Diving on the Duckypoo wreck
After about seven years we returned to dive on the wreck of the Duckypoo plane, an excellent US F4 derived from a Lockheed P-38F, shot down and then sunk just off the coast of Cecina (LI), by German anti-aircraft during a reconnaissance in June 1944, during the Second World War. Diving on the Duckypoo wreck intotheblue.it
Diving on this plane is always a great experience, even if the wreck is now almost completely covered in sand and mud brought by sea currents and storm surges. What is fascinating in this dive is not so much the wreck as the story of David Toomey and his incredible reconnaissance but above all the discovery of the plane which occurred thanks to Dino and Sara Belluomini from the Cecina Diving Center Sub in 2009 commissioned by Toomey himself now elderly, who took us to the wreck and told the whole story in detail.
A thought about the story of this intrepid and daring pilot is inevitable if we think that in 1944 David Toomey accomplished an exceptional feat. He left Tarquinia, passed near the island of Giglio between Elba and Piombino and then entered enemy territory, the town of Cecina and the river of the same name. From here he headed towards Volterra, then Florence, where he photographed the left bank of the Arno river up to Pisa and returned. The mission was exceptional and the command assigned him to another mission: he had to photograph the right bank of the Arno and then reach Lucca.
As with the first mission, Toomey repeated the journey, always flying at low altitude, but this time the German artillery that had occupied the area machine-gunned him. Suddenly he was immersed in a cloud of bullets and hit first on one engine and then on the other. Wounded but still operational, he released the dome of the nacelle and attempted, not without difficulty, to ditch. Toomey quickly freed himself from the harness and was able to inflate his life jacket.
As the plane sank, the pilot began his feat of swimming towards shore. Having reached the shoreline, to avoid being captured by the Germans, he hid the equipment by burying it and began with extreme caution the search for a friendly outpost. Fortunately he met the Guardistallo partisans who hid him from the enemy for four days.
This story reminds us how much the Second World War and the Resistance are still very close to us despite the years, in fact we can still see the testimonies today both at sea and on land.
A few notes on the current conditions of the wreck we visited. The plane was a reconnaissance plane and therefore had cameras instead of machine guns. The side of the left engine still has holes from the German anti-aircraft machine guns. A few years ago the depth was around 18-15 metres, currently due to silting it is more like 15 than 18 metres.
The wreck lies in an area where there are no reefs but only sand and mud within a radius of a few miles, so as you can see it is full of fish and life. A lobster fortunately captured by our GoPros is currently living under the wing of the plane, not yet buried. The temperature on the seabed is increasing so unfortunately within a few days the usual inevitable mucilage has appeared.
We will certainly return to dive on this wreck to remember the history of the Duckypoo and to reiterate how much our sea is still a witness and guardian of our history.
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