The wreckage of Royal Australian Air Force Baltimore FW282 has been discovered in the Aegean Sea, near the island of Antikythera, more than eighty years after it crashed, killing three of its four crew.
AegeanTec/Australian Department of DefenceA diver with the wreckage of a Royal Australian Air Force aircraft discovered by AegeanTec in 2024.
According to the Australian Department of Defence, the wreckage of the Baltimore FW282 bomber was found in 2024 by the Greek technical diving team AegeanTec. The divers found it in about 200 feet of water near the Greek island of Antikythera (famous for its ancient mechanism known as the Antikythera Mechanism). Believing it to be an RAAF aircraft, they contacted the RAAF History and Heritage Unit.
The RAAF were then able to confirm that the wreck was indeed an RAAF aircraft, namely Baltimore FW282, a bomber shot down in 1943. There were four people on board: pilot William Elroy Hugh Horsley of the RAAF, navigator Leslie Norman Rowe of the RAF, and two wireless operators/air gunners, Colin William Walker of the RAAF and John Gartside of the Royal New Zealand Air Force.
Of the four men, only Horsley survived.
“This discovery of the aircraft is significant,” said RAAF Chief of Air Force Air Marshal Stephen Chappell in a press release, “and provides an opportunity for the families to find solace.”
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