A salvage team was on Sunday attempting to raise a World War Two German bomber, a Dornier Do-17, from the depths of The Channel, where it has lain for seventy years.
Calm weather means the salvage team expect the bomber to be raised out of the water between 1930 and 2000 GMT.
Several weeks of storms have made the delicate operation to raise the aircraft difficult with the salvage team having to return to port on at least four occasions.
The original plan to build a metal frame around the wreck, which was to be used to carefully hoist it the 15 metres (50 feet) from the seabed has now been abandoned.
Salvagers instead plan to use the more risky strategy of attaching cables to the three strongest points on the aircraft. An attempt will still be made to raise it complete, and in a single lift.
Peter Dye, director general of the Royal Air Force Museum, said ?We have adapted the lifting frame design to minimise the loads on the airframe during the lift while allowing the recovery to occur within the limited time remaining.”
Once the aircraft has been laid on onto the support barge it will be transported to Ramsgate Harbour in south east England where it will be dismantled for travel to the Museum?s Conservation Centre at Cosford.
The aircraft was shot down during the Battle of Britain in 1940 and the operation to retrieve it is the biggest of its kind in British waters.
The bomber was first discovered in 2008 when it was spotted by divers at Goodwin Sands, off the coast of Kent.
Sonar scans confirmed it was a Dornier Do-17, and experts say it is in a “remarkable condition”.
The Dornier 17 was nicknamed the Luftwaffe’s “flying pencil” because of its narrow fuselage.
The Battle of Britain began on July 10, 1940, and ended on October 31 the same year.
Bid to lift WW2 bomber from Channel
