WIX Archives

Firth of Forth underwater wrecks

Posted by Cees Broere on Tue Oct 01, 2002 04:51:59 AM

From Divernet:


Crail was also a base for Fairey Swordfish, Albacore and Barracuda aircraft. More than a dozen of its Faireys are reported as crashing or ditching into the sea, though none has yet been discovered in reasonable condition.
However, another aircraft found during the Burntisland ferry search was a Hawker Hurricane, originally located in 1994 by US divers assisting the original team.
The fighter featured in a Tomorrow's World programme which explained the new technology being used in the search, and showed views of the plane shot from an ROV and fed to a diver through a screen mounted on his helmet.

When I dived it a couple of months ago, I could have wished I had such technology to hand. At 33m, the light had all but gone. It felt like 60m, definitely an unfriendly environment.
At first we couldn't find a thing in the silt. Only gradually did we start finding pieces of wreckage, parts of the wing-frame supports and then, at the end of a thick rope, the propeller blades.
Much of a Hurricane's superstructure was made of wood, and this had all but rotted away, but what remained was an impressive sight and we were pleased to have found it.
On Tomorrow's World we had seen the engine with one propeller blade sticking up, but now all three blades lay flat. Something had disturbed the wreckage. Had someone tried to lift the engine, or had something large dragged its anchor over the site?
A Hurricane was known to have ditched near Burntisland on 8 December, 1941. Could this be it?
A local recently told the Heritage Trust that she saw the aircraft come down in the sea, and later saw the pilot sitting on the wing waiting to be rescued. Further research revealed that it was a 1939-1940 Mk1 Hurricane P3101 from anti-aircraft co-operation squadron 289.

The Firth of Forth and the sea around it are home to an amazing concentration of aircraft wrecks. Off Burntisland alone there are records of three more planes, a Spitfire, a Wildcat and, from WWI, a Sopwith which fell off HMS Pegasus.
There was also supposedly at least one aircraft aboard the carrier Campania when it sank. I have dived this huge wreck, just a mile or so off Burntisland, but have yet to find aircraft remains.
One plane I would like to find here is the Junkers 88a bomber that crashed several miles south of the firth near Aberlady Bay. This was the first aircraft ever shot down by a Spitfire, and the first enemy plane downed on British territory during WWII.
Twelve Junkers 88as were involved in "the Forth Bridge Raid" on 16 October 1939, its purpose to sink HMS Hood. Hitler had ordered that the bridge should not be bombed, and that if the Hood was in dock at Rosyth, it should be spared, as civilian casualties would result.
Only seven weeks in, this was still a gentleman's war.
The Hood was indeed at Rosyth, so the Junkers went for the cruisers Edinburgh and Southampton, anchored not far from the bridge. Luckily they were intercepted by a group of Spitfires, and only moderate damage was inflicted, though the destroyer Mohawk, steaming towards Rosyth, was also attacked and 16 sailors died, including its captain.
The two lead Junkers were shot down, one off Fife Ness three miles from Crail, the other probably crashing in Aberlady Bay, about four miles from Port Seaton.

Local historian Bob Brydon was a small boy when it happened. Part of the wing from one of the planes washed up in Peffer Sands soon after the attack and his auntie's boyfriend, the local bomb-disposal expert, supervised burying the wreckage on the beach.
Fifty-five years later, amateur aircraft historian Willie Henderson persuaded Bob to take him to the burial site. Amazingly they found an exposed part of the plane and dug up the rest. In 1999 it was displayed as part of the 60th anniversary of the Forth Bridge raid.
In Aberlady Bay, Bob and Willy have also recovered small pieces of a Handley-Page Hampden bomber. They think they come from L4090, one of two "Flying Panhandles" shot down by mistake on 21 December, 1939. The planes were off course in poor visibility and failed to give correct recognition signals. Spitfire pilots from 602 Squadron mistook them for the similar Dornier bombers.
L4090 went down over Hummel Point at Gullane Bay with the loss of one crew-member, while L4089 sank at North Berwick.
It's thought that a propeller trawled up years ago belonged to this Hampden. It has been restored and can be seen at East Fortune, next to another prop thought to belong to a Beaufort torpedo-bomber which crashed somewhere in the Forth.
Perhaps one day divers will find more of these aircraft that went missing in the Firth of Forth.

Wasn't the possibilities of sunken Defiants mentioned on this board several times. Ross, do you know anything about these?

Cees


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