Lucky Find in Lake Washington

Processed Side scan sonar image of the PV4Y Privateer wreck

Side scan data image as seen during data collection

Today while testing our side scan sonar in Lake Washington we came across the wreck of an airplane, a 1956 PB4Y Privateer, that crashed in 155ft of water near the former site of the Naval Station Puget Sound (Magnuson Park). While we did know the general location of the wreck, we did not know the exact coordinates and were amazed by our luck of finding it on the first pass. The wreck appears to be mostly intact. This provides a great example of the impressive images that can be captured using side scan sonar. The upper image is what the data looks like after we process it. The lower image is what our screen looked like in real time as we were collecting the data. We are using a dual frequency side scan sonar so the upper half of the image shows the "high frequency" image collected with 500kHz sonar while the lower half of the image shows the "low frequency" image collected with 100kHz sonar.

Now that we know where the wreck is located I am looking forward to imaging it again on future tests of our sonar.