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Buried Spitfires In Burma & Hitler's Gold

I've already got excited about this one a few times now.
I wish them all the luck in the world, but I think we've seen that this whole mission is... somewhat challenging.
 
Biggles would indeed have been all over this one.

Three of the Biggles series are set in Burma: Biggles - Air Commodore, Biggles Delivers the Goods and Biggles and The Lost Sovereigns.

I've only read the first two of those and they're rather good (as a number of his East and South-East Asian adventures are), though most of the action takes place in the Mergui Archipelgo, which is pretty far removed from the proposed Spitfire burial sites.

I have to say, political niceties aside, W.E. Johns' writing is a great introduction to the geography of far-flung locales -- very credible and well-researched despite the author not having visited many of the places.

It's also pretty well established that his writing had a powerful influence on the generation of airmen that saved Britain in 1940 and flew throughout the war (the lucky ones); many of them grew up on his stories, adopted his cliches and outlook and then reforged them afresh for the generation that followed. Given that Johns himself had flown in the Great War, we have life imitating life imitating art imitating life.
 
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"Uluhan Hasdal, an amateur aviation historian, said the planes may still be operable, as they were made to endure corrosion".

Wonderful. But: there's such a thing as resistance to corrosion via coatings/plating, or the use of non-ferrous alloys (clearly already a predominant preference in aeronatical engineering); and, there's the sheer blind optimism of amateur historians.

I'm going for option two, as they always used to say the best way to bag a Focke-Wulf was to make an unexpected turn from above....
 
Ermintrude said:
"Uluhan Hasdal, an amateur aviation historian, said the planes may still be operable, as they were made to endure corrosion".

Wonderful. But: there's such a thing as resistance to corrosion via coatings/plating, or the use of non-ferrous alloys (clearly already a predominant preference in aeronatical engineering); and, there's the sheer blind optimism of amateur historians.

I'm going for option two, as they always used to say the best way to bag a Focke-Wulf was to make an unexpected turn from above....
Click to expand...

To be fair I've seen bits of crashed wartime aircraft dug out after 70 years which still functioned after a fashion.

It's a long way from just fuelling them up and flying them away as Mr Hadal seems to imply.
 
wouldn't it be great to see a fw190 in the flesh though? what about a stuka? why does no one seem to want to see one of them?
 
A full-length book is to be published tomorrow on this whole charade:

Rumours of buried Spitfires from the Second World War have spread around the world for seventy-five years, fuelling dreams of treasure hunting and watching the iconic aircraft fly again.​
​
In April 2012, the press reported that British Prime Minister David Cameron had negotiated an agreement with Myanmar President Thein Sein for the recovery and repatriation of twenty crated Spitfires, reportedly buried at RAF Mingaladon, Yangon, after the Second World War. Astonishingly the agreement came about through the single-minded determination of an ordinary Lincolnshire farmer, David Cundall.​
​
After months of negotiation, in January 2013 the excavation begins. Armed with a high-tech survey showing mysterious shapes under the sun-baked surface of Yangon International Airport, David's expedition is equipped with state-of-the-art JCB excavators, led by a team of archaeologists, and supported by Wargaming.net. Nothing can stop him from recovering the iconic aircraft because, as David tells the world's media, 'it's impossible to make up this story'.​
​
But instead of Spitfires, the team unearths a tale of fake history, highlighting the conflict between those want to believe legends and those who demand evidence and the truth.​
​
The Buried Spitfires of Burma explores what happened next as David Cundall's dream unravelled over the course of a historical 'whodunnit' that spans seven decades and three continents. In so doing, it follows one of the most bizarre, colourful, and off-the-wall stories since the sensational Hitler Diaries hoax astonished the world in 1983.​

Generous preview available here:
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Buried-Spitfires-Burma-Fake-History/dp/0750993855

There will also be a dicussion with the authors on this channel tomorrow (1/6/20):

 
I am sure that I remember my father (RAF aircrew in WWII, Burma 1944-1945) telling me that he saw new, unused Spitfires ("still shrink-wrapped") being thrown off the deck of a British aircraft carrier after hostilities ceased. No longer needed, it was economically unviable to ship them back to the UK simply for long-term storage.

maximus otter
 
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