Then Spitfires again........

[Peter Laidler]

In The Times today there's an article about opening the old atomic bomb ranges at the old RAF/RAAF base Maralinga as a tourist attraction. Yes......., I know......, not my idea of one either but I'm just telling you how I read it!!!!!!!!!

It also says that there is documented evidence of 6 Spitfires, Centurion (and other) tanks, Land Rovers, trucks and other vehicles including 6x London double-decker busses in shallow graves, buried after being cleared from the bomb test sites and other buried stuff used during the 60's clear-ups.

They were clearing up the SA site while I was there in the late 60's as I met up with some pommy Royal Engineers who were working there.

Maybe we could tell that millionaire who sunk zillions into the crated Spitfires in Burma

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[CINDERS]

Be easier in the dark Peter as not only would a Geiger counter find them but they would also glow from the radiation................me thinks also the Burma Spitfires are just like the Yeti?

[jonnyc]

Oooh.........Rover parts!

[Gil Boyd]

They would now be totally safe after all this time.
I am sure it would be an achievable operation to carryout after some soil sampling tests.............no not with a Ronshan meter, but to see if the Spits and other stuff would survive the terbulent varieties of weather soaking through the ground onto airframes and the like after all those years.
Would they survive being lifted, and each one would have to be carefully archeologically dug out, and not with a JCB!!
I know Duxford are always looking for "genuine Spitfire airframes to build from"
Current price for a airworthy completed Spitfire is in the region of £2.5K so it would make any expedition worthwhile I am sure, if the Government there backed such a venture!!
Now where did I put my OG shorts and shirts???

[Mk VII]

James Cameron's newspaper article written at the time, (as he was a press observer at the tests) mentions
"half-a-dozen ex-RAF Mustang aircraft flown there by some anonymous heroes anxious to get them there before they fell to bits" and later "the guinea-pig Mustang aircraft, parked less than __ from the site [haven't got a copy to hand now] appeared generally intact". ( J. Cameron, What a Way to Run the Tribe, Selected Articles & Journalism 1948-67)

[Peter Laidler]

We KNOW that this is a fact Gil as the RE's and UK Govt were burying stuff and cleaning up (?) the site while I was in Oz. Also buried were a load of Scammell Constructor and recovery vehicles plus Cat D8 dozers. I wouldn't worry about the rain soaking into the ground too much........ there ain't too much rain there!

There were RAAF Mustangs and Dakotas there that were there as ground targets, later dragged into pits. One Mustang was flown out believe it or not, together with a Dakota believe it or not

One of my Uni mentors was there as a scientist from the Uni of York, working for the old AERE/AWRE at Harwell doing air analysis and testing animals.

[Gil Boyd]

Oh well, on that basis, before we get too old, got your spade handy??

[Roy W]

There is a nasty rumour, that a Bedford 4 tonner got buried (after being carefully covered over first) at Chattenden, Kent back in the early 90's. The rumour that it got buried because it was full of lead from the roof of the then, being decommissioned Chatham Dockyard, cannot be verified!!!

Although it may have been dug up a few months later, once the dust had settled, and then driven to the Scrapyard in Rochester......................................... .......... around the same time that the Regt Bar got a massive makeover!

Allegedly

[Patrick Chadwick]

There are other examples of the "buried treasure" story:

When steam locomotives were scrapped in the 1960s, some enthusiasts found it very hard to believe that so many low-mileage examples with a lot of working life left in them were being simply junked, that stories appeared of "secret storage" of locos for a possible national emergency, in case those dastardly foreigners cut off our oil supplies and those horrible new-fangled diesels couldn't run anymore. This was, of course, before North Sea oil had appeared!
I remember that one theory was that this emergency reserve was stored in a blocked-off tunnel somewhere. Not that it was ever found, of course.

And recently the legend has reappeared of a "trainful of Nazi gold" being buried in Poland. Now it may be tricky to bury a Spitfire or two without someone noticing their whereabouts, but the idea of a complete train being buried is a "cover-up " of another dimension. However, that doesn't seem to stop some people hoping...

[CINDERS]

Gil I think the price is a bit on the low side for an airworthy Spitfire the last one I saw for sale went for $2 Million if there are aircraft at the test site the area is pretty arid and they may be like that WWII P-40 Curtis that was found in the African desert all those years ago sadly no trace of that pilot was found.

Not long ago in Australia they buried 4 or 5 Aardvark air frames not that any aircraft musuem in Australia including the AWM would want one for a static display no someone may smuggle the gutted plane out of Aus cover it in fabric and use it against us!!!!