BR-20 Wreck

The dive

The BR-20 is an Italian medium bomber lying in trim on a sandy bottom roughly 47 m down, a couple of kilometres off Santo Stefano al Mare on the Riviera di Ponente, between Sanremo and Imperia. On 13 June 1940, three days into Italy's war, a Fiat BR.20 Cicogna of the 43rd Gruppo returning from a raid on the Toulon area was shot up by Dewoitine D.520 fighters. With one engine half working and the dorsal gun out of action it could not clear the Alps, so it followed the coast at low level past Sanremo and ditched off Santo Stefano. It sank almost at once, taking down armourer Tommaso Ferrari, radio operator Salvatore Gaeta and the pilot, Lieutenant Simone Catalano, who was decorated posthumously; the second pilot and the flight engineer were picked up by boats from the shore after two hours in the water. Sources differ on the serial: the Nautilus account gives MM 21503 for this aircraft, while the diver Stefano Sibona's report names MM 21505.

It is very likely the last Fiat BR.20 anywhere, which is part of why divers go. The airframe is structurally complete, though the aluminium sheet and fabric skin has largely gone. Sibona, who dived it in August 2020, describes the three-bladed propeller with the first row of radial cylinders visible behind it and a pair of scorpionfish living in them, a cockpit crushed by the impact but with the pilots' seats and control levers still readable, yellow sponges encrusting the nose where the covering used to be, and the dorsal machine gun still in its revolving turret with the ammunition box below it. Groupers shelter under the long wings and lobsters sit in the gaps between the plates.

This is a decompression dive beyond recreational limits and the centres that run it are technical operations: Nautilus Technical Diving Center at Marina degli Aregai in Santo Stefano al Mare, and Borgo Marina Diving of Imperia. Sibona notes the light easterly current that often runs here and that it keeps the water clear enough to pick the aircraft out before reaching the bottom. Nothing on the wreck should be moved. Both centres frame the dive around leaving it as it is, the machine gun, its ammunition and both propellers are still in place, and three men went down with it.

• Probably the only surviving Fiat BR.20 Cicogna in the world
• Airframe upright and structurally complete on flat sand
• Three-bladed propeller with the front row of radial cylinders exposed
• Dorsal 12.7 mm machine gun still in its turret, ammunition box below it
• Cockpit with the pilots' seats and control levers still identifiable
• Grouper under the wings, lobsters in the plate gaps, scorpionfish in the engine cylinders

Conditions

Boat dive from Marina degli Aregai at Santo Stefano al Mare, about a mile and a half out. Flat sand around the aircraft, a light easterly current that keeps the water clear, and enough visibility on a good day to make out the airframe before reaching the bottom.

On current: Depth is given as 47 m by both operators and by Stefano Sibona's dive report; the Italian Wikipedia entry on the Fiat B.R.20 says 48 m. The deeper figure is used here. Sibona reports a light current that often comes from the east and that visibility is good enough to see the aircraft on the way down; no source read for this page gives a visibility figure in metres. The Borgo Marina catalogue entry dates the sinking to 1945, which is wrong: every account of the aircraft's history, including the operator Nautilus and the Italian Wikipedia entry, puts it on 13 June 1940.