1. Burma lies in the "monsoon region" of Asia, with its coastal regions receiving over 5,000 mm (196.9 in) of rain annually.

2. aircraft were buried in "wooden crates" as surplus, around 30 feet (10 meters) under the surface.

3. all they might find is a mass of corroded metal and rusty aircraft parts.

What took so long? How long have they known about these planes?

They've been talking about these planes for at least the last 4-5 years. An off-hand remark by somebody to one of the searchers about the planes started it but they needed to get permissions and settle ownership issues.

Myanmar is extremely humid and rainy. They probably all rusted.

There is nothing left of them if they are in wooden crates.

I agree. Planes buried 30 feet underground in wood crates aren't likely going to be pristine. Reminds me of the brand new Plymouth Belvedere sealed in a concrete time capsule in 1957 that was opened in 2007 to find that the vault had regularly flooded during spring rains and the car was ruined. Like P51 Mustangs, the Spitfires are worth a fortune these days. It's a good gamble to try to rescue them.

Maybe a few will have salvageable parts but I'm guessing 60 years of exposure to the monsoon season will have taken it's toll on the planes.

if they were properly covered with cosmoline , they maybe restorable....if not ?''rust never sleeps

These planes have been known about for years. They are still in the original packaging with cosmoline and paper intact. The wooden crates are not like the modern garbage, these crates were stout and could take a serious beating. Because the shipment was going to a humid area the odds are high the containers were treated for bugs and water-proofed somewhat.

I wouldn't expect anything pristine but I could imagine enough parts could be gathered to make at least one viable plane.

Why in God's name did people go to the trouble of burying these aircraft? If they were now obsolete because of the advent of the jet age, you would think they at least had some value as scrap metal. Actually, a lot of WWII aircraft were sold to small countries after the war because these countries could not produce their own aircraft, or afford the newer jet aircraft being produced. By the way, we still used P-51s at the beginning of the Korean War, but it was a much more advanced aircraft than the Spitfire.

WWII was not known for salvage. My dad witnessed hundreds of B24s bulldosed into the Mediteranean sea in Italy after the war.

It's not just a WW2 thing. You should check out how many tanks and jeeps were blown up at the end of Vietnam, or how many planes, helicopters, generators, tents, etc, were pushed overboard into the sea. When you're buggin' out, if it can't be taken back, it gets shredded, blown up, burned, or buried. Anyway, I wish this team best of luck.

Given the rainfall, chances are they are going to find collapsed machines and mud permeated corrosion.

The spitfire is one of the most aesthetically, beautiful aircraft ever made. The lines Mitchell gave it are just classic

Something no one seems to have acknowledged is the fact that the Spitfire's framing (fuselage, wing spars and stringers, vertical and horizontal stabilizers, etc.) is practically all wood (mostly hickory). I'm afraid about all they will find is the corroded aluminum skin and a bunch of fat termites. I hope all this speculation is wrong and they can build a bunch of flyable Spits but I fear they will wind up with a few restorable parts and a lot of muck. Good luck and Godspeed guys.

Yeah John. They bulldozed and dropped into the sea just about everything instead of bringing it back as it was too expensive and of little use??? at the time. Plus most of them probably thought: "I hope I never see or need to be near one of these friggin things ever again." People were not too Nostalgic about war or it's machinery back then. They could have cared less about WWI since they were just continuing it, much less wanting to remember WWII

If they were buried down below the clay level, then there is a very good chance that they are in good shape. Rain water would trickle down to the top of the clay level and then follow a down hill slope. Things buried this way have a tendancy to survive for a very long time. Since they were buried 30 feet down it is all to possible this would be the case. Lets hope it is.

Unfortunately Dave, if that were the case, the clay level would have been opened up and then the planes would have been put into that clay hole, rain water would sit in that clay pocket as it wouldn't and couldn't be compacted to it's original impermeable state above the planes that is. Let's hope they weren't put into an impermeable clay hole. It won't leave much to find.

John Kaiser @ 1.11. If they were to be trashed they why go to the trouble of putting them in wooden crates and in a 30' hole. There are easier ways to trash things. Just bull doze them into the hole, sell them or scrap them.

This is a typically ill written story which fails to answer the Q. I'm sure it is easily findable.

Gil,

I think they were spare aircraft that had not been assembled yet

3. all they might find is a mass of corroded metal and rusty aircraft parts.

That's what I was thinking but then you never know

Found an original unassembled Spitfire once in its original package too .... said Revell on it. :)

I ould point out that combat engineers in WWII were trained experts in burying equipment as a means of perserving it, especially in depots and caches, or as a means f preventing it from being seen by aerial surveillance, such as was done in England prior to the Normandy landing.

So there is a high chance that the combat engineers involved knew they were in annual monsoon Burma and took the steps necessary to keep the buried items dry. This would have included burying them on hills, providing multiple layers of both manmade (rubber sheeting) and natural (palm frond) weatherproofing. They would have also covered all exposed parts wioth rubber sheeting and cosmoline --- a thick anti-rust coating similar to vaseline in consistency.

Roadhouse, surprisingly the P-51 Mustang was in fact used during Vietnam. They were re-manufactured/refurbished by a company called Cavalier in Florida and were known as Cavalier Mustangs after being mated to a turbo prop engine for light ground attack and COIN (counter insurgency) work. These conversions were flown by several other countries for several years and some may still be flying in that role. There were only about two dozen or so built in total and many have been reconfigured back to stock North American P-51 status for the airshow circuit in the U.S. and in Europe. A company called Onmark also refurbished WWII and Korean War vintage B-26 Invaders for use in Vietnam.

I doubt they'll find intact planes, or even ones which may be restored. Were dealing with a tropical climate and planes made of metal parts. It has been almost 70 years. I'd be very much surprised if they find anything more that archaeological remains.

I agree.

Well, it did sound pretty definite. But strange.

You know about the plane graveyard in Arizona, right? And all the other graveyards out west where planes have had their windows covered up/taken out and just left to rust? It's a damned shame that we as a country are not using that as a resource--hiring people to recover the wealth of metals and materials simply left abandoned.

My guess is those engineers opted to crate and bury the obsolete aircraft instead of just stripping and dumping them as useless junk out of sentimentality. No doubt after the war there was no budget for properly storing or shipping obsolete fighter aircraft that were no longer needed.

Served a couple years at ole D-M AFB, AZ. That "graveyard" is an obsolete aircraft recycling center. Some aircraft are stripped for parts, some aircraft are "reborn" into new missions here and by allied governments abroad. Some make it to museums. Parts that have no other uses get recycled for their metals.

I’d wager it was the easiest, quickest, cheapest way to keep them from going to the Maoist Chinese. CPC (Communist Party of China)-KMT victory in 1945. The Chinese Civil War resumed, in which Mao led the Red Army to victory as Chiang and his supporters fled to Taiwan.

Not really. At the end of WWII there were lots of military equipment to get rid of. As I remember nerve and blister agent taken from the germans dumped in the gulf off lousiana. then while in oklahoma city, there is a small town north called yukon okla. On it was the cimmaron air strip. Stopped there to watch planes take of and land. Talked to a guy who worked there about bunches of large crates at the back of one of the buildings. Hundreds of em. He told me they were crated P-51 mustang engines. Never figured out why they were there. the PT boats of the japanese theater were taken to an island, pushed into a cove and set on fire. They were mostly plywood. Lots of stuff laying around. While in Illesheim germany a local german told us that the airfield was flooded until the stukas needed to take off. The stukas were under the airfield in a concrete hangar. then the airfield was flooded again. At the end of the war, the american army went in however, booby traps were set so the hangar was flooded and sealed with cement. Dont know for sure, but what i was told by a guy who was old enough to have been in the army then.

Look at all the money the govt wastes now. Whilst trying to cutback the fiscal cliff they give hollyweird 400 some million dollars. This did not start this year. Waste has been going on for a long time.

If the government had just saved a few thousand of these aircraft in even the lowest cost mothball preservation in the southwest (which they did until the 50's) they sure could be selling them off now to help pay some of the debt/bills and still come out way ahead at 6 to 30 million per aircraft. Who could have known. :) Long term planning and cost effective execution has never been the forte of the US Fed Government, though.

Glen, These are British planes. While they were buried by US engineers, the planes are the property of Great Britain...

I still don't understand how they were buried. I can understand that there may have not been a proper way to dismantle the planes available but they were buried in a way as if they were meant to preserve them. One article says when they were buried "They were waxed, wrapped in greased paper and their joints tarred."

NB820, I was wondering how long it would take somebody besides myself to come to that conclusion. The overal Commander, CBI or China Burma India theater of operations was British Lord Louis Mountbatten. There were thousands of Americans serving in that area under his overall command. If he directed that U.S. Army Engineers dismantle and bury those aircraft than they would have done so. At this point we might get lucky and there is at least one or more of those engineers surviving that will come forward and explain why. Either way this is between the governments of Great Britain and Myanmar to settle as to the disposition of said aircraft.

Pith Helmet, they had the wings and tail surfaces removed, covered in cosmoline, wrapped in waxed paper, then put into long sealed wooden crates. This was the same procedure used to ship them overseas in the holds of cargo ships to begin with. The problem is that with the extreme humidity coupled with severe seasonal monsoon rains in that part of the world, I'd be very surprised if the wood did not rot out from 60+ years of rainwater seeping down into the ground.

I remember seeing film of the U.S evacuation of Saigon(Vietnam)they were dumping Huey helicopters right off the carrier decks into the ocean.Some of them they would fly 100-200yds from the ship and "gently"ditch them in the water,as the evacuation became more frantic(the NVA were on the outskirts of the city)they simply pushed the helicopters off the deck into the sea.

I vaguely remember reading that more airplanes were destroyed following WW2 than during the war. In Europe US airplanes were bulldozed into piles and burned. Why would they do this in Britain when our Allies were so desperate for metals? Aircraft in the US that had returned and many which were brand new were recycled at Kingman Arizona. Many others were sold for scrap at a few pennies on the dollar. I know of a brand new B-17G that was sold for scrap at $980 when it contained over $2,000 in aviation gasoline! Our current idiocy in government is nothing new!

"Now any more restorable Mosquitos around?"

Weren't these mostly made of wood? I doubt there's much chance of finding any. One heck of a fast little bomber, among other things they were used for. Old airplanes are just cool.

Everyone knows about Million Dollar Point in Vanuatu, but there's supposed to be a similar WWII burial ground on the large island of Manus, in Papua New Guinea. Among other relics, it is rumored to contain at least two unused WWII-era Harley-Davidson cycles (military version) crated and packed in cosmoline.

Hell yea! Any Vet would give his left arm to be part of this operation.

The P-38's landed in Greenland, and they had to dig down for them. Supposedly, the Spitfire crates were sealed in tar and plastic, wel'll see.

They really should have a "dislike" button on news vine.

Indeed, Julian....as why would anyone be interested in a 400 year old Italian fresco, or a piece of cloth rumored to have been wrapped around a Jewish carpenter 2000 years ago, or the bones of an animal that died a few million years ago, or a 500 year-old hand-woven basket found buried in the Pacific NW, or a rare 1920's Mercedes Benz found in a German barn, or a dress worn 90 years ago by a queen, or...... it's called HISTORY!!! Look it up! some people just don't get it, and never will....

To keep the Japs from getting ahold of them.

In 1945 Japan was already badly beaten except for in parts of China. The Japanese never made it through China and lost that war having their army tied up there for over 10 years. The US nuclear bombings in late 1945 were nothing but mass murder.

Nope, it was Japanese suicide! They would have never quit otherwise because they would not surrender unconditionally. Even when the Emperor made the radio announcement a military coop was underway to stop the surrender. They figured we didn't have enough material for another bomb. Nice try at revisionist history though!

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powerful engines

Also partly depends on the type of wood used for crating. Could it be teak?

Takhli in 65 ! LOL

More people should be buying the Boneyard birds before the DoD strikes them from the inventory.