Der Flieger

The Piper hangs at around 10 metres, held level by cables rather than resting on the quarry floor, and its yellow paintwork is visible from well before you reach it in good visibility. It was a Piper PA-28 that once belonged to Alan Shepard, the second American in space and the fifth man to walk on the Moon, sunk here deliberately as a diver attraction rather than following any crash.

Someone has furnished the cockpit for effect: a skeleton sits at the controls, and an open briefcase on the back seat spills fake banknotes and money bags. Both are staged additions rather than original to the aircraft, and they are what most divers photograph rather than the airframe itself. A reel line runs from the shore out to the plane, useful for finding it directly when visibility is average rather than exceptional.

Because the whole dive sits at one constant, shallow depth, Einstieg 0 is an entry the dive base steers newcomers toward, and the plane is usually the first target beginners are shown. It lies in the same stretch as the lake's plastic shark model and, a little further round, the ruined Rüttler quarry works, so a longer dive can string more than one attraction together without much of a swim between them.