GOTHA Go 242 – The recovering of a Landing Gear Ski from the Aegean sea

[jterny]

Guided by various informations during late 90’s , I visited a beach side in the island of Evia along the Greek main land, searching for the remnants of an aircraft in the sea, since the ww2 years. After some hours of searches in the sea along a steep beach side, I came in front a large steel “ski structure”, with a part of corroded shock absorber and coil springs attached to it’s upper side ,lying along the steep bottom about 3 meters deep under the surface. With great efforts I finally managed to pull this really heavy object out of the water, in order to produce some photos for further study. It was really a confusing finding due of it’s size (almost 1,5 to 2 meters log) and so I was wondering if that belonged to an aircraft or some kind of other naval vessel..
After reviewing several data for aircrafts which operated in Greece during ww2, I finally concluded with the help of a friend, that this ski belonged to the landing gear of a Gotha Go 242 glider ! A number of these gliders were operating, from Greek airfields during 1942 supplying the advance in Egypt of the Afrikakorps . Some months later during an other visit on this spot and diving down to 15-16 meters below the surface , I was able to see the dark shape of the fuselage of this glider, lying upside down on the bottom of the sea, at an estimated depth of approximately 25-28 m deep.
Obviously this landing gear ski was “hooked” by the fishing nets of a large boat , dragged and finally discarded near the beach side were found …
John

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[harryamb2]

go get the rest of it.

[Jerry B]

go get the rest of it.

Harry are you actually a person or are you a spambot??

[harryamb2]

whats a spambot? and yes I am real thats me in luft uniform 1980

[Adrian Stevenson]

Hi John, that is another great find. Nice work.

Cheers, Ade.

[sandgroper]

What a great find, how exciting it must be to dive over the wreckage of a ww2 aircraft! I hope you get to do it again and maybe take an underwater camera, I'm sure I would not be the only one that would love to see pics of that fuselage lying on the seabed. Great stuff!

[Woolgar]

Exciting stuff!!

Nick

[jterny]

Hi everybody,
Thank you all for your kind comments !
I wish i had the equipments ( and to be also some years younger ), to dive down to the wrecked fuselage in order to complete the work !!
Any way, the Aegean sea, "hides" still a lot of ww2 aircrafts wrecks and soon i will post for you some photos of a SM79 engine and fuselage structure remnants from the sea side of Rhodes , as and the recovery of relics of a Henschel He 126 from the sea of northern Greece.
Cheers,
John

[Jerry B]

whats a spambot? and yes I am real thats me in luft uniform 1980

Sorry Harry, a feeble attempt at humor. Spambots are computer generated posters who generally post a single line of uninformative comment, often but not always just copying earlier posts. When I posted this I had just come from another forum where such posts had been made and deleted by me in my capacity as a moderator there.

[kiwiwreckdiver]

Another great post John
I've dived the Ar196 out near Naxos after spending 3 summers on Ios as a bar manager and Dive Instructor
Sadly didn't have a camera.
the fuse of the 196 is still pretty complete although very picked over, she was shot down by Beufighter while on convoy protection duty
There is also a complete Beaufighter more north of there out in the channel at 35m.
Flown by 2 fellow kiwi's they bailed out over Naxos while the local Greeks hide them for 3 months (right under the 500 German noses)
They later got picked out by a sub or motor boat headed by a SAS group.
Must be plenty more out there to find, I have found wreckage on Ios but its off something more modern (service stamp saying 1968 on them).
Keep up the great work mate always looking forward to your posts.
Hamish