The Tank

At 2 am on 8th March 1954, a convoy of amphibious vehicles set out on an exercise from what is now called Horseshoe Beach. These included DUKs, tracked troop carriers - LVTs and two amphibious tanks LVT4A. At 4 am a squall hit; the convoy attempted to make it to Stockton beach. Wreckage from one of eight amphibious vehicles which sank in one of Australia’s worst peacetime disasters has been found off Stockton Bight.

Currently the Tank is approximately 32m deep and settled around 1 to 2 foot into the sand.

The Tank

The Tank was captured July 2023 by Tam Durney and Jackie Chan, with help from Dom Butterworth of Silver Lining Adventures. We were thrilled to work with Dom on this one, because if we hadn't, we may never of found it! As it also turns out Dom's grandfather drove an amphibious tank in WWII, he crossed the river Scheldt in a LVT4 during the assault on Walcheren in 1994, so only it seemed fitting that he was part of this project.

On the day we set out to map this wreck we weren't all that confident we'd find it. Largely because it's difficult to find a wreck not much bigger than a car... and a wreck you also have four unconfirmed marks of. Despite the odds, we were fortunate to find it on the first dive.

When we initially went down the line we hit the sand, but after reeling of the line about 10m it appeared.
Below is the first draft model, created to show it's existing condition. Once we clean it up we'll publish the final tiled model to display much greater detail!