Two divers have discovered the wreckage of a Korean War-era Douglas A-1 Skyraider off the San Diego coastline, KSWB Fox 5 reported this week. Dennis Burns and Ruth Yu were exploring the shallow waters off Mission Beach when they found an airplane submerged about 60 feet deep. Its identification plate confirmed it was a Skyraider that had crash-landed in 1953. The aircraft was found with two cannons on each wing and hundreds of other objects scattered about the wreckage, the station reported.
The divers were also able to track down the family of the pilot, Charles Kelly, now deceased. They learned that he had survived the crash, was treated and released from the hospital and went back to duty that day. Yu told KSWB they’d like to turn the warbird into a museum piece, perhaps as an underwater exhibit, and are working with the San Diego Air & Space Museum to achieve that. The Skyraider was a single-seat, piston-powered attack aircraft produced from 1945 until the mid-1950s. U.S. military forces used it in the Korean and Vietnam wars.
