Supermarine Spitfire

So the fat lady has not yet started to sing...

There were two bits in the Sunday Telegraph on this at the weekend. The first in the magazine, obviously written before any problems started with the dig and the second in the newspaper that was far less positive. It detailed the opinion of the archeologists involved, who were stating that there was no written evidence of Spitfires, buried or otherwise. According to them, the whole thing was a wild goose chase, based on anecdotal evidence from ex-servicemen who were there sixty-odd years ago

hunter;119311 wrote:

evidence from ex-servicemen who were there sixty-odd years ago

This 'eyewitness' stuff is dangerous to serious research. TIGHAR seem to suffer from it big time with perfectly sincere and sane people offering information on the AE search. After (expensive) investigation it turns out to be either absurd/impossible or completely fabricated.

We had an old boy who worked at Staxton Wold in the 40-50's as a 'Bricks & Works' man. He was adamant that there was an unfinished R2 ROTOR bunker on site which had been sealed up and left. For some reason this caught the imagination of the engineers who spent a lot of days off searching the site and trawling through records trying to find the damn thing. Finally this got to somebody who knew and they stopped the project dead..no bunker no ROTOR on site. Statxton was 'retained-refurbished Chain Home' in ROTOR 1 but no further work done until Linesman/Mediator. The old guy wouldn't be told and to his dying day would tell how he'd been down in this mythical cavern.

Somebody will probably come along and post 'Oh yes there was a bunker...under the T80 building'..which Staxton never had!

The Burma story was mentioned on US National Public Radio this week. Not sure where they got the feed from but they do use a lot of BBBC World Service material.

Very good points OldTG12...
People mean well, but what they remember does change over the years and is not always reliable.

By the time my grandad was in his 90s he had been shot in the leg by Hitler during a game of football in no-mans land. During WW2...

My Grandad was court-martialed for stealing an RAF bomber and flying a daring single handed bombing mission to Berlin. It was 1974.

Sorry, think that's a bit off-topic.

???????

I've no doubt that the eyewitnesses saw something being buried, probably a load of old cr@p. It's a very quick journey then, either from a jokey comment "Oh yes, they're burying Spitfires mate..." or rumor that the eyewitness then thinks he's seen something that he hasn't.

As there are no realistic gaps in serials and the fact that under any conditions other than the need to retreat, serviceable military equipment is of value and therefore wouldn't have been chucked in a hole, it must just be a wild goose chase.

I sincerely hope to to be proven wrong.

Read the post before Peter, it was a joke.

The more I think about that statement, which seemingly says they knew they were digging in the wrong place, the more it makes no sense whatsoever.

But it's not April First.....