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Buried World War II Spitfires to be unearthed
- Thread starter moon puppy
- Start date
Mats the Spits are still in their shipping crates and sealed up, I'm willing to bet they are in better shape than some things flying today...And yes Tony is right, there are multiple aircraft at the same location.
jknaus
Administrator
They dropped a bore hole and scoped around. Everything is still in wax paper and crated up. Unless water has got in there should be something like 8 Spits ready to go. Hopefully buddy who did the research and spent his time and money searching gets some kind of return. I think he spent a few million pounds finding these.
James
James
Sherman 18
Master at Arms
There is a total of 20 Spits buried there 18 Mk XIV's and 2 2 Mk 7's. As I understand most of the steel parts were dunked in Grease also. Each spitfire in those days also had enough spares to rebuild the engine totaly and the engines were assembled at the base so all those parts should all be greased up and buried with them. The biggest worries they had was aparently that the crates would have caved in and distorted the framing beyond repair.
It was also quoted that the guy spent something like 350 000 pounds and that he will be reimbursed and receive an finders fee - usualy the finders fee can be between 5 - 25% of the value. But might be higher because neither of the governments are asking tax or anything on it. I cant wayte for these planes to be dug up.
:yipeeThats what I get for trying to use my memoryStill a great find
James
paddy
Well-known member
I hope its true but if i had a £ for every story like this .... :laugh:
Dropping a bore hole and looking about sound odd unless they are in a cave !!
Where i live there were stories of loads of WD harleys buried at the end of the war..then there were stories of US Jeeps burred on mass up the road from me. There were stories of dozens of merlin's bricked up at the factory behind what is now a car plant and so on. I have yet to see anything come out of the ground of any use after 70 years
the sad fact is that most of this stuff had a scrap value because we had nothing left and steel alloy etc was at a premium. that said my father was on carriers during the war and they picked up a new ship from the Yard, went down to Portsmouth , loaded it with 40 odd aircraft, sailed 2 miles out into the English channel and catapulted the whole lot in to the sea as part of the Ships work up and test to operational status ...
Dropping a bore hole and looking about sound odd unless they are in a cave !!
Where i live there were stories of loads of WD harleys buried at the end of the war..then there were stories of US Jeeps burred on mass up the road from me. There were stories of dozens of merlin's bricked up at the factory behind what is now a car plant and so on. I have yet to see anything come out of the ground of any use after 70 years
the sad fact is that most of this stuff had a scrap value because we had nothing left and steel alloy etc was at a premium. that said my father was on carriers during the war and they picked up a new ship from the Yard, went down to Portsmouth , loaded it with 40 odd aircraft, sailed 2 miles out into the English channel and catapulted the whole lot in to the sea as part of the Ships work up and test to operational status ...
They say they bored into the shipping crate. Now why hasn't that crate rotted, don't think it would be treated wood or painted?
don't know, seen where they were shipped P51s and P47 just wrapped in shipping paper going to UK. They may have done it differently going from UK to CBI theater. Would love to have a followup on this, wonder if the guy has a blog or something
