I take it they’re going to pump out as much silt and sand as possible before it breaks the surface? If not I fear the weight of all that lies within will tear it apart as soon as gravity takes over.

The item to be considered is the weight of structure in water versus it’s weight in air.

I hope that the people actually doing and planning the lift are taking all the instruction received from the experts on this forum and treating with the “gravity” it deserves.

Yes the aircraft components are subject to degredation due to the fluid they have been submersed in and will need conservation and treatment to slow down the subsequent effects of being exposed to air but from what I have seen and heard quite a bit of preliminary work has been done before the planning stage and reviewed before the lift.

Ross

No. they’re just going to sling a couple of straps and hope for the best.

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But Dr Mary Ryan at Imperial College London is more optimistic. She’s the scientist drafted in by the RAF Museum to find a way of halting the plane’s corrosion, and stabilising it for the long-term. Working with one small fragment already salvaged, her team have found that soaking it in a mixture of fresh water and citric acid – lemon juice – cleans the metal and stops the corrosion.

So the museum has built two polytunnels at its conservation centre at Cosford in the West Midlands, and equipped them with a system of spray nozzles. For the next 18 months the two halves of the aircraft – wings and fuselage – will be drenched in citric acid for 10 minutes out of every 30.

But first they have to get the plane out of the water in one piece. To do that, the museum turned to a marine salvage company, Seatech. They’ve designed a special frame or cradle which they’ll build around the aircraft underwater. With divers able to work for just 45 minutes four times a day at slack water – when the tides change and the strong current on the Goodwin Sands temporarily slows – it will take them up to four weeks.

Then they’ll lift the frame with the plane inside, lay it on a barge alongside and take it ashore to go by road to Cosford and its long lemon juice bath.