Wreckage of Pan Am plane found 74 years after it crashed off Puerto Rico | CNN

Seventy-four years after a Pan Am flight crashed into the water off Puerto Rico, killing 52 people and prompting sweeping reforms including preflight passenger safety briefings, an aviation search team has found the wreckage sitting on the ocean floor. The Air/Sea Heritage Foundation, in partnership with others including the Discovery Channel’s “Expedition Unknown” show, last month found the wreckage of the Pan Am “Clipper Endeavor” at the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean off Puerto Rico’s northern coast, Discovery said in a release Tuesday. The discovery, which involved an autonomous underwater drone, ends decades of mystery about precisely where the Douglas DC-4 aircraft came to rest after crashing into the ocean shortly after it took off from Puerto Rico on April 11, 1952, with 64 passengers and five crew members aboard. Although all passengers survived the initial impact, only 17 people would be rescued, and the rest would be lost with the quickly sinking plane – a result that investigators would blame in part on a lack of safety briefings and that would spur changes in the aviation industry. “We are all stunned and elated by this discovery yet also humbled to remem