Dozen or more Spitfires to be un-earthed in Burma

As I've mentioned before, when XIV Army was on the retreat in Burma there weren't any Spitfires there to be buried and by the time Spitfires arrived on the Burma front it was the Japanese who were in retreat. Time alone will tell how many, if any, Spitfires are unearthed.

 

So my understanding of this is that the aircraft were newly built, (at what is now the Jaguar car plant in Castle Bromwich) test flown and then broken down again and packed into crates for shipment.

When the aircraft arrived in Burma the war was at an end and the airfields where they were to be reassembled was in the process of being abandoned as the front moved forward and drew to an end; the aircraft packing crates were simply pushed into various 'holes' such as the former bomb dump, fuel dump, firing butts etc and then 'buried with the station remains (runway mesh, building timbers, oil drums etc) before being capped in soil.

This was done simple as a easy way to write off the airframes and not to have to account for them to be returned to the UK - a couple of family members in the RN FFA in WWII spoke of dumping the sqn stores down mine shafts in Cornwall in order to get demobed as quickly as possible in 1945/6, many aircraft like Seafires were indeed 'lost at sea' on the return to port, everyone was sick of the war and wanted to go home so corners were cut, laws/rules were bent and blind eyes turned.


Anyway in the nearly 70 years of nature reclaiming the land in Burma has deposited additional topsoil etc but in essance the 'holes' that they were deposisted into are above the local water table and were/are above the natural grade of the land.

The aircraft may well exist in good condition and I would assume that we may find many RR Griffon engines and centre fuselage sections in complete condition, the wings however may have suffered as they were built of lighter and thiner construction (the crates) and more easly damaged.

 

Get demobbed as possible eh. Well my Dad and his unit and many others weren't let home from Burma until 1947 - some 18 months after the war had ended.

 

Did he ever tell you about them being buried ?

 

Nope but then again he wasn't RAF. Assigned XIV Army HQ after the fighting was over.

 

On Radio 4 now........shapes of 36 planes buried underground......Leeds University supplying the technology to locate them......

 

Would have been a lot easier to find if they'd been buried above ground.
If and when they are recovered I'll eat some of my words but I still don't buy the back story ss to why they were buried in the first place.

 

Hmmm - must track back through this thread and see who offered to eat what :hungry:

 

Same here.

 

News of the plan to dig-up the Spitfires in Burma is being reported on this evening's BBC1 news report

 

BBC story here:

BBC News - Search for missing Spitfires in Burma due to begin

And an interesting quote, from the archaeologist working on the dig:

Hmmm....

Tom

 

There's been so much publicity on this, the next thing I want to come out of it is a conclusive photo. Pretty fed up with it to be honest.

 

Hmmm..

This article seems to be a significant playing down of all the hoohah of earlier, maybe realism is setting in, or we are just being prepared for a hoax or a hole of knackered/ war damaged planes that were tipped into a hole to move them out of the way.

 

i think you are right... most likely to have been tamped down with a bulldozer.... still. lets hope some useful stuff is reclaimed

 

The farmer (David Cundall?) and a representative from wargaming.net, who are apparently putting up the finances, were on BBC Breakfast time sofa this morning (about 8:25) talking about the project. It seems that the excavation will start early in 2013, so hopefully we will all know for sure in a few months.

 

Hmm,
I finally has a positive (rather than a negative) thought on how this wild story may stand up...
the BBC story had a different angle to others (maybe the hunters theory has evolved from buried on the run in bomb craters and purpose built holes from the japanese with a plane built 3 years after the Japanese invaded).., to..Buried after the war in 1945 in an old riverbed..

Now with that nugget put yourself in that position...
1945 war over, war supplies all over being disposed of. You get a message from US command that your newly arrived UK owned still crated expensive hardware should be bulldozed and destroyed... Even though there is no threat ?? Eh wot ? Are you sure ?

Er ok, so on the side of caution, bury them safely in the riverbed, safely cover them, so if that order was wrong your butt is covered and you can quickly undo that situation...

I could see that as being plausible... So the story may hold water (even if we hope the riverbed wasn't).

 

No idea what you're smoking mate but can I have some? Where does the US command come in by the way? SEAC was under UK command in the shape of Mountbatten.

 

Buried in a river bed? Just one question ...... Monsoon season?

 

Lets just wait till the dig starts, before jumping to conclusions, the ground radar showed huge metal deposits, but the people who did the readings say it could also be buried scrap, their machinery does not have a setting, like thus, mustang- spitfire- lancaster - scrap. all it tells the operator is that something metallic is buried there
either it will be the find of the last 10 years, or a heap of mangled scrap , airframes are alloy and depending on the nature of the soil if anything is found might be restorable just a thought, would their be any japaneze aircraft left un disturbed in the region also ?