Junkers Ju-52 (Wreck)

The dive

The Junkers Ju 52 off the Palermo coast is a three-engine German transport that came down in the sea in the summer of 1942 after engine trouble, on the stretch of water between Sferracavallo and Isola delle Femmine. The most detailed account puts the ditching on 31 August 1942, watched from shore by two boys, with the crew getting clear and being picked up by local fishermen; other accounts give only summer 1942, and one loose secondary claim of April 1943 is not supported by anything we could read. The wreck was found by the Tecnomare diving group in the late 1980s. It sits inside zone C of the Capo Gallo - Isola delle Femmine marine protected area, which lists it among its underwater itineraries at 46 m and rates it medium-to-high difficulty, technical, with excellent visibility and historical interest.

What survives is the aircraft's outer half. The machine lies inverted, probably having rolled as it sank, and the fuselage, tail and cockpit are buried in the sand and effectively gone from view. The wings are the dive: both are complete, with two of the engines undamaged, and the right propeller shows no bending at all, which is read as evidence that engine had already stopped when the aircraft touched down. Scubaportal put the bottom at 45 m of sand; the marine park says 46. Divers rig a ladder against the fuselage as a reference. A large conger, around two metres and thirty kilos, lives in the wreck and is known locally as Beniamino, and groupers shelter under the wings; one account calls the resident fish a moray instead, and both congers and moray eels are recorded in the occurrence data around this pin.

At 46 m this is a decompression dive, and every source that discusses the profile says the same thing: technical training, a professional dive centre, and a boat. One documented dive reported visibility over 30 m, and the park's own itinerary rates visibility here as excellent, which is unusual enough to be part of why the site has a reputation. There is no shallow part of the site to stretch the dive on.

The crew survived this ditching, so the wreck is not a grave, but it is still an eighty-year-old military aircraft in Sicilian waters. Underwater archaeological heritage in Sicily falls to the Soprintendenza del Mare, the regional superintendency created in 2004 for exactly this, and under the national heritage code anything of cultural interest recovered from the seabed belongs to the State. The park's rules independently forbid removing or damaging anything at its dive sites.

• Both wings complete with two engines still on them
• The unbent right propeller, evidence that engine had stopped before the ditching
• The aircraft lying inverted with fuselage and tail swallowed by sand
• A resident conger of about two metres known locally as Beniamino
• Groupers sheltering under the wings

Conditions

Open water over flat sand at 46 m, worked from a boat. The park's own itinerary rates visibility here excellent and one documented dive reported over 30 m, so the wreck usually shows itself from some distance. Bottom time is the binding constraint: sources describe it as a technical dive requiring a professional centre and a boat.

On current: Depth is given as 46 m by the marine protected area and 45 m by Scubaportal; plan on 46. The park's itinerary rates visibility here as excellent and one documented dive reported over 30 m, but that is a single observation, not a season-long average. No source read describes current at the site.