Warbird Information Exchange

Even though the thermometer doesn't!

The posts of Ric and Richard from the UK contain MANY valid points!

As to the much earlier posts that rubbish the notion that oil, fuel and oxygen may still be on board...well...never say never. In this instance it is being used, clearly, to discourage the curious. However, I have been involved in a number of recoveries where fuel and oil - and oxgen - have been present. On a Blenheim in coastal mud I reached into the mire and tried to lift out an object but turned a tap as I did so. A few yards away my colleague was startled by a WHOOOSH! as a jet of water, mud and air shot up his backside. When the alarm and hilarity had subsided it transpired I had operated an oxygen tap which discharged a fully charged cylinder through a brass tube that emerged between my pals feet! We watched in amazement as the end of the tube gathered ice in the hot sunshine. Fuel and oil has often flooded out of wreckage, on land and in water. Recently, in France, a Spitfire recovery cascaded gallons of high octance as we recovered the wreck.

Returning to the P-38 in Wales, I recently went through some old correspondence from Al Brown, a colleague who died a year back, and found reference in one of his letters to me of this same P-38. The date?
Oh......1974!!!!

I think Al got that info from me. And I got it from Welsh enthusiast Arthur Evans who told me about the prop tips sticking up. I never succeeded in getting anyone interested in recovering the wreck! And then there was the intact cockpit pod of an ex-Warton P-38J in a Blackpool scrapyard. In the 1960s, the owner offered it to me for £15 but I didn't have any means of removing it! (Nor anywhere to store it.) Soon after, it disappeared.

You are exactly right, Dave! Al did talk about the prop tips sticking out and was trying to garner some interest in getting a recovery organised was back then.

That's not the only thing either. One of my best friends was digging on a Dornier 217 in the 70's. It was a deep dig in clay, with remarkably preserved artifacts. There was a lot of fuel blended with the oozing clay on that one. He said that his boiler suit fell apart because the stitching was made of plastic and simply melted away.

However, they kept finding these strange triangular pieces of metal, which they couldn't quite identify. As they got deeper they came across a large cylindrical and very solid object. At first they thought it was an oxygen bottle, but it actually turned out to be a bomb! Sort of cleared out the hole in a hurry. However, since it didn't go off, they calmly packed mud around it to pretend it wasn't there and carried on digging!!!!

Crazy the sorts of digs that used to happen back then. Must have been a lot of fun though.

Cheers,
Richard

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Richard Mallory Allnutt - Photography - http://www.rmallnutt.com