This piece of landing gear was discovered in October 2022 along with other aircraft wreckage by a film crew looking for Giant Pacific Octopus in Saanich Inlet, on southern Vancouver Island. The landing gear may be from a Hadley Page Hampden medium bomber, flown for bombing and gunnery crew training during the Second World War. A number of these aircraft from RAF Operational Training Unit (OTU) No. 32 based in Victoria, crashed in the waters around Vancouver Island during training flights, sometimes with the loss of all four crew members.
The UASBC dived the site in December 2022 and January 2023 to inventory the wreckage, map the site and search for additional aircraft parts. This model was generated from GoPro footage shot by Jacques Marc; photogrammetry by Ewan Anderson.
The UASBC continues to record the site and search for the 80 year-old record that will identify the aircraft and the fate of its crew.
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