Malta

Bristol Blenheim Bomber

A Blenheim light bomber sitting upright on sand and low reef at 42 m off the southeast coast, ditched in 1941 with the whole crew walking away. Deep, current prone and worth the effort.

Deep / Experienced🚢 Wreck39 to 42 mBoat divePopularity: lowAlso called Blenheim Bomber, Blenheim Z7272, Bristol Blenheim

Plan this dive

Sea conditions

Good right now

Some chop (0.5 m E)

Forecast for the site, updated 01:46 AM

Waves: 0.5 m; from E
Wind: n/a
Swell: 0.5 m; 5 s period
Sea temp: 29 °C

Next 7 days

Today🌤️77 0.5 m
0 N

Sat🌤️86 0.4 m
0 N

Sun🌤️87 0.4 m
0 N

Mon🌤️99 0.2 m
0 N

Tue🌤️89 0.4 m
0 N

Wed🌤️49 1.0 m
0 N

Thu🌤️49 1.0 m
0 N

Exposed to wind and swell from: NE (45°), E (90°), SE (135°), S (180°). Open to anything coming out of the eastern half of the compass, and the local current runs hardest when the wind has been up. A settled northwesterly or a calm day is the window. Ask the skipper about current on the day, not the forecast alone. Best season: June to October for the most reliable flat days and warm water. Currents ease in settled midsummer conditions..

The dive

This is the deep one of Malta's recreational aircraft wrecks and it feels like it. You leave the boat, drop through a lot of blue, and the seabed arrives at 42 m as a mix of sand and scrappy low reef. Then the wings appear, laid out flat and wide, with the two radial engines still sitting where they should be. Starboard still carries a bent propeller. Port lost its blades long ago.

What is left is more skeleton than aeroplane. The cockpit canopy has gone, the turret and its guns were lifted decades ago, and the rear fuselage has snapped away and lies a short swim off, upside down and mostly under sand. Even the pilot's seat was removed by souvenir hunters at some point. Photographs from the first RAF Sub Aqua Club surveys in the late sixties show something far more complete than what you meet today, and the corrosion between dissimilar metals keeps quietly working away at the rest.

Plan it tightly. At 42 m the no stop clock is close to meaningless, so most centres run this on nitrox with a conservative profile or as a light decompression dive for suitably qualified divers. Current is the other variable and it can be genuinely strong here, which turns a leisurely wander around the wings into a hard swim. Get the layout in your head from the briefing, work the wreck in one direction, and do not chase the tail section unless you have the time and gas to get back.

Wings and both radial engines still laid out in aircraft shape
Bent starboard propeller, the signature photograph of the site
Detached tail section lying inverted nearby
One of the deepest aircraft still inside recreational range in Malta
A ditching story where every one of the three crew survived

Typical plan

Shot line down to 42 m, straight onto the main wreckage. Work the starboard engine and propeller first, cross the centre section to the port engine, then only visit the detached tail if gas and time allow. Nitrox 28 is close to ideal for the depth. Realistic bottom time is ten to fifteen minutes with a slow ascent, a deep stop and a long 5 m stop, deploying a surface marker early because the current will carry you off the site.

What the bottom looks like

1Main wreckage, wings and centre section upright42 m deep · 30 m out
2Starboard radial engine with bent propeller42 m deep · 36 m out
3Port engine, propeller missing42 m deep · 42 m out
4Detached rear fuselage, inverted and part buried42 m deep · 58 m out
5Low scattered reef patches on the sand42 m deep · 70 m out
6Open sand beyond the wreck field41 m deep · 80 m out

Cartoon cross-section along the usual route from the boat drop. Depths are approximate.

Sand broken up by low rocky outcrops, so the wreckage sits in a patchwork rather than on a clean plain.

Who you might meet

Getting in and staying safe

Boat only, usually from Marsaxlokk, Marsaskala or the southeast dive centres. It is an exposed corner of coast so trips get cancelled readily. Expect a shot line and a drift back to the boat rather than a return to the anchor. Advanced or deep certification is the normal minimum and centres will ask about your recent deep experience.

42 m puts you well into narcosis territory and eats gas fast
Currents here can be strong and are the main reason trips get scrubbed
Decompression obligation is easy to pick up by accident
Fragile, thin corroded alloy that breaks if you hold it
Silt over the buried sections, easily stirred
Tail section is a separate swim, so navigation errors cost gas
Open water surfacing with no shore option

A bit of history

The Bristol Blenheim was a twin engine light bomber with a crew of three, roughly 13 m long with a 17.2 m wingspan. This aircraft, a Mark IV of No. 18 Squadron RAF, was heading out towards Greece on 13 December 1941 when an Italian fighter jumped it en route and wrecked the port engine. The pilot turned back for Malta, ran out of options short of the airfield, and put her down on the water beside a Maltese fishing boat in what witnesses described as a textbook ditching. All three of the crew survived with nothing worse than minor injuries. Divers located the wreck in 1965 and the RAF Sub Aqua Club surveyed it in 1968, when it was still remarkably complete.

Divers say

No reviews yet. First one gets bragging rights.

Further reading: Underwater Malta virtual museum: Blenheim Bomber · Malta Dive Sites: Bristol Blenheim Bomber · Dive Shack Malta site guide · Wrecksite.eu entry