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I did some figuring on this some time ago due to some interest expressed by the man who funded my Atlantic Target operation (the 1810 sailing ship found during the LB7 search). Max Ary is now in the heart of oil country in Oklahoma and I know he'd like to see at least one of them recovered. I told him to find the money and we can take a crack at it. It's always the money. I concluded that the S-1C boosters from Apollo 8, 9, 10, 11, 13, and 16 landed in roughly a 5 x 11 nautical mile area. The biggest unknown was how the boosters were tracked. After checking some documentation, I believe they were not really tracked at all; I think they used estimated theoretical impact locations based on flight models. However, if the boosters were fitted with C or S band radar xponders, then the location would be fairly accurate. Granted, all of the boosters would have been reduced to wreckage with some large intact pieces, depending upon how they impacted the ocean. I would imagine they were tumbling during descent, as that seems to be what happens to these things once all the fuel is spent and they lose guidance. I imagine that many of the F-1 engine bells would have survived and at least some of them should be recognizable and capable of being recovered. Overall, the paint on the boosters should be intact as would be any lettering, as was the case on Liberty Bell 7. In addition, there will be long debris fields for each booster, with the heavier parts nearest the impact point and lighter wreckage farther down current. These days, using a standard kevlar recovery line, we can lift about 16,000 lbs from those depths, which would be in the range of around 16 to 17,000 feet down in the Atlantic. On a related topic, I do remember that we did find an intact Redstone during the Challenger search (I did not personally see it - that's how it was identified on our target list). Too bad it's still there as it was only in a few hundred feet of water.
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