Supermarine Spitfire

Daveg4otu;118512 wrote:

If you care to wade through the 30+ page long thread on the Key/Flypast Forums you will find somewhere that somebody has actually produced some kind of tentative list of potential candidates for an honorable burial in the backwoods of Burma

I think this is the thread (there are several).....
forum.keypublishing.co.uk/showthread.php?t=116104

Thanks; I will have a 'wade' when I've a bit more time.

Indeed, Kevin make a very good point about accountability of HMG's war surplus aircraft. On a sadder note, an extract from Kevin Falconer's excellent book 'Stirling at War' tells us that in India in 1945, surplus Stirlings were uncrated, assembled and kept fully fuelled 'just in case'. Although in this case there were 17, no crews were available. So the ground crews would just taxy the Stirlings around the peri track for 'something to do'. Ultimately, all 17 were put in the middle of the airfield and burnt.

Which would have been a far more obvious thing to do than dig a big hole for them.

Kevin wrote:

Thanks; I will have a 'wade' when I've a bit more time.

I did wade through 38 pages. Not a lot of information. a lot of speculation. There is an interesting photo from 1995 of a hangar with 7 Spits, a Dak and a wrecked Fury. It seems the Burmese got all their surviving ex RAF aircraft together for sell off. There's not information with the photo as to where the stuff finally ended up.

According to Wargaming.net, who are sponsoring this, there are no buried Spitfires and they have cancelled a press conference. I wonder if David Camerom is going to regret jumping on this particular bandwagon?

www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-21074699

Archaeologists believe no Spitfires buried in Burma

Archaeologists hunting for World War II Spitfires in Burma believe there are no planes buried at the sites where they have been digging, the BBC understands.

The archaeologists have concluded that evidence does not support the original claim that as many as 124 Spitfires were buried at the end of the war, the BBC's Fergal Keane reports.

Wargaming.net, the firm financing the dig, has also said there are no planes.

But project leader David Cundall says they are looking in the wrong place.

He told the BBC that he still believes Spitfires are buried at Rangoon airport and other sites.

An initial survey of the site began in early January, with excavations due to begin after that.

A scheduled press conference was cancelled on Friday morning by Wargaming Ltd, with a spokesman saying he hoped to give more details later.

When pressed, the spokesman said there are no Spitfires, our correspondent says.

Muddy waters

David Cundall has spent the last 17 years trying to discover the truth of claims that unused, unassembled Spitfires were packed into crates and buried by the RAF at sites in Burma on the orders of Lord Mountbatten at the end of the war in 1945.

He has collected eyewitness accounts from American and British service personnel as well as local people.

One of them, British veteran Stanley Coombe, had travelled to Burma to witness the excavation.

The dig got the go ahead after it secured funding from Belarusian video games firm Wargaming.net, and received permission from Burmese President Thein Sein during a meeting with British Prime Minister David Cameron last year.

Mr Cundall maintains that as many as 124 Spitfires are buried in sites around Burma.

Prior to the dig, scientists had discovered large concentrations of metal under the ground around Rangoon's airport lending support to the theory that up to 36 planes are buried there.

Earlier this month, a crate was discovered in the Kachin state capital Myitkyina, but muddy water stopped an immediate identification of its contents.

The central city of Meiktila was another site identified as a possible burial ground for the Spitfires.

And that comes as a surprise to......no-one!

On the plus side for wargaming.net, I now know they're from Belarus and I've heard of them and I'm also familiar with JCB's latest digger offerings!!! Fancy that...

Still quite a lot doesn't make sense though. What was in the water filled box they found? If there are several sites across the country and they've only just begin digging one, how can the archaeologists say "No Spitfires in Burma"? Why has everyone come out and said "no planes", if the Project Leader says they were digging in the wrong place? Why did the Project Leader let them dig in the wrong place? If they were looking in the wrong place, again, what was the crate they found? What were these "large concentrations of metal" they found?

This press release raises more questions than it answers.

Oh, if only they'd made some kind of documentary or film, that'd contain the answers and I'd definitely watch that!

Steve

Shame...It would seem that TIGHAR could give them some pointers on 'missing & unfindable aircraft'

Sorry to sound smug but I don't believe that RAF records are that bad and the system could lose 100+ new aircraft. as per previous posters. Maybe one's and two's struck of charge as 'beyond' local repair' (The Spit was prone to gear problems and operating off rough jungle strips must have been interesting...) but a whole ship load of new ones 'missing'? very unlikely I fear.

I wonder if this shipment didn't vanish but was re-coded / renumbered etc and smartly diverted to a foreign buyer without even unloading in Rangoon? Britian was completely bankrupt in 1945 and even reduced to selling US kit which annoyed the US quite a bit when they found out....

I seem to remember reading that the Rangoon runway was Japanese PSP (perforated steel plate) known to the allies as 'Marston Matting' Chunks of that left lying around or buried would give a wonderful ground radar 'paint'.

PNK;119019 wrote:

Maybe they use the same guy that predicts the end of the world incorrectly 5 times running.

It's the same chap I use for picking my lottery numbers.

what about the eyewitness who said he saw them being buried, as so much was made of the story he told he has a lot to answer for now.