The most amazing carrier video you will ever see

[kevin powles]

Gents, Set aside 15 minutes and go full screen, sound turned up.........Enjoy.

http://youtu.be/DEpz9KQCkUY

[Ben]

The Thistlegorm is in the same area and has a some earlier mk1 carriers on it too. Don't remember them offering this dive when we were there last year.

The Thistlegorm is good too, lots of bikes, trucks and a couple of steam engines for good measure if you want to check it out. Massive wreck.

[RichardT10829]

Seen that before, they were all shoved off the ship en route home apparently. Thistlegorm is a good wreck but it's over crowded with divers and the wreck in comparison to a few years back is a shadow of its former self

[eddy8men]

amazing video, just makes you wonder how much stuff is still out there

[RichardT10829]

Looking at the hulks, there is very little concretion on there so I reckon the hulls are salvageable, the more fizzy metals like the tin work and tracks perhaps not, but I bet the diffs could be saved in most too. Massive massive cost to re float and rescue them mind

[David Dunlop]

I remember a show on TV a few years back about a chap in England who made his fortune after the war salvaging wartime wrecks around the world. He focused on ships with cargos of metal ingots and developed a technique of popping the freighter's hull outwards in such a way the deck collapsed straight down. It was then lifted clear of the wreck by a large custom built claw he designed, leaving the cargo holds clear for hard hat divers to salvage. One ship he worked on off the North American coast had a deck cargo of a dozen or so Shermans. The ship had sunk upright after being torpedoed and he had lifted all the Shermans off the deck and placed them on the sea bed around the hull. Strange to see them all sitting there.

David

[arie teomim]

I would say that these are more likly from suez conflict in 1956, ant from the 1967 conflict.
arie
ISRAEL

[meduffer]

Makes me wonder how much equipment was dumped in the ocean or lakes after the war. I'd like to find those lakes...

Mike Snetsinger

[RichardT10829]

The Brits are known for it.... I think Arie is right, it's either from the suez or the remains of a return journey after ww2, most of our kit in the European theatre was given to the Russians but I am unsure what happened to the Middle East stuff. There is some sort of wheeled kit in amongst the carrier pile but cannot make it out, anyone any ideas ?

[Billruston]

Great vidio kevin, I bet the hulls are more than salvageable, the amount of stuff that was sunk etc just seems crazy!

[Dave Schindel]

between the music and the video,I think I am going to cry......

[arie teomim]

the british ship SS Thistlegorm was sunk on october 1941 by a GERMEN bombers. - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H3GpiOpklUk
there were only two carriers on bord. hte ship was sunk un the suez bay.
so, this is not thae place of the Italien divers, even it is also in the red sea.
i fiind it very interesting that I dont see remains of a sunken ship in the I talien movie.
in any case, it looks like the botum of the red sea full of carriers.
arie

[RichardT10829]

They were pushed over board Arie the ship probably continued home, I have no doubt there will be the story about them somewhere.

[shaun]

This carrier appears to have extra armour added around the gunner and the driver .

[eddy8men]

I also noticed that armour and thought it might have been part of the wading screen !

[RichardT10829]

I dont think they fitted wading screens in the ME theatre during the war... they sealed them up and bunged holes for Sicily and Italy.... they all appear to be late MK carriers from what i can see my thoughts were more along the lines of flame thrower carrier... perhaps they are suez relics, end of life...new tech coming through....conflict over...bin the waste :-(

[Ben]

They've had the engines taken out too.

[Lynn Eades]

Not only were the engines gone from them, some showed bullet holes through them. I suspect that if one was pulled out and cleaned up, that it would prove to be a disappointment.

[kevin powles]

Gents, I believe these were : Israeli Bren Gun Carriers dumped in the sea when they with withdraw from Sinai in 1948.

I have seen before black and white photo's of that drivers armour mod before, will try and locate it, some of the carriers still have the engines.

Kevin.

Nice site to check out : http://www.ointres.se/latrun.htm

[arie teomim]

HI ALL,
the story arouses my curiosity. so, I am going to make a research about it.
few facts that I do know now-
1- the only time the Israeli army used carriers was during the war for independence in 1948, and they were caught from the Egyptian army.

2- during the 1967 conflict the Egyptian army used Russian weapons and armory.
3-there were no carriers in the area during the seventis. I know that for sure, I was there at the time.
SO, I guess these carriers were caught in SHARM EL SHECH in the south of the SINAI dezet. It realy looks like these carriers were dumped into the sea.
at that time there was no road from SHARM EL SHECH to ISRAEL. so maybe, thats was the reason that it was dumped to the sea.
but, as I said, this interesting, and I will research it.
arie

[Richard Farrant]

Like this Israeli Carrier ?
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fi...takh_tikva.jpg

[kevin powles]

Richard, No!, That's something they have put on to stop people climbing in it, not service use applied. I need to find that picture.

kev.

[Marc Montgomery]

Someone once said there is a similar vehicle/ammo dump in the St Lawrence and shown in a Jacques Cousteau show/documentary.

Does anyone know if this is true, or another urban myth?

Would it really be that hard to take a few balloons down, give them all a shot of air from spare scuba tanks , tether and let the air lift them?
With different lengths of tether, balloons near the surface could be filled almost 100% to provide max lift, I guess the tough part would be breaking one free, once free. lifting and slowly towing to shore might not be so difficult? or is this just silly?

[RichardT10829]

lift bags would easily raise them, however getting authority to do it is one thing.... also when the machine is pulled from the fizzy sea bath, unless it is immediately emersed in a solution to counter act the salt.... the thing will fizz away and become as brittle as the preverbial Wan~~rs hankerchief in hours.

seen it happen first hand.

[Hanno Spoelstra]

Originally Posted by Lynn Eades

Not only were the engines gone from them, some showed bullet holes through them. I suspect that if one was pulled out and cleaned up, that it would prove to be a disappointment.

Definately, just have a close look at the wrecks pulled from the Normandy seabed at Port-en-Bessin. The armour on Sherman tanks has been seriously thinned down by corrossion, thinner armour on a Priest has even been corroded away. Those carriers are best left at the bottom of the ocean for divers and fish to enjoy

H.

[Lynn Eades]

Hanno, I did notice that none of the divers touched any of them. I imagine they are protected already.

[David Dunlop]

Marc

The St. Lawrence wreck does exist. I cannot recall if the ship was torpedoed on it's way out of Montreal or sank following a collision, but a good part of it's cargo was a shipment of Valentine tanks. Nothing was ever salvaged because the currents are very bad at the location it went down and the visibility not that great either. I think it is in a part of the river that bears the effects of the downstream river current and upcoming tidal bore effects. I did see a TV show about them many years back but cannot recall the source.

David

[eddy8men]

this valentine washed down a river in india last year, the locals thought it was the latest Pakistani tank and were up in arms about it until the army took it away . as far as I know they still don't know it's a valentine

[kevin powles]

Originally Posted by eddy8men

this valentine washed down a river in india last year, the locals thought it was the latest Pakistani tank and were up in arms about it until the army took it away . as far as I know they still don't know it's a valentine

Rick, This is what we should really be after..................!

[eddy8men]

the d-day centaurs and d7 dozer

I would love to raise them but I doubt it's possible to save anything, although having said that I did go to a yard in Portsmouth earlier this year where one of the valentine 6 pdr barrels and cradle from studland bay had been recovered and was awaiting restoration. so it is possible but it was rough.

rick