Walter Elcock, now 89 and living in Georgia, recalls the landing and how he managed to snag a wire on the carrier with the plane's tailhook and hung from it a few seconds before the wire broke.

"I went straight underwater," Elcock recalled. He unbuckled and kicked for the surface, maybe 10 feet away, thinking that he wouldn't be able to stay afloat wearing all of his heavy flight gear. Fortunately almost immediately, a Coast Guard ship pulled him out.

"I grew up hearing the story of this crash," said Elcock's grandson, Hunter Brawley, 36, of Atlanta, Georgia.

Giant basking sharks like to take tropical vacations too.

Previously thought to inhabit only temperate waters, a new study, just published in Current Biology, shows that the giant sharks make long, make vast migrations to deep, warm-water hideouts. Before the annual winter disappearance, scientists tagged 25 basking sharks off New England with floating, timed-release satellite transmitters, which showed that, like humans, the giant basking sharks like to take tropical vacations too.