
A World War II fighter aircraft was dredged up from the bottom of the Kerch Strait between Crimea and mainland Russia on Saturday.

The Curtiss P-40 Warhawk fighter aircraft, leased from the US to the Soviet Red Army, spent about 70 years underwater until divers spotted it nearly four miles from the coast.

The divers were searching the waters for mines and bombs with the $3.2 billion construction of the Kerch Strait Bridge - a project Russian President Vladimir Putin as called a 'historic mission'.

The Kremlin sees the bridge, which will span the Kerch Strait, as vital to integrating Crimea, which it seized from Ukraine in 2014.

On Saturday, a crane borrowed from the bridge's construction lifted the decayed plane, which may be incorporated into a future exhibition by a historical reconstruction group, RT reported.

The Curtiss P-40 Warhawk was constructed by the Curtiss-Wright Corporation's main production facilities in Buffalo, New York, before the planes were widely used among the Allied powers in WWII.

A World War II fighter aircraft was dredged up from the bottom of the Kerch Strait between Crimea and mainland Russia on Saturday

The Curtiss P-40 Warhawk fighter aircraft, leased from the US to the Soviet Red Army, spent about 70 years underwater until divers spotted it nearly four miles from the coast

A floating crane, borrowed from the construction of the Kerch Strait Bridge by a historical reconstruction group, was used to lift the decayed aircraft out of the water

Divers helping the construction of the bridge were checking the waters for mines or bombs when they found the aircraft