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There's a long running treasure hunt for some still-crated Spitfires that were supposedly shipped to Burma at the exact end of the war and then buried when no l
by pjc50 4mo ago
There's a long running treasure hunt for some still-crated Spitfires that were supposedly shipped to Burma at the exact end of the war and then buried when no longer required.
The amount of equipment left over from WW2 was staggering.
- hydrogen7800 4mo agoThis is one of those perennial aviation legends[0] that are still alive, like Amelia Earhart's wreck. Always another rich guy funding a search with promising results. [0]https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-20957162 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-20957162
- echelon_musk 4mo agoMy late great uncle was in the RAF during WW2 and was at the liberation of Belson. I remember him saying that the RAF buried Spitfire engines, so it's definitely a real practice.
- AsmaraHolding 4mo agoThe terms of the lend lease agreement meant that Britain only had to pay for the equipment it kept after the war. So in some cases they were pushing aircraft of the deck of carriers into the sea so they didn’t have to pay for them.
- hydrogen7800 4mo agoSpitfires were British planes, so not part of the American lend lease program. Maybe if they were build with American loans, though?
- AsmaraHolding 4mo agoSorry, I wasn’t meaning to say that they were spitfires in particular that they pushed into the sea. I believe they were actually F4U Corsairs in that case.
- kryogen1c 4mo ago>in some cases they were pushing aircraft of the deck of carriers into the sea so they didn’t have to pay You may be shocked to learn that practices such as this exist in the modern US military as well.
- helsinkiandrew 4mo ago> Always another rich guy funding a search with promising results. Although 9 days later: > Archaeologists believe no Spitfires buried in Burma https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-21074699 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-21074699