Since 2004 nationally acclaimed novelist Clive Cussler has been working with Holland, Michigan-based Michigan Shipwreck Research Associates (MSRA) to attempt to locate the wreckage of this plane.       

  Cussler  is the author of more than two dozen best sellers. He began writing in 1965 and published his first fiction novel featuring Dirk Pitt ® in 1973. Cussler's books are published in more than 40 languages in over 100 countries with a readership of 125 million avid fans. 

    With the proceeds from his books, Cussler formed a non-profit organization, the National Underwater Marine Agency (NUMA), and mounts expeditions around the world to find lost shipwrecks and solve other historical mysteries.  Cussler has discovered over 80 shipwrecks around the world.  Many of these adventures are detailed in his non-fiction books, The Sea Hunters I and II, including the famed Civil War submarine, the CSS Hunley.  But up until 2004, Cussler had never attempted a project in the Great Lakes. 

    In 2004 Cussler learned that MSRA, had a similar interest in this disaster.  MSRA team members have been engaged since 1998  in locating lost vessels and solving historical mysteries in the waters of Lake Michigan.  To undertake this search, Cussler  provides the services of side scan sonar expert Ralph Wilbanks, a marine archaeologist and owner of Diversified Wilbanks, Inc.
    MSRA compiled research on the crash and developed an initial search grid in preparation for the first search effort. Over the last eight search seasons, WIlbanks, associate Steve Howard, and other crew members have worked out of South Haven, Michigan, to comb the lake bottom for evidence of this crash.  Using highly sophisticated side scan sonar , the team has covered over 400 square miles of bottomland. While the wreck remains illusive, the team has found seven shipwrecks, all of which have been surveyed by MSRA. including the car ferry Ann Arbor No. 5,  lost in 1969;  the Joseph P. Farnan, a victim of fire in 1889; a 60-foot schooner, likely the A.P. Dunton, lost in 1869; a 40 foot work barge; the schooner William Tell lost in 1869, the schooner Hattie Wells lost in 1912, and perhaps the oldest sloop yet found in Lake Michigan, which has yet to be identified.
    Efforts to locate the wreck are on-going.