Lost for decades, found at last: two discoveries off Californian coast have very different backstories

In a dramatic underwater discovery off the Southern California coast, a team of U.S. researchers has located the sunken remains of two military vessels—each with its own story lost to time.

One is a U.S. Navy bomber that crash-landed in 1950. The other: a submarine lost over a century ago in a deadly training accident. Both were found near San Diego, submerged and nearly forgotten—until now.

A tragic submarine collision revisited in high definition

The first relic, the USS F-1, sank in 1917 after colliding with another Navy submarine during a training exercise. Nineteen crew members were killed. Only three survived—rescued by the very vessel that struck them.

Though the wreck was originally located in 1970, this year’s expedition marked the first time it’s been filmed in high-resolution detail. Using advanced technology—including the manned submersible Alvin and the autonomous underwater vehicle Sentry—researchers descended over 1,300 feet to capture stunning new visuals of the wreck.

“These two important oceanographic tools work extremely well together,” said Bruce Strickrott, director of the Alvin group at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI), in an interview with Live Science.

The USS F-1: lost in the fog, doomed by a deadly mistake

According to Bradley Krueger, an underwater archaeologist with the U.S. Navy’s History and Heritage Command, the USS F-1 was in the middle of a 48-hour engineering and performance test when tragedy struck.

Three submarines—USS F-1, F-2, and F-3—were operating in formation between San Pedro and San Diego when they entered a dense fog bank. In the low visibility, USS F-3 accidentally rammed the F-1.

“Following the collision USS F-3 remained on scene to help rescue survivors from the water,” Krueger explained.

The devastating incident marked one of the U.S. Navy’s earliest submarine disasters and remains a solemn chapter in its maritime history.

The ‘lucky’ bomber that lived to tell the tale—barely

In the same area, researchers also located a Grumman TBF Avenger—a torpedo bomber used by the U.S. Navy during and after World War II. The aircraft crashed in 1950, but unlike many wrecks of its kind, this one was found “remarkably intact.”

What truly captured the team’s attention, however, was a detail etched onto the engine nacelle: the number 13.

At first glance, it seemed to be a symbol of superstition—especially eerie given the aircraft’s fate. But experts later clarified that the number referred to the plane’s training squadron, not a premonition of bad luck.

Crucially, the mission revealed that the entire flight crew survived the crash, an extraordinary outcome that stands in stark contrast to the fate of the submarine’s crew decades earlier.

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