Apparently the British buried 20 Spitfires in Burma in WW2. And they’re still there!
I wonder in what condition they’ll be found? The jungle isn’t a kind environment.
Apparently they were crated and awaiting assembly.
I would expect that they would have been shipped in preservative greases. There should be a good chance that many components will be in very good condition.
Restoration of WWII aircraft has become such an industry that there would be no problem in replacing any parts that are beyond repair.
There are (supposedly) quite a number of aircraft crated and buried in Australia. There are also a number supposed to have been dumped off shore still crated. I have no doubt that some do exist but as to the condition- well…
In the 60’s I recall as a school child one of those old bull nosed army trucks having sat in a street where one of my friends lived. It was an army truck and no one had bothered to look. Naturally we did. The back part of the truck was full of small calibre ammunition- rifle stuff.
There was a lot of things never accounted for.
And on a different note, I saw a doco the other night that said there was only one Sunderland flying boat still flying.
Ive heard similar stories in NZ about buried planes etc.
Much of it seems to be buried treasure type stories, so until they’re actually located, Id keep a pinch of salt handy.
Otara
Wouldn’t be surprised.
We have 7 Spitfires in NZ but only 2 airworthy - the others are being worked on.
Given how special these fighter planes are, I’ve often wondered if replicas are built? Anyone know?
Love the sight and sound of a Spitfire diving down under power onto a ground target. There is something primal about the rising pitch of the Merlins and the prop which send shivers down my spine.
The Sunderland was actually at one stage operated by Ansett out of Brisbane so there is a local connection. The show was on the history channel and I suspect a few years old- if anyone wants a copy dop me a PM.
Otara, I agree- the stories of crated Spitfires seem to surface every few years. One thing I would mention though - and this was back in the 80’s- I was talking to one of the heads of Civil Aviation in Qld. he said that in the western part of the state for years civil pilots had reported seeing a Mustang flying near by. It was assumed at the time that some cow cocky had got his hands on one after the War and just took it for joy rides every now and then. There were none registered of course.
It was possibly fiction but he did report it was from several sources. I’d like to believe it was true.
Good news, if they find them! You all know that the Spit is my favourite airplane. (Truth be told, though, if I had a choice of a Spit or a Hurricane, I’d take the Hurricane for a few reasons.) The more Spits in the air, the better, I say! Let’s hope they are found and are restorable!
Unlike WWI aircraft, building a replica of a WWII fighter is rather daunting. The only full-scale replicas I can think of are the ME-262s. Hurricanes have a simpler structure than a Spitfire, being bolted steel tubing covered with fabric. I think Hawker Hurricane Restorations, Ltd. have all of the parts to build a Hurricane from scratch, but I don’t think they have. The Hurricane was a transitional design; it was between the tube-and-fabric era and the monocoque era. The Spitfire had the more modern monocoque structure, and also was a mass of compound curves. Not a particularly easy thing to build. Of course one could build a replica, but it would be a difficult endeavour. Finding engines might be a problem. I remember when I was a kid people would use them in hydroplane (boat) racing (along with Packard-built Merlins and the similar Allisons), and engines were always blowing up due to the stresses put on them.
Supermarine Aircraft offers 90% scale kits that look really nice. They got the landing gear wrong, but otherwise it’s pretty spiffy.
Johnny LA, I don’t doubt your knowledge on this subject, but could anyone really build a WW1 aircraft?
Who could/ would build a rotary engine? And I would think the stressing of the skin on the plane may be a lost art. Could someone build a Giant these days (irrespective of cost?)
Just to add some fuel to the fire, the specs of the German gun that bombarded Paris in the Great War were destroyed and no one knew how to rebuild it .
ISTR reading about an accurate SE.5 replica having been built. (Remember that many WWI aircraft did not use rotary engines.) There are some full-scale WWI replicas that use more modern construction and radial engines. I consider those replicas close enough.
EDIT: Also, many WWI fighters were surprisingly tiny. And welding tubes or carving wood would not be that difficult.
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The planes of WW1 were tiny- I saw them at the Imperial War Museum in London. Against (I think ) a FW.
The other question would be how many pilots would want to fly the damn things? Planes with no brakes and very poor safety records? Those guys were far braver than I would ever be.
(I have read that 50% of the British Air Force- under various names- casualties were in training)
I would fly one. (Actually, I found a full-sized Nieuport kit that looks nice. But the Australian radial engine is expensive.) They land slow enough that brakes might not be necessary. Or you could always add them. I think the safety issues came primarily from lack of training. They’d send you up after only a few hours. Also, the rotary engines had a lot of torque that could bite an incautious or inexperienced pilot. True, sometimes wings (or wing fabric, anyway) would rip off; but for recreational flying one would be less prone to exceed the envelope, and modern construction would be stronger.
But I don’t think you could add brakes because of weight. Those planes were so balanced with weight/ power ratio.
A lot has been made of the no parachutes for WW1 but initially it was the weight. It would have slowed the planes so much.
I’m going to disagree about the brakes. A replica would probably be lighter than an original, and the engine would likely be lighter and/or more powerful. Also, the undercarriage isn’t so far forward of the cg that adding brakes there would be a factor weight-and-balance-wise.
I’ve always heard that parachutes were discouraged because TPTB thought pilots might bail in a tight situation, costing an expensive aircraft (and possibly, an expensive pilot). I’ve also heard that parachutes were considered ‘cowardly’, and that they limited mobility in an already-cramped cockpit. I don’t think the actual weight was much of a factor. Of course, I stand to be corrected if I am wrong.
Why on Earth 90% scale? And perhaps you should be glad they got the landing gear wrong: it was a notorious weak point of the original.
How much assembly would be required? Bolt on the wings and the propeller, put on the wheels, then gas it up and fly? Or would they be in many more pieces?
Probably because it’s too hard to find a Merlin. 90% allows them to use less power. But yeah, it would be nice to have a 100% scale aircraft. I know there are 100% scale Spitfire kits out there, only they’re made of wood. Those use Allison V-12s, and I’ve read that they can out-perform an original Mk. IX.
The undercarriage looks like it tracks the same as the original, but they fold a bit forward instead of aft. The ‘notorious weak point’, AFAIK, was that the narrow track made it difficult to handle on landing. This characteristic was shared by the Bf-109.
It’s a little bit more involved than that, but not much. At least based on what I remember from reading about the way they shipped US aircraft around.
Bomber Command had a huge attrition rate in WWII, more than 40% deaths. That’s in operations, not training - any training regime that killed the trainees that readily would not last long. Also, it is the Royal Air Force although that was the offspring of the Army that was known as the Royal Flying Corps. Changed the name as recently as 1918.
That sounds like an interesting topic, if you’d care to expand on it.
The Spitfire was the most beautiful, elegant fighter ever made. And it was a good one, too. They were a match for the Bf-109s, and starting with the Mk. IXs they were a match for the FW-190s. The beautiful lines, the performance, and their role in the Battle of Britain make it my favourite airplane. But…
Although it is the symbol of the Battle of Britain, the Hurricane accounted for some 55% of German losses compared to 42% to the Spitfire. Most of the RAF squadrons at the time were equipped with the Hurricane. While slower than a Spitfire or a Bf-109, the Hurricane could out-turn both of them. The Spitfire got all of the glory, but it was the Hurricane that was the real workhorse.
So one reason I’d choose to own a Hurricane over a Spitfire is that I feel it ‘deserves’ some recognition. Another, more practical, reason is that it’s easier to fly. Its wider undercarriage makes it easier to land. Its structure makes it easier to maintain. I’ve read that the Spitfire (that used to belong to Cliff Robertson) at the museum in Seattle needs to be re-skinned to be airworthy. With the Hurricane, re-skinning means doping on some new fabric; and the structure is bolted – not welded – together, so it’s simpler to replace components. Since I’m not going to fly a plane into battle, the Hurricane makes more sense. Finally, there aren’t that many of them. Of more than 14,000 built, only 12 are airworthy – fewer than one-third the number of flying Spitfires. What can I say? I’m an attention whore.