History Buried Treasure? WWII Spitfires o/t

fantastic story. Can not wait to see what they unearth!

 

I think this if for real. My father fought in the South Pacific in WWII and told me many stories of how they brought in bulldozers and dug huge pits and pushed in equipment and buried it as they left the islands. He said some of the stuff was new,coming directly off of a ship and put into pits,buried and then they boogied out of there. Sometimes planes were buried, especially if there were no adequate landing sites.I think New Caledonia was one of the islands with new stuff buried.

 

Burying surplus equipment happened after the Korean War too. Tons of stuff was buried in pits all other the country. New used and otherwise.

 

Does anyone have information on the size of the crates and how many it took to ship one Spitfire? If there are 20 that must be on good size pit that was dug to bury them. Bob

 

I was out in Kuwait for GW1 and helped in the aftermath (I was Explosive Ordanance Disposal). The coalition units pulling back from the Kuwait/Iraq border came through our location to "de-bomb". Stuff that could be identified by batch number (be it small arms ammo, 5.56mm, 7.62mm, .50 and mortar stuff) was collected and repacked for return to europe. Stuff that couldn't be ID'd was thrown into a couple of dozen 200litre oil drums. when these oil drums were full of mixed ammo, we buried them. Along with four Armstrong 400cc motorcycles, two landrovers and a whole host of tools, tents etc that we couldnt bring back or were deemed cheaper to ditch.

I don't know how you guy's operate, but everytime the British Army has finished up somewhere, we have dumped or buried tons of stuff rather than bring it back. Same thing is gonna happen in Afghan as well, i bet.

@ Bob, thanks, he was a hell of a bloke and turned his hand to anything. His first thought was genearlly to look to see if something could be repaired rather than replaced. The plane in the background of that pic was a Spitfire he helped assemble in Malta. Malta was too far from anywhere to fly the planes directly there, so they were crated up, transported by sea (dodging the German Navy) and when they got to the island they were assembled and flown into combat. I often think that must have been a hell of a day at the office, to build a fighter plane and then go dog fighting in it!

 

Cool find. The only way this could be better is if it was a stash of P-51s. Sorry, personal preference.

 

cool

 

Multiple pits and locations according to one article I read.

 

I know Jack about WWII planes and ordinance. A couple of things bother me, though. Were airplanes crated before shipping? It seems odd to me. Also, in every WWII surplus scam that I've ever heard, (WLA 45 Harleys being the most common), they are always "wrapped in cosmoline". Wouldn't airplanes be shipped in as close to flying condition as possible? Unload them from the ships, fill with fluids, check out all the systems and go for it. I doubt airplanes were cosmolined, as I doubt motorcycles were, similarly, protected. They didn't sit in some warehouse, during the war for a year or two until they needed a new one. I dunno, it's a cool story and I hope the planes are there, but I've heard parts of this story many times in the past

 

I ran across this site sometime back. Great project, and great history.

http://www.jneaircraftrestoration.com/AM274/AM274.html

 

(Yes, the plane in the Polish photo is a Curtiss P-40, the yanks called it the Warhawk, think the British called it the "Kittyhawk" it seems to have British markings).

Hope the Burma story is true, it's good to be skeptical, but we can hope,

 

Carl..

Some, like the smaller fighters,were crated and other larger a/c were shipped uncrated with a protective coating that was stripped off after arrival.. Salt air does a job on aluminum and magnesium.
My dad's Groups A-24's were crated and reassembled in Australia.. Their B-25's were flown over.

Bill

 

Just as phony and unbelievable as half the barn finds i see on here, that i will never find or see in real life and could only dream about finding..... Anything is possible!

 

Carl, This is how Harley shipped a Military bike to South Africa in 1944, assemble, add oil and gas and go. Bob

 

I'd rather see this on the HAMB than someone molding 88 Cadillac lights onto their 54 chevy. Great read, will be interesting to see if or how this pans out.

 

Maybe if you got your dead ass off the couch and went out there, you might find something...

 

X2. one standard way of preventing things from falling into enemy hands was simply to blow them up.

Crockashit.

 

During war...yes.
When the war is over and your pulling out of friendly territory? No.

Could still be a crockashit though!

 

Airplanes were crated because it gives maximum effective use of space for shipping.
Think of carrier planes having folding wings to maximize hanger deck storage...well crating does the same thing in shipping!
Pull the wings and crate it all up parallel to each other and you'll put a lot more disassembled aircraft into a freighter than fully assembled planes!

Besides...it makes it MUCH harder to damage the plane if its crated as opposed to having the aluminum skin exposed.

 

Related to this, my old man was stationed on destroyer escorts in WW2 in the Pacific. He often told me that when the war was over Ka-zillions of dollars of new stuff was tossed over the side, from expendables, general supplies, to heavy quipment, trucks, jeeps, aircraft, etc.. The primary reason? He said that Ford, GM, GE, Boeing, etc. etc. did not want ANY perfectly good stuff (which they had themselves built and were already paid to do it) returning to the states. They were gearing up to make new cars, trucks and toasters and friges etc. and didn't want the market flooded with cheap, but perfectly good stuff. Anyone else confirm that? Gary

 

man how cool it would be to find something like this , i hope its true

 

Haha, my dead ass is too busy making other people's ideas and dreams come true. I like to barter for what barn finds they get and still get paid for it!

 

On the crating of aircraft;I think it depends on the nation doing the shipping and what type of aircraft. I have photos of US aircraft being off loaded in the UK from ships,some just minus wings,some complete,none were crated.Longer range aircraft were usually flown from the US to combat locations.The Spitfire had a short range so it was more likely to be crated up and shipped.They might have been buried to hide them from whoever.

 

I'M absolutely SURE they were shipped both ways...but I think it would depend more on number to be shipped per vessel, cargo location on the vessel and final destination, than on which country actually shipped the aircraft.
Remember...once you finally get them to port you then have to transport them to an assembly point. Crated aircraft would be much easier to handle as Railroad cargo and also somewhat easier to protect from saboteurs and prying eyes!
Burma was a nasty place during WW2!!!

My guess on uncrated aircraft would be that they would be shipped as additional deck cargo on laden freighters due to their fragile nature and light weight.
Also, the destination being the UK in the early war years for home defense use...its doubtful that rail transport etc would be over much distance and also saboteurs wouldn't be too much of a problem!

 

Having them all shot out of the skies will do that.

 

Awesome. I really hope this is for real.

 

fAint gonna happen ... Burbank has no ground that isnt paved over! LOL

Hope it goes better than the b-17 that was frozen in Iceland and burnt up on restart.

 

<HR style="BACKGROUND-COLOR: #e5e5e5; COLOR: #e5e5e5" SIZE=1> <!-- / icon and title --><!-- message -->
Quote:
<TABLE border=0 cellSpacing=0 cellPadding=6 width="100%"><TBODY><TR><TD style="BORDER-BOTTOM: 1px inset; BORDER-LEFT: 1px inset; BORDER-TOP: 1px inset; BORDER-RIGHT: 1px inset" class=alt2>Originally Posted by That guy with the coupe
X2. one standard way of preventing things from falling into enemy hands was simply to blow them up.

Crockashit.
</TD></TR></TBODY></TABLE>
During war...yes.
When the war is over and your pulling out of friendly territory? No.

----------------- Ok, but in that case, why even bury them?
Nice story, but with a suspicious odor ----------------

 

Actually was a B-29..... poor security of the gas tank for the APU did them in. One of my old Supervisors, Roger Flower, was up there with the recovery crew..
video of the recovery/loss:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PpR2S_gu5I8


Bill

 

So cool! Wonder if anyone ever buried '32 Fords?