Getting prepared  Photo: Carl Thomaeus, Havsresan

The History

The 29th of November 1944 was a gray and gloomy day with heavy clouds over the southern Baltic. At 10.25 the patrol post at Falsterbo lighthouse observed a ”fireball” appearing through the clouds, slowly at first then accelerating before crashing on the surface 3-5 kilometres off the coast. The plane was a German Focke Wulff Condor 200, flying passengers between Berlin and Stockholm. It is believed that the plan was mistaken for an American bomb plane B17 (also known as the flying fortress) and therefore was shot down by a German patrol boat in the area (http://2011.havsresan.se/vmainfo/files/VMA11_FW200.pdf).

The Tall tale

Some people are convinced that the plane wasn’t shot down by mistake but intentionally.

Why?

It was supposedly transporting a courier carrying Japanese capitulation papers, something that Hitler’s “Third Reich” didn’t appreciate…  

The diving

The Swedish Coast Guard had approximate positions for the location of the plane as early as the beginning of the 90’s. However, to update the data they did a new sonar scan of the area last night and this morning we were given three new interesting positions, which initially had been interpreted as a wing, a strange rock and a fishing net caught in something.

We started off by doing a circle search (a circle search is a technique where you attach a line to a weight and swim in circles, moving further from the middle after each lap visually examining the bottom) of the wing position – nothing but filamentous algae. The strange rock – the same thing. But on the fishing net position we struck gold (or at least iron). After only five minutes in the water the divers resurfaced and they couldn’t hide their excitement:

 – We found it! We found the Wulff!

What we had found was the landing gear from an airplane and a few minutes later we got a VHF-message that one of the other boats had found something that appeared to be the fuel tank of a plane.

Landing gear  Photo: Michael Palmgren, Havsresan

Fuel tank  Photo: Robert Hansson, Havsresan

However, more parts from the plane need to be located to establish if it in fact is the German Focke Wulff Condor 200 that went down on that gray November morning in 1944.