Wreck

Hercules C-130

Aqaba, AQ, Jordan

Snorkeller-friendly reef top
Suitable for beginners
Best for advanced divers
Great for macro photography

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Type

Wreck

Max depth

17 m

Level

Advanced

Depth10-17m across the debris field

Location13 km south-southwest of Aqaba, 1.4 km south of the Cedar Pride. Shore entry, the wreck lying 300 m out; also run from a boat.

ConditionsShallow at 10 to 17 m with visibility over 20 m, which puts it within reach of beginners and snorkelers and makes it a standard site for wreck and navigation training.

Overview

A Hercules is built to be as light as an airframe can be, and that is why this one did not last. The Royal Jordanian Air Force machine, 30 m long with a 40 m wingspan, was towed down from Amman and sunk 300 m off the shore on November 16, 2017, upright and intact in about 17 m of water. On the night of March 17, 2020 a gale ran into Aqaba, and the aluminum could not take the surge: the wings came off and dropped to the sand, the fuselage broke in two, and the nose was torn away and now lies elsewhere on the site. Only the tail came through more or less whole. A staged exhibit turned into an actual wreck in a single night, and it reads as one now in a way the intact aircraft never did.

Dive plan

The site is a debris field rather than an aircraft, and it is dived as one. The tail is the landmark and the most complete piece; from there the two halves of the fuselage, the wings lying flat on the sand and the detached nose are worked in turn. Nothing sits deeper than about 17 m, so the whole field fits into one dive with gas to spare. The aircraft was stripped of fuel, oil, paint and hazardous material before it went down, and the storm has since opened the fuselage up, so there is light through the broken sections rather than a real overhead. The M42 Duster and the Al Shoruk lie close enough to be added on, which is how the deeper certifications usually spend the rest of the day.

What to see

The break-up did the reef a favor. Flat plating on open sand grows very little, and the wings now lying detached on the bottom have taken soft coral along their whole length, while the torn edges of the fuselage give the kind of shelter an intact hull does not. Lionfish hold in the broken sections, scorpionfish sit on the plating where they are almost impossible to pick out, and schools of reef fish move through the open fuselage. Nudibranchs on the growing coral are what the macro divers come here for.