WWII Spitfires Found

[chrisolson]

What a story! As many as 20 WWII Spitfires found buried in Burma ... never flown, buried in their shipping crates and never assembled.

 

Link to story

[racer7]

Way cool!!!!

 

I wouldn't bet on them all being in decent shape after all these years at that depth but no doubt most should be restorable.

 

The Brits ought to save them. Spitfires and Hurricanes were a critical part of a very tough period in their history and only the skill of their pilots and deployment saved their bacon.

 

I wish they had saved some bits of their equally significant navy. HMS Belfast docked across from the Tower is at best only an ordinary pick that I think got made only becasue it was in passable condition when they decided to preserve something. They were pretty sick of the war by the end and wasted no time pitching out wartime leaders like Churchill and getting back to their idea of normality..

[chrisolson]

... I wouldn't bet on them all being in decent shape after all these years at that depth but no doubt most should be restorable.

Not mentioned in this article, but in others, is that prior to shipping the planes would have been waxed, wrapped in greased paper with the joints tarred to protect against the elements. So they may be in excellent condition if the crates are intact!

 

Another source says these may be rare models with Griffon engines rather than Merlin.

[AviP]

Holy crap! Me want one. My all-time favorite aircraft. I always dreamed of being born 50 years earlier in the UK and being a WWII Spitfire Ace. Seriously!

[Bob Palin]

Holy crap! Me want one. My all-time favorite aircraft. I always dreamed of being born 50 years earlier in the UK and being a WWII Spitfire Ace. Seriously!

I know a Spitfire pilot, father of a friend, in his 90s now. He flew one mission, was shot down over France and spent the rest of the war in a POW camp! Ace.

[AviP]

Holy crap! Me want one. My all-time favorite aircraft. I always dreamed of being born 50 years earlier in the UK and being a WWII Spitfire Ace. Seriously!

I know a Spitfire pilot, father of a friend, in his 90s now. He flew one mission, was shot down over France and spent the rest of the war in a POW camp! Ace.

Oh I know the bad side of war. But I can't help being enamoured by the glory of it. BTW, part of my dream involved dying in 1945. But it was a glorious death too.

[Bob Palin]

And here he is, Dave Denchfield. I went sailing with him many times in a ridiculously small dinghy in high winds, he really took to water sports rather than flying after his wartime experiences! Somewhere I have pictures from a long boat canal trip we took in the early 1970s, pub to pub, great times!

 

[Kathy R]

HERE is a photo of David Cundall, the man responsible for finding these Spitfires. What an amazingly driven man. I can hardly imagine spending £130,000 searching for something when you really don't know what will come of it. Bravo to him.

[Paul Mihalka]

"But I can't help being enamoured by the glory of it"

 

I lived through WWII as a teenager. Believe me, there is no glory in it.

[Bob Palin]

And here is a link to his story in his own words - it sounds just like him! I didn't know him until 25 years after the war ended but he still spoke like a traditional RAF pilot, he frequently called us 'erks'. I haven't seen him for many years now but he was still with us last time I checked about a year ago.

 

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/history/Britain_at_War_Readers__Memorie/4401793/Britain-at-War-Taken-prisoner-by-the-Germans-after-crashing-my-plane.html

 

Apologies for the hijack, hope it was interesting. Kathy, in a strange quirk of the universe his son's name was Nigel.

[Bob Palin]

"But I can't help being enamoured by the glory of it"

 

I lived through WWII as a teenager. Believe me, there is no glory in it.

Totally agree Paul, my mother still suffers from the mental effects of being in London during the blitz, she's terrified by fireworks and thunderstorms. My father suffered from his injuries for over 25 years until they came up with some new form of treatment for knitting bones.

[Danny caddyshack Noonan]

Cool. The Spitfire, ME109, P-38 and P-51 are what I consider flying art.

[RTJohn]

My dad was captured on Corregidor in '42. The seige of the island was one ordeal, being a guest of the Emporer for 3 1/2 years was another. The experience never left him.

[Kathy R]

And here is a link to his story in his own words - it sounds just like him! I didn't know him until 25 years after the war ended but he still spoke like a traditional RAF pilot, he frequently called us 'erks'. I haven't seen him for many years now but he was still with us last time I checked about a year ago.

 

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/history/Britain_at_War_Readers__Memorie/4401793/Britain-at-War-Taken-prisoner-by-the-Germans-after-crashing-my-plane.html

 

Apologies for the hijack, hope it was interesting. Kathy, in a strange quirk of the universe his son's name was Nigel.

 

Hyjack? Hell no! What a read. Although there were dozens of words I didn't know, I got the story all the way through.

 

.....(I remembered the unseen white hot debris from the exhausts, and in the context of the fuel smell didn't have a lot of confidence in the immediate future).

 

I was introduced to the pilot who shot me down, Major Oeseau, who became one of the top scoring pilots before losing his life in 1944. We spoke for a couple of minutes with my escort as interpreter, and then I signed his cigarette case in pencil for him to have engraved over.

 

Again, that was one heck of a read!

 

Nigel? Wait til you meet him. He's a Nigel alright

 

 

[Firefight911]

"But I can't help being enamoured by the glory of it"

 

I lived through WWII as a teenager. Believe me, there is no glory in it.

Totally agree Paul, my mother still suffers from the mental effects of being in London during the blitz, she's terrified by fireworks and thunderstorms. My father suffered from his injuries for over 25 years until they came up with some new form of treatment for knitting bones.

 

My grandfather (Mother's side) was a machinist in England during the war. He was a member of civil defence and his job as a mchinist??????? Spinner cones on Spitfires amongst other things.

 

My grandfather (father's side) was a part of the Royal Navy. Oh, the parts of history he played in!!!!

 

My father and mother both have stories from the Blitz. Never forget the picture of my father's house. You know, the one where it shows my father's house standing and the one next door gone from the bomb raid the night before. The story of my grandfather throwing my father in to the water as the Germans came in for a strafing run on the boat. My father collected the scarf from the water that he had been wearing when he was thrown in....with bullet holes in it.

[hANNAbONE]

...aLL tHIS just in time for the Olympics..!!!

[Survived-til-now]

Way cool!!!!

 

I wouldn't bet on them all being in decent shape after all these years at that depth but no doubt most should be restorable.

 

The Brits ought to save them. Spitfires and Hurricanes were a critical part of a very tough period in their history and only the skill of their pilots and deployment saved their bacon.

 

I wish they had saved some bits of their equally significant navy. HMS Belfast docked across from the Tower is at best only an ordinary pick that I think got made only becasue it was in passable condition when they decided to preserve something. They were pretty sick of the war by the end and wasted no time pitching out wartime leaders like Churchill and getting back to their idea of normality..

 

I hear that the government over here has relinquished any claim on them and so it's open to the finder to recover them (though our PM did put in a plea for the Burmese government to let them be recovered). We have the facilities over here at Duxford to restore them and the Imperial War Museum who owns Duxford has a number of Spitfires and a Hurricane as part of its collection , in flying order and displayed regularly. So if you want to see these aircraft flying (and other Spitfires/Hurricanes from other collections) make a note in your diary of the Flying Legends Airshow held every year on the first weekend in July.

 

As for saving bits of the navy etc etc - generally speaking I think you are right and I sure wish they had hung onto a few more Lancasters. As for Churchill, he was a great war leader but by the end he was not surprisingly worn out and to some extent his thinking lay in the past. There was a desperate desire by ordinary Britons for a change in society, one that Churchill didn't acknowledge and it cost him the election. For those who are interested - I recommend Max Hasting's book "Finest Years - Churchill as a Warlord 1940-45".

 

Andy