Rare WWII Junkers Ju 88 Pulled Up From Baltic Sea Floor

Bethany Whitfield

Tuesday, June 19, 2012 at 08:48 PM ET

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Junkers Ju 88

Key Takeaways:

German military divers are recovering the rare wreckage of a Junkers Ju 88 aircraft from the Baltic Sea, where it lay submerged for over half a century.
Initially misidentified as a Stuka, the recovered aircraft was confirmed to be a Junkers Ju 88, a versatile WWII German twin-engine plane, of which only a few examples remain worldwide.
While parts of the aircraft and human remains have been brought to the surface, the pilot's identity and the cause of the crash remain unknown, with hopes that recovered items will provide answers.
The current recovery efforts have only brought up a portion of the aircraft, with plans for future expeditions to retrieve the remaining submerged wreckage.

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After lying on the bottom of the Baltic Sea for more than half a century, the wreckage of a rare Junkers Ju 88 is being brought to the surface by a group of German military divers.

The wreckage, located just off the coast of the German island of Rugen, was first found in the 1990s by a fisherman approximately 60 feet below the surface. After recovering small parts of the aircraft earlier in the week, experts initially thought the aircraft was a Stuka, a single engine dive-bomber known for the particularly striking noise it emits during power dives.