WW2... crashed planes

[tegwin]

I am reading a book at the moment (recomneded by someone on here) about the RAF etc.. it briefly talks about the Battle of Britain and the blitz et al.

I am curious though, the planes that were crash landed (be them British or German) on our green lands... What happened to them?

Presumably those aircraft that did not explode on impact the munitions were recovered and or destroyed?

Were the aircraft quickly burried, or left until after the war?


Did the British make use of any crash laneded german aircraft etc?

Im sure a lot of the crashes would completely destroy the aircraft in a flaming impact crater, but there must have been a large number that managed to "land"...

[Eric Mc]

Most crashed aircraft were scrapped.
If possible, useable bits were recovered and refurbished for spares.
If substantially intact, the aircraft was taken to an RAF Maintenance Unit (MU) for restoration to flying status.
Sometimes the aircraft would go back to the manufacturer or a sub-contractor for repair.

Enemy aircraft went through a similar process. If the airframe was reasonably intact, the plane might be restored to flying status and then flown for evaluation purposes or for disimilar combat trials. The RAE at Farnborough had a dedicated unit for flying German aircraft and during the war flew a number of Messerschmitt 109s, 110s, Junkers 88 etc.

[mrmaggit]

Generally they were recycled, although both us and the germans re-built "enemy" planes for evaluation purposes, the Germans had a unit "KG200" who operated captured and rebuilt allied aircraft, not all for research use!

There is a story of a Mosquito being salvaged from the Issel Meer in Holland with german ammunition in the guns!

[dr_gn]

tegwin said:

I am reading a book at the moment (recomneded by someone on here) about the RAF etc.. it briefly talks about the Battle of Britain and the blitz et al.

I am curious though, the planes that were crash landed (be them British or German) on our green lands... What happened to them?

Presumably those aircraft that did not explode on impact the munitions were recovered and or destroyed?

Were the aircraft quickly burried, or left until after the war?


Did the British make use of any crash laneded german aircraft etc?

Im sure a lot of the crashes would completely destroy the aircraft in a flaming impact crater, but there must have been a large number that managed to "land"...

Although not necessarily directly relevant to the Battle of Britain, sometimes, due to terrain, it was impossible to remove heavier items such as engines or main structural assemblies such as spars. I live near to the Peak District, and many aircraft that crashed here were broken up and buried (in order to avoid confusion with more recently crashed aircraft that may be being searched for).

There are also many examples of aircraft of which easily identifiable pieces remain on the surface to this day:

http://www.peakdistrictaircrashes.co.uk/

and here:

http://peakwreckhunters.blogspot.com/

Conversely, a Hawker Hunter which crashed in the early 1990's remains almost complete (presumably a bit bent), but buried deeply in the soft peat:

http://www.peakdistrictaircrashes.co.uk/pages/peak...

Very interesting AAIB report on that one.

Good books with interesting stories and analyses are from this series:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Peakland-Air-Crashes-P-Cun...

Cheers,

Edited by dr_gn on Monday 17th August 12:57

[anonymous-user]

I've got some photos of that Hunter somewhere when it displayed at North Weald. That was only about a month before it crashed

[dr_gn]

anonymous said:

[redacted]

Apparently one of the possible causes was that the pilot tried to climb out of bad weather, but because the oxygen system was not required (and therefore disconnected) due to a ceiling restriction on the aircraft, he passed out after exceeding this limit by a considerable margin.

Here is a picture of it, XL 595 :

Edited by dr_gn on Tuesday 18th August 09:26

[Stedman]

Off Topic, but a woman i used to work with, her father in-law was the first person ever to survive a ditch into the sea in a Spitfire in WW2.

As you were

[Eric Mc]

Stedman said:

Off Topic, but a woman i used to work with, her father in-law was the first person ever to survive a ditch into the sea in a Spitfire in WW2.

As you were

Name?

[wreckhunter]

Here's a picture of the former XL595 now.