kenb
Bronze Member
Undersea armour find is a mystery
DIVERS are trying to solve a mystery as to why a batch of Army vehicles and a huge gun were found at the bottom of the sea.
Thirty-five members of the Southsea Sub Aqua Club will be spending a week in July diving eight miles south of East Wittering, West Sussex, to try to discover why two tanks, two bulldozers and a field gun managed to end up 59ft under water.
The rusting vehicles – and there may be more – have been known about for some time but until now no-one has carried out a full site survey to work out what models the vehicles and field gun are and whether there is anything else down there.
The belief is that they were probably bound for the Normandy beaches and somehow fell off a landing craft during a storm.
Leading the team will be Alison Mayor, who admitted she had become hooked by the mystery.
She said: 'We dived the site in April 2004 and the visibility was terrible but we all thought at the time let's go back and do it properly. But we never got to go back.
'The thing is there's no shipwreck nearby but there are five items and that says to me it's something to do with D-Day.
'We will be trying to find out how those military vehicles came to be lying on the seabed.
'We also want to do a site survey and record whether they are British, American or Canadian – it could be any of them.
'We've been in touch with the tank museum at Bovington, which has given us information on how to identify the tanks
'The theory is that they fell off a section of a mulberry harbour road bridge called a Whale Bridge. But I think it's more likely to have been they fell off a landing craft tank or landing ship tank.'
The club has also been in touch with the Ministry of Defence, the Receiver of Wrecks and the Hydrographic Office to see if these organisations can shed any light on the mystery.
kenb
DIVERS are trying to solve a mystery as to why a batch of Army vehicles and a huge gun were found at the bottom of the sea.
Thirty-five members of the Southsea Sub Aqua Club will be spending a week in July diving eight miles south of East Wittering, West Sussex, to try to discover why two tanks, two bulldozers and a field gun managed to end up 59ft under water.
The rusting vehicles – and there may be more – have been known about for some time but until now no-one has carried out a full site survey to work out what models the vehicles and field gun are and whether there is anything else down there.
The belief is that they were probably bound for the Normandy beaches and somehow fell off a landing craft during a storm.
Leading the team will be Alison Mayor, who admitted she had become hooked by the mystery.
She said: 'We dived the site in April 2004 and the visibility was terrible but we all thought at the time let's go back and do it properly. But we never got to go back.
'The thing is there's no shipwreck nearby but there are five items and that says to me it's something to do with D-Day.
'We will be trying to find out how those military vehicles came to be lying on the seabed.
'We also want to do a site survey and record whether they are British, American or Canadian – it could be any of them.
'We've been in touch with the tank museum at Bovington, which has given us information on how to identify the tanks
'The theory is that they fell off a section of a mulberry harbour road bridge called a Whale Bridge. But I think it's more likely to have been they fell off a landing craft tank or landing ship tank.'
The club has also been in touch with the Ministry of Defence, the Receiver of Wrecks and the Hydrographic Office to see if these organisations can shed any light on the mystery.
kenb
