Whatever became of the buried Spits?

[mrloudly]

Did they find anything?

[XJSJohn]

The ones in Myanmar?

Gone all quiet but the country has realy opened up in the last 12 months so if they were there and good I would guess lots of stuff happening but being kept private!

[Eric Mc]

Legal wrangles have arisen which mat stall the project.

[Pothole]

Sounds like there is a Gold Rush:

http://www.avweb.com/avwebflash/news/Dogfight_Burm...

[anonymous-user]

It's turned nasty and the monsoon season has put a stop until next year.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/history/world-war-two/9...

[mrloudly]

Thanks guys! Interesting to watch though :-) Will be very surprised if they are as good as predicted, sixty odd years is a long time underground in a tropical monsoon style
climate (indeed any climate!).

[davepoth]

Deal signed with Burma, excavation due to start this month.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/oct/17/spitfi...

Yay!

[mrloudly]

Good timing LOL

[telecat]

Griffon Engined Spitfires. Wonder what the ratio of restored Merlin versus Griffon is? One of the Best Spitfire marks as well. Good performance without the downside of affecting it's dog fighting prowess.

[Eric Mc]

Proprtionately, there have been more Griffons preserved out of the total number of Spitfires built - which is mainly down to the fact that they were the last Spitfire models produced and therefore were the ones still in service when people started thinking of preserving remaining airframes.

The Griffon population may get a big boost with this recovery operation - although it remains to be seen what state the airframes and engines are in and what can be salvaged.

Overall, the population of preserved and airworthy Spitfires grows with each passing year so the ratio of surviving Merlin Spitfires to Griffon Spitfires is variable year on year.

[Yertis]

Reading around the subject there is mention also of some mark VIIIs, which as you know is possibly the most thoroughbred of the Merlin Spits as well as one of the rarest. (Mark IX being a hybrid etc)

[Eric Mc]

MkVIIIs were used a lot by the Aussies in the Far East.

[scubadude]

Funnily enough I mentioned the search for the buried Spitfires to my Granfather 2months ago and he laughed- said he remembered "pushing the bl**dy things down the runway as they where packing to leave" Sadly he passed away last month before I could tell him the lack of progress they'd made, he was sick and it was one of the few things he was sufficently interested in to wake up in the last 6months.
He had been a fitter on them and followed them all over the far east, one was even the plane he got told of for repainting wrongly which was when they discovered he was colour blind :-)

[Podie]

Article. In the Times today suggests 124 Spitfires buried in 5 sites.

Be interesting if they do see the light of day.

[LotusOmega375D]

Podie said:

Article. In the Times today suggests 124 Spitfires buried in 5 sites.

Be interesting if they do see the light of day.

With that sort of level of new supply, I am hoping that Spitfire prices will plummet to around the 30k mark and then I'll get my chequebook out.

Not good news for the current Spitfire owners though! I bet they wished they'd bought a Hurricane!

[Podie]

Apologies for the abrupt post - seems the iDevice chose when to put a full stop.

Times suggests they have found about 20 and blokey has agreed to sell them for 1.5m (can't recall currency).

Apparently they are in the tar paper they were shipped in. Will be interesting to see the condition they are actually in, as the article notes they were buried in August '45.

[williamp]

whatever condition they will need full restoration, so the important bit will be the small brass plaque with the serial number on it. The complete airframe and engine will be built around this regardless.

[mrloudly]

I would imagine they'll be in a poor old way irrespective. Will be interesting to watch though!