30/08/2026
One of the most fascinating aircraft wrecks I have ever dived is the B24 Liberator Tulsamerican. Yesterday I had the opportunity to dive it again.
Tulsamerican was the final B24 built at the Douglas factory in Tulsa, Oklahoma. The people who built her bought war bonds to help fund the aircraft and even signed their names and messages on the fuselage before she left for Europe.
On 17 December 1944, Tulsamerican was leading a formation attacking oil facilities at Odertal when the bombers were hit by German fighters.
Three of the six aircraft were shot down and the other three, including Tulsamerican, were badly damaged.
Her crew tried desperately to get the crippled bomber back to the emergency Allied airfield on Vis, in what is now Croatia
They almost made it.
With power failing, Tulsamerican ditched in the Adriatic just off the island. Notoriously poor at ditching, only seven of the ten crew survived.
In 2017, a team involving the US Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency, Croatian Navy, archaeologists and technical divers carried out a detailed excavation of the wreck in an attempt to recover the missing crew.
Human remains were found and DNA analysis eventually identified some of those remains as the aircraft's 21 year old pilot, 1st Lt Eugene P. Ford.
More than 73 years after Tulsamerican went down, he had finally been found.
Ford was subsequently returned to the United States and buried with full military honours at Arlington National Cemetery.
The other two missing crewmen, 1st Lt Russell C. Landry and Tech Sgt Charles E. Priest, remain unaccounted for.
I had dived Tulsamerican before the major recovery operation took place. Diving the wreck again, knowing that story, and remembering what the site was like when I first saw it before the recovery work, gives this dive a very different significance.
The main wreck lies at around 40 metres, with the separated tail deeper at around 52 metres. The huge wings, engines, undercarriage and remains of the fuselage make it an incredible aircraft wreck to explore.
But Tulsamerican is much more than an aircraft on the seabed.
It is the story of the people who built her, the ten men who flew her, the seven who came home, and the three who didn't.
An extraordinary dive in stunning conditions.
Awesome photo by Manta Diving by Andi Marovic
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