No Spitfires In Burma After All

FBeans writes "In a story at the end of last year, it was reported that up to 124 lost WWII Spitfires could be buried in Burma at various locations. A team sponsored by Wargaming.net and led by David Cundall, who says he witnessed one such burial of planes, have been investigating a site that was thought to have up to 36 planes buried in crates near the end of the war. However, based on the evidence they have obtained recently, it seems there are no Spitfires buried at this location, and no substantial evidence supporting any other location, possibly leading to the end of the hunt. Over 20,000 Spitfires were made between 1938 and 1948, at a cost of around £12,000 each. Cundall has spent 17 years of his life and around $200,000 hunting the Supermarine planes; presumably, the lack of evidence will not stop him from continuing to search."

Comments

Spitfires were obsolete ...

[perpenso]

I don't know whether to lambast the guy for being so f***ing stupid, or feel sorry for him because he's mentally ill. I mean, let's think about this. Why, WHY, would they bury even a single plane, let alone 124 of them? It's just not rational.

Spitfires were considered technologically obsolete at the time. The British had an operational jet fighter by the end of the war. The ships necessary to transport the crates back to the UK may have been unavailable, or had higher priority cargo, or it was not cost effect, ... The mechanics needed to assemble the aircraft may have been, or were about to be, shipped home and discharged from service. Similarly the pilots may have been shipped home, or perhaps they were never sent to where the crates were in the first place.

While burial is plausible, it would also seem plausible to just store the crates and sell the aircraft off as surplus to developing nations.

The Spitfire is an amazing aircraft. An important part of history. But at the end of the war they were not as rare and valuable as they are today, and sufficient quantities were available in the UK for historical preservation and museum needs. If the aircraft in question had been returned to the UK they probably would have been scrapped and the metal sent off to the recycler. It may seem strange to us today but that was the postwar fate of many warbirds. That is why they are so rare today.

Re:Informative graphic

[Colonel Korn]

I now know that the Spitfire's "performance" was located under the fuselage, and its "aerodynamics" were located in the tail section.

Which funnily enough is about right. The aircraft was a hack, a case of fix-what-we-have. The development history of the Spitfire is one of constant attempts to keep-up with the state-of-the-art as set by Germany and, to a lesser degree, the USA.

Constantly out-performed, out-manoeuvred and over-rated; the only reason the RAF continued to fly Spitfires is that there weren't enough Lend-Lease aircraft from the USA to meet demand. P-51s and P-47s couldn't come quick enough for European theatre and the P-40s held the line in North Africa.

There are plenty of airworthy Spitfires for anyone who feels dewy-eyed about them. What we really need to find is a cache of buried Beaufighters or Battles. Now THAT would really add to the historical record.

You overstate your case. The Spitfire had a higher power to mass ratio than any of its competitors and had a much better rate of turn than, for instance, the P-51. It had many shortcomings and many advantages compared to P-51s and P47s. Overall the range and cruise speed certainly made a P-51 a more valuable aircraft for flying the kind of missions most common late in the war, but Spitfires were pretty well suited for the Blitz.