I.

The AE1 was lost at sea with 35 officers and crew on board on Sept. 14, 1914, after it sailed away on patrol near the Duke of York Islands, east of Papua New Guinea in the Pacific Ocean.

For more than a century, the Royal Australian Navy had no idea what happened to the sub. Not a trace of it was found — until last December. That’s when an autonomous underwater vehicle operated by the Royal Australian Navy used side-scan sonar to detect the wreck on the seafloor, more than 300 meters (984 feet) beneath the surface.

The precise location wasn’t disclosed, to keep salvagers from interfering with what’s essentially an underwater gravesite. But the Australian search effort, coordinated by a company called Find AE1 Ltd., enlisted the Petrel and its remotely operated vehicle to capture high-resolution video and stills of the remains.

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Paul Allen’s team finds USS Helena shipwreck

Helena remains
The “50” painted on the hull helped identify the shipwreck as the USS Helena, which was sunk during World War II. The inset image shows the ship’s sonar signature. (Paul G. Allen Photo)

Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen’s seagoing sleuths are reporting one more find in their quest to locate sunken military vessels from World War II.

This time it’s the USS Helena, a St. Louis-class light cruiser that was hit during the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941 but went on to meritorious service in three Pacific naval battles. Its service was so meritorious that the Helena became the first U.S. ship to receive a Navy Unit Commendation.

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Shipwreck linked to ‘Fighting Sullivans’ found

USS Juneau propeller
The propeller of the USS Juneau rests on the South Pacific seafloor. (Navigea via PaulAllen.com)

The latest chapter of an Irish-American family tragedy played out on St. Patrick’s Day when an expedition team backed by Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen discovered the shipwreck of the USS Juneau in the South Pacific.

The Juneau was sunk by a Japanese torpedo during the Battle of Guadalcanal on Nov. 13, 1942, leading to the deaths of 687 sailors — including the five Sullivan Brothers.

The Sullivans insisted so forcefully on serving together that naval officers bent their rules against having brothers serving on the same ship during wartime.

The Iowa family’s tragic story rallied the nation during World War II, inspired a movie titled “The Fighting Sullivans” and led to the christening of two Navy ships in honor of the Sullivans.

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Does bone study crack the Amelia Earhart case?

Amelia Earhart
Famed aviator Amelia Earhart looks out from the cockpit of her plane in a circa-1936 picture. (Harris & Ewing Collection, Library of Congress via University of Tennessee)

A newly published study lends support to the view that famed aviator Amelia Earhart died on the remote Pacific island of Nikumaroro during her attempt to fly around the world in 1937.

In the study, published by Forensic Anthropology, Richard Jantz contends that the recorded measurements for remains found on the island in 1940 are consistent with the estimated size of Earhart’s bones. That contradicts earlier determinations by experts that the bones belonged to a stocky middle-aged man.

Jantz estimated Earhart’s skeletal dimensions by analyzing photographs of the aviator and factoring in clothing measurements from a collection of Earhart’s personal papers.

Some anthropologists have questioned how reliable such methods could be, but Jantz insists that the bones described in 1940 should have more similarity to Earhart’s bones than to 99 percent of the individuals in his reference sample of 2,700 individuals.

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Museum of Flight offers VR tours inside planes

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Visitors to Seattle’s Museum of Flight can use smartphones equipped with VR glasses to look into the interior of historic airplanes. (Credit: Microsoft via YouTube)

It’s not easy to crawl through the guts of a World War II bomber, but a new virtual reality project from Microsoft and Seattle’s Museum of Flight turns it into a snap on a screen.

The Aviation Pavilion Virtual Tour is actually a series of VR tours, highlighting interior views of planes ranging from the B-17F Flying Fortress and the B-29 Superfortress to Boeing’s 737 and 747 jets.

“For the first time, visitors – both on site as well as remotely – will be able to ‘step inside’ the cockpits and interiors of these carefully preserved artifacts through high-fidelity 360-degree virtual tours,” the museum says.

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Explorers map the Everest of shipwrecks

Andrea Doria bow
The heavily encrusted bow of the Andrea Doria is dimly visible in this image captured from OceanGate’s Cyclops 1 submersible. (Credit: OceanGate)

A crew of undersea explorers from Everett, Wash., has gotten the best look in decades at the Andrea Doria, an Italian ocean liner that sank 60 years ago off Nantucket.

The hard-to-reach shipwreck has been called the “Mount Everest of scuba diving.” But this Everest is crumbling more quickly than expected, the OceanGate crew reported.

OceanGate CEO Stockton Rush told reporters at a Monday news conference in Boston that the ship looks “dramatically different” from images captured during previous dives. More than a dozen sonar images reveal that a significant portion of the ship’s hull has decayed, 240 feet beneath the Alantic Ocean’s surface. A large section of the bow appears to have broken off.

“Imagine it as a collapsing cave,” the Boston Globe quoted Rush as saying. “Once the cave loses its basic structure, it deteriorates very quickly.”

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Boeing’s first 727 jet makes its last flight

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Fire trucks greet the Boeing 727 at Seattle’s Museum of Flight. (GeekWire photo by Alan Boyle)

The final flight of the first Boeing 727 prototype jet ever produced was one of the shortest trips it’s made in its 53-year history: a 15-minute jaunt from a restoration hangar at Everett’s Paine Field to Seattle’s Boeing Field and the Museum of Flight.

But in another sense, it took decades to make the journey.

The three-engine jet was used as a test prototype when Boeing started flying the 727s in 1963, and was delivered to United Airlines in 1964. The plane put in nearly 65,000 hours of service with United, and made more than 48,000 takeoffs and landings.

The three-engine jet made its last commercial voyage in 1991, and then United donated it to the Museum of Flight. At the time, the museum couldn’t accommodate the plane in Seattle, so it was put into storage in Everett. Some of its parts were scavenged for other planes.

For 25 years, a volunteer team toiled to raise money, acquire spare parts (mostly donated by FedEx) and refurbish the plane for one more flight. Once the plane was judged airworthy, the Federal Aviation Administration issued a special permit to clear the way for the March 2 flight under visual flight rules.

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Boeing puts out the call for memorabilia

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Boeing historian Mike Lombardi holds memorabilia from the company’s history. (Credit: Boeing)

Think of it as “Antiques Roadshow” for the aerospace set: The Boeing Co. is looking for historical artifacts and memorabilia that will help the company tell the story of its first 100 years in the Puget Sound region.

Your item could go on display at a centennial exhibit due to open at Seattle’s Museum of Flight in May.

“Check your attics, check your basement, check your trophy cases,” Mike Lombardi, Boeing’s corporate historian and archivist, said in a video about the effort. “Find all that Boeing memorabilia, those models, those photographs.”

The company is particularly interested in subjects such as the company’s role in the local community during World War II, the first flights and rollouts of Boeing airplanes, Seafair activities and the 1962 World’s Fair.

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