After 60 years, the search for a missing plane in Lake Superior remains fruitless
Experts searching for plane wreckage in Michigan's Lake Superior turned up found logs and rocks on the bottom but no debris from an aircraft that crashed nearly 60 years ago carrying three people on a scientific assignment.
A team from Michigan Technological University returned last week by boat to get closer to 16 targets that appeared on sonar last fall, more than 200 feet (61 meters) below the surface of the vast lake. The crew used side-scan sonar and other remote technology.
'We did not locate any sign of the wreckage of the missing aircraft,' said Travis White, a research engineer at the Great Lakes Research Center at Michigan Tech. 'However, we did validate our technical approach, as we found physical objects in each target location.'
The Beechcraft plane carrying pilot Robert Carew, co-pilot Gordon Jones and graduate student Velayudh Krishna Menon left Madison, Wisconsin, for Lake Superior on Oct. 23, 1968. They were collecting data on temperature and other lake conditions for the National Center for Atmospheric Research.
Seat cushions and pieces of stray metal have washed ashore over the years along the Keweenaw Peninsula. But the wreckage and the remains of the men have never been found.
'We're probably not going to find a fully intact airplane,' said Wayne Lusardi, state maritime archaeologist.
An autonomous vessel was launched last September, recording sonar readings and other data. After studying those findings over the winter, White, Lusardi and others returned to Lake Superior.
'Unfortunately, the targets turned out to be mostly natural: large sunken trees, logs, rocks,' White said by email.
Metal cans on the lake bottom, believed to be 75 years old, give 'hope that the plane wreckage may be reasonably well-preserved and not buried,' he said.
White said the next challenge will be how to continue the work.
'We may attempt a crowdfunding model to see if we can raise some funds for future mapping activities that could help us locate the plane or other historic wrecks,' he said.
The initial search last fall was organized by the Smart Ships Coalition, a group of more than 60 universities, government agencies, companies and international organizations interested in maritime autonomous technologies.
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Toronto Star
03-06-2025
- Toronto Star
After 60 years, the search for a missing plane in Lake Superior remains fruitless
Experts searching for plane wreckage in Michigan's Lake Superior turned up found logs and rocks on the bottom but no debris from an aircraft that crashed nearly 60 years ago carrying three people on a scientific assignment. A team from Michigan Technological University returned last week by boat to get closer to 16 targets that appeared on sonar last fall, more than 200 feet (61 meters) below the surface of the vast lake. The crew used side-scan sonar and other remote technology. 'We did not locate any sign of the wreckage of the missing aircraft,' said Travis White, a research engineer at the Great Lakes Research Center at Michigan Tech. 'However, we did validate our technical approach, as we found physical objects in each target location.' ARTICLE CONTINUES BELOW The Beechcraft plane carrying pilot Robert Carew, co-pilot Gordon Jones and graduate student Velayudh Krishna Menon left Madison, Wisconsin, for Lake Superior on Oct. 23, 1968. They were collecting data on temperature and other lake conditions for the National Center for Atmospheric Research. Seat cushions and pieces of stray metal have washed ashore over the years along the Keweenaw Peninsula. But the wreckage and the remains of the men have never been found. 'We're probably not going to find a fully intact airplane,' said Wayne Lusardi, state maritime archaeologist. An autonomous vessel was launched last September, recording sonar readings and other data. After studying those findings over the winter, White, Lusardi and others returned to Lake Superior. 'Unfortunately, the targets turned out to be mostly natural: large sunken trees, logs, rocks,' White said by email. Metal cans on the lake bottom, believed to be 75 years old, give 'hope that the plane wreckage may be reasonably well-preserved and not buried,' he said. ARTICLE CONTINUES BELOW ARTICLE CONTINUES BELOW White said the next challenge will be how to continue the work. 'We may attempt a crowdfunding model to see if we can raise some funds for future mapping activities that could help us locate the plane or other historic wrecks,' he said. The initial search last fall was organized by the Smart Ships Coalition, a group of more than 60 universities, government agencies, companies and international organizations interested in maritime autonomous technologies.
Winnipeg Free Press
03-06-2025
- Winnipeg Free Press
After 60 years, the search for a missing plane in Lake Superior remains fruitless
Experts searching for plane wreckage in Michigan's Lake Superior turned up found logs and rocks on the bottom but no debris from an aircraft that crashed nearly 60 years ago carrying three people on a scientific assignment. A team from Michigan Technological University returned last week by boat to get closer to 16 targets that appeared on sonar last fall, more than 200 feet (61 meters) below the surface of the vast lake. The crew used side-scan sonar and other remote technology. 'We did not locate any sign of the wreckage of the missing aircraft,' said Travis White, a research engineer at the Great Lakes Research Center at Michigan Tech. 'However, we did validate our technical approach, as we found physical objects in each target location.' The Beechcraft plane carrying pilot Robert Carew, co-pilot Gordon Jones and graduate student Velayudh Krishna Menon left Madison, Wisconsin, for Lake Superior on Oct. 23, 1968. They were collecting data on temperature and other lake conditions for the National Center for Atmospheric Research. Seat cushions and pieces of stray metal have washed ashore over the years along the Keweenaw Peninsula. But the wreckage and the remains of the men have never been found. 'We're probably not going to find a fully intact airplane,' said Wayne Lusardi, state maritime archaeologist. An autonomous vessel was launched last September, recording sonar readings and other data. After studying those findings over the winter, White, Lusardi and others returned to Lake Superior. 'Unfortunately, the targets turned out to be mostly natural: large sunken trees, logs, rocks,' White said by email. Metal cans on the lake bottom, believed to be 75 years old, give 'hope that the plane wreckage may be reasonably well-preserved and not buried,' he said. White said the next challenge will be how to continue the work. 'We may attempt a crowdfunding model to see if we can raise some funds for future mapping activities that could help us locate the plane or other historic wrecks,' he said. The initial search last fall was organized by the Smart Ships Coalition, a group of more than 60 universities, government agencies, companies and international organizations interested in maritime autonomous technologies.
Winnipeg Free Press
10-05-2025
- Winnipeg Free Press
Is the Southern accent fixin' to disappear in parts of the US South?
Growing up in Atlanta in the 1940s and 1950s, Susan Levine's visits to New York City relatives included being the star of an impromptu novelty show: Her cousin invited over friends and charged 25 cents a pop for them to listen to Levine's Southern accent. Even though they too grew up in Atlanta, Levine's two sons, born more than a quarter century after her, never spoke with the accent that is perhaps the most famous regional dialect in the United States, with its elongated vowels and soft 'r' sounds. 'My accent is nonexistent,' said Ira Levine, her oldest son. 'People I work with, and even in school, people didn't believe I was from Atlanta.' The Southern accent, which has many variations, is fading in some areas of the South as people migrate to the region from other parts of the U.S. and around the world. A series of research papers published in December documented the diminishment of the regional accent among Black residents of the Atlanta area, white working-class people in the New Orleans area and people who grew up in Raleigh, North Carolina. More than 5.8 million people have moved into the U.S. South so far in the 2020s, more than four times the combined total of the nation's three other regions. Linguists don't believe mass media has played a significant role in the language change, which tends to start in urban areas and radiate out to more rural places. Late 20th century migration surge affects accents The classical white Southern accent in the Atlanta area and other parts of the urban South peaked with baby boomers born between 1946 and 1964 and then dropped off with Gen Xers born between 1965 and 1980 and subsequent generations, in large part because of the tremendous in-migration of people in the second half of the 20th century. It has been replaced among the youngest speakers in the 21st century with a dialect that was first noticed in California in the late 1980s, according to recent research from linguists at the University of Georgia, Georgia Tech and Brigham Young University. That dialect, which also was detected in Canada, has become a pan-regional accent as it has spread to other parts of the U.S., including Boston, New York and Michigan, contributing to the diminishment of their regional accents. In Raleigh, North Carolina, the trigger point in the decline of the Southern accent was the opening in 1959 of the Research Triangle Park, a sprawling complex of research and technology firms that attracted tens of thousands of highly educated workers from outside the South. White residents born after 1979, a generation after the Research Triangle's establishment, typically don't talk with a Southern accent, linguist Sean Lundergan wrote in a paper published in December. Often, outsiders wrongly associate a Southern accent with a lack of education, and some younger people may be trying to distance themselves from that stereotype. 'Young people today, especially the educated young people, they don't want to sound too much like they are from a specific hometown,' said Georgia Tech linguist Lelia Glass, who co-wrote the Atlanta study. 'They want to sound more kind of, nonlocal and geographically mobile.' Accents change for younger people The Southern dialect among Black people in Atlanta has dropped off in recent decades mainly because of an influx of African Americans from northern U.S. cities in what has been described as the 'Reverse Great Migration.' During the Great Migration, from roughly 1910 to 1970, African Americans from the South moved to cities in the North like New York, Detroit and Chicago. Their grandchildren and great-grandchildren have moved back South in large numbers to places like Atlanta during the late 20th and early 21st centuries and are more likely to be college-educated. Researchers found Southern accents among African Americans dropped off with Gen Z, or those born between 1997 and 2012, according to a study published in December. The same researchers previously studied Southern accents among white people in Atlanta. Michelle and Richard Beck, Gen Xers living in the Atlanta area, have Southern accents, but it's missing in their two sons born in 1998 and 2001. 'I think they speak clearer than I do,' Richard Beck, a law enforcement officer, said of his sons. 'They don't sound as country as I do when it comes to the Southern drawl.' New Orleans 'yat' accent diminished Unlike other accents that have changed because of an influx of new residents, the distinctive, white working-class 'yat' accent of New Orleans has declined as many locals left following the devastating Hurricane Katrina in 2005. The accent is distinct from other regional accents in the South and often described as sounding as much like Brooklynese as Southern. The hurricane was a 'catastrophic' language change event for New Orleans since it displaced around a quarter million residents in the first year after the storm and brought in tens of thousands of outsiders in the following decade. The diminishment of the 'yat' accent is most noticeable in millennials, who were adolescents when Katrina hit, since they were exposed to other ways of speaking during a key time for linguistic development, Virginia Tech sociolinguist Katie Carmichael said in a paper published in December. Cheryl Wilson Lanier, a 64-year-old who grew up in Chalmette, Louisiana, one of the New Orleans suburbs where the accent was most prevalent, worries that part of the region's uniqueness will be lost if the accent disappears. 'It's kind of like we're losing our distinct personality,' she said. Southern identity changing Winnipeg Jets Game Days On Winnipeg Jets game days, hockey writers Mike McIntyre and Ken Wiebe send news, notes and quotes from the morning skate, as well as injury updates and lineup decisions. Arrives a few hours prior to puck drop. While it is diminishing in many urban areas, the Southern accent is unlikely to disappear completely because 'accents are an incredibly straightforward way of showing other people something about ourselves,' said University of Georgia linguist Margaret Renwick, one of the authors of the Atlanta studies. It may instead reflect a change in how younger speakers view Southern identity, with a regional accent not as closely associated with what is considered Southern as in previous generations, and linguistic boundaries less important than other factors, she said. 'So young people in the Atlanta area or Raleigh area have a different vision of what life is in the South,' Renwick said. 'And it's not the same as the one that their parents or grandparents grew up with.' ___ Follow Mike Schneider on the social platform Bluesky: @
