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Squadron of Lost WWII Spitfires To Be Exhumed In Burma
An anonymous reader writes with this excerpt that sounds like a good Neal Stephenson plot point: "Like a treasure chest stuffed with priceless booty, as many as 20 World War II-era Spitfire planes are perfectly preserved, buried in crates beneath Burma — and after 67 years underground, they're set to be uncovered. The planes were shipped in standard fashion in 1945 from their manufacturer in England to the Far East country: waxed, wrapped in greased paper and tarred to protect against the elements. They were then buried in the crates they were shipped in, rather than let them fall into enemy hands, said David Cundall, an aviation enthusiast who has spent 15 years and about $200,000 in his efforts to reveal the lost planes."
She put a bullet Through his hat But he's had closer Shaves than that With Burma-Shave
If they turn out to be in good enough condition to be made flyable I will squee, a lot.
Yeah, I had a sig once; I got bored of it.
Not so sure about the perfectly preserved bit.
Not much anything mechanical does well with time. The ground has moisture which is the big enemy. I really doubt they had put them in a big plastic bag and vacuum sealed it. And even if they had, and nothing chewed into it, that still dries out anything made of rubber or leather.
They may just be preserved junk at this point - but it will certainly be interesting to see.
With recent austerity measures, the UK are looking at bringing these fighters back into service.
Thanks David!
Please circle one of the following:
* Fox news is a reliable source of information
* Sorry, I was doing meth in my cousins trailer when I linked
* I'm a moron
* I did it for the lulz
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These planes will be needed in the uprising against the psychlos.
It's an article about a 70 year old fighter aircraft. What kind of bias do you expect, idiot?
I have had the pleasure of seeing-hearing-feeling a Spitfire fly by at full speed at very low altitude. It's a sexual experience for anyone who appreciates aircraft.
I have something in common with Stephen Hawking...
but actually useless.
Why unearthing all those planes?
To show? We already have plenty of original spitfires all over the world and a few also still working.
To sell? How would buy one?
To learn new things? Don't think so.
Sent as ripples into the electromagnetic field. No single photon has been harmed in the process.
It is sad when submitters don't check for the best sources.
Fox news copied their story from The Syndey Morning Herald, who copied the story from The Telegraph (UK) (April 14). There is a follow up story on the Telegraph site too; the buried spitfire story was revealed by a war vet, and they found them and made bore holes and looked inside the crates.
They were buried in August 1945 - so after the end of WW2. The Japanese - the most recent "enemy" - had surrendered, and were not in a position to get control of the aircraft or use them. The reason they were buried was because the aircraft were surplus and it would cost too much to return them to the UK.
So I am not sure who the "enemy" was that they were being hidden from. I suspect it was a case of burying military equipment after a war because it would be dangerous for anyone else (eg random civilians or possible insurgents, etc) to have access to it.
I am anarch of all I survey.
Good luck getting them out of Myanmar, it is still a military dictatorship and there are still sanctions in place against the place that prevent the transfer of military hardware. And I'm not sure whether a "visit by PM Cameron" where he discusses them for maybe 20 seconds is going to change much.
Burying military surplus is a great way to give future military historians and archeologists solid evidence to study in the future. It is inexpensive and should be done with other unneeded military hardware.
Like, landmines and nerve gas.
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
Beneath Burma? Why not in Burma? Or did you mean Thailand?
He would tend to the view that, rather than it being a sexual experience, a Stuka attack was more of a shit-in-the-pants affair. Even a friend of his who was a Lancaster navigator never showed any inclination to go to air shows post war.
Yes, the past romanticises everything. The Spitfire was pretty, but the old engineers i worked with when I started would recollect its awful design flaws - like the fuel tank right in front of the pilot (the reason so many pilots were burned.) Like the battlecruisers at Jutland, the Spitfire was of the "the only way not to get killed is not to get hit" school of design. The British aircraft of WW2 that most of them regarded as the pinnacle of design was the first stealth bomber - the Mosquito. The ex-WC who tried to teach us metalwork said that he owed his survival to being picked to fly a Mosquito - your chance of surviving a mission was over 99% while in the metal bombers it was around 96%, bad odds in a long war. Unfortunately, as its radar near-invisibility was achieved by being made largely of plywood, there aren't many left.
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
A couple years ago, long after I read The Baroque Cycle and its ending about strange alchemic gold coming from The Solomon islands, they discovered traces of what must be the wreck of La Perouse expedition, 230 years after it disapeared. For mind blowing reference: the last words of Louis XVI as he walked up the steps to the scaffold were 'Is there any news of La Pérouse?'. It was begging for volume 4 to be written...
Non-Linux Penguins ?
"In 1940 I could at least fly as far as Glasgow in most of my aircraft, but not now! It makes me furious when I see the Mosquito. I turn green and yellow with envy. The British, who can afford aluminium better than we can, knock together a beautiful wooden aircraft that every piano factory over there is building, and they give it a speed which they have now increased yet again. What do you make of that? There is nothing the British do not have. They have the geniuses and we have the nincompoops. After the war is over I'm going to buy a British radio set - then at least I'll own something that has always worked." (Hermann Goering, 1943)
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
with the Spitfires from Demons Run...
How are they going to find planes in a place that hasn't existed in almost 25 years?
If indeed they turn out to be viable, they would be worth a fortune or maybe even priceless. If the Burmese and UK governments are involved, I would bet they won't end up owned by private parties- they'll likely fly less under those circumstances.
Have you ever noticed that anybody driving slower than you is an idiot, and anyone going faster than you is a maniac?
I heard lots of Packard built Merlins at the 2007 Gathering of Mustangs and Legends at Rickenbacker AFB outside of Columbus Ohio. The overflight of a couple of dozen Mustangs in a "51" formation was particularly nice. More recently, I recorded the overflight of 19 B-25s at the 70th reunion of the Doolitlle Tokyo Raiders at Wright-Patterson AFB. Turn up your speakers and enjoy the "noise." That many bombers in the air is just something you don't see or hear anymore.
Cheers,
Dave
They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither safety nor liberty.
Ben
Old Spitfires fly all around
Up they come from under ground
New Old Stock is all the rave
Burma-Save
I think it a bit of pity that these are 1945 Spits, with Gryphon engines and the modified airframes.
If you care to see what these XIVs might look like, see this:
http://www.spitfireperformance.com/spit14v109.html
The XIV marque - like other Gryphon Spits - had an elongated cowl, which interrupted the series of broad, elliptical shapes that made up a Spitfire, and gave it an extraordinary, sculptural quality.
Additionally, there was an enormous , five-bladed airscrew, behind a pointier spinner. The tiny cross section where the fuselage tapers toward the tali was "beefed up" and a much broader and taller tail/rudder structure again, change the elegant line of the aircraft. I suppose, as late as these models are, that Burma mk XIV's also have... Horror! The cut-down and bubble-top, instead of the more familiar hood and sloping airframe, behind the pilot.
Even in Merlin-engined Spitfires, you begin to see the transformation hinted with the Mk VIIIs that served in Australia and Asia, with clipped wingtips and pointed tops on their rudders. But these were gentler adaptations, and lent an interesting variant on the form of the aircraft that wasn't displeasing.
Altogether, so seriously altered, the Spitfire may well have been able to maintain itself against the equally radical adaptations made in BF109s and FW190s. However in doing so, the Spit looked more derived from Hawker's Tempest fighters, albeit with a nip at the chin, and less like the supple, equine aircraft that Reg Mitchell derived from Thompson Trophy racing winners of the 1930s.
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
It is sad when submitters don't check for the best sources.
And it's pathetic when someone bitches because a link is from Fox. Sheesh. Give it a rest.
Life is hard, and the world is cruel
You mis-spelled Faux.
the flyover of a lancaster really is remarkable, and leaves your bones shaking. its almost like your hair is tingling, as though it was on fire.
make me want to vomit
Will do... Just as soon as Fox News starts doing serious journalism. Don't hold your breath.
Funny, I thought they did serious journalism. You mean you haven't realized that by the Zimmerman case by now? Or are you still on full witch-hunt mode for the "white" who's actually not. And I'm not even talking about the "black" part. Only people with a serious political bias believe what you've said, because they're so wrapped up in their own bubble that they feel threatened by other media sources that don't conform to their own world view.
Anyway, let me point out the funny thing, it took this guy 15 years to find them. And he knew roughly where they are. Remember that thing about hiding stuff in the middle of a desert?
Om, nomnomnom...
You know what's actually pathetic? White knighting Fox. Dude wasn't even "bitching", he was trying to helpfully offer links to far better sources of information. I for one saw that TFA link led to Fox and didn't click it on the rather safe assumption that even if there was no political content the Fox-ized article would be sensationalized, poorly researched, etc. It's what Fox does. It's who they are.