Who here believes WWII aircraft are still to be found? ...

[Mark Allen M]

As in, intact aircraft that are unknown to exist in unknown locations. This could include caves, buried in crates in the ground or desert, hidden by overgrowth, stored at inaccessible locations i.e. hostile countries, etc.
This would NOT include underwater, wrecks in jungles, parts & pieces scattered about.

Here's what drove my thoughts today.


Ray Watts "This is a picture I took in part of the underground tunnels under the modern city of Nuremberg, Germany.
The tunnels under the city are quite extensive and hardly touched since they were vacated after the war.
I took this picture about 5 years ago."

[Mick G]

I doubt it

[marine air]

Not too many left. Much of the good stuff from Russia came out in the 1990's. Now what's surfacing are known items like the P-47N fuselage that was at the Soplata Farm for fifty years and increasing smaller bits and pieces of damaged and corroded items. I still feel like there is a little more treasure in lakes and African deserts and "off limits" military bases. There just isn't anything being brought out any more. Interestingly, is howm many spare parts are out there. A friend with a P-47 project told me I would be amazed at the stuff that keeps surfacing. Just not airframes or complete basketcases.

[lucky52]

Maybe Greenland has some that are not under 350 of ice,maybe the arctic area too.What happened to that attempt to get another P38 a couple of years ago?

[Jesse C.]

What happened to that Secret Cave in the Pacific that was full of Japanese stuff?

There might be some stuff out there that might be hidden from view. Like the P-40 in Egypt. Who knows what else the sand is hiding.
Planes came down somewhere.

There is plenty of Jungle as well that has not been searched.

[Zac Yates]

Standing by for the Australian tunnel brigade. Have seen a lot of analysis with red lines on photos but not much evidence - which I'd truly love to see.

Here's what drove my thoughts today.


Ray Watts "This is a picture I took in part of the underground tunnels under the modern city of Nuremberg, Germany.
The tunnels under the city are quite extensive and hardly touched since they were vacated after the war.
I took this picture about 5 years ago."

Have intact aircraft been found there?

[CoastieJohn]

Maybe Greenland has some that are not under 350 of ice,maybe the arctic area too.What happened to that attempt to get another P38 a couple of years ago?

The Lost Squadron, the J2F-4 (3 MIA's) and maybe the C-53 (5 MIA's) are still on the radar screen. The virus threw a wrench in this past spring/summer deployments.


https://www.facebook.com/pages/category ... 399953808/

[rtwpsom2]

I mean, there's got to be thousands out there that haven't been found. I'm sure we'll keep finding them for the next hundred years. Whether they will be worth anything by the time they are found will be a different story.

[Xrayist]

Jackie Cochran is P-51C racer, Thunderbird, was thought to be lost in a crash decades ago. All of a sudden there is a gentleman who was asking about parts for said aircraft. Supposed to make first post restoration flight next year.

[Michel Lemieux]

South America could yield a few surprises....!!! Who knows.

K Weeks got his P-47 years ago from there.

Someone here remembers the auction / add for it?

I remember seeing he had to put it on storage for tax reasons.

Good subject Mark!

[marine air]

The Jackie Cochran racer "Thunderbird" for years was supposed to only be the logbooks. Of Course, Mike Coutches owned and sold a lot of P-51's and parts over the years. So maybe the logbooks were sold with some usable parts. Unlike Kermit's A model that is incomplete, there have never been any pictures of Thunderbird in the last fifty years.
The P-38's in Greenland are only getting more deeply submerged in ice. The first expedition was financed by Mr. Roy Shofner who certainly didn't know he was buying a "pig in a poke" when he kept investing. You're probably not going to find another blind investor for another attempt. It would have been a total failure and Mr. Shofner's deep pockets and expertise in mining equipment. He owned coal mines and other companies.
I crew a Falcon 900B that spent the first twenty years of it's life in Saudi Arabia . The Falcon jets and other aircraft coming from that part of the world are prone to corrosion from the dust and sand. Apparently it isn't as ideal a climate as Arizona. I don't know if the sand has salt or whatever in it but it causes corrosion and gets into everything. All of the Temco T-35's and Israeli P-51D's have been rife with corrosion.
Like the Zero that was found i Hawaii a few years ago that had been on a farm since being shot down on the Pearl harbor raid, I feel there may be more artificats on the Russian front. The Russians flew their stuff plus Spitfires, P-51's , P-39's and P-63s. There would also be a lot of German aircraft downed but not as many as the German types. I also feel Libya, Morroco, etc. may field some good finds. When I worked in Afghanistan, there were piles of Russian aircraft , trucks and equipment. The area was so remote that the locals had never bothered to steal the wheels and other things you'd think were useful. In the poorest countries there is no recycling center for metals. They jus tpush them out of the way with a bulldozer. Syria probably has some FW-190s pushed into a ravine on a couple of their bases.

[eze240]

If I recall right, there was a guy a few years ago who found about 15 Hawker Hind airframes in a dump near Kabul in Afghanistan....this is where you'll find most of any remaining stuff for restoration projects...many of the middle eastern countries have a tendency to just dump old equipment rather than scrapping or recycling it...
Otherwise, what's left elsewhere is in jungles, in the sea, etc...so it's nearly unsalvageable by now at best...
The best you can hope for is to find some data plates, etc from which you could build...or "restore" ...something that's effectively completely new...

[JohnB]

There will be previously unknown aircraft coming out of long term storage as their owners pass away.
A friend recently restored a completely stock PT-17.
It was bought surplus immediately after the war by a non-pilot and put away.
So, in 2015 his family sold it.
It was (as they say in the classic car world) "unmolested"...meaning it had never been modified, "improved" or frequently...butchered.

Likewise, I knew a guy in Texas with an flying BT-13...but he had a spare airframe in storage.

Okay, I know these aren't Bf-109s, Spitfires or Mustangs, but they are warbirds that haven't seen the light of day since they were sold surplus for next to nothing.

And unlike some "exotics" that will remain in long term storage awaiting their turn to be restored (or their owners finding enough money to restore them) these are out there ready to be flown and enjoyed by mere mortals.

After all, if someone does find a rare German type in some tunnel in the Fatherland...and it immediately disappears into a storage shed at a collector like Weeks or Allen...does it do anyone any good?

[tulsaboy]

I think that if I was wanting to work towards more flying aircraft, I would consider the possibility of recovering some of the known airframes that exist and are combat vets but are not candidates for airworthy restoration, doing a really nice cosmetic static restoration, and then arranging a swap with a museum that has a flyable (but presently static) airframe with no combat history. Everybody would win, as the museum gets a genuine combat vet and an airworthy airplane gets to stretch its wings.
kevin

[Chris Brame]

I'm guessing some more old barns will give up their secrets, but they'll be mostly PT/BT types like the BT-13/15 stash I found in Kentucky.