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Burma Spitfires , check your piggy banks


ruxy

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  • 4 months later...
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hi, i cannot believe these stories about crated spitfires being buried. first of all they were state of the art fighters and many countries at the end of the war were equipping their air forces, secondly they must have arrived in crates why not take them back out in crates, they would be worth a fortune in 1945 and would just be like dumping new euro fighters, thirdly imagine the size of the hole to bury them, tony g.

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Not entirely correct.

The writing was on the wall for piston engined aircraft, especially fighters. Look at the amount of kit, of all types, that was dumped at the end of WW2, especially in the Far East.

 

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P40s, location unknown.

 

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B24s

 

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A heap of P38s, ready for burial at Clark Field in the Phillipines. These are still buried, they're beneath the power station site, so aren't going to be enearthed in the foreseeable future, despite the best efforts of some rather rich Americans!

 

The cost of bringing these planes back to the UK/USA, where they would only be scrapped anyway, was more than their value. Reload onto trucks/railways, offload at docks, reload onto ships, sail back to the UK, offload, truck/train to disposal point, add to the thousands of Allied & Axis planes, all awaiting scrapping. Remember that the Yanks couldn't be bothered to ship back to the US half of the planes they'd sent to Europe, including brand new ones!

Also, they weren't "state of the art", Spitfire XIVs had been superceded by the Mk21, 22 & 24, it's more like thinking along the line that they were Tornado GR1, so not even upto GR4 standard.

It also gave the thousands of men, waiting to be shipped home & demobbed, something to do!

Some planes were sold/given to the newly liberated countries of the CBI theatre, Spitfires to Burma, for instance, but there's only so many they'd need and the Yanks would be as keen to offload Mustangs as we'd be to get shut of obsolete Spitfires.

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hi , in response to the last article it did not show any spitfires being buried, the israeli air force and egyptian forces used spits and piston engined fighters were still used during the vietnam war including mustang p51ds, my father flew with spifire xiv,s in burma until 1945, i understand about the 21,s and 24,s but these were very few on the ground, being involved with mainly battle of britain types for over 50 years these rumours will always exsist, i just hope that for the people involved it is not a waste of time and money, hope of interest, tony g.

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  • 1 month later...
  • 2 weeks later...

So..

Whats the score with these ?

Surely someone here should know.

I'm getting bored with my daily google search ' buried spitfires last 24 hours'..

Surely someone must have a photo ?

Apparently they put a camera down a hole ?

Any ideas ?

Skel..

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  • 1 month later...

Acording to a recent news report, some locals in burma tried to get to some of the recovered aircraft presumably to nick something and were actually shot by the local security at the site.The article states that they are hoping to start shipping in the new year.

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I think they haven't stop when hit the wooden crate. The went into it to look, if it was worthwhile to go on with the project. There is much more known than we know. Cameron will look a bit silly, when it works out to be a pile of old scrap metal, where he putted his time into.

 

Peter

www.milmarket.org

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Apparently the test data located metallic parts abt. 30ft under the surface. Would take some crate to stand up to that type of overburden for 70 years IMHO , but who knows - if they are in fact crates they may not be crushed and in fact contain Spitfires LoL

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It seems to me that the media circus is being encouraged.

 

Google on the words "Burma Spitfires" , for latest news.

 

http://www.irrawaddy.org/archives/23633

 

Read carefully , the "news Conference" of Wednesday gone, site formalities for live cable checks etc. not completed - dig to start in a few days (that would probably be about now).

 

The talk about finding water filled crates , the photographs shown - were apparently from a "preliminary dig" - obviously these photographs could have surfaced months ago, soon after the "preliminary dig" - when a bore-hole was cut into the top of a crate (if it was a crate - that fact is still to be established) . These photographs are only recently shown to reporters BUT it seems they are not fresh. The world news media then go off to - break news LoL

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A great shame. Not wishing to do down the status of the Spitfire, but after all the hype and suspense for me the finale will be a bit less exciting as a result.

 

How about an aging Bruce Willis for the persistent American who made the discovery in the Hollywood version of the story? Oh and they'd have to be Mustangs..........

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Oh and they'd have to be Mustangs..........

 

Now my interest level is starting to rise a little from tick-over......

 

All those external drop tanks bobbing up and down in the water filled crates and shiny sleek aluminum fuselage's from North American Aviation's P-51 production line at the factory in Dallas.

 

Ok, back to sleep..........its been a long winter and its too early to surface yet!

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