CORALS AND SPONGES are growing off the body of this Vought F4U Corsair, above. Its 41-foot wingspan is braced on the sandy bottom, keeping it propped up for the last 75 years like a dart thrown into the shallow ocean. The Corsair, like so many aircraft, vehicles, and other equipment for war, was too heavy and expensive to haul back home, so it was simply pushed into the sea, along with hundreds of other airplanes all over the Pacific. One of the watery boneyards is in the Kwajalein Atoll, one of the world's largest of these reef-formed islands, which photographer and diver Brandi Mueller visits often. Her images, along with text by military historian Alan Axelrod, are featured in a book out November 27, The Airplane Graveyard: The Forgotten WWII Warbirds of Kwajalein Atoll.
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