A fisherman from Thessaloniki came away from a fishing trip with a larger catch than he expected, it was revealed yesterday, as he netted a Luftwaffe bomber that had crashed off the coast of central Greece some 66 years ago.

Constantinos Damoultzis’s nets became entangled in the relic of the Junkers Ju 88 aircraft at a depth of more than 100 meters off Agiokambos beach, near Larissa. When the fisherman pulled up the nets, he found a piece of the twin-engine aircraft instead of the fish that he had been hoping for.

The air force said the Nazi airplane, which has a wing span of 18 meters, had probably crashed in April 1941 during a bombing raid. Although some 15,000 Ju 88s were built during World War II, only 34 of them, 13 of which were in pieces, have been recovered around the world.