“Five minutes after the planes touched down, there were red snapper inside.” So says Pat Green, owner of Panama City Diving in Panama City Beach, Florida, where two retired F-101 Voodoo Air Force jets became artificial reefs on June 27. They’re now 76 feet below the surface, 3 nautical miles from shore and 8 nautical miles from the Saint Andrews Pass.

Green was the first to explore the just-downed vessels, which were intended to lie tail to tail with 30 feet between them. All went according to plan, save for the fact that one of the planes inverted.

“That is an unexpected bonus,” says Green. “It created a protected area — more like a cave — which explains the fish inside.”

As for why the plane flipped, nobody knows for sure. One theory supposes that an air pocket formed under one wing, upsetting its balance. Green suspects that the plane hit the sand tail first, prematurely triggering the crane to release the chains that lowered the vessel. This might have sent the plane pirouetting before its final descent.

Regardless of how it happened, the inversion adds variety, which was the goal of the entire project.

Previously, both fighter jets had been on display in the city — one at a college and the other at a downtown marina. The Bay County Board of County Commissioners’ Planning and Zoning Department saved the planes from becoming scrap metal by overseeing the reefing project. They found assistance from organizations including the Tyndall Dive Club and the Bay County Artificial Reef Association (BCARA). Volunteers donated more than 1,000 hours to ready the planes for sinking, removing 400 pounds of wire, among other duties.

Green — a BCARA board member — is already looking for- ward to the next sinking project. “Hopefully, we’ll soon have more stories like this — maybe even one a year.”