Gadgetory

hey everyone welcome to the inside scoop I'm Sina at scar Tsuboi joined by senior writer Daniel tournament Daniel just returned from a trip to Palau in the South Pacific what were you doing there I was out there kind of documenting this expedition by a group called the bent prop project along with photographers from the Scripps Institution of Oceanography and the University of Delaware and what they were doing is hunting underwater in the seas just off of Palau for airplanes that were shot down during World War two where there's thought to be as there are lots and lots of Airmen who are missing in action what have they found well this year right before I got there they found two airplanes one was a TPM Avenger and the other one was an f6f hellcat and these are planes that they've been missing since 1944 what is the ritual but they do find one of these down planes because this is a huge piece of history obvious right they took the boat to right over the two different sites and they did this twice once once for each site and they had what they called a flag ceremony after they folded them they handed them to one of the bent prop team members who and as a former Navy lieutenant commander and he will personally make sure that those flags eventually end up in the hands of the families of the airmen what is involved in discovering these planes how do they find them locate them it's there's so many different pieces of that it can be anything from you know an eyewitness account from a Lowen who saw where it happened the team spent a lot of time at the American National Archives looking through you know old records trying to find any anything that refers to the planes being shot down then the technology element of it which it's a fairly new oceanographers have these underwater autonomous vehicles called Remus's and they look like little torpedoes like $300,000 a piece and they're they're packed with all these sensors and cameras and everything so they they are programmable they're autonomous they put them off the boat they sink down underwater and then they go out on these pre-programmed missions and they'll work these grids kind of like going back and forth and back and forth and back and forth scanning the seabed the oceanographers will kind of like literally go through like frame by frame by frame of this imagery looking for anything that seems out of the ordinary what about the average tourist if we were to travel to Palau can we experience any of this World War two history there's an old Japanese plane that is there now it wasn't actually sunk there apparently they they brought it there to make it available for just the average snorkeler but but for people who are a little bit more adventurous there's all kinds of things that are in their original spots and that like you know dive tours would but it would take them out what are some other must visit spots on Palau if you're gonna travel that far so you have this lake that's seawater and that has like rising and lowering tides and in this lake jellyfish lake you have millions of these beautiful non stinging jellyfish and they're just sort of you know magical or slow moving around and you can snorkel in amongst them as long as you're careful well we are glad you're back in one piece thank you so much for sharing your stories CNET senior writer Daniel tournament I'm Kara Tsuboi thanks for watching this inside scoop