In their own tribute to the late Michael Jackson, members of Southsea SAC helped Diving Officer Martin Davies scoop the 'Humorous' Category at this year's British Society of Underwater Photographers (BSoUP) 'Splash-in' photographic competition   The four divers wore 70's style wigs/sunglasses and posed with 'Bubbles' the chimp as the 'Jackson Four'.  The winning image was selected by an audience fellow photgraphers and guests at the annual event hosted at the National Aquarium in Plymouth.  Fellow SSAC members Richard Hobson, Jim Fuller, Tom Templeton and Alison Mayor all helped Martin win the award.   It's the 3rd time in 5 years that Martin and the Club have had success in this category. The Humorous category is sponsored by AP Valves Ltd and as a result of winning the Club will receive a new Buddy BCD.

Martin was delighted to receive the AP Valves trophy saying "It was a fantastic team effort and great fun too.   It's really good that the Club will benefit with some new equipment as a result."

For more information about the BSoUP Splash-in Championships visit www.bsoup.org 

SSAC at the D-Day Museum to mark the 65 anniversary of D-Day

 The D-Day Museum in Southsea is offering free entry to visitors on Saturday 6 June to mark the 65 anniversary of D-Day.

This is a great opportunity to see the museum, including some new displays, as well as several special events and activities that will only take place on the day.

Southsea Sub Aqua Club will be displaying photographs and film shot underwater while diving on a site not far off Selsey Bill. They have dived on a site where there are several tanks and armoured bulldozers lying on the sea floor, which were lost from a landing craft at the time of D-Day.

The story behind this has been discovered through the club’s careful research. The craft concerned was LCT(A) 4248, a 112ft landing craft carrying Centaur Tanks manned by Royal Marines, as well as armoured bulldozers, all of which were intended to land on Juno Beach. The landing craft got into trouble and capsized while under tow, although the crew and troops on board were saved. This year the club hope to locate and dive on the wreck of this landing craft itself.

The Club will also be at the museum on Sunday 7 June. On both days, they will also have some of their specialist diving equipment on show.

Re-enactors and historic military vehicles will be at the museum on 6 June to give visitors a feel for the uniforms and equipment of the period. The “Pathfinder 101” re-enactors group, which depicts US airborne soldiers of 1944, will be giving presentations on the equipment and uniforms used by these elite troops. These will be at 11.30am, 1.30pm and 3.30pm.

The day is also an opportunity for people to come and see the newest part of the D-Day Museum’s displays, about life on the home front during the Second World War.

A key exhibit in the new displays is a recent donation to the museum: a coat covered with around 100 badges and buttons that were given to five-year old Betty White (later Betty Nicholson) at the time of D-Day. She lived at Albemarle Avenue in Gosport. Troops regularly went past her house on their way to Normandy, and many of them gave her badges which her mother sewed onto this coat.
This is a unique record of the men of many different units and nationalities who left from the Portsmouth area for the fighting in Normandy, and is highly unusual.

Andrew Whitmarsh, Military History Officer at the museum said “The Museum is Britain’s only visitor attraction with the sole purpose of telling the story of the 1944 Normandy landings. This is an opportunity to see the museum’s displays and the special activities that we have on that day.”
 

Date : 26 May 2009

A team of divers from Southsea Sub-Aqua Club plan to spend their summer exploring local dive sites to try to identify a number of wrecks which are believed to be linked to the WW2 Invasion of Normandy - code named Operation ‘Neptune’.