Over 5,100 Sunken Aircraft Litter the Seafloor Worldwide
As an avid gamer and virtual explorer of fantastical worlds, few realms intrigue me more than the hidden lands lying beneath the waves that cover most of our planet. With over 152 million square kilometers of seafloor carpeted in shipwrecks, debris fields, and entire cities swallowed by the sea, Earth‘s oceans are the final resting place for countless artifacts that reveal our history.
And soaring silently amongst these deep sea ruins lies one object that ignites imaginings of high-stakes adventures, intrepid heroes, and strange new worlds: aircraft.
When Did Our Oceans Become Home to So Many Sunken Planes?
As long as we‘ve been slipping the surly bonds of Earth to take to the skies, we‘ve also been crashing back down to the seas that cover over 70% of the globe. From pioneer aviators testing new flying machines to globe-spanning passenger jets that can cross oceans in mere hours, watery endings have claimed all kinds of aircraft.
The infographic below charts highlights in the history of aviation water landings, crashes, and disappearances that have left over 5,100 sunken plane wrecks littering the seafloor as of 2023:
What‘s stunning when visualizing all these watery crashes on a timeline is both the rapidity and the variety of downed aircraft accumulating on the seafloor in little over a century of flight. From B-29 bombers and Hellcat fighters to Airbus A330s and Boeing‘s new 787 Dreamliner, almost every plane humans have ever flown also decorate the silent darkness of the abyss.
And sometimes in enormous crashes that rival anything designed for theaters of war.
Epic Aircraft Graveyards Under the Sea
Every gamer loves discovering hidden treasure troves and entire lost cities swallowed by disaster and time. And scattered across Earth‘s oceans lie aircraft wreck sites epic and eerie enough to fire any adventurer‘s imagination.
Truk Lagoon: Dubbed "the biggest graveyard of ships and planes anywhere in the world," this South Pacific lagoon is home to over 60 WWII aircraft and 200 sunken vessels. This Ghost Fleet has inspired my own dreams of scuba diving through time capsules of artifact-strewn bomber and fighter wrecks colonized by coral and schools of tropical fish.
Pacific Ocean Floor: When new sonar surveys mapped over 500 previously unknown ship and plane wrecks peppering a vast region of the South Pacific, I felt like I‘d discovered a bonus dungeon world! With advanced underwater drones just starting to probe this huge debris field, who knows what otherworldly ruined aircraft or battle remnants will be uncovered on the abyssal plain?
Atlantic‘s "Bermuda Triangle": The folklore of vanished ships and planes in this region has sparked adventures in everything from National Treasure to Scooby Doo. And the 1991 loss of Challenger Shuttle STS-35 shows that the Atlantic has accumulated some uniquely rare wrecks. Maybe I‘ll be the gamer to finally solve the Triangle‘s secrets after my submersible locates Amelia Earhart‘s Lockheed Electra!
From the sunken aerial armadas of WWII to remote plunge sites of experimental aircraft, so many real underwater worlds exist to explore across every ocean that I may never need to create fantasy realms again! Except perhaps to envision future virtual tours that bring anyone into these elusive wreck sites.
My Vision: VR Time Capsule Tours of Our Ocean‘s Sunken History
As gaming tech gives us ever more immersive access to digital domains, we now have the tools to preserve and share discoveries from our authentic sunken histories in exciting new ways. Through detailed 3D sonar scans, photogrammetry models, and interactive maps, today‘s underwater wreck mappers are digitizing planes, ships, and structures lost beneath the waves with incredible resolution.
What if explorers then imported these underwater 3D assets into game engines or VR platforms to let ANYONE virtually dive through these fully mapped wreck sites?
We could swim inside downed aircraft broken open by the crushing pressure yet perfectly preserved across decades in the darkness. Peer out their algae-filmed windows to gaze over an alien seafloor wasteland landscape. Study radar scopes and cockpit controls not seen operational in 70 years.
Imagine a whole series of underwater VR tours taking gamers and history buffs through these aircraft boneyards, wreck debris fields, even a tour based on the Titanic complete with optional historical costumes! Aviation museums could showcase meticulously scanned wreck interiors without salvaging artifacts. We can open a portal to these hidden worlds for all who share our passion.
Who‘s ready to virtually dive through a sunken history many never knew lurked far below the waves?! Suit up…🤿
