Yep, Leigh Light, built into modified ‘dustbin’ mid-under turret on a Wellington.

http://uboat.net/allies/technical/leigh_light.htm

Didn’t she arrive on a Barge, INTACT when being ‘delivered’ down the River Mersey (in the first place) ?

Yes, all the way across the North Sea!

Possibly this is to allow better access to the interior (a bit like the X-craft at Duxford but on a much larger scale).

Although U-543 is ‘complete’ her actual condition is quite poor but that doesn’t detract from the impact of her as an exhibit in my opinion…

…and there are no better u-boats to be had…anywhere!

Howeverwhat I had in mind when I asked the question was more er traditional aircraft carriers that might be within safe diving depth.

Ah…I see…my mistake! 😀

Aircraft carriers to dive on?

I can only think of HMS Ark Royal and USS Yorktown as carriers that have been found and photographed underwater but both are too deep for sport diving.

I think it is possible to dive HMS/M M2 but that wasn’t what you wanted. 🙂

Good question. :confused:

Sorry but my Naval History lets me down on this one.

Are there any diveable aircraft carriers anywhere?

I’d thought you’d never ask!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HMS_M2

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I-400_class_submarine

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_submarine_Surcouf

A tragic development.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/northern_ireland/7025213.stm

Interesting that it is the County Council that are looking into recovering such large historic artefacts from the seabed.

Apologies for the lack of aviation/zombie nature of this post.

Had another (all too brief) chat today with that friend of mine who used to test the Blue Streak RZ2 engines at Spadeadam.

One thing I hadn’t realised is that the testing was being done on engines that were intended for the launch vehicles. I’d assumed, quite wrongly, that the RZ2 engines were a ‘one-shot’ deal and that once used they would require an extensive rebuild. Not so.

It seems that the purpose of most of the tests (on single engines) was ‘trimming’ the individual engines. This consisted of measuring the thrust and then bringing that thrust within the design limits. The method for doing this was by placing an ‘orifice’ of an appropriate size between the turbo-fuel-pump and the thrust-chamber to ‘throttle’ the engine!

Also apparently all tests were of three minutes duration; the maximum duration of the engine burn between launch and fuel exhaustion.

Question 1: Did they flew always straight to the target or had they a sort of flightplan (to avoid flak etc.)? Because the crashsite isn’t inline with Snaith and Bremen.

It depends on a number of factors but it is highly probable that the route was not direct. ‘Dog-leg’ courses would be flown to avoid flak (as you say) but also to avoid giving away the target before the attack began. Earlier in the war crews were I believe, free to set their own route and timings, later the ‘bomber stream’ proper was developed.

Of course they could have been lost; bombers could be routinely tens-of-kilometres off track. Or they could have been pushed off track by the weather or by some technical malfunction.

Question 2: Is it possible that they hit the Wellington by flak (it was shot down by flak), some pieces fell down on our spot and the rest of the Wellington fell down a couple of kilometers further?

If a bomber broke up in mid-air at an operational height 15,000ft say, parts of the wreckage could easily come down several kilometres apart.