Hi Anne,

I’ll see if I can get one of my contacts to hunt down the Whitley war equipment schedule to see if 5U/2492 appears in it. It will take a good couple of weeks though.

Did you have any luck on this one?

email me at: [email]philday@ntlworld.com[/email]

Will be later rather than sooner.

Hi Coanda,

Thanks for lesson and the description of the “engine nacelles”-would you mind for my second lesson to go on to “geodectic construction” 🙂

The vis conditions are not too bad were the plane is situated:

Lat 53 25 98
Lon 01 02 43

I think this is about 40 miles offshore-the plane being in about 12m depth. I have already sent these co-ordinates to Ross-he replied:

The bulk of the twin engine aircraft are Hampdens and Wellingtons but these
had radial engines (pistons in a circle round a circular crankcase) not the
inline piston engine you described.

Three Whitleys were lost but all about 20 miles from the position.

Anglesey is were I first got my taste of wreck diving-the club that I am a member in Manchester still dive there now-I am told there are aircraft around there but I have never dived on one. Anglesey is a fine place to dive. If the wind is blowing you can always go to the leeward side of the island and dive in the calm there. When you start to go out further from the island the depths become unpractical for working.

The North Sea has some very good wrecks but the problem being if there is any North or East in the wind then it makes it difficult to dive. You can go fo miles and miles out to sea and still only be in 10-15m of water.

One other thought you guys may know-We bought a wreck called “The Manchester Engineer” 1905, (ex-Nation, 1917 purchased from Treasury S.S.Co, Liverpool, renamed Manchester Engineer), 1917 torpedoed and sunk off Flamborough Head. 4415 tons. I have never done any research on the ship-in fact I have only dived on it once-but when we bought it we were told that amongst its cargo was aeroplane engines-could anyone confirm this?

Hey what happened to you guys-you seem to have been off line for about three days-is that right, or is it something I said?

Ross-if you check your email I have sent you the co-ordinates for the aeroplane (Hi Moggy-I am sticking to my promise) will be interesting to see if you come up with something.

We go over the wreckage many times on our way out to the Outer Dowsing area-we are currently trying to find a wreck-HMS Cobra-one of the first turbine driven ships of the Royal Navy-it had four propeller shafts with two propellers on each shaft-it sank on its maiden voyage. It was built at the Parsons yard in Newcastle and still had their staff on board when it sank.
Ross said he had charts with details of losses on it-I will contact our skipper who will be able to give the exact GPS marks-I will report back on that.
Photographs-well people think that when ships sink that they are stood upright on the seabed with the sails still flowing in the tide from the masts-and of course the captain with his gold braid still at the wheel on the bridge. Life ain’t that easy. I will ask the guys that come out with us if they have a camera-but with the light and visibility you would only be able to photograph a small section-and I mean a small section-so what part do you photograph? Quite a lot of it is in the sand-the engines are not totally exposed they have the remains of fishing net round them-easier said than done. It would be relatively easy to put a rope round one of the engines and pull it to the surface and get it on board-but is that allowed, would we need permission-could you historical guys get permission? – Aeroplanes (Hi Moggy) like I said are not our speciality-but if you want the engine or engines then that would be easy-you would have to collect them from the Fishdocks in Grimsby.
Unfortunately at the moment we have a clutch problem on the ships engine so it maybe next year now when we go that way-it is very weather dependant for diving-tides, wind, slack water, fog, light, etc etc.

The bullets were very small-I think we may have one somewhere-will try and find it and post a pic-from what I remember they were about 2″-3″ long-looked the sort that would fit in a rifle. Someone said that they were from a Browning-but I would not consider that as gospel.

Anne seems to be on to something with the stores number-anyone got access to that sort of info? Anne-I am impressed.

Old Fart………….

we came across an airplane near the Outer Dowsing. The plane was upside down-a lot of it in the sand-there looked to be bullet holes in one of the wings that was showing, two engines could be seen one on each wing-

As for wing span-sorry tape measures are not standard diving kit-the wings were partially buried in the sand-we are interested in shipwrecks not aeroplanes-hi Moggy-once we saw it was an aeroplane it was just a matter of having brief look over it before finishing the dive.