Thread: Buried spitfires in Burma?

Burma? No wonder he can't find them. They're really buried in Queensland

Either way, what sort of condition would this treasure be in after being buried in the tropics for 70 years?

Hi Snowy, it seems there were spitfires all over Australia including attacks against the Japanese in 1943 during the bombing of Darwin. Quite a few were lost.

According to the myth, the Spitfires buried in Burma were coated in grease to preserve them, so in theory, they should be like brand new, if they exist.

No doubt rubber components, tires etc, will have perished, but all the aluminium parts should be fine.

I'd love just one, even if the tires are perished and a bit of paint is missing. Dream on.........

Broken Wings

Ken

Apparently the search has been and gone and nothing was found.

The Spitfires are going ahead.

I first heard the Spitfires at Oakey story when I started work in Brisbane in 1966. Don't think too much has been found of them either.

It's possible Spitfires may be buried in Burma, but I would expect they would be corroded useless wrecks by now.

Tropical rainfall is measured in feet, and anything underground would be in a bad way after 70 years.

I watched the video "Broken Wings" and had to laugh at the Air Force officers statement that every bullet was accounted for - crap.

My father served in the NT during WW2 and his Kenworth M1A1 heavy wrecker was used on occasions to lift engines into aircraft - see: Kenworth M1 wrecker at Alice Springs workshops

In one instance a large radial engine for a Liberator bomber was poorly slung by an Airforce Officer, slipped on the chains, crashed to the ground and was broken.

The AIF guys were told to dig a hole and bury it - true story.

So there's a complete engine buried next to one of the NT WW2 strips to this day.

I'm sure it was ticked off the books, but how it was accounted for is anyones guess.

Plenty of Spitfires got written off in pilot error crashes on those NT strips, and I still have a few bits and pieces my father brought back with him.

Cheers

Rob

During my time in the system heard of that many stories of munitions and hardware that are supposedly buried around the place. Under parade grounds was a favourite one.

Before selling off land in Sydney behind where I worked they dug trenches every so often looking for stuff. Short answer, they simply didnt know if the stories were true. Land had been in the hands of the military for a long time. If they actually found anything there, they were keeping it very quiet, cause I didnt see or hear anything. Would have been interesting if something was subsequently found by a homeowner later on. Houses were packed that tightly together one can literately jump from one roof to the next.

Always interesting to read about another story like this. The internut abounds with searches for the ark of the covenant and just about anything else as well. Its anybody's guess whether any are true or not.

One of the most interesting I have read about is the money pit on Oak Island, just off Nova Scotia. Its existence has been known for a couple of hundred years and countless peoples fortunes have been squandered on the search. I wont go into the problems, read it yourself, but it has been suggested as the final resting place of "The Ark of the Covenant". This mystery has been investigated by a US Geo - something survey ship etc etc.

A mate told me years ago that a training/testing RAAF airfield was located near to the Mt Gambier Airport during WW2. At the cease of hostilities, so he told me all of the stores held there at the time was "buried" on site.

Dean

I have a mk14 spitfire in my back paddock the kids use for a cubby.

It's missing a few parts.....the prop, engine, cockpit, fuselage, wings, tail section and wheels. I wish.....

Might have more luck putting this back together than the blokes in Burma.

Ken

Spitfires buried in Burma during war to be returned to UK - Telegraph

Regardless of the condition, all aircraft would have to be completely re-riveted as they had over 11,500 magnesium alloy rivets which have a very short life span.

Spitfires were only built with a life expectancy period of 100 missions. Most never got anywhere near that.

This article is now getting a bit old.

Rob

Can anyone imagine that there was enough grease in Burma to preserve how many Spitfires? Can anyone imagine that at the end of the war troops wanting to stick around and preserve some planes that they were heartily sick of looking after anyway? All they wanted to do was leg it home and forget the war, it is only human nature. Why anyone would actually spend money to try and find a myth is beyond me.

What I find so frustrating about buried spitfires in Burma is all the piddle and dribble. They reckon they have ground penetrating radar images of something big in the ground, they reckon they have drilled down into what's there and found muddy water, why the phuque don't they just get an excavator in there and dig it up. Grrrrrrrr.

The Brits did this in a busy London street to recover a downed Hurricane........all in 24 hours, so it can be done.

Ken

Originally Posted by Chris Parks

Can anyone imagine that there was enough grease in Burma to preserve how many Spitfires? Can anyone imagine that at the end of the war troops wanting to stick around and preserve some planes that they were heartily sick of looking after anyway? All they wanted to do was leg it home and forget the war, it is only human nature. Why anyone would actually spend money to try and find a myth is beyond me.

There are a lot of strange things people do. I try not to wonder too much why.

Why would a guy get a perm? To me a haircut is to get my hair out of my face.
Why would anyone feed money into a machine with one arm when they know the machine is going to keep a percentage of what they feed in.
Why would anyone spend a massive amount of time watching football and then pretend they are into sport? Its entertainment. Nothing else. Nothing sporting about sitting on yer bum watching tv.
Why would anyone watch tv anyway. It is one of the most boring pastimes I know of. An opinion, know.

But then you have to wonder why someone

went looking for the Titanic?
went to the depths of the sea?
went to the moon?
wants to go to Mars when its pretty obvious that if earth is doomed then the best we can hope for with space travel is for a sample of our race to go somewhere else? A very small sample.

To each his own I guess. The world would be a more boring place without mysteries.

Re

Why anyone would actually spend money to try and find a myth is beyond me.

Often it is not their own money! Just look at the Oak Island affair.

Dean

I still remember the stories of the brand new WW2 Harleys, still in their crates and coated in grease, stored away in a warehouse somewhere. They haven't been found yet either.

Originally Posted by th62

I still remember the stories of the brand new WW2 Harleys, still in their crates and coated in grease, stored away in a warehouse somewhere. They haven't been found yet either.

The version of this I heard was they are buried near one of the air strips in the Northern Territory. In alcohol fuelled student daze a few mates and I would plan (semi-scientific) ways of finding then using air craft mounted detectors.

Yeah there is meant to be a tunnel in the hills near here full of trucks etc etc.

Originally Posted by neksmerj

The Brits did this in a busy London street to recover a downed Hurricane

well "pieces of"
I never really saw the point of that, its not like they didnt know it was there. its not like they didnt know it hit the ground doing 100+mph, its not like they were going to find "much". Still it made a tv show I guess.

Now the lightning they recovered from the deep in ice...... that was interesting.

Stuart