Junker 88

The dive

This is a Junkers Ju 88, a twin-engine German bomber of the Second World War, lying on a flat sandy bottom roughly two and a half miles west of Santa Caterina di Nardo in Salento, on the Ionian side. Depth is given as 35 m by the Costa del Sud diving service that found and runs the site and as 33 to 35 m by the divers who documented it; the airframe measures about 20 m across the wings and 15 m nose to tail. The identification was tightened in 2021: a reader working from Chris Shores's history of the Mediterranean air war matched it to a Ju 88A-4, Werknummer 5909 of 11./KG1, recorded as ditched following an engine fire 10 km west of Gallipoli on 10 July 1943. The pilot, Kurt Koneke, was injured; three of the crew are recorded as killed. Divers cleaning the fuselage during a 2017 expedition found a yellow marking traceable to the letter K, which is as close to a registration as the corroded skin allows.

It lies in flying attitude, nose to the south-west. The fuselage has broken cleanly at the level of the emergency hatch, and the tail section with the landing gear sits separately about ninety feet behind the main body. The canopy shattered on impact, so the cockpit is open to view with the seating and instrument panels visible, and the wings are largely intact with the engines partly buried in sand. Yellow Axinella verrucosa bushes are the most obvious growth on the exposed metal. No weapons, no ammunition and no human remains have been reported on the wreck, and the missing life raft and oxygen bottle plank are read as evidence the crew got out.

The practical dive is a straightforward one if you are qualified for the depth: a boat run out from Santa Caterina, a descent onto a wreck that stands clear on featureless sand, and a bottom time that ends long before the interest does. The 2017 documentation expedition worked it on Nitrox 32 with a 60-minute ceiling per dive, which is a reasonable indication of the profile. Nothing published gives a visibility or a current figure for the site.

Treat it as a grave marker as much as a wreck. It is a war loss with three of its crew recorded as killed, and under Italian law anything of cultural interest recovered from the seabed belongs to the State (D.Lgs. 42/2004, art. 91), so removing so much as a fitting is not a diver's decision to make. The 2017 team brushed the fuselage with natural bristles specifically to avoid damaging the metal.

• The aircraft sitting in flying attitude, nose to the south-west
• An open cockpit with seating and instrument panels still readable
• Wings largely intact with the engines half buried in sand
• The tail section and landing gear lying separately about ninety feet behind
• Yellow Axinella verrucosa sponge on the exposed metal

Conditions

A boat dive over featureless Ionian sand. The aircraft is the only structure on the bottom, so the dive is a circuit of the airframe rather than a route. The 2017 documentation team worked it on Nitrox 32 with a 60-minute maximum per dive, and lost planned days to wind and sea state, which is the usual limiting factor on an exposed offshore site.

On current: Sources give the depth as 35 m (Costa del Sud) and as 33 to 35 m (the divers who documented the wreck); plan on 35 m. No source read gives a visibility figure or describes current at the site, so neither is recorded.