Speed hero's Bluebird found

by Steve Cunningham< xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" />

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DIVERS have found the submerged wreck of speed hero Donald Campbell's jet-powered boat Bluebird, 34 years after he was killed.

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��Press Association

Bluebird in action

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Underwater surveyor Bill Smith and his team has now found Bluebird 150ft below the surface and submerged in silt. He wants to film a salvage operation for a BBC documentary, if Campbell's relatives give permission.

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But the plan has caused a rift in the family. Campbell's widow, Tonia Bern-Campbell, 64, criticised the plans as 'terribly sad'. She said: 'They can't do this without my permission. I have not given it and I knew nothing about it. Donald always said 'The craft stays with the skipper'. Therefore, as we never found him and he's somewhere in that lake, I do not want it up.'

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Other family members, including Campbell's nephew Don Wales and his daughter Gina, who broke the women's water speed record in 1984, are involved in the project.

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Wales, who holds the British electric car speed record, said: 'A survey of the lake is being conducted. Gina and Tonia will have to act together. They've have had their differences in the past and I want to keep them together.'

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Smith, a friend of the Campbell family, said the wreck had been well preserved.� 'The tail end has sunk a little bit on the bottom,' he said. 'There's a lot of silt, a lot of mess, but the best bit, the Union Jack, is still there on the tail after all this time.'

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Mike Humphreys, custodian of the Ruskin Museum in Coniston, which has a Campbell exhibition, said: 'The feeling in the village is that it is wrong for someone to make commercial gain out of it. When Donald Campbell died, the villagers were very sad. He was a hero and his body and Bluebird should be left in peace.'

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Campbell already held the world record for travelling over water at a speed of 276mph. On that fateful day, he got up to a speed of 297mph on the way out, but on the return leg, as Bluebird reached an estimated 300mph, he crashed.

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Donald's father, Sir Malcolm Campbell, who died in 1949, set the land speed record nine times, and was the first person to travel on land at more than 150mph.