USS Dorado (SS-248):

On Eternal Patrol

"We knew we were going to have a rough time with this submarine from the beginning." Those words were written by Don Wheeler, a former DORADO crewmember who participated in the sea trials, in a letter to the author. DORADO was a U.S. Gato-class submarine, launched on May 23, 1943, set sail for Pearl Harbor via the Panama Canal on October 6, and was lost with all hands somewhere in the Caribbean Sea six days later. This book is quite possibly about one of the worst "friendly fire" incidents in U.S. military history. It is the story of a U.S. submarine attacked by a patrol-bomber aircraft attached to VP-210 out of Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Within these pages you will read the formal Court of Inquiry that concluded, incorrectly, that the aircrew probably bombed a U-boat that was known to be in the area. Included in this book is the U-214 logbook which shows that they witnessed the bombing of DORADO. In this book is also the story of the author's search for the submarine over a 20+ year period. ISBN 978-1-257-95155-0

USS Dorado (SS-248) On Eternal Patrol

A Remote Sensing Survey to Locate the Remains of

USS DORADO (SS-248) Off of Bahia de la Ascension, Quintana Roo, Mexico

The Maritime Education and Research Society (MERS) is a non-profit 501(c)(3) organization whose aims and objectives are to research and to advance education and training in the techniques pertaining to the study of various maritime fields of endeavor for the benefit of the public. Such fields include the continuing assessment of ecological impacts on coral reefs around the world, the research of maritime events that have shaped history, underwater archeology, the training of individuals and groups in the above fields, and the publication of all such research for the continuing education of the public. Our first field study was called The Dorado Expedition and continues to this day. This is a research program to determine if a World War II US submarine was lost on the coral reef system off the Yucatan Peninsula as mentioned by Mexican locals in the 1970s.  ISBN 978-1-329-09883-1

A Remote Sensing Survey to Locate the Remains of USS DORADO (SS-248) Off of Bahia de la Ascension, Quintana Roo, Mexico

The Identification of Potentially Hazardous Material Discovered In and Around the Mesoamerican Reef Region of Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula

In 2007 an underwater survey of the coral reef system off Bahia de la Ascension (Punta Allen, Mexico) discovered 26 anomalies among the reef, ranging from “man-made geometric patterns” to “unusual shadows” to “unusual bottom disturbances” to “possible debris fields.” It is the search for and the analysis of the impact of these 26 anomalies that is the subject of this report. A Maritime Education and Research Society (MERS) Diving Team, supported by the Mexican Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia, Subdirección de Arqueología Subacuática (INAH) and the Sian Ka'an Biosphere Reserve re-visited the area nine years later to inspect these 26 sites to ensure that the reef system remained healthy despite the findings of such anomalies, many of which were clearly man-made and resting on the reef. ISBN 978-1-329-85639-4

The Identification of Potentially Hazardous Material Discovered In and Around the Mesoamerican Reef Region of Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula