P-38 recovery update?

RyanShort1 · **Posted:** Wed May 13, 2009 3:12 pm

Waay cool. If you guys were able to get the permits, do you have some infrastructure for a restoration or preservation?

Ryan

Richard Woods · **Posted:** Wed May 13, 2009 4:38 pm

Hi all.

Me personally? No. I've got a few friends in the conservation area of things... amongst other areas, who I will be persuading to help. First job though, I have to locate it!

As for recovering it... for my day job I work with a big bunch of the "military assets" that TIGHAR speak of, who all love this idea... and would love a bit of publicity to boost their recruiting.

I've got a couple of weekends off work at the end of June and a few mates roped in to help go look.

Just for a bit of extra fun though;

Load Google Earth...

Your co-ordinates are 52 50' 57.48 N, 4 07' 20.17"W
Eye altitude of 400 to 500 feet.

Set the date to 09 Nov 2007, the time to 1400hrs, and activate the sun.
Line up the way the shadow points now on the map, with the way it points in the TIGHAR kite shot.

.... then try and convince me, that what is at that point idoesn't look like a P-38.

:twisted:

Regards

Ric

Django · **Posted:** Thu Jun 11, 2009 2:21 pm

Any luck Richard?

TIGHAR has moved on to the next big thing. :shock:

Richard Woods · **Posted:** Fri Jun 12, 2009 5:25 am

No luck so far.

Went over there the other weekend but the weather was foul. Going to go again in the next few weeks see what I can find. I'm going to take some friends this time so I can cover a bigger area.

Oh I do like to be beside the seasiiiiide.......

Ric

lancaster 132 · **Posted:** Sun Aug 16, 2009 5:02 pm

I checked out those co-ords,pretty convincing...
Also went on to multimap and there seems to be a dark patch at roughly the same point!.
Scaling the vehicles on the road it looks as if the is an aircraft sized object,also zoom in and out on both sites and you can glimpes wing shapes.
The photo of the tighar man on the beach is probably to mislead you into looking in the wrong area.with Harlech college partially obscured and the castle at extreme left,just out of shot.
I know the area well as i,ve been going there for years.
Lets dig.....

Django · **Posted:** Thu Aug 20, 2009 12:10 pm

Anyone with Google Earth care to post a screen capture?

Any updates?

Django · **Posted:** Mon Sep 14, 2009 12:22 pm

Almost 2 years later... what is the holdup!??!!??

Jesse C. · **Posted:** Mon Sep 14, 2009 2:58 pm

Dang, almost forgot about this one!

Any news from our friends across the pond?

Matt Gunsch · **Posted:** Mon Sep 14, 2009 3:01 pm

TIGHAR is planning on starting the planning phase...........

Holedigger · **Posted:** Mon Sep 14, 2009 3:14 pm

Or was that proposing to study the planning of the idea to investigate the concept of the layout to the outline of a motion to do something?

PinecastleAAF · **Joined:** Fri May 25, 2007 4:50 pm **Posts:** 1027

Assuming they get it out they can have fun watching it disentigrate before their eyes as it dries out. A friend with a v-12 motor that came out of the water off normandy has one as a display in his front yard ( a farm) on a concrete pad. When he mows the yard and then uses his blower to blow the grass off the concrete he indicates he needs to be careful and not direct the flow directly on the motor because the airflow will take chunks of motor off.

Django · **Posted:** Mon Sep 14, 2009 4:23 pm

PinecastleAAF wrote:

Assuming they get it out they can have fun watching it disentigrate before their eyes as it dries out. A friend with a v-12 motor that came out of the water off normandy has one as a display in his front yard ( a farm) on a concrete pad. When he mows the yard and then uses his blower to blow the grass off the concrete he indicates he needs to be careful and not direct the flow directly on the motor because the airflow will take chunks of motor off.

Then what was done to the Merlin P-40 that was pulled out of the beach in Italy that is on display now?

JDK · **Posted:** Mon Sep 14, 2009 7:39 pm

Django wrote:

Then what was done to the Merlin P-40 that was pulled out of the beach in Italy that is on display now?

Proper conservation.

Simplistically put (so I understand it

) if the salts are replaced by intensive washing with fresh water, and other treatment, then the material protected, it can be stabilised at that level of decay. If you don't do anything, on removal the decay accelerates and you can end up with something that acts more like a fizzy pill than a metal airframe.

It's expensive, takes time and effort, has to be done immediately and is even today something not considered often enough by recovery teams, despite being a well established process.

Secondly that does not return it to 'as new' or 'repair' it, so it doesn't return to a better condition than what it's found at - to do that requires restoration, which usually involves replacement of parts.

Probably worth mentioning that the depth, oxygen, salts, water movement, other materials (buried in sand, covered with shellfish, coral etc) all affect the requirements and rate of decay. Different parts obviously decay at different rates - glazing, rubber and magnesium alloy going quick, stainless steel probably being the slowest.

HTH.

Django · **Posted:** Wed Oct 07, 2009 1:13 pm

Hey Richard... any news from your side of the pond?

Dan K · **Posted:** Wed Oct 07, 2009 7:45 pm

Warbird Information Exchange

P-38 recovery update?

Who is online