I was stationed in Malta during 1954/55. My unit, No. 40 Commando was in barracks at first St. Patricks Barracks then, St. Andrews Barracks just the other side of Spinola.
At the three airields with which I was familiar; Ta Kali or Ta Quali, Hal Far and Luqa could be seen plenty of WW2 aircraft looking the worse for wear apart from a few Spitfires and some Mosquitoes.
Each regiment/unit on the island took turns to perform garrison fatigues. When, came our turn we were given the job of attending the caves below the bridge near the town of Mosta to load vast quantities of 3.7 and 4.5 inch shells onto a narrow guage railway track and thence down to the sea for dumping.
I don’t know what quantity and type of a/c were dumped in the sea around Malta, if any. You’d be hard put to distinguish dumped a/c from shot down Axis machines of whom there were hundreds. I know that a favoured if accidental dumping spot would have been the sea bed directly under the cliffs where Hal Far’s main runway terminated.
Heavily loaded Wellingtons struggled to get airborne and sometimes depended on a gradual descent to the sea after leaving the end of the runway to gather a little extra speed to climb away. Rumour had it that this area of the sea bed was rich in unscheduled arrivals.
The Italian scrap metal merchants hauled stuff up out of the sea as fast as it was dumped off Halfar.
There are 30-40 wrecks know on the sea bed but these are crash’s,and some aircraft pushed off carriers including a Sea Fury and a Sky Raider both sat on their undercarriage.Most of the wrecks are around 80 -150 metres and include a B24 Liberator at around 100 metres. But the stuff is all best left there until someone has the facility and funds to get them up and do something with them its a pointless exercise otherwise.
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