Potential underwater airframe source

Originally posted by Graeme C
i heard a while back that a company in the UK were trying to get salvage rights to a British ship which had planes on it? It was on Russian convoys? Would it be possible to get planes off the merchant ships that have sunk? i would like someone to have a go?

i heard someone else say that alot of aircraft are down a mine in Australia, it would be interesting to find out what is down there?

That’ll be the Archerfield Quarry. A bloke got the rights to it, then the Aussie authorities closed it down and confiscated the stuff he had brought up. There is a website-cant remember the address, but a search should sort you out.

Is the B 29 above the one on the bottom of lake Meade? If so then it is not likely that it will be recovered any time soon, if ever. Lake Meade is the responsibility of the national park service. The fact that the aircraft is there makes that spot and underwater heritage site, therefore what is there stays there. It would take an act of congress in conjunction with a small miracle for any one to be allowed to recover that aircraft.

The park services policy on underwater heritage sites in a nutshell is ‘if it’s down there,then down there is where it’s going to stay’.

Yes I have dived that wreck myself about twenty years ago-by all accounts it was carrying all sorts of stuff-including, so I am told, horses for the Aga Khan. I found a pair of stirrups and a makers badge off a saddle but did not get any hint of aeroplane parts.

The SS Breda off Oban is a very well dived wreck in shallow water that had some rare aircraft on it when it got torpedoed in WW2… friends of mine who have dived it said there is basically bugger all there, the most they ever found was a perspex windshield.

What you guys need to remember like planes crashing-ships sink for a reason-usually being blown up by the enemy or hitting a mine-so it is imaginable how much damage is caused to the ship-they do not let in the water, then slowly sink to the bottom and rest on their keel ready to have the hatches open and the cargo removed. A lot of ships that sank in shallow water were dispersed so they would not be a hazard to other ships.

However I mentioned in another post regarding the identification of an aeroplane wreck, that we have a ship in the fishdocks in Grimsby. If any of you guys have a project for recovering a plane in the North Sea wreck let us know-we could maybe help.

We own a wreck called the Manchester Engineer which I am told was carrying crated aeroplane engines-however I have never seen a ships manifest so I cannot confirm or deny this. Maybe one of you guys could shed light on this!

Hi Lancman,

Several of the Lake Michigan Wildcats are now flying. These aircraft came out of the water still in their original paint (see another thread higher up the pile for pics) and are often in staggeringly good condition: air in the tires, strut pressure and gas in the tanks etc. One estimate suggests there are around 300 aircraft in that lake. Sadly the US NAvy has proven ownership of them and it is very difficult to persuade them to authorise a salvage.

PS: The point is these aircraft have come out of deep, cold fresh water and not the sea.

your welcome lancman
i’ll post more pics of other aircraft for you and others in a new thread:)

As an enthusiast of both marine archeology and historic aviation, those pics were great, thanks!

But I think that salvage-wise, you might find a few airframes that you could get back to static condition, but I can’t ever imagine an aircraft coming out of the drink (fresh or salty) and ever flying again?

B-29 superfortress was last found in a lake

And so there are lot of more airframes in good condition but nobody wants to salvage them.

pics of b-29:

all pictures are from:indepthconsulting
for more info follow this link:http://www.indepthconsulting.com/B29/B29Photos2.htm

This was the phantom Phoenix Foudation …they have many plans , but little seems to come from it ;-0
Most of the stuff on the site has been recovered by other people already…or has been lifted from other wreck sites..

http://www.the-phoenix-foundation.com/recovery-aircraft.htm

Dave

i heard a while back that a company in the UK were trying to get salvage rights to a British ship which had planes on it? It was on Russian convoys? Would it be possible to get planes off the merchant ships that have sunk? i would like someone to have a go?

i heard someone else say that alot of aircraft are down a mine in Australia, it would be interesting to find out what is down there?

Try contacting Steve Carmichael-Timson at

http://www.divetheworld.com

I remember seeing some footage of divers visiting the ships that were sunk during the US atomic weapons testing I believe at Bikini Attoll, amongst these was an aircraft carrier (not sure whichone) stacked full of surplus (rare) aircraft and also a number of German warships.

The footage I saw the aircraft looked to farely well preserved but mind you it was a number of years ago so the may be gone now.

There are hundreds if not thousands of WWII aircraft beneath the oceans of the world. Some are regularly explored by divers, many others sit unseen in the holds sunken freighters or lie on the bottom follwing deliberate dumping overboard.

The condition of these airframes will undoubtedly make them unsuitable for restoration to airworthy standard as the highly corrosive effects of salt water, regardless of what temporary measure were taken to protect them during the voyage, on aluminium alloy airframes and steel engines are well known. This severely reduces the feasibilty of locating and rescuing these airframes.

The issue of wrecked vessels as wargraves should be considered.

The only underwater aircraft wrecks worth making serious efforts to recover are those in cold freshwater. The US Navy aircraft in Lake Michigan being the best examples I can think of. A number of these aircraft have been salvaged and some were in surprisingly good condition and flew again after restoration. There are likely to be many more potentially restorable aircraft in the remote lakes of Russia and perhaps this source will be explored further once the (comparitivley) readily accesible supply of surface wrecks is exhausted.

Tim, apart from the salt water corrosion (which still eats through everything regardless of depth – Titanic being a prime example), I’d have thought that most of the ships that went down took crew members with them, and are therefore designated war graves.