12 hidden Spitfire planes in Burma

[Simperator]

Hi all,

It may interest you that there were 12 planes buried there at the end of the war:

http://www.flyingmag.com/pilots-places/ ... -excavated

Regards,
Simon

[Andy H]

Thanks for sharing that news with us Simon.

Let's hope it comes to fruition and keep us posted

Regards

Andy H

[Juha Tompuri]

The aircraft were reportedly shipped to an RAF base in the country late in the war, but were never used due to the development of more apt fighters. With the threat of a Japanese occupation looming, the Allied forces decided to bury the aircraft within their crates, where they sat just a couple weeks later as the use of atomic bombs brought the war to an end -- and have remained entombed ever since.

http://www.flyingmag.com/pilots-places/ ... -excavated

What threat of Japanese occupation?

Regards, Juha

[phylo_roadking]

The numbers on this seem to vary I've seen 40, then 20....now 12

[phylo_roadking]

Juha - I've yet to see a precise date for this action, even in the printed aviation press...but the nearest thing to a Japanese "offensive" I can find "a few weeks" before the end of the war is the attempted breakout by the Twenty-Eighth Army from the Pegu Yomas in July, in an attempt to rejoin the Burma Area Army; Gen. Kimura ordered an "offensive" by the by-then severely attrited Thirty-Third Army to cover the breakout, and they attacked British forces at Sittang Bend on the Sittang River. Both forces withdrew after some heavy fighting in badly-waterlogged terrain...but the Twenty-Eighth Army wasn't ready to move for another week, so when they did they were not covered and took large losses

I have to say, though, this is the weirdest bit of the whole story...given that apparently some of the buried Spitfires have been reached by bore drilling and checked in their crates by camera!...that whatever happened so late in the war caused Mountbatten to panic like that! Allied forces were on the attack everywhere else...

[Juha Tompuri]

Discussion about the issue:
http://forum.keypublishing.com/showthread.php?t=116104
...Where the burial site is mentioned to be Mingaladon airfield, Rangoon:
http://www.iwm.org.uk/collections/searc ... %22&query=

And:

These are considered to be former RAF Mk XIV's with potentially further Mk VIII's downstream.

They are considered to have been buried circa 1946 in wooden crates with a view to possible recovery in the future at a time when there was much political upheaval on the Indian sub-continent.

http://forum.keypublishing.com/showthread.php?t=116104

Regards, Juha

[Saxon Cross]

At first I thought this was excellent news, but then I considered the climate, the monsoon rains and that they were buried in crates.

The crates may be bad news. Wouldn't they create sumps for the water to gather in every time it rains, and in addition create air pockets which will be a great environment for corrosion?

The aircraft may have been preserved better at the bottom of a lake, or better still at the bottom of a bog.

I'm not too optimistic about their condition.

Saxon

[phylo_roadking]

At first I thought this was excellent news, but then I considered the climate, the monsoon rains and that they were buried in crates.

The crates may be bad news. Wouldn't they create sumps for the water to gather in every time it rains, and in addition create air pockets which will be a great environment for corrosion?

In all the articles on the television and in the press I can't remember where I read it, but apparently they were packed for longterm "wet climate" external storage anyway So however that was done - I assume a LOT of heavy gease - it might have given them a better chance of survival.

The aircraft may have been preserved better at the bottom of a lake, or better still at the bottom of a bog.

S-C, it's not actually the particular wetness of the environment that has preserved so well all those aircraft coming out of Russian or Finnish lakes/bogs/fjords...it's the cold It supresses various chemical reactions...like corrosion.

[Saxon Cross]

In all the articles on the television and in the press I can't remember where I read it, but apparently they were packed for longterm "wet climate" external storage anyway So however that was done - I assume a LOT of heavy gease - it might have given them a better chance of survival.

S-C, it's not actually the particular wetness of the environment that has preserved so well all those aircraft coming out of Russian or Finnish lakes/bogs/fjords...it's the cold It supresses various chemical reactions...like corrosion.

I certainly hope they are right about the packing, which will at least give the engines a chance. I doubt they packed the airframes in grease.

I think a lack of oxygen also keeps chemical reactions at bay.

Myanmar isn't exactly known for it's cold climate, so that's another concern.

I recall a US bomber abandoned in the artic. By the 1990s (IIRC) it was still in very good condition. It needed quite a few weeks of work, but they got it running there on the ice and intended to fly it back to civilisation. Something shook loose from the vibrations of a pre-flight warmup, started a fire and it burnt to the ground in 10 minutes.
That was depressing.


Saxon

[Natter]

Deal has been closed:
http://www.timeslive.co.za/world/2012/1 ... in-myanmar

It seems at least 60 planes are buried there, but according to some sources 20 are the actual number to be excavated?

They should be able to piece together at least one good plane from all those parts...

[Juha Tompuri]

Deal has been closed:
http://www.timeslive.co.za/world/2012/1 ... in-myanmar

It seems at least 60 planes are buried there, but according to some sources 20 are the actual number to be excavated?

They should be able to piece together at least one good plane from all those parts...

The numbers on this seem to vary I've seen 40, then 20....now 12

You were/are right

http://forum.keypublishing.com/showthread.php?t=120038

Regards, Juha

[phylo_roadking]

The numbers on this seem to vary I've seen 40, then 20....now 12

I've wondered since if thse larger numbers wrere released to help scare up some investment for the recovery costs The thought of 40 to 60 that could be sold at 1.5-2 million pounds each is a LOT more interesting to potential investors.... than a "mere" 12 - a certain number of which might THEN have to be left in Burma to secure the deal!

[Habu]

On the other hand, how large is the potential market? I really don't know how many of the old warbirds come up for sale in a given year, but it seems like 40-60 of them would flood the market and depress prices, at least for a time.

[phylo_roadking]

Habu - large Scarcity had driven the price of flightworthy Spits up considerably in the last few years; a while back there was IIRC 51 flying around the world...but thanks to ownership in those countries where flightworthy certification is bound to hours on the airframe, like the UK - the number has come down to the "mid 40s" apparently.

Remember - if these are restorable - they'll be NEW aircraft with ZERO hours on their airframes except testing hours.They'll be snapped up by those owners who fund their ownership by airshow appearances - given that in the UK and Europe for instance, the number of display hours they have on "old" airframes" is dwindling fast.

And of course - depressing the price is no bad thing...for it will of course allow more of these to be sold, restored AND kept in the air if the initial asking price is lower

Guy Walters published a pretty decent article on these in yesterday's Daily Mail in the UK...with a LOT more history! This batch...I'll return to that later!...IS at Mingladoon, buried in a dried up river bed beside the airfield there that was excavated...then covered over again...by a U.S Construction Battalion. The reason apparently that the number 60 is being mentioned is that there was some 120 Spitfires at several locations sitting crated at the end of the war - with up to 60 at Mingladoon. It seems the decision to dispose of them "creatively" had nothing to do with the aforementioned "Japanese advance"...tho' they are indeed aircraft assigned to one of the RAF squadrons that helped drive back the Japanese at Sittang Bend The decision to dispose of them came at the END of the war - when it was simply reckoned cheaper to get rid of them than bring them home! Just like those truly awful late 1945 pics of RAN Seafires and others with just testing hours on them being pushed off the fantail of aircraft carriers in Sydney Roads'

Cundall says there is a total of FIVE sites in Burma where Spitfires in similar crated condition are hidden...including a quarry where four ultra-rare MkVIIIs are sequestered!...but this first excavation will fund the others.

[Juha Tompuri]

British experts looking for a cache of World War II Spitfire planes believed to be buried in Burma say they have discovered a crate.

The team has lowered a camera into the crate in the Kachin state capital Myitkyina, but says muddy water has stopped them identifying the contents.

Project leader David Cundall described the development as "very encouraging".

The team believes that more than 120 unused Spitfires could be buried in sites across Burma.

"We've gone into a box, but we have hit this water problem. It's murky water and we can't really see very far," Mr Cundall told reporters in Rangoon, Burma's main city.

"It will take some time to pump the water out... but I do expect all aircraft to be in very good condition," he added...
...Mr Cundall said a survey was being carried out at the site to locate any modern-day obstacles like electricity cables. He said they hoped to begin excavating within days.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-20957162
http://forum.keypublishing.com/showthre ... 04&page=31

Burma Spitfire search finds water-filled crate that may contain plane
An excavation team searching for a stash of Second World War era British Spitfires in Burma says it has found a wooden crate believed to contain one of the planes, but it is full of muddy water...
...It was not immediately clear how much damage the water may have caused, and searchers could not definitively say what was inside the crate.
But British aviation enthusiast David J. Cundall, who is driving the hunt for the rare Spitfires, called the results "very encouraging."

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldne ... plane.html

Regards, Juha