Burma Spitfires Merged thread. Put all new info in here please.
 

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-17710598

RedToo.

That would be an epic find, wonder what sort of condition they would be in?

Wow, that sounds to good to be true, but I imagine if they were in crates then they obviously buried them with the intention of retrieving them at some point or they would have simply destroyed them, one would hope that they would have been carefully protected.

Near where I live there was a US military depot during the war no doubt involved with the D-Day landings. During the 60s and 70s the area started to grow into an industrial estate and quite large quantities of equipment was discovered all greased, crated and buried including a number of vehicles and Harley Davidson motorcycles. No Spitfires sadly.

Nice Find....and could be an apt comment :)

"A Downing Street source said: "The Spitfire is arguably the most important plane in the history of aviation, playing a crucial role in the Second World War."

Why does our government make such ridiculous claims?

Because they are not very bright, not very well educated and have no awareness of what they lack.

RedToo.

I wonder what mark they will be? They could be MK Vs or IXs I imagine.

that would be proper time capsule NOS find, and possibly one of the best aviation archeology finds since WW2!

The question now is what mark they are (I would think either Vs or IXs) and who's gonna get 'em ;-)

They are MkIIs. reportedly.

the news reports are very misinformed tho, all rather comical hysterical media hype.

The BBC webpage reports them as "Buried in 1945" This is ludicrous as in 1945 the Japanese forces had been defeated. They must have been buried in 1942 when the Japanese were advancing.

The telegraph report is even funnier, refering to the buried Spitfires as "Jet Fighters"

Actually quite a few spitfires have survived, personally I would have been more excited had they been some rare WWII aircraft, ie a tempest, Whirlwind or beafighter or Halifax.

Assuming they are still crated, that they had been preserved enough to survive the sea journey to Burma, and were carefully hidden with the optomistic intention of recovering them after the Japanese had been forced back im sure some useful bits could be recovered. But buried for seventy years in the hot humid jungle enviroment of Burma its asking a lot.

Good thread here:

http://forum.keypublishing.com/showthread.php?t=116104

RedToo.

I remember a similar story about Zero's found in a cave in Indonesia (?) a few years ago. I will believe it when the first Spitfire is dug up.
If the story turns out to be untrue, can I still have one? (:-))

20 crated Spit MkIIs found buried in Burma..
 

20 crated Spit MkIIs fond buried in Burma. Imagine ... 20 brand new Spitfire MkIIs ... imagine that!! REALLY!!!

OUTSTANDING!!!! :)

Amazing!

see http://forum.1cpublishing.eu/showthread.php?t=31125

This is an amazing find. I hope the recovery is documented fully and a series television series made about it.

20 Spitfire Mk IIs! Incredible. A good day to be a WWII aviation enthusiast!

Good detail about the research to find them here:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/ukne...ned-to-UK.html

..and what is it exactly that makes your conclusions less comical than theirs?

aaah armchair experts... :rolleyes:

Why that aggressive tone? He is right. The Japs invaded Burma in 1942 and conquered it in 1943. Allies launched a counter offensive during late 1944 and the first half of 1945. The Japanese surrendered on 14th Aug 1945. It really makes no sense to fear about the Japs to invade Burma in July 1945. Plus the CNN article clearly says Mk II ... Really doesn't take a rocket scientist to conclude.

Spitfire MkIIs in Burma? Not likely as afik no MkIIs went there.

They are most likely to be Mk 14's.

well it wasn't meant to be aggressive, it's more sarcastic, since the statement made by whoarmongar has no basement and is ludicrous just as much as the news statements.. it was meant in jest anyway, please don't take it always so seriously, it's banter...

Anyway, as Mark from the Key Publishing forum stated "These are not Burmese Air Force Spitfires.

These are considered to be former RAF Mk XIV's with potentially further Mk VIII's downstream.

They are considered to have been buried circa 1946 in wooden crates with a view to possible recovery in the future at a time when there was much political upheaval on the Indian sub-continent.

This has been trundling along for twelve or more years.

The political climate has never been better.

Perfect timing for Vol. II of the boo...

...and yes I have seen the ground penetration scans."

he has seen the scans, I talked to the guys that are going to recover them this morning ;)

Can't say much else unfortunately, let's only say that I never heard of the thing before, I asked a very well informed source who confirmed me that it's true.. it came out only now but the thing has been planned for years now.

In any case, don't believe my word, let's wait and see what they take out from underground ;)

I call this bullshit... Fake news, that's all this is.

and why or in whose interest would that be?

Nobody noticed that the BBC inset pic is obviously a pic of one of the balbo flights at the end of the Duxford Flying Legend weekends :)

http://news.bbcimg.co.uk/media/image...02995467-1.jpg

Yep ... according to this ...

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/travel/de...-in-Burma.html

its actually 12 crated Mk XIVs

At the bottom of this page:

http://forum.keypublishing.com/showt...=116104&page=8

There is some interesting information. Possible serial numbers for these Spits.

RedToo.

Spitfires to Be Unearthed in Burma
 

http://newsfeed.time.com/2012/04/17/...rma/?hpt=hp_t3

This will be one to watch, fella was on the TV last night involved and these things are 6 metres (18ft) down

Great Find................You think there will be a TV programme on this???

Would not suprise me if Nat Geo or Discovey/History had already signed them up before 'going public' Andy, well I hope so any hoo

There was a similar story about Spitfires in Australia a while back. Unopenened and still crated up they were consigned to the smelters after the war, an employee of the smelter was suposed to have spirited some away and hid them down a disused mineshaft.

Unfortuanately no evidence has come forth to verify it actually happening.

I hope the Burmese Spits turn out to be true.

I saw the Burma story in the paper on the weekend.

good story, thx for posting it

hope they can recover them intact :]

Crikey...

http://forum.1cpublishing.eu/showthread.php?t=31125

http://forum.1cpublishing.eu/showthread.php?t=31145


How many more?

You can never have too many threads about Spitfires!! :grin:

This much is true!

My fear is they will be corroded beyond salvage.

The Burmese jungle is not an equipment friendly environment.

Lost WWII Spitfires to be exhumed In Burma
 

Squadmate found this interesting tidbit....

Buried treasure in Burma: Squadron of lost WWII Spitfires to be exhumed


Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2012/...#ixzz1siEy93nX

Crated, Buried, Factory fresh Spitfires found in Myanmar.
 

Wow.... simply wow.
Jackpot ladies and gentlemen.

http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2012/...to-be-exhumed/

http://www.eaa.org/news/2012/2012-04-16_spitfires.asp

Amazing. Thanks for sharing.

Great news - if they are as well protected as seems to be the case this will really be something. Thanks for that.

Allmost sounds too good to be true.. Hope I am wrong

Amazing.

They are late-war Spit XIVs, with the 2000+ HP engines.

I wonder how much effort would be required to get them in flying shape again.

Mods may as well stick this thread with the three other threads on the same topic

It’s Spitfires at dawn in Burma.
 

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/history/w...-in-Burma.html

RedToo.

Not agai... oh wait lol :)

Maybe they should both take one each and have a proper dogfight :)

Once upon a time ...bladdablubb...Spitfire...bladdablubb...Spitfire ...Cameron....Spitfire....blabla...even more blabla....greatest fairytale of all....Ennio Morricone wants to make film about it...Working title: The Good, the bad, the buried...little more bla bla....Jay Leno...bla bla....two years later....*yawn*...And they all lived happily ever after.

So not as rare as I thought...

yea if there's so many... they should just dig ONE up to prove it.

Interesting turn of events.

Has all the making of a fantastic reality TV series. He could finance this entire project with the revenue derived from it. Think about it. We could even have Geraldo Rivera host it. It's perfect!!

Maybe you would be more interested if they were Me 109s? :cool:

No actually not! I just still believe not a jot of it.
Buried Lancasters in Lincolnshire, sunken Sunderlands in Lake Windermere, aaah c'mon.

I dont believe so, but then, 109's are really rare.

I dunno whats worse: the original researcher's naivety or the millionaire stereotypical attitude...

Du'h the Lancasters are burried in Lancashire!

This crackpot guy lives near me, maybe I should ask him for a job? :-P

Shouldn't the Sunderlands be in the Tyne?

I take a closer look when i'm visiting Newcastle again. :cool:

uh huh ...

and Short Stirlings in the Forth River in central Scotland.

Pretty easy to locate old warbird sites when you think about it.

Thinking about it logically then, it can't be spitfires it must be Typhoons in Burma.

Thinking about it logically means they're arguing over a lot of crushed, bulldozed rubbish pushed into a handy pit nearly seventy years ago. Not completely surprized by a falling out between the parties when the old greed glands get so much stimulation.

I note this article now puts the number of buried Spits at sixty!! I am laugh.

Actually in an interview with AVweb, the number has risen to 124.

If true, and I'm not taking a stand either way, this would crash the world market for Spitfires.

Can you imagine being at an airshow and seeing so many Spits that it would actually be boring? Sort of like Ferraris in California.

:o

or P51s at Reno :D

So many Spitfires boring? Now thats just crazy talk. Please check your medication and get back to us.:P

124 Spitfires, how many Squadrons are this? 7-10?

That's one for each of us!:grin:

I'll pass.

Not enough room in my garage, and have you priced 100 LL AVGAS lately?

;)

Early war, Commonwealth fighter squadrons would typically have 12 aircraft operational as Initial Equipment (IE) with an additional 6 as Immediate Reserve (IR).

Anecdotal evidence is that BoB squadrons sometimes had as many as 12 aircraft as Immediate Reserve (IR) due to the high attrition rate.

Late war, Commonwealth fighter squadrons would often have 18 aircraft operational plus a reserve.

Any more on the Burma Spitfires?
 

Seems that since the British Government and the RAF got involved they have been swept under the rug.

A real pilot I know was asking me about it.

I was wondering the same thing yesterday. I launched a massive search in the Internjets with no result... well just few google search but no info was easily available so I wonder whats going on?

everything fell VERY silent. Money are a powerful, powerful thing..

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fdjf4lMmiiI

No news on the Dornier at Goodwin Sands either. Peculiar.

I blame aliens ...

Are they going to be listed on Ebay soon? ;)

highly unlikely ;) but keep an eye on the US warbirds circus in the next year or so...

Pretty sure it was all hokum. No actual evidence of their existence was ever presented.

Theres a British company that will rebuild your spitfire with as little original components as an identity plate or make you a 100% reproduction without one.

I would guess the price of restoring one that had been buried underground for 60 odd years would be fairly similar!

oooh believe me, it was not, they just applied the classic magic of "warbird stealth" ;-)

Do you remember the Me109E found in India some years ago? Very few people do, because there was an intentional quietness on the subject. The thing is under restoration somewhere here in the UK, and rest assured it'll never go back to India.
The same thing is happening with these Burmese Spitfires, the real mistake that was done here is when the original researcher came on the news with the thing before he actually recovered the planes (mainly because he ran out of money..). Now someone else stepped in, muscled him out and allegedly has already placed some of them..

It's all about money fellas..

The identity plate is what makes it the original machine.

A complete original BoB Spitfire missing its identity plate is just a collection of used spare parts.

uhmmm well you're looking for at least £800k for a "new from scratch" one, I doubt the checks and repairs to a "NOS" Spitfire would be anywhere near that amount (probably in the region of £150k tops), not to mention the historical value..

You could be right.

I guess it'd depend on the conditions it was stored in and how much cosmoline they were packed in.

Hmmmm! 800K ???? One Power Ball!!!!!!! ;)

yeah well the last info I saw was that they were crated and underground, so in theory, unless they had massive water infiltration or collapses of the crates themselves they shouldn't be too bad, the air in the boxes might be a bit stuffy for sure ;-)

800k is just a ballpark figure, but then again it's also maintenance costs.. just to give you an example, a single propeller blade might cost up to $40k, so you'd better know how to land the thing properly ;-)

so yes, you might need two powerballs ;-)

Thanks SternjaegerII, kind of what I expected to hear. It's the same story here in the US, as you intimated. A classic aircraft is found, then... silence. A few years later the plane emerges freshly restored with a new owner after much money changes hands.

The same is often true for very high end collector cars.


Ciao.

It's the good ol' "boys and their toys", although in the case of the Burma Spits there's a fair chance of a huge profit margin, those babies won't sell cheap, that's for sure.. yeah, high end collectors would do the dirtiest tricks to ensure the stuff they want ends in their possession.

The case of the 109 that I mentioned before though is an example of media attention as well: soon after the news were released, the specialised magazines and media went silent for a specific reason..
It sounds terribly conspiracy theory, but in some cases there is a will from the sector media to keep some news secret, and not just for promotional reasons, but because there's a distinct will to keep these planes in the west, where they're more likely to be restored/flown.

Which government department in the UK is responsible for the current ownership of the Burma Spits?
Surely a concerted effort with some of the more conservative (jolly ol' Britain what!) press would keep this in the public sphere?

This article is somewhat worrying:
http://news.discovery.com/history/wo...ne-120502.html

"2-year-old Cundall claims he was pressured into abandoning his claim to the 67-year-old fighters by Brooks, a British version of Donald Trump who presented him with a "memorandum of understanding" that took control of his overseas activities, the Vancouver Sun said."

Gad-damned tories and their big business brown nosing...

They were literally up for grabs, the Government was only involved because of the embargo on Burma.

Once Cundall's claims were proven true, Brooks stepped in and asked Cameron to sort that out for them, so that he could do whatever he wanted with the Spits. A couple of bribes here and there, and the Burmese government is happy for whoever wants to recover the Spits to proceed.
Cundall should have kept it quiet and asked for more funds, in this way he lost all the investment he made and is left with nothing. It's disgusting, but unfortunately there's nothing he can do about it.

As I said, the warbirds entourage is not all roses...

Absolutely no such thing has occurred. You won't hear anything more about this except in a year's time when one of our broadsheets will pick up on a "whatever happend to those Burmese Spits" story and surprise, surprise.....it will all have been pie in the sky.

A very reputable source in the entourage guaranteed me it happened, besides you wouldn't have had such a turmoil for a load of baloney..

From The Times, May 1990.http://i254.photobucket.com/albums/h.../Toys03211.jpg

Wonder where all those lovely Lancs went?

yeah, I remember hearing that story, and I remember being told that as they started digging they actually went through them: they had managed to locate them with radars, but albeit having preserved the original shape, the aluminium had deteriorated so much over the years that they were unsalvageable.

This time we're talking about crated and preserved stuff, not just wrapped and buried.

Or...there were no Lancs there in the first place! To save face the good Doctor at the heart of the Lanc story convinced himself (but few others) that "unusual" soil conditions had oxidised the aluminium and er....all those steel fittings, engine cradles, turret motors, etc., leaving just a residue that ground radar-that boon of archaeological wishful thinking-had picked up.

This Burma story is just another example but mixed in with a rather too gullible PR advisor to our PM. That don't really matter 'cause our mainstream media have now moved on to another sound-bite.

lol maybe, I dunno much more about the Lancs, but this is another story apparently.. a bit of wishful thinking never hurt anybody anyway, all we can do is wait, we should be pretty well used by now ;)

Thanks Mr Smedley for the Lanc story. Buried facing east... and in hessian of course.

Made my day.

It's still burma.
Maybe they put them into pelican cases... :-P

hehehe maybe!

Just to complete the picture...http://www.heritagedaily.com/2012/05/achtung-spitfires/

Looks very much like we'll be waiting a very long time...:rolleyes:

Guys, you have no idea how many aircraft even rarer than these Burmese Spitfires are stored all over the world.

Did you know there are 2 Bf-109F-4, two proper JG5 battle veterans, in near airworthy conditions stored in the US, one of them being for sale at $3mil?
Or that there are a Ju-87B2 and an Il-2 Sturmovik being restored to airworthy conditions in the UK?
Or that there's a Fiat G.59 being reconverted to Fiat G.55 in Germany?
Collectors tend to keep this stuff away from the public eye because there's far too many anoraks or people that want to chip in with their "skillz". It's sad but that's the way it is fellas..

Or in the case of SE Asia ... the local villagers upon finding a miraculously preserved warbird can either blab about it and have it carted off by a bunch of foreigners and not get a cent ... or take a hatchet to it and live comfortably for several years on the proceeds of the scrap metal sales.

Spitfire anyone?
 

They've found some Spitfires in Burma......

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012...rma-excavation

Already posted :)

http://forum.1cpublishing.eu/showthread.php?t=35043