Expedition Features

From February 24-March 11, 2022, a team of researchers will explore the waters off Tinian and Saipan in the Northern Mariana Islands to locate and document U.S. warplanes lost during World War II. View Expedition Summary

The Benefits of Exploration: What Lies At the Intersection of Archaeology and Technology?

March 8, 2022

The surveys conducted during the Deepwater Surveys of World War II U.S. Cultural Assets in the Saipan Channel expedition will not only allow researchers to document and inventory the sites of lost submerged B-29 aircraft, but will also provide data for the potential discovery of additional archaeological sites, allow the stories of men who lost their lives to be remembered and shared, and advance deepwater archaeology from a technological/engineering perspective.

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The Key to the Central Pacific: The Capture and Strategic Development of the Mariana Islands by the United States in World War II

March 4, 2022

Once captured from the Japanese, the airfields of Saipan, Tinian, and Guam became launch sites for hundreds of U.S. combat sorties featuring thousands of Boeing B-29 Superfortresses on long-range bombing missions against Japan. During the Deepwater Surveys of World War II U.S. Cultural Assets in the Saipan Channel expedition, scientists, archaeologists, and historians are hoping to find the wreckage sites of some of these planes that were lost in operational accidents shortly after takeoff from Saipan and Tinian.

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Expedition Overview

February 24, 2022

From February 24-March 11, 2022, a team of researchers from Scripps Institution of Oceanography, the University of Delaware, and Project Recover explored the waters off Tinian and Saipan in the Northern Mariana Islands in hopes of locating and documenting U.S. warplanes lost during World War II.

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