Dozen or more Spitfires to be un-earthed in Burma

Turns out that it was true after all:Burma spitfires to be dug up and flown home - UK - Scotsman.com

 

The son of the chap who made the discovery was talking on Chris Evan's show on radio 2 this morning.

 

Articles in The Times and The Guardian this morning too (yes, I like to get a couple of angles on a story!) All very exciting, looking forward to some pictures!

 

The number of buried Spitfires keeps going up!

This Canadian article quotes sources stating there are now thought to be 140 buried Spitfires - more than the 20 quoted today in the UK press.

Trove of WW II-era Spitfires could be unearthed in Burma - World - CBC News

 

A few months ago there were reports that an Australian and an Israeli group were also 'exploring' the possibility of recovering these Mk XIV Spitfires and ,no doubt, repatriating them to their own territory. Have the Brits now 'won' this one? Hope so.

 

Are they all mk XIV's because if it was towards the end of the war, and they were new, might they have been Mk 22's ?
but even if they are still boxed up, how much damage would the damp conditions have done, they might be found to be like new, or a corroded mess, after all anyone see that programe about that spitfire that crashed in Ireland, and one of the machine guns was salvaged and when it was stripped found to be stilll in working order ,i guess it depends on the nature of the soil that surrounds the crates and if they are still intact . like others have said, those pictures when the first crate is un earthed and opened will be widely awaited, imagine the faces of the people opening it if they find a prefectly preserved spitfire inside

 

Wow 140.. Gosh no wonder the 2nd world war lasted 6 years.. They spent there entire time digging holes to bury planes in, and such a small team of people it must have been, as to bury 140 spitfires in a hurry must have needed thousands of people and if so everyone would know about it.
Each one in a box, around half the length of a Mark 1 coach, length and width similar... Buried 40feet deep?
How many wooden coaches do we have unrestored in preservation that are runnable after 50 years without maintenace ?

Maybe I'm too much a sceptic, but it starts to sound like the grotto holding these planes is at the end of a rainbow and protected by leprechauns and a golden chest.

Personally if a 140 are found it will devalue the historical value of the ones that survived and fought in the war too much, and turn this into a used airplane sales pit.

I still don't buy into how you can bury a plane in a muddy swamp, that is flooded months of the year, in none waterproof packaging and expect it to fly itself out of the hole 60 years later.
look at this time capsule for an example... It was buried 50 years purposely in a sealed container specially prepared.. And look how it turned out.

buried 1957 Plymouth time capsule unveiling, 2007

See what happened in the 4 years since it was recovered...Sad end, but ultimately predictable.

My guess is a handful of rotting wooden crates, some rusted, seized engines and a good TV story will be what comes of this.
Sad thing is, if 60 are found in phase 1, only 17 will be sent to the UK, the others will remain in Burmese ownership with an uncertain future.. Isn't there an arms embargo on buying weaponry from Burma still ?..

 

Not sure you can count a Spit as "weaponry" in 2012, that's like saying a Bow and Arrow will protect you from the Heat Ray from War of the Worlds.

 

Strange, i thought the last mk22/24's served out of hong kong?
Still when do the recovery teams expect to unearth the first airframe? if they do and they find that its vertually intact then i expect that the cheque books will be coming out, Mk14's are not exactly ten a penny, but if they find severe corrosion of most of the airframe maybe they won't recover more than a handfull restorers now a days can almost build a new aircraft from very little of the original airframe , engines can be rebuilt if they have the engine cases, but as everything at a price , how many warbird collectors will want to add a mk14 to their collection, If one is found in good condition, i would hope that the government would see to it that in some way that it joins the BoB flight , as a memorial of those who fell in the far east campain

 

<cynic mode on>

I suspect the most valuable bit to come out will be the firewall with a makers plate attached or a serial stencilled on it. A lot of recent Spitfire 'rebuilds' seem to have been based on just this one bit

<cynic mode off>

 

Correct. 80 Sqd flew the Mk.24 out of Honk Kong as did the Royal Hong Kong Auxiliary Air Force.

 

Love this bit in the Scotsman :
Planes were buried by retreating British Army to stop them falling into hands of Japanese
By the time the MK.XIV arrived in theatre, XIV Army wasn't retreating anywhere.
and here's another gem
The planes are believed to be in good condition, since they were reportedly packed in crates and hidden by British forces to keep them out of the hands of invading Japanese.
When the Japs invaded Burma there wasn't a single Spitfire in the Far East theatre.

I really hope the story is true and a few more Spitfires end up gracing the skies again but it's the back story to the burial I don't buy.

 

Well it is the end of the month, and I'm yet to see a Witch flying out of a Burmese pit on the back of spitfire with a cat sat on its rudder.?. Guess we may have to wait a bit longer than "the end of the month" to see what's recovered.

 

Apparently the farmer has had to sign three seperate agreements with Burmese generals as they all have juristriction over different areas, and this has caused a delay. These planes are located at several sites so there maybe quite a number as previously said. They have had an endoscope down into one of these crates and the contents seem ok. One wonders where the money is coming from for all this........well he is being backed by a millionaire from Belarus.

 

The Belarus guy mentioned owns this site Wargaming.net

 

I just don't get this story, even if it is partly garbled.

If you were an army in retreat trying to keep equipment out of the hands of the enemy, you wouldn't go to elaborate lengths to dig a pit, package up teh aeroplanes, then cut down huge trees to put over the top of each pit to keep them secure (as some versions of the story suggest happened). You'd just remove any "top secret" stuff (codebooks, advanced electronics etc) and then bulldoze / crush / burn the rest - as happened to a lot of equipment at Dunkirk.

If instead this happened at the end of the war when the British were leaving, again why go to such elaborate lengths? If you thought that Britain still had use for the aircraft, you'd make efforts to fly them out of the country. But if not, you'd remove anything of value (engines, say) and again destroy the remainder or, if you were on friendly terms with the country you were leaving, maybe hand them over for use in a fledgling airforce or at technical colleges, or else just leave them dumped to eventually decay at the edge of some airfield.

The one thing I just can't imagine doing would be to dig a big hole, carefully place the aircraft in and then cut huge teak beams to protect them from above. Under what circumstances would that seem like a good idea?

In any circumstance I can imagine, the only options for the British when leaving would be rescue them for our own use; dump them to decay / leave to salvage merchants; hand them over for further use; or actively destroy so no further use could take place. Careful preservation underground just makes no sense to me.

PS: When 24 gleaming Spitfires are unearthed from Burma, still covered in a layer of protective grease and which start on the press of a button, I am quite prepared to eat my father's Battle of Britain vintage flying cap...

Tom

 

More money than sense, but still if he's got it and fancies a wild punt.. Hey why not.
i admire the spirit of the expedition, but not the claims of discovery.
on the subject if wild and spirits.. Here was another gallant, but obvious resulting endeavour...

See recent history...
SS Politician - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

It seemed unbelievable to me when I first heard about this find. Years age I'd heard that when the yanks left the UK after WW2, they had to clear their airfields and so buried stuff they didn't want to take home: mostly this was tools - which I bet were dug up again and found their way into the PD quite quickly - but there were rumours of complete B17s being buried, although probably flattened by a bulldozer first.
I also heard that the RN dumped crated Corsairs overboard during the voyage home after cessation of hostilities hwell: :fish2:.

So how come these Spitfires were so well protected?

Well probably because the order to bury them wasn't specific about wrecking them first and the person in charge erred on the side of caution. Maybe there was a thought of preserving them for the future but most servicemen just wanted to clear-up and go home to their families.
I guess we'll never know.