BBC iPlayer - William Wright: 16/04/2012
Good interview with the geophysicist at around 1:40. The people 'in the know' all seem to be exuding optimism about the aircraft - it's just the armchair cynics on PPRuNe who are predicting some rotted timbers and stained earth!
As to the depth - he says that they were put in a river gulley then covered over. This seems to make sense, as 6m is a deep hole to bother digging...
In an organisation with a many-tiered command structure and a potentially massive surplus of labour at the end of it, it is inevitable that odd things happen. Anyone who has been in the military will know this!
I find it bizarre that so many people are surprised that the military of 70 years ago seems to have disposed of these aircraft so incompetently. Only last year, the nine most capable maritime reconnaissance aircraft in the world were torn up by the MOD. Why should decisions about aircraft procurement and disposal have been made with any more logic in wartime?
I'm as big a cynic as any, but in this case, as a Spitfire fanatic, I am permitting myself some modest optimism! By all accounts, we will know soon enough anyway!