F-89 Discovery a Possible Hoax

Since this story first appeared, various people have been trying to corroborate information supplied by Adam Jimenez concerning the alleged discovery of a missing F-89 on the bottom of Lake Superior.

Update Dec. 18, 2006 - See summary of MUFON's investigation into Great Lakes Dive Company and their claims of discovery of the missing F-89.

While it may be too early to reach any definitive conclusions, there certainly seems to be many more questions than answers concerning Great Lakes Dive Company and the alleged F-89 discovery.

About the middle of October, the Great Lakes Dive Company website suddenly went blank. It was at this time that Adam Jimenez stopped returning phone calls and emails.

Without communication from Adam Jimenez, it is impossible to know exactly why the website was blanked out and why Adam has chosen to stop answering questions.

It is possible that he simply decided he wanted to keep a lower profile and was tired of the publicity.

It is also possible that he was avoiding the exposure of those who were asking questions of the authenticity of his claims.

Some see the disappearance of the website as evidence of a dark conspiracy of government to hide the truth that was daring to be revealed. This seems like one of the lesser possibilities based on all the questions surrounding the claims.

Who is Great Lakes Dive Company?

According to Adam, Great Lakes Dive Company first discovered the F-89 in the summer of 2005. They sat on the discovery for almost a year before revealing it to anyone. To do this search, they need some very expensive equipment, and a fairly large boat. Adam indicated that GLDC was involved in the search of other missing shipwrecks, however, it seems that no one in the Great Lakes shipwreck searching community has ever heard of Adam Jimenez or his project.

Their name appears in no other web related citations concerning shipwrecks, side scan sonar or Great Lakes diving.

The Great Lakes Dive Company website was brought online about the time that Adam announced the alleged F-89 find. During the whole time it was online, it never once provided a list detailing the members or owners of the alleged "Great Lakes Dive Company". Investigators who have tried to track down any registration or license for the company have found nothing.

Does the company consist of any other person besides Adam Jimenez? It is difficult to tell because no one appears to have had any contact with anyone else but Adam and there were never any photographs of anyone from GLDC posted to their website.

Does the company have any assets such as a boat or side scan sonar equipment? This is also difficult to tell as GLDC never posted any pictures of the boat and the side scan sonar equipment.

 Was the company ever on Lake Superior? You would think that anyone who was engaged in such a search would bring a camera and record the search and discoveries. Note that Adam claimed that GLDC had actually performed ROV surveys of the F-89 and "mystery object" and had taken photos of video of the F-89 and mystery object. But not a single photograph from the vessel was ever posted to the site. This certainly seems very puzzling.

Where Did the Story Originate?

My first knowledge of the alleged discovery came by word of mouth from someone who had read about the discovery on the website list "UFO Updates" which is hosted by Errol Bruce-Knapp of Toronto, Ontario. The original August 22nd, 2006 post was sent to UFO Updates from Francis Ridge who is a researcher, writer and investigator with NICAP. Francis received email from Preston Miller which consisted of copied text which was presented as an AP (Associated Press) news story from Port Huron, Michigan.

Beyond this, no one has been able to find the original story or any trace of the AP story. It now seems likely that the story was a fake. It is unclear who this Preston Miller is and whether they were the actual source for the story.

Are the Sonar Images Real?

There seems to be conflicting opinions on whether the images of the F-89 and the mystery object are real side scan sonar images. Brendon Baillod of Great Lakes Shipwreck Research uses side scan sonar to search for shipwrecks in the Great Lakes. He believes the images are real side scan sonar images although he does think that "his (Adam Jimenez's) claims are based on an elaborate hoax".

I am not an authority on side scan sonar imaging, but I thought it might be possible for someone to create these images using image processing software on a computer. The original image might be a real model or a computer generated model. The photographs don't have much detail so I thought it would be quite possible for someone to fake these images.

From the beginning, I worried that the whole find might be a hoax, but I did not want to sound too skeptical because I wanted to ensure that if it was a real find, that I would do my best to assist the investigation. In my view, if the claim turned out to be a hoax, this would be just another in a rather tedious and boring history. If it were real, then this possibly would lead to the solution to the mystery surrounding a fifty year old missing aircraft and crew - a mystery which resonates deeply within me.

I am very curious about the real truth behind the claims. Perhaps this whole thing is some persons idea of a joke. If so, they would have to know that they would eventually have to face up to the hoax. The only logical sounding theory I have heard put forward is that someone wanted to fool the UFO community into swallowing the notion that a flying saucer had been found on the bottom of Lake Superior. Then the idea would be just to make the whole UFO community look gullible. If this is the case, we would expect Adam to emerge trumpeting his success in making some people look foolish.

I was never really much impressed with the image of the "mystery object" or with Adam's account of how they used a fish finder to get the image after they noticed a distortion in the image from their regular sidescan sonar equipment. As Brendon states, it is really quite hard to imagine how they would connect up this fish finder and get it down several hundred feet on the towfish and then collect the returned signal from the fish finder and patch it back as a feed into the sonar signal processing software.

Where To From Here?

With what is known now, we still don't know the following:

Are the sonar images real sonar images?

If the images are real, are the images of an real F-89?

If the images are of a real F-89, is it an F-89 on the bottom of Lake Superior?

It is possible that Adam Jimenez could do us all a favor by explaining all that he knows about the find. He did state that he has photographs or video images of the F-89 showing it is the missing F-89 from Kinross.

If he doesn't come forward to validate his claim or explain the purpose of the possible hoax, then we can still solve the key remaining question.

Is the missing F-89 lying on the bottom of Lake Superior? All that is needed is some people with a good boat, some expensive side scan sonar equipment, and a camera equipped ROV and we're off to the races.

Any volunteers?