CHICK HUETEL: The WWII airplane mystery of Choctawhatchee Bay

Recently, I reported the discovery by the Hoey family of the missing boiler that could have been part of a long-ago bay steamboat. Many have searched but the Hoey’s made a plan and found the site!

But bad weather and murky water made it difficult to search, and their vacation time was up. So we still are unsure what lies around the boiler, if anything. To read the story of the shipwreck, click here.

In the 1960s, shrimp boats were happily harvesting their bounty from our bay with drags going back and forth. Today, we are just lucky to see them pass back and forth to other shrimp grounds around the Gulf Coast. Some old timers say that the golf course fertilizer run-offs are ruining the bay along with farm fertilizer coming downstream from the bay rivers.  Others say the cheap shrimp imports have led to fewer boats and shrimpers.

One area that was dragged was just off Four Mile Point, which is located at the northern tip end of the Sandestin area on Choctawhatchcee Bay. There is a lighted and numbered inter-coastal  mile  marker about 500 feet off the point. However, that is only a reference and does not designate any discovery location.

Most of the long-timers recall an incident back in the early ’60s when a shrimp boat got its net tangled in something so heavy in that area that it almost destroyed the gear when trying to raise the drag net. The object was bent and twisted when it came above the water … it was an enormous airplane propeller!  It was believed the boat captain dragged it near shore so his crew could unwrap the net from the barnacle-encrusted prop.

The question is where is the propeller now?  Even more intriguing … is there a plane under the water somewhere?  Since this area is where pilots trained in WWII, is there a vintage aircraft in the area or have shrimp drags all but scatted the fuselage? That seems unlikely and if a plane did crash in the area was it raised? Maybe someday someone will find the prop, and we’ll know what kind of plane crashed into the bay.

I received many calls after last week’s article came out and I hope others will find if there is any ship wreckage at the boiler site. If there is none, then the huge boiler was simply abandoned and left underwater.  But why would aged bay charts show the “fishbone” wreck map symbol of a sunken boat?  

The Hoeys were kind enough to give the GPS coordinates of their find —  N3025.407 and W8619.344.

My friend Buz Livingston also said numerous bay boats hauled extremely volatile resin and many burned and sank. That’s true as we know of the sinking of “Old Bell,” which caught fire and made the plunge. We have resin from that underwater site at the Coastal Heritage Preservation display at the Coastal Branch Library.

Fair winds to ye matey!

Chick Huettel is a longtime Walton County resident, writer and artist. He is a member of a number of local organizations including the Emerald Coast Archeological Society.