John started diving at the grand old age of 14, with a commercial diving company owned by his Uncle in the Westcountry.  Following a substantial gap, he took up the Sport again in 1992 with BSAC whilst during a tour of the Falkland Islands.  He’s been a qualified Advanced Diver and Club Instructor since 1996 with roughly 2,500 dives under his metaphorical weight-belt.  This year he has completed his OWI and NAS Part 1 with The Nautical and Archaeological Society in Portsmouth in preparation for this Expedition and is arranging to do his Advanced Instructor course and NAS Part 2 during 2006, he’s also a current member of the Royal Geographical Society.

John’s previously organised four successful tri-service military Expeditions to The Maldives, plus others to The Red Sea, Gibraltar and Ascension Islands.  He’s dived in various wonderful locations including: Ascension Islands, Belize, Bermuda, Caribbean, Falkland Islands, Gibraltar, The Maldives, Mauritius, Red Sea, and most places in Europe and along the Coastline of our Great Country to mention but a few.  One aspect of John’s expeditions is always a charity event, in 2004 over £4,000 was raised for SSAFA after organising a charity Dive around Biyaadoo Island in The Maldives.  2005 saw the most time consuming challenge – which was to collect enough Children’s books to open six children’s libraries in the outer atolls of the Maldives - in fact during the year he collected over 12,500 Books.  This year’s event is another challenge for SSAFA which is to circumnavigate underwater around Kuda Bandos with all proceeds going to SSAFA.  John’s long term goal is to spend the summers teaching diving holidays in Brittany with the winters being spent as a Hotel Dive Instructor in the Maldives.

Expedition Dive Location Feature:

Another early start put 4 pair on a sandy bottom search for 40mins but the 6-8 m dive returned no targets even though the water was clear.  The second wave was put on the wing after another search and a single pair surveyed the wing while 4 remaining pairs starburst on set headings to establish water depth in the immediate vicinity.

The second search dive returned a possible debris field northwest of the main wing site. This was the only find of the dive and by the end of the day we as a team are starting to believe that we may have found the main site. The dive pairs were split into search quadrants and box search’s commenced, it was getting towards the end of the dive when Dave Bewick and Stef spotted something on the seabed which was obviously metal. They decided it was worth further investigation and attached their SMB to it then finned over the surrounding area. This proved to be very profitable as the whole area was littered with debris. Unfortunately their air supply was approaching the reserve so they had to mark up the site for the second wave to investigate further.

The third dive of the days aim was to eliminate additional seabed and to confirm the detail established during dive 2.  Again teams went out and conducted searches using the compass box (raster scan) search method.  This activity not only eliminated previously unexplored areas but also reconfirmed the limit of the debris found.  Peter Gorgan and Phil Anderson also found what may be the plane’s anchor; however, this will require further exploration to confirm this.  Today’s diving used the underwater metal detectors for the first time.  These proved to be very useful when confirming pieces of debris were metal rather than coral masquerading as debris.  Overall a very successful day’s investigative work.

 A late afternoon shore party (JC, Liz, Mike, Reid, John Parris and Riyaz) visited Utheem, along with Seedhbe from Kelaa.  Seedhbe had contacted the Chief of Utheem who, in turn, had invited people with knowledge of the wreck to meet us.  The grandson of one of those that salvaged the wreck talked to us for almost an hour and we gathered an enormous amount of information; we also saw blades from the propellers, a box and sheet metal plus pots and pans that had been made from the aircraft metal.  We learnt that the aircraft had settled on the lagoon bed with the tail section mainly intact but the forward section of the fuselage heavily broken apart.  One wing was around 50ft from the main wreck but the other wing was not seen.  The wreck was lifted and dragged to the shallows some 27 years ago (when the grandson was about 17) and one engine (perhaps both) had been recovered to Hodaafushi.   Two machine guns had also been recovered, along with a significant amount of ammunition, but these had been sold to a foreigner (nationality not known) around 5 years ago.  Three blades from the propeller(s) had been preserved, though one had the feathering mechanism cut off to form an anvil.  The entire contents of the fuselage has been recycled into various tools and cooking utensils, including around 250 pots and pans (see pictures) which had been sold around the islands.  The larger portion of wing we had found was never seen by the salvagers and although they recovered one engine they didn’t know whether the other had been located or not.  The salvage team fixed wires to the wreck by free diving (no aqualung kit) in around 40ft of water and then winched the wreck up before dragging it to the shallower water, where it was easier to dismantle.  During the salvage they came across 4 large drums which we consider were depth charges.  Thankfully, they had no particular use for these drums and threw them back into deeper water – hence, they’re probably still there somewhere!  All this information backs up the contemporary evidence and we now think that we’ve found all that we are likely to find.  We have located the small piece of wing in the shallows that has been mainly stripped, the larger (starboard) wing that the locals never found, and the crash site that has significant debris left from the initially lift and drag.  Still missing are the depth charges and, possibly, one engine.  However, there is not sufficient reason to continue searching for these items.  Unfortunately, one of the most valuable pieces of evidence that could have helped identify the cause of the crash, ie the cockpit instrumentation, had no local value and, although the instruments were recovered, they have long since been thrown away or put on scrap heaps.  Therefore, we have lost the chance of identifying whether the artificial horizon was caged or not at the moment of impact with the sea.  Consequently, in our opinion, the cause of the crash remains open.

Search briefing

Searching, searching......

Finding finding

Catalina wing centre - DF antenna mounts