Warbird Information Exchange

Cruising the vast wasteland of Thursday evening television programming having less than zero interest in college Basketbore, I see that NATGEO is runnning a 30 minute program on searching for a crashed FW-190 at Freeman Field in Indiana. HMMMM-
If you've never watched 'Diggers' it's an irritating program, the two 'stars' act like 13 year olds with too many Hostess Ding-Dongs washed down with Mountain Dew in them. They did find some interesting items but every time they find a rusty nail they act like idiots throwing up their hands and yelling ("OH! This COULD BE John Wesley Hardins old condom wrapper") and spend most of the program being overly simplistic (and always a bit off dead center with the info) in their explainations of everything they are looking for and at.
It'll be repeated so if you watch, resist the urge to empty a clip into your 50 in. SHARP flatscreen.

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Don't make me go get my flying monkeys-

Those fellas act like idiots and it's embarrassing. What's worse is the cameraman will follow them as they run thru the woods or field jumping up and down trying to get close-ups. It's got to be an act for the camera.

I seen that episode a week or so back. I was going to post on it but seen there were already some threads on it here discussing Freeman Field and the various aircraft parts/pieces there.

I actually like the show. its fun and they actually find things not like other shows I have seen. Been detecting since the late 80s, found lots of beer can pull tabs. I cannot understand that they seem to be EVERYWERE!!!

I call B.S. on the Freeman dig. There has been a group digging there for years, and these yahoos show up and find everything in two days! Some of those items looked planted to me, I'd bet money on it.

I like the idea of the show as I dig too.....I just don't go hooping-n-hollering like a 6 year getting their first Valentine card.

Not sure if they "salted" the Freeman site. Someone would have caught them I'd think....unless several people were in on it. I'd give them the benefit of being authentic on this one.

They dig one 40 X 10 hole with a backhoe in the middle of 983 acres and among the things they 'find' is a perfect BMW piston minus rings and a wrist pin, and after being 10 feet under for nearly 70 years has no signs of corrosion or caked, solidified dirt/mud. Like most airplane s would have, that 'souvenier' enemy piston would have gone under the table bandsaw and your great grandpa would have had a cool ashtray.
Think I need to blow the B.S. whistle on this

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Don't make me go get my flying monkeys-

I think the host's were a little too goofy for my liking but I did enjoy the show overall. I've been following the Freeman team for quite a while. The "Parts Pit" was a known area of interest where parts were dumped and has given up plenty of other goodies in previous excavations, so it wasn't exactly a random spot in a field.

I also thought their search for the 190 debris field seemed believable. Fairly close to what was in the official record.

As for the condition of the parts, it obviously can vary wildly. I've heard them say in Warbird Radio interviews that similar parts only feet away from each other can come out of the ground it very different states. One could be as nice as the piston pulled up, while the other could be rotted to virtually nothing.

If you can, take a look through their picture albums on Facebook, https://www.facebook.com/pages/Freeman- ... tos_albums

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