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SS Thistlegorm
A famous wreck and diving event web site in the Red Sea has been recreate on the WWW in virtual reality by a squad of marine archeologist and imaging specialists . The Thistlegorm Project , which expire online this calendar month , include a extremely - detailed three - dimensional poser of the British freighter SS Thistlegorm , which was carrying a cargo of Allied war supplies to the Egyptian metropolis of Alexandria when it was sunk by German bomber in 1941.The project website also features 360 - level video clips of several primal emplacement around the shipwreck . [ scan more about the SS Thistlegorm task ]
Filming the wreck
Simon Brown , a photogrammetric adviser with the Thistlegorm Project , made 12 dives total more than 13 hours underwater to tear photographs of the giant shipwreck . Tens of thou of photographs were need to figure the entire shipwreck , which covers an area of more than 28,000 hearty meter ( 301,000 straight feet ) .
3D data
Brown then analyze his photographs of the shipwreck using photogrammetric software , which can extract 3D data from hardening of calibrated photographs . The vast amounts of 3D datum from the photographs was then used to create an accurate 3D model of the crash of the Thistlegorm where it now lies on the seafloor near the baksheesh of the Sinai Peninsula , at a depth of around 30 meters ( 90 feet ) .
3D model
The ruined 3D model of the Thistlegorm wreck , confront on the projection website , is base on data from more than 24,000 subaquatic photographs . It is the big photogrammetric survey of an subaquatic wreck yet undertaken . [ Read more about the SS Thistlegorm task ]
Shipping freighter
The SS Thistlegorm was ramp up in Sunderland in Union - east England for the Albyn Line shipping caller , and launch in 1940.As an armed freighter partly financed by the British government for wartime service , the Thistlegorm was fit out with an anti - aircraft gun and a heavy machine ordnance .
War supplies
When the SS Thistlegorm was spotted by German bombers near the entrance to the Gulf of Suez on the night of October 6 , 1941 , it was behave a full hold of Allied warfare supply to the Egyptian city of Alexandria . The total ship and its cargo – admit motortruck , armored combat vehicle , aircraft component part , ammunition and steam locomotives – was send to the bottom when the Thistlegorm was hit by two bombs dropped by a Heinkel hoagy .
Sunken cargo
The wreck of the SS Thistlegorm was rediscovered in the 1950s by the open up French loon Jacques Cousteau . Since the development of the nearby Egyptian townspeople of Sharm El Sheikh as a dive recourse in the nineties , the Thistlegorm with its dramatic sunken lading has become one of the world ’s most democratic wreck diving web site .
Joint effort
The Thistlegorm Project is a joint effort by archaeologists and imaging specialists from the University of Nottingham in the UK , Egypt ’s Alexandria University , and Ain Shams University in Cairo .
Video clips
As well as the elaborate 3D model based on the photogrammetric survey of the wreck , visitors to the Thistlegorm Project internet site can experience some of the sensations of dive at key location on the shipwreck through several 360 - stage video clipping .
Raising awareness
The labor member go for that make the wonders of the Thistlegorm shipwreck accessible to an online hearing will serve to protect such sites by conjure awareness of the underwater inheritance of the realm . [ study more about the SS Thistlegorm project ]
