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12 buried, pickled WWII fighter planes found


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What a complete waste of resources. If today's military buried 12 state of the art fighters the media would terrorize the government! Absolutely amazing that they just buried BRAND NEW planes!

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the amount of material that was burned/buried/destroyed at the end of WW2 is mind boggling. There are still rumors of thousands of M-1's packed in cosmoline and hidden through-out Europe

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Cool that they found them, but why bury them. Seems like a waste

 

A lot of times it was cheaper to discard equipment (often by burying) than ship it back to the home country and recycle it, particularly in the Pacific and Southeast Asian theaters. Unusual that it should be brand-new, uncrated equipment, but not entirely surprising.

 

A dozen perfectly preserved Griffon-engined Spitfires...that's a serious find.

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A lot of times it was cheaper to discard equipment (often by burying) than ship it back to the home country and recycle it, particularly in the Pacific and Southeast Asian theaters. Unusual that it should be brand-new, uncrated equipment, but not entirely surprising.

 

A dozen perfectly preserved Griffon-engined Spitfires...that's a serious find.

I guess i didnt consider that. I suppose that makes sense

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I worked on some haz waste clean-up projects at Quantico in the 90s. During one project, we unearthed 50 motorcycles, complete with sidecars, brand new in giant crates. They'd been buried who knows when but dated back to the 40s.

 

I would love to get my hands on one of those treasures.

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I wonder about just how true this really is. Being into offroading and Jeeps, there are plenty of Urban Legends of these great, unused Military Jeeps being found in crates somewhere that are in perfect shape and just left over from the war. Usually they are just urban legends or scams and not true

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I wonder about just how true this really is. Being into offroading and Jeeps, there are plenty of Urban Legends of these great, unused Military Jeeps being found in crates somewhere that are in perfect shape and just left over from the war. Usually they are just urban legends or scams and not true

 

Do you often go off-roading in, say, Burma?

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I would love to get my hands on one of those treasures.

 

They were nonfunctional. They's been packed in some 1940s plasticky crap (I no longer remember what it was) that had tuned into some kind of toxic ooze.

 

But large portions of them were untouched and looked gorgeous.

Edited by John Adams
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Not even close, but i think it could be fun

 

Point being, you're not going to find a hell of a lot of buried WWII equipment in the continental US, because it was much easier to account for and dispose of. But the **** that was shipped overseas...different story.

 

Another reason a lot of overseas equipment was buried - not in this case, but in plenty of others - was that the US military was so over-supplied that it was relatively easy for rear-area units to acquire (often through theft from other units) far more equipment than they were entitled to. Then, when the war ended and everyone was shipped home, they'd just dig a great big hole and bury everything, rather than have to answer questions like "How come your TO&E says your unit is supposed to have four jeeps, but you're bringing home 10 and a pair of 2 1/2 ton trucks?"

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Point being, you're not going to find a hell of a lot of buried WWII equipment in the continental US, because it was much easier to account for and dispose of. But the **** that was shipped overseas...different story.

 

Another reason a lot of overseas equipment was buried - not in this case, but in plenty of others - was that the US military was so over-supplied that it was relatively easy for rear-area units to acquire (often through theft from other units) far more equipment than they were entitled to. Then, when the war ended and everyone was shipped home, they'd just dig a great big hole and bury everything, rather than have to answer questions like "How come your TO&E says your unit is supposed to have four jeeps, but you're bringing home 10 and a pair of 2 1/2 ton trucks?"

Most of the stories or Ads you see for these jeeps were never found buried in the US, they were from overseas, sometimes in places like Japan. You don't hear as many about them being found buried, mostly warehouses with crates. Its similar to the urban legend "Barn Finds" you hear about where someone finds a mint condition original mustang, or corvette just sitting in a barn covered by some tarps, driven only a few times and stored away.......

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Most of the stories or Ads you see for these jeeps were never found buried in the US, they were from overseas, sometimes in places like Japan. You don't hear as many about them being found buried, mostly warehouses with crates. Its similar to the urban legend "Barn Finds" you hear about where someone finds a mint condition original mustang, or corvette just sitting in a barn covered by some tarps, driven only a few times and stored away.......

 

Yeah, warehouses with crates is most usually bull ****.

 

And I know one of those "mint condition Mustang" stories. Mother of a guy who bought it to rebuild it but "never finished it" offered to sell it to me. Nothing sits under a tarp for 20 years and is in "mint" condition. Except maybe Twinkies.

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I saw a RR Griffin engine at a museum in GB. It's a real monster! Now if they could recover both the engines AND the Airframes, considering their age and storage conditions, that would be remarkable.

 

Having seen the engine I don't know how/if it would perform with today's LL AV Gas?

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I saw a RR Griffin engine at a museum in GB. It's a real monster! Now if they could recover both the engines AND the Airframes, considering their age and storage conditions, that would be remarkable.

 

Having seen the engine I don't know how/if it would perform with today's LL AV Gas?

It'll run at lower boost, maybe 80% power. It was built for 130 octane, best today is 100. Still a screamer though.

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