Propellors recovered from Poole Harbour

[pulse1]

Came out the door on Saturday to find two damaged propellors sitting in my neighbour's driveway. Apparently they were dragged up from Poole Harbour by a local fisherman some time ago. My neighbour bought them to save them from the scrapyard.

He is now trying to discover the history of these propellors. They are believed to be from a German aircraft but this is far from certain. I have found a website which gives a list of all plane crashes in Dorset and there is only one record of a Bf109 shot down into the harbour. The propellors look identical so that would be an unlikely source.

There have been various Sunderland, Liberator and Catalina accidents.

Can anyone point him at a source of helpful information. I guess that a source of propellor dimensions for the various suspect aircraft might be a useful start.

[parabellum]

You have probably already done this so I apologise in advance but most props have a serial number somewhere plus groups of letters and numbers that might help to identify them. If they have been in the water for a long time they could be hard to find.

[Brian Abraham]

German and Allied props were also quite different in appearance which would enhance identification.

[chevvron]

A number of Short 'C' class boats were scuttled in Poole Harbour in the late 40s or early 50s.

[DB6]

Can you post a picture?

[tubby linton]

Are the flying boats in water shallow enough to dive on?I would love to see a C class.

[pulse1]

tubby linton,

The water is certainly shallow but very muddy and tidal. I don't know too much about this but I found quite a lot of useful information on this website:


http://www.scribd.com/doc/2251377/Aircraft-Crash-Sites-at-Sea-a-Scoping-Study-project-report

I will try to post photographs when I can work out hhow to do it.

p1

[ICT_SLB]

About twenty-odd years ago, I dived on a P-38 Lightning that was found in Poole Bay - the centre section is huge when your underneath it & need to get out quick! To my knowledge there have been Typhoons & at least one P-38 lost in Poole Bay. I cut my hand underwater on the ignition studs of the Napier Sabre in the FAA Museum & I'm 99% certain it's from a Tiffie not a Blackburn Firebrand - there used to be loads of practice 8 inch rockets found in Swanage Bay from when they used to fire on a raft moored of Old Harry (or so I was told).

The back wall of the Royal Motor Yacht Club (RMYC) in Sandbanks used(?) to have paint "cutouts" of various large spanners & rig boards for Kingfishers & Sea Otters as it was used a seaplane base during the war so you've got a lot of aircraft to choose from apart from the usual flying boats.

I doubt Chevvrons post about C-class airframes - thought the majority of those were sunk off Norway & certainly they were never mentioned all the time I was a member of BSAC No.6 Branch or BAC Hurn Sub-Aqua Club.

[chevvron]

A friend of mine lived there at the time; he said they were beached for years as BOAC didn't want them then towed out and scuttled.

[Groundloop]

According to the book "Adventurous Empires" 13 C-class boats are listed as "Scrapped Hythe" under Final Disposal. There is a photograph of Corsair being broken up at Hythe. It mentions the boats were beached at Hythe and cut-up by R J Coley and Sons.

The only reference to Poole as a final "resting place" was for Maia which is listed as "Enemy action - bombed Poole 11 May 41".

Only 2 boats - Caribou and Connemara - are listed as bombed off Bodo in Norway.

[chevvron]

Maybe my mate was getting confused with Solents or Hythes? Ex Aquilla Airways? he definitely told me they were beached at Poole for many years.

[Corsairoz]

If your neighbour wants some help, a trip or a call to us at the Solentsky museum up the road in Southampton might be useful. We have a large display full of bits recovered from the Solent including various props and engines. We also have a Sandringham (Sunderland) with 4 x Twin Wasps for comparison props.

My guess would be a Sunderland, or a DO-88 or ME-110. Plenty of them in action at the time. Contact em off thread at [email protected] if you want to drop in on us for a chat.

cheers

[ICT_SLB]

Just a clarification, the vast majority of known wrecks, at least, are not in Poole Harbour but in Poole (or Bournemouth) Bay. Both are tidal but the harbour is, as stated, pretty muddy & low viz with by far the higher current especially through the entrance at Sandbanks. Most of the items in the harbour have been found while dredging operations have been made - everything from unexploded bombs to ancient fossilised wood trackways & dugout canoes and Roman pottery (Poole was the main supply base for Hadrian's Wall).

Outside in the Bay, interesting wrecks range from 16th century ships (including one captured Armada vessel) to Duplex Drive (DD) Valentine & Sherman tanks.

[pulse1]

Corsairoz,

Please check your PM.

[XF828]

The 'Boats were broken up, presumably for scrap, on Hamworthy (Poole Harbour) beach in the late 1950's. I well remember climbing around in the (by then) wingless hulks. No way were they "Scuttled" in the Harbour, too shallow outside of the "Navigation Channels".

[ICT_SLB]

"Wings over Dorset" (ISBN 0 948699 10 8) states that Solent Mk 3 "City of Salisbury" G-AHIL was scrapped on "Hamworthy Beach" during 1954 (see page 148). Page 149 shows the remains of "City of Liverpool" & "Solway" with kids standing in just about every opening. Plenty of other flying boat pictures as well.

My guess would be that the props could be from the P-38 (see above) which, if memory serves, was out on the seaward end of Hook Sands - want to bet it crashed when the pilot tried to duplicate the Typhoon's practice attacks. If they are from a water wreck, the blades will be pushed back to a ninety degree angle from contact with the water. If they still look like normal blades then my guess is they are from a scrapped aircraft and there's a lot of potential dry land sources for them in Dorset. Measuring the blade length will also help identify the source.

[Double Zero]

Possibly related - about 20 years ago when my father ( life-long aircraft engineer, Seafire to Harrier ) went ashore from his boat in Studland Bay he saw a very large aircraft wheel & tyre in a corner of the beach.

He reckoned it was probably from a flying boat, and presumably well known as it appeared to have been there quite a while.

On the same slant, but drifting in position if you'll pardon the pun, I was once at the pontoon in Bembridge where the fishing boats empty their junk; as I walked past I did a double-take, as among the usual stuff was an unmistakable Cessna 172 type main leg, complete with step ( no tyre ).

Possibly from the poor sod who managed to crash into the only yacht in sight in the Eastern Solent on a winter's day a few years ago.

It did the yacht & crew no good at all either - never heard the outcome, I 'hope' it was a sad accident, not intentional ?

- Follow up after a quick google - it ( the accident, not necessarily the wreckage I saw ) was probably the 172 which went into the Solent on 30 April1987, killing all 3 in the Cessna & 2 people on the yacht; the verdict was ' probable loss of control ' which is hardly enlightening.

Always seemed a strange one, but then again what aircraft accident isn't a combination of strange and / or unexpected circumstances...

[ICT_SLB]

Re the 172, when we used to provide safety divers for the RMYC & other powerboat races our boat was always a target for the spotter aircraft. Want to bet the 172 was doing a beat up & sadly underestimated the height of the yacht mast?