The B-24 That Never Made It Home: A Deep Dive

A famous WW2 bomber that almost made it home, an extraordinary act of heroism, and a pilot whose remains were found more than 70 years later. Join me as I dive the wreck of the **B24 Liberator Tulsamerican**, lying off the beautiful island of Vis in Croatia. Tulsamerican was the last B24 built at the Douglas factory in Tulsa, Oklahoma. On 17 December 1944, she was badly damaged by German fighters and desperately tried to reach the emergency Allied airfield on Vis. She almost made it. The aircraft crashed into the Adriatic, breaking apart on impact. Seven of the ten crew survived, but three were killed, including 21 year old pilot Eugene Ford. One survivor, **Edward Steelandt**, escaped the sinking bomber before going back inside to rescue a wounded crewman, an act of courage for which he received the Soldier's Medal. In this video, I'll take you around this remarkable aircraft wreck, including: ✈️ The detached nose turret with its twin .50 calibre machine guns ✈️ The separated tail section at around 50 metres ✈️ The enormous inverted wings, four engines and remains of the cockpit ✈️ The area where Eugene Ford's remains were discovered in 2017 ✈️ Incredible artefacts still surviving on the seabed I first dived Tulsamerican in February 2017, before the recovery operation later that year. Returning to the wreck knowing what was subsequently discovered made this a particularly special dive. **DIVING WITH MANTA DIVING** I'm diving with my great friend **Andi Marovic from Manta Diving**, based on the island of Vis. Andi is a superb diver who knows these wrecks incredibly well, and I cannot recommend him and his team highly enough. If you're interested in wreck diving in Croatia, Vis really should be on your list. Manta Diving: https://mantadiving.center/ **THE DIVE** Location: Vis, Croatia Wreck: B24 Liberator Tulsamerican Depth: Approximately 40 to 50 metres Rebreather: AP Inspiration CCR Scooter: Seacraft GO Dive gas: Trimix 16/48 And make sure you watch the decompression at the end. I had a rather special surprise from my two sons! ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ **CHAPTERS** 00:00 The extraordinary story of Tulsamerican 01:12 Diving Vis with Manta Diving 02:13 The final mission and emergency airfield 03:38 Dive equipment and the Seacraft GO 05:04 The detached nose turret 05:29 Why Tulsamerican crashed 06:54 Exploring the separated tail 07:21 Edward Steelandt's heroic rescue 12:45 The ball turret and surviving equipment 15:06 Exploring the deeper wreckage 17:58 Why Tulsamerican was famous 19:18 Protecting the wreck 21:26 The main aircraft and cockpit 23:32 Finding Eugene Ford after 73 years 26:30 Exploring the cockpit and engines 33:00 The engines and turbosuperchargers 34:58 Leaving the wreck and decompression 37:21 A very special family moment 39:20 Final thoughts ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ *ABOUT THIS CHANNEL* Deep Wreck Diver explores shipwrecks, submarines, and sunken aircraft from around the world - combining technical diving with detailed wreck identification and historical storytelling. Every dive uncovers a piece of history lost to the depths. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ *Kit I Use* Note, some of these are affiliate links so help support making my videos: - Gloves are Ansell Alphatec 87-063 - https://amzn.to/4jDHhX4 - Main torch is an Orcatorch D630 - https://amzn.to/4jlT4tA - Backup torch is an Orcatorch D710 - https://amzn.to/4jhddRk - Drysuit is an O-Three Ri200 - https://www.othree.co.uk/drysuit-range/ri-2-100-drysuit/ - CCR is an AP Diving Inspiration (XPD) - https://www.apdiving.com/ - Backup computer is a Shearwater Perdix v2 - https://amzn.to/42FXZOW - Reels are by Kent Tooling - https://www.divingproducts.co.uk/ - Cameras are Paralenz Vaquita - Video light is NiteScuba NSV60 - NiteScuba NSV60 - https://s.click.aliexpress.com/e/_onHEKQZ - Phone housing is Divevolk Seatouch 4 Max - https://s.click.aliexpress.com/e/_omJlNKL - Stickers for gear by Dive Signs - https://www.divesigns.com/ ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ *Strobes* I use two different strobes (also affiliate links) -- Prozhaozhu 3000 Lumen Diving Strobe - https://s.click.aliexpress.com/e/_c3Qb99tF -- Prozhaozhu 4000 Lumen Diving Strobe - https://s.click.aliexpress.com/e/_c3KmWqCN - Jon clip - https://s.click.aliexpress.com/e/_oDqq0RW ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ 📱Follow My Socials! Instagram 👉 https://www.instagram.com/deepwreckdiver/ Facebook 👉 https://www.fb.com/DeepWreckDiver Buy Me A Coffee 👉 https://buymeacoffee.com/d33puk Email 👉 [email protected] #Tulsamerican #WreckDiving #B24Liberator