Salvage Operations

Charles McDougald looked every bit a real-life Indiana Jones one recent afternoon as he sat cross-legged outside the World War II-era Japanese torture chamber where he and half a dozen other American treasure hunters are convinced lie buried more than 400 tons of gold worth at least $7 billion.

An ambitious, five-day undersea search of Santa Monica Bay for the last missing Womens Airforce Service Pilot from World War II ended Saturday with the whereabouts of Gertrude Tompkins' P-51D Mustang fighter plane still a mystery. But divers found the wreckage of two civilian planes -- a light aircraft and a helicopter, they announced Saturday evening. In April, while doing a preliminary search for Tompkins, they discovered an Air Force T-33 jet trainer that had been missing since Oct. 15, 1955.

The Spanish galleon had just left the Philippine province of Palawan carrying three bronze bells for the newly constructed Catholic missions in California when it was attacked by Moro pirates. Knowing that capture meant certain death, the crew fought off the marauders until a cannon on the galleon exploded, triggering a secondary explosion that sank the ship. That was in the late 1700s. The as-yet-unidentified galleon lay 170 feet deep, hidden in a shipping lane in the South China Sea.

She's navigated the world of Los Angeles' elite for eight decades -- weekending at Hearst Castle at San Simeon with William Randolph Hearst, riding horses with friends at her family ranch above the boulevard that bears her father's name, partying at posh gatherings from Newport Beach to Beverly Hills.

A commercial fishing boat that ran aground in a midnight fog early Wednesday in Oxnard was destroyed in the surf after salvage companies decided against trying to save it, partly because they feared they might get sued for their trouble. The 40-foot boat and its crew of three Vietnamese-speaking fishermen were returning to Ventura Harbor from a seven-day trip to Santa Rosa Island. Its captain apparently became disoriented in the thick fog and landed on McGrath State Beach instead, a U.S.

Mounds of titanium and steel glinted in the afternoon sun, valves and pipes protruding in all directions like half-formed metal organisms. In one corner of the warehouse was a twin of the Apollo command module engine that brought Buzz Aldrin and Neil Armstrong back from the surface of the moon nearly 40 years ago. Nearby was the second-stage motor for a Saturn V, the most powerful rocket ever used in the U.S. space program.

Salvage operations began off Cape Cod on Sunday to raise a sunken trawler still holding 70 to 100 bales of marijuana, after divers removed up to $15 million worth of the drug, Coast Guard officials said. Authorities believe the 60-foot vessel, which was discovered by fishermen Wednesday, was scuttled when the smugglers ran into trouble.

The Senate has tentatively approved a plan to exempt some national forest logging from environmental laws in an effort to ease fire threats and harvest dying trees. The proposal by Sen. Slade Gorton (R-Wash.) would insulate the logging from legal challenges under the Endangered Species Act and other laws. The House has approved a similar measure, although President Clinton has indicated he opposes the idea. Critics say salvage operations actually increase fire threats.

Divers will try to salvage a sunken barge laden with 300,000 gallons of fuel by lifting it off the sea bed with a crane, turning it right side up underwater, and pumping out the fuel so the vessel can be refloated, the Coast Guard said Tuesday. Authorities said salvage operations would begin today when a derrick barge arrives, and the operation will take several days to complete.

This is the astonishing story of Victorio Peak, a minor mountain with major history in the sandy southern deserts of New Mexico. Under its rocky and road-scarred topsoil lies one of two things: either a king's ransom in hidden gold bars--upwards of $2 billion, maybe--or the dusky nothingness of empty limestone caverns.

A federal judge in Tampa has denied a bid by deep-sea explorers to keep secret the details of a 19th century shipwreck that has yielded $500 million in treasure. U.S. Magistrate Judge Mark Pizzo threw out Odyssey Marine Exploration's request to keep information, including the identity of the ship, sealed as the company argues with Spain over ownership of the 17 tons of silver coins and other artifacts retrieved last year. The company followed with a news release announcing that the shipwreck was probably the Nuestra Senora de las Mercedes y las Animas, a Spanish galleon that sank in the Atlantic Ocean southwest of Portugal in 1804.

The pine trees cradling this mountain town are dying, turned rusty red by a beetle that is destroying the Rockies' forests. The brittle corpses are an eyesore as well as a major fire hazard. When they collapse, they make hillsides unstable, increasing erosion and damming streams that feed into the Colorado River, which provides drinking water to seven states and Mexico. But Randy Piper is trying to focus on the positive. He moved here four years ago, scanned the hillsides and saw opportunity.

Brad guy, an architect and researcher at Pennsylvania State University, is an advocate of deconstruction -- not the thorny literary theory, but the idea of carefully taking apart buildings and making the parts available to builders. The idea, Guy says, "is as old as buildings -- the Romans built on the ruins of the Egyptians."

The Spanish Civil Guard heightened a battle over a $500-million treasure of gold and silver coins from a shipwreck when it seized a vessel belonging to a Tampa, Fla.-based company. The Ocean Alert was seized three miles off the southeastern coast. The Civil Guard acted on an order of a Spanish judge who in June instructed police to seize two vessels of Odyssey Marine Exploration if they left the British colony of Gibraltar and entered Spanish waters.

Deep-sea treasure hunters said Friday that they had recovered what could be a record haul of gold and silver coins from a colonial-era shipwreck -- but their failure to provide many details has set off a galleon-sized controversy over their claims. The hunters from Odyssey Marine Exploration Inc., a Tampa, Fla.-based company, said their haul had so far totaled about 17 tons of coins, more than 500,000 in all.

Katrina Cars. Rita Wrecks. However they're tagged, the half-million or so vehicles damaged by the 2005 Gulf Coast hurricanes continue to haunt the automotive industry. Sen. Trent Lott (R-Miss.) is trying to drum up support for a bill that would require insurers to supply information to a national database whenever they declare a car or truck a total loss. Rep. John Campbell (R-Irvine) is co-sponsoring a similar bill in the House. Although more than 5 million vehicles were totaled in the U.S.

Fifty-six years after the carrier Yorktown sank in the battle of Midway--at a turning point of World War II--researchers Thursday released the first photograph of the wreckage three miles down on the Pacific Ocean floor. A team of National Geographic researchers working with a San Diego-based U.S.

Most of the $21 million in treasure from a ship that sank in 1857 was awarded Thursday to the salvagers who spent $30 million to find it. The judge said he wished it was worth more. "What a pity it did not amount to a billion dollars so that a proper award could have been given," U.S. District Judge Richard B. Kellam wrote in a decision giving 90% of the gold to the Columbus-America Discovery Group. The rest will go to the original insurers of the cargo.

Mounds of titanium and steel glinted in the afternoon sun, valves and pipes protruding in all directions like half-formed metal organisms. In one corner of the warehouse was a twin of the Apollo command module engine that brought Buzz Aldrin and Neil Armstrong back from the surface of the moon nearly 40 years ago. Nearby was the second-stage motor for a Saturn V, the most powerful rocket ever used in the U.S. space program.