Good to see so much effort being put into locating losses- "Japanese researchers believe they have located the wreck of the Imperial Japanese Navy battleship Hiei – designed by a British naval architect and built with British components before being pitted against the Royal Navy in the early exchanges of the Second World War in the Far East. The Hiei was the first Japanese battleship to be lost in the conflict and members of the Tokyo-based Asian-Pacific Remembrance Honouring Association have been searching for the wreck for several years. Badly damaged in an encounter in November 1942 with US Navy units off Guadalcanal, in the Solomon Islands, the Hiei was under tow when it was subsequently attacked by US bombers and the order was given to abandon ship. The vessel drifted at night from its last confirmed position before sinking with the loss of 188 of her crew, making determining its final resting place more difficult. The Japanese group has used sonar to map the seabed around the Solomons and to identify anomalies. In late November a previously unknown wreck was discovered about 7 miles north of Guadalcanal. The wreckage is at a depth of more than 1,300 feet and partly covered in sand and debris, the group said. Sonar images show a vessel approximately 490 feet long, 130 feet wide and standing 16 feet proud of the seabed. A second debris field is slightly nearer to the surface and is believed to be part of the vessel measuring around 100 feet long by 26 feet wide. Experts believe the vessel sank on an even keel and with its bridge upright, although it has sunk into the seabed over the intervening 76 years." www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2018/02/26/wreck-japanese-battleship-hiei-may-have-located-solomon-islands/
It would take years upon years to find every shipwreck in the Pacific from WW2, and that would be if you drain the ocean. I would be very impresses if they did in fact find it, that's fantastic....
Oh I'm sure there are many more lakes and lagoons across the world that are probably holding dozens of wrecks like those, waiting to be discovered. It's sad, but also exciting.
The Zuiderzee was on the way to and from many bombing runs...many pilots chose to fly over it knowing there weren't any AA guns directly below as it was water...the Germans stationed guns along its edge though (and eventually placed barges with AA guns - Scurvy dogs!)...if you were hit and flying low and slow it was a choice place to fly over...many damaged aircraft didn't make the journey though and ditched...
Now I'm very curious as to why there is a Finnish aircraft (F2A Buffalo) in the Netherlands? Are those just pictures showing other aircraft taken out of lakes I'm assuming to prove there are many examples?
Undoubtedly some of those photos were taken outside of Holland. The Buffalo was recovered from a Finnish (or was that Russian?) lake, and resides in a Finnish museum. I saw it several years ago. Th Ju88 is certainly not from Holland, and instead is likely from Norway.
I knew there was no way a Finnish aircraft of any type would be anywhere further south than the coast of Denmark, as it was still an axis country despite it's support from the U.S and others in it's fight against Russia in 1939-1940. I just wasn't sure where the lake was initially located, since I saw the B-17 that confused me at first more so than the Buffalo.
Svalbard to be precise. And the Me-109 was found in a lake in Russia. 1 out of 4 ain't ba...Well, yeah that is pretty bad.