Thread: Spitfires in Burma 'could be found'

^I think they knew the Burma Campaign was over and that they had won.

Originally Posted by robuzo

I still want to know why they bothered burying them two weeks before the war ended.

Yes I'm interested in that question as well.
Going by the reports the Brits didn't bury them, it was the Yanks who did the digging.
Sounds like they left in a big hurry

^A prank?

They were pulling out of the area. You dont just leave state of the art war machines lying around for the natives to play with.
If they pulled out of Afghanistan today they wouldn't leave a box full of F16's just lying around.

I remember a case about 20 or so years ago when a farmer in Kent doing some ploughing came across a couple of hundred WW2 motorbikes each with a complete set of spares and boxed up and carefully buried in preparation for D-Day. With all the stuff they had to take care of, they just got forgotten about.

Originally Posted by superman

They were buried still in their delivery boxes which meant they didn't have time to assemble them, the pilots weren't there, or both.

Yes, quite possibly but why go to the bother of burying them when you don't have the equipment to do it (they had to ask the yanks to do it) when they could have just burnt them.
As Robuzo said it looks like they planned to recover them later.

^
Well they are being recovered later.... An awful lot later. I wonder what the Burmese take on this would have been if they had known these aircraft were their?

It would be amazing if they were all in a flyable condition. I suppose that would be to much to ask for. Here,s hoping though....

It’s Spitfires at dawn in Burma
The hunt for valuable planes buried at the end of the Second World War is turning nasty.

Flying into trouble: there are as many as 120 Spitfires buried in Burma, some in mint condition Photo: PA
By Neil Tweedie, and Victoria Ward7:30AM BST 27 Apr 20121 Comment
This is a story of buried treasure, a map with X marking the spot and the race to recover untold riches. The treasure in this case is of the winged variety, some 60 Spitfires, maybe more, quite possibly in pristine condition, never flown in anger, interred in Burma at the end of the Second World War. There are only three dozen Spits in flying condition around the world, commanding prices of £1.5 million or more. So this is big money. And as with all tales of treasure-seeking, there is mistrust, manoeuvring and bad blood.
The story begins in August 1945 as the irradiated ruins of Hiroshima and Nagasaki still smouldered. The war against the Japanese in Burma, always something of a strategic sideshow, was suddenly truncated, leaving the British with vast quantities of war material too expensive to ship home. What to do, then, with some of the latest versions of the Spitfire, Griffon‑engined Mark XIVs, recently delivered and still in their crates? Wary of leaving high-performance aircraft in a country with an uncertain future, Britain’s South‑East Asia command decided to bury them. As many as 120 Spitfires, original cost about £12,000, may have been disposed of in this way. There they have lain for 67 years, protected by tar seals and grease, steadily accumulating in value, just waiting for someone to find them and dig them up.
“Spitfires were ten a penny in 1945,” says David Cundall. “You have to remember that we built more than 20,000 of them, and by the end of the war they were nearing obsolescence, thanks to the advent of jets.”
Mr Cundall, 62, a farmer and aviation enthusiast from Lincolnshire, has devoted much of the past 16 years and a lot of money (“I stopped counting after £130,000”) to unearthing the Spitfires and restoring them to flying condition. The project has involved hundreds of hours of research and interviews and repeated visits to Burma, until very recently a pariah state run by a corrupt and very dangerous military regime.
“I had an AK47 pointed at me once,” says Mr Cundall, who has endured mosquitoes and jungle heat in his search for the aeroplanes, many of which were buried around the old British airfields at Myitkyina and Mingaladon. “There were also six non-crated Mark VIIIs,” says Mr Cundall. “They are very rare and I believe they were buried in a quarry.”
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Then, in February, he finally struck gold. Geophysical returns combined with eyewitness testimony narrowed the search to specific points. But to get the aircraft out Mr Cundall needs money, about half a million pounds. That is where Steve Boultbee Brooks came in.
Mr Boultbee Brooks, 47, is a self‑confessed Spitfire lover and owner of a trainer version of the fighter. He is also very rich, the result of a career in property investing. In need of a backer, Mr Cundall approached Paul Beaver, a former defence journalist, now in public relations, who suggested Mr Boultbee Brooks. There was a meeting, an agreement in principle to proceed and a fairly rapid falling‑out.
Mr Cundall was presented with a “memorandum of understanding”, which effectively placed his activities in Burma under the control of Mr Boultbee Brooks’s company, Spitfire Display Limited. Mr Boultbee Brooks then took off for Burma to lobby support from David Cameron, who was making a landmark visit to the country as part of its slow reintroduction into the international community. The Spitfire story provided Number 10 with a stirring example of future Anglo-Burmese co-operation. Cameron met with Boultbee Brooks and duly climbed on the bandwagon, waxing lyrical about Spitfires gracing the skies. The millionaire was also allowed a ride home on the prime ministerial jet. Mr Cundall says he knew nothing of the trip until contacted by Mr Boultbee Brooks from Burma. He was also appalled at the terms of the memorandum, calling them an insult.
“I had an hour with him [Boultbee Brooks]. He didn’t say yes, he didn’t say no. He had all the information he wanted to make up his mind. People tell me he was on television making claims that it is his project. Last Sunday he said if we didn’t come to an agreement, the Prime Minister would close the door. I can do it without Brooks, I can do it without anybody. I’ve been digging up aircraft for 35 years. I’ve pushed the boat out financially. I’ve struggled like hell to keep it going. I’ve dug up Burma before, and I don’t need them.”
Mr Boultbee Brooks says he did inform Mr Cundall of the Burma visit in advance and that the memorandum did not represent a contract.
“I totally see why he [Mr Cundall] could be rather annoyed,” says Mr Boultbee Brooks. “I see that the letter could be misunderstood. We have therefore gone to some great lengths to explain that to him.
“We have got nothing against Mr Cundall. We do not want to push him off this team. We would love to be working with him, and we cannot understand how this wonderful situation is turning into such a ridiculous situation. It’s very sad.”
Mr Cundall has already moved on, however. He has secured new backing from an anonymous investor, who wants to buy all the Spitfires recovered from Burma. Under the deal, Mr Cundall and the Burmese government each net 40 per cent of the sale proceeds, while Mr Cundall’s agent in the country gets 20 per cent.
“He [the backer] wants to buy all the aeroplanes,” says Mr Cundall. “He’s putting half a million pounds into the project for me to go over, dig them up, and I will then sell them to him. The Burmese have agreed to sell their share to him. My agents have agreed to sell their share to him, at a fair and reasonable price. Between £1.25 and £1.5 million.”
Undeterred, Mr Boultbee Brooks is proceeding with his own recovery project. “It is a massive project, and it is between two nations that haven’t traded for 50 years. We think it is an opportunity that just can’t be passed off: to bring these machines back to England and get them flying again. We train pilots to fly Spitfires, we train engineers to build them, so yes, we would love to. We will keep this project on the road.”
The race is on. Mr Cundall says he has given the millionaire detailed information about the whereabouts of aircraft so far detected, which should not be acted upon because it is his intellectual property. Mr Boultbee Brooks says: “I would dispute that we got the information [from Mr Cundall]. He didn’t pass anything across to me. He assured me that he had the information, and I’ve taken him at his word.”
Time is running out. The monsoon breaks at the beginning of June and the ground in Burma will be so waterlogged as to be unworkable until the end of the year. A temporary holiday on sanctions against Burma means the recovery work should soon be deemed lawful. Mr Cundall is counting on his ties with the Burmese, cultivated over many years, to see him through. But Mr Boultbee Brooks is obviously not a man to back down at the first fence.
“The Brits had a real chance here to get ahead,” he laments. “The Americans are really keen. The Israelis are really keen. There is talk of an Australian team that is very keen. What a terrible day this is when the Prime Minister has gone out and got a British team, we put a British team together, and then we squabble so much that we allow other nations to walk in and take the Spitfires from under our noses. We’re absolutely nuts, aren’t we?”
But then, the lure of treasure has always driven men mad.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/history/w...-in-Burma.html

earlier ..........................


Dogfight Over Buried WWII Spitfires in Burma
Wed May 2, 2012

These British-made planes helped win the war for the allies, but now the finder could lose them.

THE GIST

• More than a dozen Rolls Royce-powered Spitfire airplanes were found buried in Burma.
• The British version of Donald Trump convinced the 62-year-old finder to relinquish his claim.
• Spitfire planes are both historically and intrinsically significant.

The Spitfire airplane was designed as a short-range, high-performance interceptor aircraft.
Corbis

After a 15-year treasure hunt, a farmer and aviation enthusiast struck gold, uncovering as many as 20 World War II-era Spitfire planes buried in Burma at the end of World War II -- a find he may lose to the British Donald Trump.

In April FoxNews.com reported the discovery of the priceless booty, a squadron of the legendary planes perfectly preserved in the chests they were shipped halfway around the world in. They were waxed, wrapped in greased paper and tarred to protect against the elements. They were then buried in their shipping crates, rather than let them fall into enemy hands.

The long-lost planes were discovered after a $200,000 quest by aviation enthusiast David Cundall.

British prime minister David Cameron sent a business delegation to Burma after the planes in late April -- and he brought along wealthy real estate developer Steven Boultbee Brooks instead of him.

BIG PIC: Battle of Britain Commemorated in London

"Mr. Brooks wants all rights handed over to him, including media rights, and if there's any money (left) over he says he might pay me something. It's appalling," Cundall told the Independent.

The 62-year-old Cundall claims he was pressured into abandoning his claim to the 67-year-old fighters by Brooks, a British version of Donald Trump who presented him with a "memorandum of understanding" that took control of his overseas activities, the Vancouver Sun said.

He learned of the Cameron / Brooks trip after the fact -- and called the terms of the memorandum an insult.

"I can do it without Brooks, I can do it without anybody. I've been digging up aircraft for 35 years. I've pushed the boat out financially. I've struggled like hell to keep it going. I've dug up Burma before, and I don't need them," Cundall told the Vancouver Sun.

Like Trump, Boultbee Brooks has a string of self-named businesses. He set up the eponymous Boultbee real estate firm in 1987 with his brother Clive; the firm reportedly now owns and manages an investment portfolio worth over $800 million.

He’s also an aviation enthusiast: There are an estimated 35 Spitfire planes still flying -- and Boultbee Flight Academy can teach you how to fly them on his Vicker’s Supermarine Spitfire, a training version of the plane built just after the war.

Cundall told the Independent that Burmese President Thein Sein promised the government in Rangoon would abide by its commitment to work with him, despite Brooks’ entry in the race.

"We were issued a permit to dig, which is still a valid and exclusive agreement," he said.

"The President of Burma wants to do business with me. He doesn't trust Cameron because when he visited they talked for two hours -- 10 minutes on removing sanctions and one hour and 50 minutes about the Spitfires," Cundall said.

Boultbee Brooks confirmed to SkyNews that he was working on the salvage operation.

"We're delighted to be working with the Myanmar and British Governments regarding the excavation of these Spitfires and their eventual repatriation to the UK,” SkyNews reported.

BIG PIC: WWII Fighter Plane Recovered

A spokeswoman for Brooks told FoxNews.com he could not be reached at present.

“At the moment the team is entirely focused on the project and is not giving any interviews,” said Elizabeth Tagge.

British farmer CUndall realized the fate of the aircraft thanks to an offhand comment a group of American veterans made to a friend, he told the Sydney Morning Herald.

''They told Jim: 'We've done some pretty silly things in our time, but the silliest was burying Spitfires.' And when Jim got back from the U.S., he told me,'" Cundall said.

He confirmed the location of the planes during a recent trip to the Far East country, he said.

''We sent a borehole down and used a camera to look at the crates. They seemed to be in good condition," Cundall told the Herald.

BLOG: 200 Tons of Silver Found on WWII Ship

The Spitfire Mark XIV planes he discovered -- definitely a dozen and as many as 20 -- are rare for more than one reason: They used Rolls Royce Griffon engines rather than the Merlins used in earlier models to achieve tremendous speeds. Griffon-powered planes could reach 440 mph thanks to the hefty, 2,050-horsepower engines.

When production of the planes ultimately ended in 1947, 20,334 Spitfires of all versions had been produced, but just 2,053 of them were Griffon-powered versions, according to Encyclopaedia Britannica.

The planes were deemed surplus and were buried in Aug. 1945. At that time, propeller planes were falling out of fashion in favor of newer jet-engine designs -- Cundall said Spitfires "were 10 a penny." British military officials decided burying them was cheaper and more practical than bringing them home.

The challenge: Time is running out. The monsoon season begins in June, making the ground so water-logged as to be unworkable.

Boultbee Brooks told the Vancouver Sun he believes he can get there in time.

"We train pilots to fly Spitfires, we train engineers to build them, so yes, we would love to. We will keep this project on the road."

news.discovery.com

The myth of buried Spitfires west of Brisbane in Australia has been around at least since I was at highschool in 1965.

Cookies must be enabled. | The Australian

Just wondering if anthing else has been heard on this Burmese Spitfire find?
Has it been now verified to be a hoax like the one a while back in Australia?
What do the Asian news report? How about the Thai Newspapers or TV Stations?
Amina

Burma to excavate World War II fighter planes
Oct 17, 2012

YANGON, Burma (AP) — Burma has signed a deal with a British aviation enthusiast to allow the excavation of dozens of vintage Spitfire fighter planes that have been buried since World War II.

The British Embassy said Wednesday that the agreement was reached after discussions between President Thein Sein and British Prime Minister David Cameron during his visit to Burma earlier this year.

Aviation enthusiast David J. Cundall discovered the locations of the planes after years of searching.

The planes are believed to be in good condition, since they were reportedly packed in crates and hidden by British forces to keep them out of the hands of invading Japanese.

Excavating is slated to begin by the end of October.

asiancorrespondent.com

Originally Posted by Mid

Aviation enthusiast David J. Cundall discovered the locations of the planes after years of searching.
Excavating is slated to begin by the end of October.

Its good to hear that the person who initially found the planes is still involved with this project, does anyone know what happened to the Steve Boultbee Brooks character, who tried to muscle in on this project?

Burma has signed a deal with a British aviation enthusiast to allow the excavation of dozens of vintage Spitfire fighter planes that have been buried since World War II.

Once the hard work has been done and paid for, the question of exporting them will no doubt be "discussed".