Quite the Catch

There's a tail, but it ain't a fish.

A San Diego area fisherman made the surprise discovery of his life on his fish finder recently, and it wasn't a sea creature.

Duane Johnson was out on his boat on Lower Otay Reservoir searching for fish when he noticed a strange object on his fish finder.

"We saw what looked like a two by four or something... something wasn't right," Johnson said. "As I'm looking at the picture more I see a tail on it."

Johnson said he went over it about three times, each time at a different angle, just to see if it was the same each time.

“Sometimes on those fish finders you go over things and it looks different,” he said. "My first thought was maybe it was a remote control airplane or something."

He saw the wings and then the fuselage and then went over it from a different angle and he could actually see a whole airplane.

"I went to one of the lake staff and told them that they had an airplane in the water and they didn't believe me," Johnson said.

Johnson sent photos of the plane to the FAA and they started an investigation. It turns out that the plane he found was an SB2C-4 Helldiver. In May of 1945 the plane was out on a practice mission and made an emergency landing in the lake. The crewmembers survived the landing, but the Navy never recovered the plane.

"It was 100 percent luck that we happened to be going over that spot," Johnson said. “ I'm glad I found it, I'm glad I was the one."

Navy divers will head down 85 feet to inspect the plane on Thursday to see whether it's worth salvaging. If restored, the plane could end up in a museum.

One of the pilots that survived the emergency landing is believed to be 90-years-old and living in Michigan.

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