Two Lancaster wrecks, one operation. The bombers fell over the Baltic laying mines still disarmed today

Divers from the Gdynia-based Baltictech group have identified the wreck of a British Avro Lancaster bomber on the floor of the Bay of Gdańsk. The aircraft lies at a depth of just eleven metres, between the entrance to the port of Gdynia and the torpedo station at Babie Doły, in an area considered thoroughly surveyed. Three months earlier, in a wood near the beach at Świnoujście, a local man picking blueberries came across dozens of fragments of another Lancaster, whose wing fishermen had hauled from the sea seventeen years ago.

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03 october 2026   |   07:29   |   Source: Gazeta Morska   |   Prepared by: Kamil Kusier   |   Print

fot. Wikimedia / RAF

Two wrecks at opposite ends of the Polish coast, found in the same year, share a history. Both aircraft fell in 1944 in an operation that barely features in the story of Britain's bombers: night minelaying sorties over the Baltic, in which Lancasters dropped sea mines from low altitude into the approaches to German ports from Szczecin to Gdynia. The same mines are still being disarmed by Polish Navy clearance divers today.

V12 engines at eleven metres

The wreck in the Bay of Gdańsk was found by Baltictech, the group known for identifying Baltic wrecks including the cruiser Karlsruhe. The lead came from the Polish Navy, which a few weeks ago passed the divers information that the remains of a large aircraft lay between the port entrance and the torpedo station.

- It was a little hard to believe, because that area has been very thoroughly checked. Only when we went into the water were we really surprised, the Baltictech divers wrote in their statement on the discovery.

The identification rested on the surviving engines, in-line V12s, that is Rolls-Royce Merlins, and the propeller blades. The Germans did not shoot down many four-engined bombers with that powerplant over the Bay of Gdańsk, and the Lancaster, with its distinctive twin tail, was the only one that flew here regularly.

- At a depth of 11 metres lay the engines with the propeller blades and the remains of a really large aircraft. From the type of engine we quickly worked out that it was a British Lancaster, the group reports.

The first lead pointed to the raids on Gdynia, which as the largest Kriegsmarine base outside Germany was bombed by the Allies twice: in August 1943, when the unfinished aircraft carrier Graf Zeppelin and the transport Stuttgart were hit in the port, and in December 1944. The first raid was flown only by American aircraft; the second included Lancasters, four of which were lost. The divers were, as they write, close to an identification, but according to the reports all four came down on the way back to England, far from Gdynia.

Then Tomasz Zwara of Baltictech took a different route and checked the British archives for every Lancaster lost over the Baltic. There were eight, including one right over Gdynia in August 1944, during a low-level minelaying sortie against the port.

- The aircraft was brought down by anti-aircraft defences and the whole crew was killed. The mining operation was so precise and effective that some of those unexploded mines were disposed of only recently, the divers write, adding that they are still searching and should soon reach the crew list.

The wreck is protected. The Naval Museum in Gdynia has taken an interest and, according to Baltictech, is preparing to recover the remains of the aircraft. If it does, a Merlin engine from the floor of the Bay of Gdańsk will stand in a museum a few hundred metres from the spot over which it was shot down.

Blueberries, sheet metal and .303 ammunition

The Świnoujście story began in July, in a wood not far from the beach. A local man picking blueberries found aircraft parts in a trench: sheet metal with characteristic riveting, .303 British rifle-calibre ammunition of the kind used in British aircraft Brownings, and a tube with an identification number pointing to Merlin engine fittings. Wiktor Czeszewski of the Coastal Defence Museum said at once that this was no random scrap but fragments of an Allied aircraft, a Lancaster or a Mosquito.

The museum has more than a supposition. Since 2009 its collection has held a five-metre section of a Lancaster wing, hauled from the Baltic by fishermen about a kilometre in a straight line from the July find. The wing was identified, and with it the names of three crew members of an aircraft that flew past Świnoujście to bomb targets around Police or Szczecin. The museum's director, Piotr Piwowarczyk, says plainly that it may be the same machine: the ground is unnaturally undulating, a larger object can be seen driven into the soil in the trench, and half a hectare needs to be searched. Officials from the voivode's office have visited the site, which opens the way to formal archaeological investigation, because the ground may hold the remains of airmen who were never buried.

The operation that is not in the textbooks

The memory of Bomber Command holds Dresden, Hamburg and Berlin. It does not hold the Baltic, although from 1940 to the end of the war British bombers waged a continuous minelaying campaign over it under the code name "Gardening". The drop zones were named after vegetables and flowers, and instead of bombs the crews carried sea mines that had to be dropped precisely, from a few hundred feet, into the shipping channels leading to ports. The aim was to close German harbours, disrupt the U-boat training the Kriegsmarine ran in the Baltic and halt the Swedish iron ore traffic.

Minelaying was regarded among crews as easier than a raid on the Ruhr, which is why young crews were often sent on it. That was an illusion. A low-level flight over water, within range of flak from the shore and from ships, with no room to manoeuvre at the moment of release, cost Bomber Command hundreds of aircraft, and losses on Baltic mining operations in 1944, when the Germans strengthened the defences of ports from Szczecin to Gdynia and Königsberg, were on some nights higher than over Germany. The Lancaster in the Bay of Gdańsk, shot down in August 1944, and the Lancaster near Świnoujście, bound for Police or Szczecin, are two of those aircraft. Both fell into the water at night, in places to which nobody came back for the crews.

Mines from the same aircraft still lie there

There is one more reason to join these wrecks into a single story. On Monday 5 October clearance divers of the 8th Coastal Defence Flotilla begin neutralising five British Mark IV, V and VI aerial mines at Świnoujście, found on the construction site of the breakwater for the new outer port, a kilometre from the LNG terminal. Each is three metres long and carries 350 to 550 kilogrammes of explosive; together they equal 2,500 kilogrammes of TNT. For four days the beaches from Ahlbeck to Międzyzdroje will be closed to anyone entering the water.

These are exactly the mines the Lancasters dropped: aerial sea mines responding to the magnetic and acoustic signatures of passing ships, parachuted into shipping channels. Hundreds of them lie in the Bay of Gdańsk, the Pomeranian Bay and the approaches to Świnoujście, and every investment on the seabed, from a breakwater to a wind farm, begins with searching for them. Two aircraft wrecks and five mines in one week are two ends of the same operation eighty-two years on: the aircraft that did not come back, and the load that arrived.

What happens next with both wrecks

In Gdynia the next step is names. Baltictech is matching archive data with what can be seen on the seabed, and the Naval Museum is weighing the recovery of parts; if the crew can be established, the wreck will cease to be a find and become a war grave, which under British rules changes how it must be treated. In Świnoujście archaeological investigation of half a hectare of woodland awaits, with the question whether the soil holds the remains of the three airmen from the wing of 2009. For both museums it is a chance to tell a story the Polish coast has not told before: of British bombers that fell not over Germany but over the Baltic, at night, a few hundred metres from shore, on sorties the reports called gardening.

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