Photos were on the Telegraph film, they only dropped a shaft down to the 1st crate.

Posted from it on the flypast forum

http://i.telegraph.co.uk/multimedia/...a_2446762b.jpg

That definitely deserves a :ok: Wensleydale

My grandfather and his brother both joined Bomber Command. My grandfather survived the war flying Lancs, primarily with 44 (Rhodesia) Sqn. His brother was sadly killed during training and is in a Commonwealth War Grave near Bournemouth.

So in our family it was a 50% survival rate, I'm sure other families were less fortunate.

I'm sure the sight and sound of these Spits would be incredible and I hope they find them!

I'm currently reading the Nuremberg Raid by Martin Middlebrook, itself very sobering. He quotes the figures for "any 100 airmen joining into heavy bomber crews at an Operational Training Unit and for whom the war lasted long enough for them to serve the full cycle of service in Bomber Command" (which I take to mean two tours, around 50 operational sorties):

Killed on operations 51
Killed in crashes in England 9
Seriously injured in crashes 3
Prisoner-of-War (some injured) 12
Shot down but evaded capture 1
Survived unharmed 24

This, of course, does not include training losses before getting to an OTU

I remember after the Falklands War a chap I knew who had been a FE on Bomber Command remarking on the total British casualties (255 killed) that they could lose more than that in a night on a large raid.

Didn't make the Falklands casualties any less tragic, of course, but I sort of saw his point.

Yep, they lost more than that on the 'milk run' to Mailly le Camp on a moonlit night in Northern France just before D-Day.

I suppose scale doesn't make it any easier, but he DID have a point, quite right.

Burmese Spitfires
 

Not wishing to spoil a good story, but in 1945 the RAF dispatched a Sqn of Spitfires to Saigon to help the French to reassume control of the then French Indo-China, and a whole Wing of Spitfires as well as two Brigades of British troops to Jagakarta to help the Dutch to regain control of the then Dutch East Indies. Why should all these aircrat have been kept back?

Probably because one hand didn't know what the other was doing, also depends on role required as various marks were more suited to high or low level work, top that off with you would need to get them out, assemble them, get the manpower to operate them, the tooling, the spares etc, far simpler to shift a squadron that has those already in place.

Assistance in French Indo-china.
 

John Purdey and Nutloose,

In March 1951 two of us from 20 Sqdn went on a gunnery course (Spit XIV and XXIIs, total 11 hrs) at 226 OCU, Stradishall.

Seemed no point in it at all, but there was a vague rumour that we might be going out to give the French a hand out there (nothing came of it).

Danny42C.

Burmese Spitfires
 

Nutloose. Your post leads to another interesting question; why send aircraft in crates rather than simply ferrying them out? Surely a ferry would have been faster and cheaper than a sea passage, and would have saved the effort needed to reassemple them. JP

Just about every ferry flight I have done in my career has had snags, delays, diversions, delays and delays. To have ferried spits half way round the globe in wartime would be "interesting" They didn't take that long to reassemble from the crated state in those days.

If you'd have seen the shambolic results of the UK's pre-1997 Hong Kong handover 'show of force' - getting half a dozen Tornado GR1s to the far east for an exercise - you'd soon know why they sent the Spits by ship.

Unless the tactic was to weaken the Chinese through laughter of course...

Burmese Spitfires
 

Drifting away somewhat, but reinforcements for the Middle East during the N Africa campaign were ferried through the Takoradi (W Africa) route, ie a cross very inhospitable terrain with virtually no support and primative airsrips, it would be interesting to know what the failure/accident rate was for that exercise. JP

An old SAR pilot with a royal surname once told me about a ferry flight of 5 Wessex from here to Cyprus many moons ago. Apparently two of the aircraft made it more or less as planned, another two experienced some problems but turned up within a reasonable timeframe, and the fifth one took 67 days to complete the journey! Perhaps someone can elaborate?

There's a remarkable account of one man's experience of this, flying a Hurricane, in 'Out Of The Blue' by Laddie Lucas. Well worth seeking out if possible.

Quote:

---

I once ferried a Javelin (no flight refuelling) from Waterbeach to Tengah when 60 Sqn were re-equipping.

---

In a similar vane I once met a chap in my shop who had ferried a Single Pioneer out to Seletar. He flew in company with another, plus a Piston Provost which accompanied them as far as Oman. The route seemed to go all over the place, and IIRC took them 37 days! I'd have loved to have seen his logbook.

Again - much easier by ship (and in this case not much slower!).

That is called a Trionides.




Ok, hat,coat, Taxi

Water table
 

Surely, unless it's a seasonal thing, the water table will
always be at about the same level and the original hole diggers
would have encountered it. So maybe seepage from rainwater ?

John Purdey, my father was based in Takoradi as an engineer putting together whatever came out of the crates, but he was dealing with multi engine bombers mainly. When they were flown up to their operational units the engineer flying on the aircraft was given honorary 'Flight Engineer' status so that if they needed to get spares en route they would have sufficient clout to be able to order them.

Sorry for the thread drift...................

Burials
 

My father witnessed the burial of many Stirlings ( in sand) at Kasfereet in Egypt Canal Zone post war......
Taxied in , wings chopped off , shunted into a massive trench "grave" about 800m long..

Long chats with Him, Jack Bruce and Bill Sayer (Mates of Haraka Snr. who both respected and used his technical knowledge) at RAFM on this one in the late 70's.

Haraka, I reckon those aircraft would have a far better chance of survival than the Burma Spitfires.

Anyone got a spare few million so we can go Stirling hunting? Not sure we've got any of those preserved have we?

What is the Stirling exchange rate in Egypt at the moment?

Have a dig around Edzell, in Scotland. That was the Halifax and Stirling disposal unit after the war. My father used to ferry brand new Hailfaxs from the factory to there to be scrapped.

BURMA UPDATE: Hunt for lost Spitfires ‘buried in crates’ continues as JCBs dig trenches around Burmese airport. | Forces-War-Records


Well you would have thought they would have kept the old boy on to see them raised instead of shipping him off "Surplus to Requirements"

Maybe he had nicked the clocks out of them and didn't want to be found out.

Well if he was "surplus to requirements" it's a wonder they didn't put him in crate and bury him too.;)

BBC reporting that archaeologists no longer believe there are any Spitfires.


Posted from Pprune.org App for Android

Keep Digging! :ok:

For more money from the backers or the Spitfires :O

Australian finds 5.5Kg gold nugget:

BBC News - Australian amateur prospector finds massive gold nugget

Maybe they should have dug in Australia

Well their is that much Gold and Gold nuggets left
in the ground but within metal detector range it will
keep being found for years :O

People make a living out of it !

So you are probably right !!!

Not so much Spitfires, more like Zeros.

Well some consolation from the project, Burma motorists will enjoy following a couple of JCB diggers at 7:30am on the roads each day now. This is globalisation...

PS: The Spitfires may rust in peace now...:{:{

Spitfires that Never Were.
 

maliyahsdad2,

Thank you, thank you, thank you for the link to the BBC story (if only for the gorgeous pic of the Mk. XXII).

Rest of it sad, but predictable. But good fun while it lasted !

Danny42C

And my old man, an RAF fireman, then took a chainsaw to them and then buldozered them into a hole at the end of the runway - crated engines as well (he says!)

Stirlings
 

Just a parting shot on the Kasfareet Stirling saga.
Haraka senior witnessed their burial around 1947 at the latest ( he was back at St. Eval in 1948) . Others have confirmed on the internet that some 7 or so Stirlings were there around that time, and also certainly were out of sight and mind by 1951.
The RAF Museum did ask for a survey from the Egyptians in 1986 apparently ( some 40 years after the event) . I don't know anything about any results of this enquiry.

I can remember a Stirling at a Battle of Britain display when I was a small child - the undercarriage!!!!