Hi I’m Patreon Cutlass72, but in real life i’m Colin. I was a marine engineer for 26 years on various ships around the globe. On May 16th 1995 Nimrod XW666 ditched into the Moray Firth after a test flight straight out of servicing went wrong. A report on the incident can be read here ; https://aviation-safety.net/database/record.php?id=19950516-0

XW666 was an R.1A Nimrod which was tasked with ELINT duties. I was serving as a 3rd Engineer at the time onboard the MV Subsea Discovery as ship that normal laid telephone cables for BT, however we were using it a diving support vessel.

We went to the crash site a number of weeks after the incident to recover the aircraft. The lifting frame used was fabricated at nearby Nigg oil yard, for recovering the main fuselage section. Divers cut away the wings and aft section to reduce the weight once the aircraft was out of the water. These were recovered first and the main fuselage was recovered last of all.

Everything that was recovered was then transported to RN dockyard at Rosyth so that it could then head away for air accident investigation. No lives were lost and the crew were all rescued by a nearby SAR Sea King based at RAF Lossiemouth. The recovery went really well and the weather was perfect the whole time we were on site, if I recall it only took us 10 days or so for the whole operation. The cockpit of XW666 now resides at AeroVenture South Yorkshire Aircraft Museum in Doncaster.

Oh what’s this rising from the deep?

https://colinmcr.imgur.com/

https://colinmcr.imgur.com/

https://colinmcr.imgur.com/

https://colinmcr.imgur.com/

See all the pictures of the Nimrod Recovery here https://imgur.com/a/YvUej  

Here’s the news report on YouTube