Pat Carry wrote:
In one of my books about the B-17 there is a photo of a totally intact B-17 sitting in one of the ploders after it was drained. There was very little visual damage because it made a landing on its gear. It was later scrapped! Also, at the Natl Museum of the USAF they have a display with B-24 parts that were recovered from the Nerherlands. I assume there are still parts to be found there.
The draining of the lake IJsselmeer in the late 1960s was part of a great public works project to reclaim swampy land and this is where numerous Allied and Axis airframes (from both World Wars, but primarily from WWII) made international headlines. All of the airframes were examined by members of the Royal Dutch Air Force, as so many of these airframes contained not only UXO hazards, but also the remains of the ill-fated crew members.
A large percentage of the airframes were examined and indeed scrapped (as this was 25 years after the end of the war). The main focal point at the time was to return the remains of the deceased airmen to their respective counties and to render munitions harmless.
Indeed, some very interesting artifacts taken from Lake IJseelmeer in 1970 survive today in various museums and collections. That any of these artifacts made it to the US at all is, in fact due in part to the professional and personal effort of a late McDonnell Aircraft Co. (McDonnell-Douglas) engineer named Jim Walker.
Walker worked for a special McDonnell programme to test long-term WX exposure on aerospace materials. McDonnell was particularly interested in how aerospace materials used in ICBMs deteriorated over time, and had a team of engineers examining bits and pieces of crashed WWII aircraft as recovered from different climatic extremes around the globe.
Walker, a former military pilot and WWII aircraft afficionado, examined parts taken from a variety of airplanes including the B-24 "Lady Be Good" from the Libyan desert, B-17 "My Gal Sal" from a Greenland ice cap, and pieces from fighters removed from the jungle and even the ocean floor. When he heard of the finds in the Zuider Zee, he asked for items to be sent to St. Louis for continued testing and evaluation.
The Dutch Air Force sent a few samples, and Walker asked for more. In all, several shipments of parts that include airframe, armament, radio components, munitions, hydraulics, electronics, rubber, textiles and more arrived in Missouri.
Upon termination of the testing and evaluation, these items were to be disposed of. Walker saw to it that some of these items were filtered to museums, but there really was little interest in the artifacts at this time. Instead of seeing these items destroyed or sent to the junkyard, the engineer was able to "liberate" them and took them home and tucked them away in garage, attic, and basement. His home literally became a respository of aircraft parts selected from around the globe, a collection wholly paid for by defense contractors and the US government to build "better and safer ICBMs."
From a technical perspective, the parts recovered from the inland sea area provided valuable information to the engineering teams. Some were remarkably preserved despite having been immersed in salt water and mud for 25 + years. Ammunition sent to the manufacturer showed no deterioration, and examination of engine oils, hydraulic fluids, some textiles and rubber components yielded useful scientific data.
One of the most interesting items sent "home" for testing was a propellor hub and blade assembly from B-17G PFF 42-30280 "Crazy Horse" - a Pathfinder 482 BG aircraft lost 21 February 1944 after a bombing raid to Dipholz, Hannover, Germany.
Before his passing several years ago, Walker had said that if he could've figured out a way to have had the Dutch government send a complete airframe back to MD for testing he would have done so.
I'm told that the entire reclaimed area of the lake IJsselmeer is completely devoid of aircraft parts to this day.
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