Ras Peter / Tank Garden

The dive

Ras Peter is a dump of Second World War vehicles pushed off the cliff at Sharm el Maya, the bay that holds Sharm el Sheikh's commercial port. Divers who have been down count more than thirty tracked Universal Carriers, the same Mk II carriers that sit in the holds of the Thistlegorm, together with Bedford trucks, trailers and, if you look for them, motorcycles. They lie over and under each other in no order at all, some on their tracks, some on their sides, and the serial numbers of the carriers have been matched to the Thistlegorm's cargo manifest.

The dive is a boat drift. A few trucks still break the surface, which is how the place is found. The plan reported from the site is to drop at the southernmost truck showing above water, begin at 25 to 30 m and let the current carry you north along a band of wreckage roughly fifteen metres wide. The two accounts we read disagree on where the wreckage starts: 2dive4 puts the first vehicle at about 6 m and the average of the site near 34 m, while the Taucher.net report found the vehicles spread between 35 and 10 m. What both agree on is that the bulk of the metal is below 30 m, so this is a deep dive on a scrap field, not a reef swim.

The naming is worth getting right. Divers and dive centres call it Ras Peter, Tank Reef, or Panzerriff in German; the compound "Tank Garden" in our catalogue entry appears in no dive-centre or diver text we could find. Live ammunition has been reported lying loose among the wreckage and 2dive4 records an unexploded landmine on the site, so nothing here is to be touched or moved. It also sits at the entrance to a working harbour used by cruise ships, and the 2002 report from the site could not establish whether the Egyptian authorities forbid diving there or merely dislike it, so it is a dive to arrange through a Sharm operator rather than to plan on your own.

• Over thirty Universal Carrier Mk II tracked vehicles, matched by serial number to the Thistlegorm's cargo
• Bedford trucks, trailers and motorcycles in the same pile
• Trucks still visible above water mark the entry point
• A north-running drift over a band of wreckage about 15 m wide

Conditions

Visibility was described as excellent by the diver who reported the site, with light current mostly setting north. Morning is named as the better time of day for light on the wreckage, though an afternoon dive was reported as perfectly workable. Neither source we read gives water temperatures or a seasonal pattern for this site.

On current: Both accounts describe a north-setting drift. The Taucher.net report calls the current light and mostly northerly with excellent visibility; 2dive4 warns that there can be a fair current now and then. We take the stronger of the two. The same two sources disagree on the shallow limit of the wreckage, 6 m against 10 m, so treat the shallow end as uncertain; the deep end, about 40 m, is the number that governs the plan.