OSWEGO, N.Y. — Underwater explorers say they’ve found the wreck of a US Air Force twin-engine plane that crashed into Lake Ontario more than 60 years ago.
The C-45 flew for miles on its own after its three-man crew and two civilian passengers bailed out when one of the engines failed during a flight over central New York in 1952. The aircraft flew on automatic pilot for more than an hour before it crashed into the lake off Oswego.
A team of explorers from the Rochester area say Tuesday that they located the nearly intact plane in deep water while searching for historic shipwrecks on the lake’s eastern end.
The C-45 was on a routine flight on Sept. 11, 1952, from Bedford, Massachusetts, to Griffiss Air Force Base in Rome, New York, when it crashed.