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A British team completed a painstaking salvage of a second world war German bomber from in the English Channel.
Covered with barnacles and missing a wing, the wreck of the Dornier Do-17 was slowly raised 15 metres to the surface at Goodwin Sands, Kent, on Monday.
Experts from the Royal Air Force (RAF) Museum spent five weeks preparing to lift the aircraft, which is believed to be the only Do-17 bomber plane left from the war.
The aircraft was shot down during the Battle of Britain in 1940 and the operation to retrieve it was the biggest of its kind in British waters, the museum said.
"The discovery and recovery of the Dornier is of national and international importance," said the museum's director general, Air Vice-Marshal Peter Dye.
"The aircraft is a unique and unprecedented survivor from the Battle of Britain and the Blitz [the intense bombing of London]."
The bomber was only discovered in 2008 when it was spotted by divers.
Work will now begin to conserve the Dornier and prepare it for display at the museum's London site.
Dye said the plane would provide an "evocative and moving exhibit" that would highlight the sacrifices made by young men from all sides.
The Dornier 17 was nicknamed the Luftwaffe's "flying pencil" because of its narrow fuselage.
The Battle of Britain began on July 10, 1940, and ended on October 31 the same year. More than 2,900 British, Commonwealth and Allied airmen flew in some 600 planes - fewer than half the 1,750 German aircraft involved.
The heavily outnumbered RAF defeated the Luftwaffe in what is considered a turning point in the war.
Nearly all the hundreds of German bombers shot down in the battle were smelted and turned into British aircraft, according to the museum.


RAF Museum salvages wreckage of rare German Dornier Do-17 bomber