The Irish Adventure of Richard Kukura and Tommy Hulme and the fate of their Beaufighter JL710

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It is with regret that I must report our extreme disappointment, we not only did not recover a complete engine but even failed to recover any single large pieces.

Willie Seaman and Eddie Brogan worked very hard all day on Saturday and Sunday cutting water weed roots and blowing away tons of mud but no complete engine was found. There was lots of oil and many broken engine parts buried in clay below the roots and mud. We all really thought we had found the engine on Saturday when gallons of oil rose to the surface!

Recovery of wreck from land has its own problems, obviously the damage is greater than in deep water. Recovery in water is easier provided it is reasonably deep (5-10m). Recovery from a combination of water which is more than wading depth and less than two to three metres combined with plant roots, mud and boulder clay on top of bedrock is the most difficult. Not only is the damage to the aircraft as bad as on land but the site is water logged as well.

Sea water is easier! Fresh water recovery is far more difficult and hazardous. Due to the amount of silt caused by decaying vegetation visibility is nil once activity starts. Lake water carries all sorts of invisible diseases, add to this the oil from the engines, sharps, etc and the urgency of the recovery to reduce the unwanted souvenir hunters things become quite hectic.

Soon after the aircraft hit the water it seemed to have nose dived (also from reports we had previously from observers) and made a trench in the clay three or four feet below water level approximately the length of its wing span. Much of the 'trench' was filled with mud and had weed roots matted together which Willie cut. He found what he thought were three deeper places in the clay with a higher bank in front (towards St Mogues Island) which may have been pushed forward by the diving aircraft. He had been convinced that the middle of the deeper and larger 'holes' was the nose while the other two were Port and Starboard engines. As indicated above he dug in to the bank and although he found lots of small engine pieces there was nothing large. The biggest appeared to be bits of engine cowling, some pieces of supercharger, crank case, plug leads, oil pipes and other small pieces of unidentifiable aluminium, copper, brass, steel, stainless steel, Bakelite and Paxolin. An eight by three inch piece of Perspex which may have been windscreen appeared to have been burnt at one end.

We now assume that either the very badly damaged engines were removed by the Irish army in the Spring of 1943 or by treasure (scrap metal) hunters after the site had been abandoned by the authorities. We already knew of one local man who has one of the very bent engine sleeve valves.

A bit away from the locations where we thought the engines should have been we found hundreds of miscellaneous parts, the most significant of which were a piece of cylinder with a small piece of head still attached and somewhat later in the evening before abandoning the efforts Isabel donned the diving gear and during her searching found a piston crown complete with rings.

For the readers who are not familiar with fresh water diving in these lakes we should explain that once the mud is stirred by any activity visibility drops to zero, it's dark and it isn't possible to see even inches in front so every inch needs to be searched with fingers. It's inevitable that sharp parts cut them but minor cuts aren't noticeable until the diver surfaces.

W.S. & NR 3rd July 2006