Search for missing airliner finds lost shipwrecks after author Clive Cussler and TV producer Josh Gates show interest

By James Heinz

Years ago an airliner with its crew and passengers went missing. A massive air, sea, and underwater search failed to find the aircraft but did by chance discover long-missing shipwrecks. For years people have speculated about the missing aircraft, even invoking UFOs to explain its disappearance. It is a story familiar to all of us.

Just like Malaysian Airlines Flight 370.

Wikipedia reports that on the night of June 23, 1950, Northwest Orient Airlines Flight 2501 was on a course from New York to Seattle with a scheduled stop in Minneapolis. The plane was a Douglas DC-4, which had four Pratt and Whitney engines each driving a 13 foot propellor. It was 93 feet long with a wingspan of 117.5 feet. It had a cruising speed of two hundred twenty-seven miles and a range of 3,300 miles. 

The book Fatal Crossing by Valerie Van Heest tells us that on this night a crew of three was transporting fifty-five passengers — twenty-seven women, twenty-two men, and six children. At 10:49 p.m., Eastern time, Cleveland control reported a thunder storm causing turbulence over Lake Michigan. At 11:51 the flight radioed that it was over Battle Creek, Michigan, and expected to reach Milwaukee at 11:37 p.m., Central time.

After that, nothing more was heard from the aircraft.

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The plane was declared missing at 5:30 a.m. on June 24. An extensive search revealed an oil slick and debris scattered over a wide area. Many body parts were found but then they seemed to have disappear from the record. The flight was declared lost with all aboard somewhere between Benton Harbor, Michigan, and Milwaukee. It was the deadliest commercial aircraft accident in American history up to that time.

Little was heard about the missing flight for more than fifty years — until Clive Cussler came along.

In 2004 the Michigan Shipwreck Research Association partnered with Cussler, the well known author of adventure novels, to try and locate the missing airliner. Cussler had founded the nonprofit National Underwater Marine Agency for the purpose of locating historic shipwrecks. Each spring from 2004 to 2013 MSRA and NUMA conducted a month-long side scan sonar search of Lake Michigan, and also separate searches with Great Lakes wreck hunter Dave Trotter. MSRA resumed searching from 2015 to 2020. They didn’t find the missing airliner, but many long-lost shipwrecks were found.

Just like Malaysian Airlines Flight 370.

Eleven shipwrecks were found. Here is the story of three of them, taken from the research association website and the files of the underwater marine agency.

The car ferry ANN ARBOR No. 5 was launched in 1910 in Toledo, Ohio. At 360 feet long and 56 feet wide, she was the largest car ferry on the Great Lakes. She was the first to be fitted with a sea gate, a barrier over the ship’s open stern that could be raised to allow car loading and lowered to prevent water from entering the car deck. Her four boilers and two triple expansion engines generated 3,000 horsepower.

In 1966 she was sold to a construction firm that cut her down to be used as a temporary offshore breakwater during the building of a nuclear power plant near South Haven, Michigan. She broke up during the winter storms of 1969-1970 and was scrapped and disappeared from history.

Until MSRA and NUMA found her in May 2005 while searching for Flight 2501.

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She may be the strangest shipwreck in the Great Lakes. The ship is stuck bow first into the bottom of the lake at a depth of one hundred sixty-three feet. The stern with its propellors rises at a thirty degree angle to a depth of one-hundred twenty-five feet, looking somewhat like an enormous lawn dart stuck in the bottom. Much of the bow is buried beneath the lake floor, with about one hundred feet of hull exposed.

So how did a supposedly scrapped ship come back into existence? MSRA research found that the bow section of the ship was “clamshelled” for scrap and the stern section was being towed when it began to sink. The son of the construction company was plucked by crane from the hulk seconds before the stern rose up and slid into the depths, impaling itself in the bottom like a thrown spear. Tug crews towing the hulk said they could hear the sound of its impact with the bottom.

In 2009 the Michigan Shipwreck Research Association and National Underwater Marine Agency found three shipwrecks while searching for Flight 2501. One of them was the HATTIE WELLS. She was a 291 gross ton, three masted schooner launched in 1867 with a length of 135 feet and a beam of 26 feet. In her first five years of life she was involved in five collisions with various objects. In 1885 she was lengthened to 164 feet. In 1892 lightning struck her foremast and killed a sailor. In 1892 she was wrecked off Point Pelee, the southern most point of mainland Canada that extends into Lake Erie. Although described as “going to pieces,” she was refloated in 1892.

On November 6, 1912, the HATTIE WELLS was towed out of Muskegon, carrying a load of lumber, by the tug JAMES H. MARTIN. The gales of November came early that year. By nightfall heavy seas had carried away the deck cargo and deckhouse and rendered the donkey engine and pumps inoperative. As the schooner was sinking, the tow rope was cut and the tug tried to effect a rescue.

The heavy seas pushed the tug against the barge. One man jumped aboard the tug. A line was passed but the ships separated. Five schooner men pulled themselves hand over hand through the freezing, mountainous waves to the tug. Two teenage stewardesses on the tug were noted to be braver than the men of the crew, insisting that the tug try to rescue the schooner crew and remained on deck to cheer them on as they were pelted with cold lake water.

The HATTIE WELLS lies at an undisclosed depth eighteen miles off St. Joseph, Michigan. The hull is largely intact but the decking is gone except at the bow and stern.

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The most historically significant shipwreck found during the search for Flight 2501 was the steamer HENNEPIN. She was found in 2006 as a “splotch” on a roll of side scan sonar paper recorded by legendary Great Lakes wreck finder Dave Trotter, who had been working with the Michigan Shipwreck Research Association since the late 1990s. Just what the smear was could not be determined until the association’s technical divers descended to two hundred thirty feet to find a largely intact shipwreck.

The HENNEPIN was launched in 1885 by Milwaukee’s Wolf and Davidson shipyard. At 214 feet long and 1,372 gross tons, she was equipped with an engine salvaged from a shipwreck. In 1901 she caught fire which assured her place in the history of the Lakes.

As the MSRA website states: “Simply put, the Hennepin is one of the most significant vessels ever to sail the Great Lakes for one indisputable reason: her 1902 conversion provided the model upon which virtually all future self-unloading bulk vessels, on both fresh and salt water, would be based. Inclined walls within the hold dispensed cargo onto conveyors below deck which ran the length of the ship. The conveyors moved the cargo into a hopper where it was transferred to an inclined conveyor, up to the conveyor boom on deck, which swung over to deposit the bulk material on land. What made this advancement completely unique was that the ship would no longer require massive shore infrastructure at major harbors to unload its’ cargo. The Hennepin could discharge its stone not only in a small harbor, but along a river, into a construction caisson, or into trucks, something not possible before this development.”

On August 18, 1927, the tug LOTUS towed the HENNEPIN out of Chicago as a barge. Barge officers were mariners who had lost their licenses and the engineer apparently did not clean the pump filters. At 10:30 a.m. the ship was taking on water. By 2:30 p.m. she was sinking. The captain blew the whistle to alert the tug. She sank eighteen miles southwest of South Haven, Michigan. The crew got off in a lifeboat and rowed to the tug. Although the captain would blame a storm for her loss, records show that Lake Michigan was calm with a light breeze. It was just the sort of thing someone who had lost their license might say.

At that time, the HENNEPIN was hauling fill to build Chicago’s lakefront. “Much of the gravel hauled to Chicago on the Hennepin was used as fill, becoming the bed for the Outer Drive, Field Museum, Shedd Aquarium, and Adler Planetarium,” according to MSRA .

Today, as the Michigan Shipwreck Research Association website states, “This historic shipwreck with its ground-breaking equipment is currently on exhibit 230′ beneath Lake Michigan in an extraordinary underwater maritime museum where it serves as a reminder of the roots of an industry still flourishing after more than a century.”

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As the Gordon Lightfoot song says, all of these ships are on display “in the rooms of an ice water mansion.”

Well known in Great Lakes shipwreck circles, the search for 2501 was not known nationally, until Josh Gates came along.

The ongoing search for the missing airliner came to the attention of Gates, host of the Discovery Channel’s “Expedition Unknown.” He went to Michigan and with the MSRA filmed an episode about the search titled “Searching for America’s Lost Flight,” which aired February 12, 2020.

That Flight 2501 was not found is not surprising. Witnesses claim they saw a flash of light over the lake on the night it disappeared, raising speculation that the plane had broken up in flight. The MSRA website lists eight other missing aircraft in the same area dating back to the 1930s. Two pioneering 19th century balloonists went missing in the area and have never been located either.

Michigan Shipwreck Research Association did locate the body parts.

In 2008 and 2015 MSRA members and others discovered two unmarked mass graves in cemeteries in St. Joseph and Grand Haven with the recovered body parts of people on Flight 2501. Donated markers were installed and memorial services held.

The final resting places of victims of Flight 2501 were finally known.

Unlike Malaysian Airlines Flight 370.

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Photo at top of page:
Northwest Orient Airlines Flight 2501 disappeared with its crew and passengers the night of June 23, 1950. The DC-4 propliner was enroute from New York City to Seattle when it vanished over Lake Michigan. It was carrying fifty-five passengers and three crew members, a loss of life that made it the deadliest commercial airline accident in the United States at the time. Photo Credit: Wikipedia

More photos:
Ann Arbor No. 5,  car ferry
Hennepin steamer, launched 1885
Hennepin, unloading stone
Hattie Wells, schooner

Reading resources:
Michigan Shipwrecks
National Underwater Marine Agency
Wikipedia