Submerged aircraft wrecks program

Description

In 2025 Heritage Victoria completed comprehensive research of all wrecks of aircraft in Victorian waters. The data consists of 104 submerged wrecks across commercial, military, general aviation, recreational aircraft and space debris from 1918 to the present.

Wrecks are segmented into ten lists showing aircraft by category and date order with Australian military aircraft also classified by date range.

The lists include individual links to the Australian Government’s Australasian Underwater Cultural Heritage Database (AUCHD), where detailed information on each aircraft is included. The aircraft registration number is also the link to the AUCHD.

We encourage users to access the information for personal or research purposes and to contact us with new information (see More information).

The information collated as part of this program will be added to Heritage Victoria’s Maritime Heritage at Risk Program to actively manage and protect the most important located and at-risk aircraft wrecks. It will also be added to Heritage Victoria’s Shipwreck Discovery Program (which will be renamed) to identify the most significant aircraft wrecks still to be found.

Examples of identified aircraft wrecks are shown below.

The disappearance of Miss Hobart and the development of the black box flight recorder

On 19 October 1934, a de Havilland DH.86 Express plane named Miss Hobart disappeared over Bass Strait on a flight from Launceston, Tasmania, to Melbourne, Victoria. It carried two crew and nine passengers including the Reverend H.E. Warren. The aircraft disappeared off the coast of Wilsons Promontory, Victoria.

An oil leak was reported by searching aircraft, but no trace of the plane was ever found. The disappearance of his father on the flight inspired Dr. David Warren to develop the first black box flight recorder in the 1950s.

The missing aircraft, believed to be within 20 kilometres of the south-western side of Wilsons Promontory, is one of Heritage Victoria’s priority underwater aircraft wrecks to locate.

Frederick Valentich and the UFO sighting

The disappearance of Cessna 182L VH-DSJ is arguably the best-known aircraft loss at sea in Australia given the circumstances of its disappearance. On 21 October 1978, Frederick Valentich took off from Moorabbin Airport on a flight to King Island, Tasmania.

During the flight, Valentich contacted air traffic control stating that he was being followed by an aircraft hovering above him and that it had a shiny metal surface and a green light on it. The final transmission to air traffic control recorded him saying "that strange aircraft is hovering on top of me again. It's hovering, and it’s not an aircraft". The Valentich flight was a global sensation with claims that an unidentified flying object (UFO) either destroyed Valentich's aircraft or abducted him.

Finding the remains of this aircraft, somewhere in Bass Strait, would allow Heritage Victoria’s maritime archaeologists to answer the mystery about what happened to Valentich and his aircraft.

More information

If you have any queries or new information about underwater aircraft wrecks in Victoria, please call Heritage Victoria on 03 7022 6390 or email: heritage.victoria@transport.vic.gov.au.

Page last updated: 05/06/26