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36 Burma Spifires found


chrisrope

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My late father was serving in Burma at the end of the war. He told me once that a lot of aircraft were buried there, usually with the aid of a bulldozer.

 

At thje end of the war a huge amount of materiel of all sorts was buried or dumped. Some because it was bought on Lease-Lend ( and I think some Spitfire production was financed that way?) and some because many units had accummulated kit well over their establishment. for good operational reasons.

 

That was as bad an offence as being short of equipment, so the excess had to go. My late father, who was REME/IEME out there, told of opening the REME Workshop stores to locals to take whatever they wanted, since the rest of the excess was to be thrown into a quarry and filled over.

My late Uncle, in Fleet Air Arm Engineering, spent months after the war ferrrying brand new aero engines still in their crates, many of them Merlins, out to sea and dumping them off SW India.(Wince)  No longer needed, not worth taking home again. So the burial stories make sense, though what might come out is dubious. 

Light alloys after seventy years - I doubt any crate would be much protection, though some of the preservative greases and gunks used for  sea shipping of aircraft might make a big difference! 

I wish them luck but it still seems to me to be a needle in a haystack job.

 

As for the 91 year old's memory  -  the jungle changes hugely in months, let alone decades.  Again, my father told me of being unable to find tank transporter size trucks which had fallen off the supply routes after as little as a week. They had to be quick or the jungle covered everything.

 

John B

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i've told you all,don't read and believe the papers,we have had Mark12,

whom as I've already mentioned,knows quite a thing or two about Spitfires,

out there on the spot,so if I believe anyone,it's him.

 

 

Posted on Keyforum by Mark12 at 1pm today,Sunday 20/01.

 

I am now back home to a mountain email, as you might imagine.

This was my fifth trip to Burma since 1987 on Spitfire business, so I have more than a passing idea of how the system works.

I went this time as an independent observer, paying my own way, and have no contractual ties to any of the main participants.

When Fergal Keane announces on BBC that there are no Spitfires in Burma that just about kills the story for further follow on journalists however I think Robert Hardman's report in yesterday's Mail and and the Robin Pagnamenta piece in the Times are giving a pretty clear picture.

I am on record here of saying that is more to do with making a TV adventure documentary that may end up with Spitfires rather than a Spitfire dig by obsessed enthusiasts with a TV crew tagging along filming the event.

It was pretty clear from press conference at the IWM, and general chatting there, that the principal 'Conflict Archaeologists' thought this buried Spitfire theory was light weight.

David Cundall is the figurehead project leader but he is not leading the project. That is being done by the Wargaming upper echelon in close association with the documentary director and his crew of about twelve.

So where do we start digging? We have a inner perimeter fence in poor order, a perimeter un-made road, a ditch, some sort of modern pipework and new indicators to show where electrical cables run parallel. There is then about three hundred metres of rough grass up to the parallel main runway. The grass is flat and the earth beneath, the leveling spoil from the time the new and current main runway was laid, I would estimate in the 1950's/60's...or whenever.

Think documentary, looking across this grass you have regular take-offs, the odd Mig 29, taxiing aircraft, the old colonial buildings from the early post WWII airport and the magnificent old 'Gold' arrivals building. This will be fine, so lets start our geophysics work here in two separate football pitch size areas, then we will scrape the surface and get the 'Conflict Archaeologist' to work. Well as you can imagine there will not be too much conflict archeology in 1960's spoil but we will dig an exploratory trench down to the original WWII ground level and see what we find...an industrial bolt, a nail, a substantial softwood post, three bricks and a small level area of concrete. The image of this site work has been posted back some couple of days.

David Cundall, the two geophysicists Dr Roger Clark and Dr Adam Booth together with the on site eye-witness Stanley Coombes all make it quite clear that from the readings and the memory no Spitfires will be found here. And you are patient and when this has been done we will surely move on the hot spots of the 2004 survey by the British and the later survey by the Burmese where they bored holes and fully reported...and we can resolve the riddle of the 'old old Prome road' and the 'old Prome road', so important to the eyewitness accounts that throws doubt on the conflict archaeologists overlay map by a couple of hundred metres or so...but no, a senior military officer says that is it, stop there, it is too dangerous, you can dig at night.

I think we can all imagine David Cundall's exasperation at this. The world's Press and TV crews are flying in and there is nothing to show. Major headache for the Wargaming PR team. Who makes the call...perhaps best not David Cundall, we will field the Conflict Archaeos. Result...'There are no buried Spitfires in Burma'...time to go home.

With the internal, and I would say anticipated, wrangling with all the participants 'miked up' this is going to be a wonderful documentary.

Myitkycina is 900 odd miles north. It is a military base. I would suggest the next move would be for David Cundall to quietly retrace his steps there from December 2012 with his Burmese geologist and partners, expand the hand dug hole by 300%, expose more of the crate, if that is what it is, cut a substantial hole in it, and using a very large pump and generator set get sufficient water out so that a conventional camera can record what is there. I would allow a couple of weeks. smile.gif

Mark

Edited by Miggers
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Maybe Geraldo Rivera should lead the next expedition. ;)

 

I would say the whole "documentary" thing is likely to be repeated in a couple years when somebody finally gets permission to dig where the dang planes should be. Than the whole silly thing can begin all over again. Besides, if this first documentary gets good numbers when it airs, why not. That is the way of "reality" television.

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  • 4 weeks later...

I'm sorry but this still smacks of withheld information etc to me.


Eg:

Last month a crate was discovered in the Kachin state capital Myitkyina, but muddy water stopped an immediate identification of its contents.


And yet it's still not been announced what was actually in it?!

I'm sure there will be more of the story to come - while the available evidence regrettably suggests there are no aircraft buried, I think there's far too much that's gone unsaid for the story to be completely over.

Tim

Edited by HammerUK9
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So, no Spitfires there. They say that their researches spent weeks in the archives but couldn't find any proof of Spitfires being buried. Seems to contradict what they were saying originally

Edited by chadders
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But you have to admit it was fun anticipating what might have been the result. I too was sceptical, but the romantic inside me really wanted to find buried Spitfires. At least now we have a good script idea for Indiana Jones 5!

Cheers,

Bill

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yeah well there you go sometimes it happens sometimes it does not. It is like the lottery though if you do not play then you do not have a chance to win. Glad they checked it out anyways just in case it was actually true. Just remember they thought Troy was a myth as well

Edited by hacker
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