I didn’t see any mention of what kind of plane this may be, probably a bomber or recon type.
Since there were survivors it might still be intact.
PBY-5A Catalina
It supposedly had nine people on board, this means it was a multi-engined craft, quite possibly a DC3(the Air Corps and the Marines used different designations for the DC3, but still that’s what it was!). OTH, 9 people was originally the number of crew members on board the B17, it was later changed to 10. So actually it could be just about any multi-engined Airplane of that day. Too bad they didn’t have brains enough to mention the model in the article. Typical left wing rag.