And a British-Burmese – or Myanmar, if you prefer – venture is going to dig them up. Story here.
Apparently the Japanese surrendered before they could be used, and for reasons that are not explained in the story, the US Army decided burying them in their crates was the way to go. Twenty have been located so far. If there does indeed turn out to be 140, all in pristine working order, that will be “three to four times the number of airworthy models known to exist,” the story says. Them taking to the skies will be something to see.
I hope this does not turn out to be like all those stories of Japanese war gold hidden away that never pan out.
EDIT: Seems the Brits decided to bury them. The US Army was put in charge of it. Still don’t know why.
I wonder how good of a condition they will actually be in. After all, this is what happened to a car that was buried for 50 years (not pretty). That was also in a (supposedly) watertight concrete vault, not what I am picturing as wooden crates.
Thanks. I was in the US when that thread appeared and missed it. (In fact, it was started the same day the wife and I met up with twickster and some other Dopers in Philadelphia.)
The new story says only 20 have been located. Not sure why they think there may be 140. It’s in the news again because approval for excavation was finally given last week.
Does anyone know why they would be buried to begin with? That seems to me an odd thing to do with them.
As for what condition they’ll be in, the first link in the first thread says: "‘They were just buried there in transport crates,’ Mr Cundall said. ‘They were waxed, wrapped in greased paper and their joints tarred. They will be in near perfect condition’.”
There was quite a bit of speculation in the old thread about why they were buried. The most popular idea seemed to be that the became useless as the war ended, they weren’t needed anywhere else, so it was cheaper to just bury them rather than return them to England.
Also some comments about how many US aircraft were actually destroyed rather than repatriated – so I guess that would be the next question – why would they be buried rather than just chopped up for scrap?
I can understand them not being needed and becoming outdated by technological advances. But I can’t understand looking at them and thinking: “Hmmm. I know! Let’s dig big holes and bury all these suckers.” Especially not when what would next come would be: “But we’re going to make sure they’re perfectly preserved first.”
My guess would be, since they were shipped by sea, they were crated and coated with grease to prevent corrosion from the start, so all the locals would have to do is bury the crates.
I wasn’t skeptical in the first thread, but given these later stories, I am now. That thread was six months ago, and the claim was that excavation would start in the next month. Now this story says basically the same thing – excavation will begin soon.
I am reminded of the flying car guy – he is always just a little bit away from getting into production. I have to wonder if this is another scam to suck in investors.
I mentioned Japanese gold in the OP. There are constant rumors of buried Japanese gold hoards all throughout Southeast Asia. That’s what this story reminds me of. I recall one Thai senator claiming he’d found a stash in a province bordering Burma about 11 or 12 years ago and was planning to dig it out. Nothing ever came of it. Someone in the Philippines claimed to have found a stash of Japanese platinum but said it had rusted a bit. Er, platinum doesn’t rust.
But perhaps it really did take this long to get approval to excavate? Burma is in the process of opening up, but the wheels still turn lowly.
I defer to your expertise on that one. There is one thing that argues against it being a scam – or may ague that it’s a really good scam – are stories that the British government (and PM David Cameron personally) is involved in negotiations involving the recovery.
I suspect this is a hoax perpetrated by someone who’s currently trying to buy a vintage Spitfire.
“A million pounds!?!? You’ve got to be crazy, the market’s about to be flooded with perfectly preserved Spitfires right off the showroom floor. I’ll give you 250,000.”
I thought I’d add a brief update… this whole dig thing is looking ever more dodgy.
Here’s a story dated Nov 28 saying digging will start in January. The link in the OP story was in mid Oct and said digging would start by the end of the month. There’s another thread and story from six months or so before that saying that digging would begin in a few weeks.
The guy behind this also seems to backed off on his claim that there were at least 20, to an unstated number. And the maximum number has gone down from 140 to 60. And since they apparently can’t even find a record of any of these planes being sent to Burma at the time and haven’t started digging yet, HTF do they know?
So why is this in the news again? Because the plane hunter guy has sucke…, I mean “attracted” a corporate sponsor for the expedition. My prediction – with serious corporate money behind them, the planned excavation will slow down dramatically.
Oh, I forgot another thing. The newly hired archaeologist says they as yet have “no physical evidence” that the planes are there. But there was a story some months back that claimed they had dug a bore hole and sent down a camera and examined a crate, which had no visible damage. What, did they not record it? Is video of a buried plane crate not “physical evidence”. Or was the earlier story a load of BS?
Basically they’ve found a – that is, one (1) – box of something buried in a remote area of the country. Maybe a bit too soon to start popping the champagne corks.