WW2 plane crash evidence found at Cornwall's Loe Pool

Evidence of a crashed World War II plane has been found at the bottom of Loe Pool

Evidence of a crashed World War Two plane has been found at the bottom of a lake in Cornwall.

A survey of Loe Pool, near Porthleven, has revealed images believed to be debris of a plane and a floating target used during the Second World War.

Exeter University's Camborne School of Mines used sonar technology to produce images of the bottom of the lake.

Project leader Neill Wood spoke of a "huge amount of interesting debris from many thousand years of history".

Loe Pool is Cornwall's largest natural lake and is on the National Trust's Penrose Estate stretching across 50 acres.

A sonar side-scan was used to take this picture of the bottom of the lake

The Camborne School of Mines found evidence of large objects at the bottom of Cornwall's largest natural lake

Mr Wood said: "There's a lot of debris which looks to originate from World War II, ranging from pieces of barbed wire through to what may be a floating target for the development of anti-U-boat rockets.

"There's very large pieces of debris in an area where it's believed an aircraft went down in or just after World War II, so that's really quite exciting.

"In a way it's like looking at a crime scene, but now we have to piece together what's actually happening here".

'Amazing'

Mike Hardy, of the National Trust, said the survey was "really helping to build our understanding of the pool, the history, how it works and helping us to plan our conservation work".

Mr Hardy has heard stories of people seeing a plane coming across the bar and crashing into the pool around the time of the war.

He said: "To make that link potentially between that incident and one person's life and their research is amazing and fascinating."