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Dumped WW2 aircraft off Austrailia

Thu Feb 01, 2007 9:52 pm

Whatever happened to this story??

Supposedly there was a group that was going to recover some of these airframes :? :?:

Did this already happen?

Shay
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Semper Fortis

Thu Feb 01, 2007 10:22 pm

From what I can gather, the airframes that were located were too corroded to do anything with. This is based on what little actual information seemed to filter out of the many pages of (forum) discussions on this topic about a year ago.

If I had to guess, I would say that either the large dumps of airframes couldn't be located, or they were located and were junk, or just a few were located and were junk, or the whole thing was about as tangible as that B-32 deep in the Pacific.

Put it this way; if someone had found a treasure trove of WWII aircraft in great shape just sitting on the ocean floor, someone somewhere would have had something to say about it.

Personally I wish it were true.

cheers

greg v.

dumped a/c

Fri Feb 02, 2007 12:51 am

OK here goes. Some years back they found a stash of dumped corsairs at the mouth of sydney harbor from an aussie carrier.The war had ended and they were going up to the islands to bring home the troops.They pushed the corsairs over the side and one of these had been pulled out and was in florida.In a word sadly JUNK. They werent deep enough, I think 150 feetBut there is supposedly a bunch of them.Some of the aussie members would know more.

Fri Feb 02, 2007 1:36 am

Search the WIX archives, was discussed at length several years back.

Dumped aircraft

Fri Feb 02, 2007 3:23 am

I think the bottom line was that the wrecks were too deep to be a viable undertaking at this stage. They certainly were dumped & are there, though I think fishing nets have interferred a lot over the years?

The stuff that has been brought to the surface has been bought up by trawler nets & they have "had" to bring it to shallower water to try & recover their nets.

I had a mate who worked on trawlers off Townsville, and he said hauling up a radial engine wasn't an uncommon occurence... at one point his boat hauled up a "complete bomber wing with engines". (he not an aircraft guy?) Apparently netting .50 ammo is common also?

There is an interesting government website that talks about WWII dumped aircraft off Australia:

http://www.heritage.nsw.gov.au/docs/air ... es_nsw.pdf

I guess it'll be too late by the time we have the technology?

Jason

Fri Feb 02, 2007 4:51 am

I recall a local Australian aviation magazine covering this issue in the 1990's focusing the eventual recovery of a corsair wreck of the east coast of Australia and carried photo's of it stored on a property in the Brisbane suburbs.

I understood its corrosion state rendered it beyond for any meaningful restoration, even static display, and at best could only form an interesting "as found" artefact or a source of pattern material for skins and frames, I am not aware of its eventual fate and it may well have been exported for pattern use?

There has been no further recovery "activity" reported in local magazines or via the "grapevine" since that one Corsair recovery in the mid/late 1990's?, suggesting the remaining airframes were considered to be of similar quality.

regards

Mark Pilkington

Fri Feb 02, 2007 5:43 am

IIRC one Corsair center section went to Bootstrap in the US for tests on what would neutralise corrosion, and they were expecting a Barracuda. Photo of the Corsair was in WWW, and wasn't the example shown falling to pieces in Oz. Anyone know what happened to it at Bootstrap........Rob?
At one time the Oz Navy was patrolling the dumpsite and supposedly video showed intact airframes on the bottom, along with aircraft sized crates.

Dave

Fri Feb 02, 2007 8:12 am

at the time there was talk that a complete mustang in a crate recovered but no more has been said?

Fri Feb 02, 2007 8:30 am

I wish it were possible for someone to restore a B-32. That sucks that no noe saved any. Just the on one the moon!

Fri Feb 02, 2007 10:16 am

There were three corsairs, and the tail section from a Fairey Firefly recovered, all heavily corroded. Two of the corsairs went to Bootstrap aircraft. The third was disassembled, with the effort of selling the parts that were salvageable. The main spar was sent to California, and advertized in Trage-a-plane and Barnstormers for $50k. Needless to say, it didn't sell. There was too much pitting the the important bits. Regardless of this, there were quite a few components which were still salvageable: mostly small forgings, and steel components which hadn't suffered any corrosion. Some of these parts were saved.

The reasons that they stopped the recoveries are a little unclear. Mostly, I believe it was due to economics. The aircraft were not viable restoration projects, and it was too expensive to strip them for useable components. There were also some stories about a request from the US Navy to the Australian government to prevent further salvage of the US-made naval aircraft. Whether this is true or not, I don't know.

No further recoveries have been made, at least not publicly.

Hope this helps.

Cheers,
Richard
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