http://www.calgaryherald.com/hopes+bring+buried+Spitfires+from+earth/6461712/story.html
U.K. man hopes to bring buried Spitfires from the earth to the sky
By Adam Lusher, The Telegraph April 15, 2012
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A U.K. man has discovered the location of 20 Supermarine Spitfires, like the plane in the foreground above, still in their packing crates, buried in Myanmar as a result of orders given near the end of the Second World War.
Photograph by: Herald Archive, Reuters , The Telegraph
Extraordinary plans to raise a lost squadron of Spitfires that has lain buried in Myanmar since the end of the Second World War were revealed this weekend as British Prime Minister David Cameron visited the capital, Yangon.
Now, the Lincolnshire farmer who devoted 15 years of his life to finding the planes has spoken about his quest to recover them and get them airborne.
David Cundall, 62, of Sandtoft, n e a r S****horpe, has spent more than $200,000, visited Myanmar 12 times, persuaded the country's secretive regime to trust him, and all the time sought testimony from a dwindling band of Far East veterans to locate the Spitfires.
His treasure hunt was sparked by little more than a throwaway remark from a group of U.S. veterans made 15 years ago to his friend and fellow aviation archeologist, Jim Pearce.
"They told Jim: 'We've done some pretty silly things in our time, but the silliest was burying Spitfires,' " Cundall said. "And when Jim got back from the U.S., he told me."
Cundall realized the Spitfires would have been buried as they had been shipped, still in their crates.
Before they were shipped to the Far East, they would have been waxed, wrapped in greased paper and their joints tarred, to protect them against the elements. There seemed to be a chance that somewhere in Myanmar, there lay Spitfires that could be restored to flying condition.
The first step was to place advertisements in magazines, trying to find soldiers who buried Spitfires.
"The trouble was that many of them were dying of old age," Cundall said.
He visited Myanmar over and over, slowly building friendly relations with its military junta.
"In the end, they (Myanma minders) trusted me so much they would let me hold their AK-47s while they ate the lunch I had bought them."
Finally, he found the Spitfires, at a location that is being kept a secret.
"We sent a borehole down and used a camera to look at the crates," Cundall said. "They seemed to be in good condition."
In August 1945, the Mark XIV airplanes, which used Rolls-Royce Griffon engines instead of the Merlins of earlier models, were put in crates and transported from the factory in Castle Bromwich, in the West Midlands, to Myanmar.
Once they arrived, however, the Spitfires were deemed surplus to requirements.
The war was in its final months and fighting was increasingly confined to "islandhopping" to clear the Japanese of their remaining strongholds in the Pacific. Land-based Spitfires, as opposed to a carrierbased variant, Seafires, did not have the required range.
The order was given to bury 12 Spitfires without even unpacking them.
It is possible that a further eight Spitfires were then buried in December 1945, bringing the potential total to 20.
"In 1945, Spitfires were 10 a penny," Cundall said. "Jets were coming into service. Spitfires were struck off charge, unwanted. Lots of Spitfires were just pushed off the back of aircraft carriers into the sea. On land, you couldn't leave them for the locals - they might have ended up being used against you."
To meet the $800,000 cost of the excavation, Cundall enlisted the help of Steve Boultbee Brooks, a 51-year-old commercial property investor who runs the Boultbee Flight Academy in Chichester, West Sussex, which teaches people to fly in a two-seater Spitfire that Brooks bought for close to $3 million in 2009.
Ground radar images showed that inside the crates were Spitfires with their wings packed alongside the fuselages.
The Britons want to work to restore as many of the 20 Spitfires as possible and get them flying. There are only about 35 flying in the world.
"Spitfires are beautiful airplanes and should not be rotting away in a foreign land," Cundall said.
The final obstacle to recovering the Spitfires, however, is political: international sanctions forbid the movement of military materials in and out of Myanmar, and it was also feared the Myanmar government would not allow any foreign excavations.
However, because of the new, reforming stance of the Myanmar government, the sanctions on movement of military material will be lifted on April 23.
With the help of Cameron and his visit to Myanmar, a deal is being negotiated and hopes are high that it will conclude with Thein Sein, the president of Myanmar, granting permission for the dig.
"Our hope is that we can be digging them out in the next three or four weeks," said Brooks, who returned to his home Saturday after helping open negotiations.
"They have been in the ground for more than 65 years, so it is not a case of taking them out of the crates, putting them together and flying them. There is a lot of work to do. We may have to use parts of many planes to make perhaps a couple airworthy.
"But if the crates didn't get waterlogged, the Spitfires might be in pretty amazing condition. It's also encouraging that they put teak beams over the crates so they wouldn't be crushed by the earth when they were buried."
Cundall raised the tantalizing prospect that there may be more buried Spitfires.
"It's possible there are other Spitfires buried around different sites in Myanmar. I have heard about 36 in one burial; 18 in another; six in another. And when they were buried, they would have been brand new, never taken out of the box."
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