The M2 6th June
Last Updated on Tuesday, 22 June 2010 05:37 Written by david Saturday, 12 June 2010 19:41
The M2 is the sort of boat that a small boy might draw. Imagining the ability for a submarine to also contain an aircraft is the stuff of a vivid imagination, but the M2 has it, or had it for in 1932 whilst sea training the hangar door was left open. Adjacent to a runway this is not a problem, but in a submarine it means disaster and death as 60 officers and men lost their lives when if flooded and sunk onto a shingle seabed at 34 metres off of chesil beach
Click the image to join us on the dive
Despite being warned in West Bay that the site was likely to be busy, we arrived to find only one other rhib and the divers on board it shot back a grin like a signal lamp flashing. This was because their sounder had failed and now with our arrival they realized that they hadn't had a wasted 23 mile round trip.
My Buddy and I descended the line onto a carpet of Brittle stars with the shadow of the wreck off to our right. The shot had landed just wide of the starboard stern hydroplane and we started our dive at the stubbed ends of the prop shafts, the propellers no doubt previously salvaged by a family of aquatic tinkers. We moved through schooling fish and traveled along the port side to the torpedo tubes and bow, large Wrasse seemed to be using the growth on the hull like a huge salad bar.
The side of the submarine resembled a high wall until we reached the bow where as we turned across it, it changed from an inpenetrable plane into one long vertical line like a monstrous pencil
With our no stop time eroding fast by being on the seabed, we moved up onto the deck and along the anchor chains set into a channel in the submarines hull, these channels provided accommodation for many edible crabs and large tompot blennies. Further back we encountered the aircraft's catapult mechanism and the hangar.
A hole had appeared in the roof probably accelerated by the countless divers who had left their exhaust bubbles trapped in it. So a light shone in and the hangar, normally filled with fine silt had been largely flushed out and access gained further in, with controls fixed to the walls clearly visible.
Up onto the conning tower to inspect the periscopes and snorkel festooned with bright purple jewel anemones, tick tock down over the retracted gun fitting to return to the stern. With the 15 metres visibility that we had been given the shot line appeared easily and we rejoined it and back to the Rhib to give someone else a turn to enjoy what was was a splendid dive.
I think the word generally used to describe the dive we had experienced was cracking! yes a cracking dive, absolutely cracking, had we, I wondered encountered the spectral spirit of the aviators and their colloquialisms.....?
Roger!