More buried Spifires..

[John Lever]

This time closer to home in Birmingham.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/history/worl ... ngham.html

 

[Peter Graham]

Hmmm........?

 

[Roughwear]

I can see no reason to doubt the man's claims. It was a common practice after the War to bury equipment. They had so much surplus, redundant equipment. Many surplus Irvins were apparently burnt on bonfires. Times have certainly changed now!

 

[coalman]

There is no substance to this story of any spifires being buried under the housing at Castle Bromwich, which seems to rear its ugly head every decade or so , this gentleman I feel may be confusing his story with one of being involved in the episode in 1940's when the RAF had Air ministry authorisation to dispose of some time expired surplus piston engines on the airfield and was buried in a pit on part of the airfield which was recovered prior to the RAF leaving in 1960.I actually saw a copy of the order which gave the authoristion and way of disposal of a total of 9 engines of which 3 were merlins ,which was kept by the RAF nco which was made responsible for carrying out the order. I interviewed this ex NCO in the 1980's who had settled in nearby Solihull after he left the service.He was told by his CO to use a local building contractor who used self employed labour to dig the pit and bury the crated engines, just before the RAF was leaving the airfield he was contacted by the station commander and was asked to disclose the position of the buried engines, the next day the pit was re dug and the engines was disposed of by the RAF 3 days before the official closure.
One only has to look at maps of the airfield between 1945 and 1960 to see that there was no where to bury crated spitfires without stopping the day to day movement of a service establishment plus a part of it was owned by the birmingham council since 1915 at the same time.
Most of the site was built on forming the castle vale housing estate, which over the years has been knocked down and replaced by new housing and shopping parades, schools and warehousing so anything would have been found by the builders of each new phase.
Regarding the saga of the burmese spitfires, despite a recent press conference at the IWM in London last week there is still no proof that these even exist, the statment reading that actual digging will take place in late January to early March period of 2013 so we will await till then to see if the rumours are true or not.
If I had a £1 for every time I have heard of buried spitfires and engines at Castle Bromwich I could now buy one next week, even after the war until 1960 even a unused spitfire had value, they was brought back by Vickers and refurbished and sold overseas airforces including Ireland, was used in training schools , certainly not crated and disposed of by the RAF by buriel.
Whilst we are at it the rumour of a spitfire propellor being blown into the of the roof of the spitfire factory which is now the jaguar factory and still there is untrue has well
Can assure everybody the rumours were looked into and proven beyond doubt they were just rumours many years ago however No doubt the current householders, Castle Vale housing trust along with the local police will now have to put up with idiots with thier metal detectors and JCb's in back gardens digging up thier metal lottery tickets until the story dies down for another decade.

 

[Peter Graham]

Thanks Coalman, very informative. The story sounded extremely dubious to me.

 

[Roughwear]

Thanks for the clarification. Maybe the guy was simply confused. However only excavation would prove whether they are buried where he claims they are. If he confused crated Spits with the engines, then as Coleman says they don't exist.

 

[coalman]

Thanks for the clarification. Maybe the guy was simply confused. However only excavation would prove whether they are buried where he claims they are. If he confused crated Spits with the engines, then as Coleman says they don't exist.

Digging under a runway in Burma is one thing however getting Time team turning up on a sunday morning to knock down your house and dig 30 foot down to check if a wooden crate exists is another, personnly I dont think any householder will aggree to that do you?
The whole site has been buit upon, in most places knocked down and re built and no sign of its former use exists, even the original memorial which Alex Henshaw himself unvieled has been moved to another part of the site which was knocked down and rebuilt 15 yrs ago.This was when the rumours was eventually dismissed as the former site of housing where the so called buried aircraft were said to be, it was investigated and nothing was found at all, not even a rivet .
I recall being invited in 1984 to a farm near to Aston Down airfield which had an old underground stores, the farmer who owned the land came accross it and when openned up for the first time he found RAF items still boxed up, instruments, uniforms and even flying clothing.I was with others who was invited to see and value the items, some of the instruments still adorn my original spitfire instrument panel upstairs now.I saw 1941 patternflying boots, helmets, life jackets and even a flying jacket still in boxes which as time went by was sold off, I think a flying clothing dealer called Quartermaster in london had most of it where member groups of the BAPC bought the instruments.
Over the years there has been hundreds of rumours of buried aircraft, yet only one ever turned out to be true, and that was when the remains of a mk16 spitfire was found on the former fire dump at Kenley which is now in the hands of a museum in shoreham.

 

[m444uk]

It's amazing the number of disused military sites these guys crack.

http://www.28dayslater.co.uk/forums/index.php

http://www.28dayslater.co.uk/forums/sho ... -June-2012

Some stuff like this sub by permission

http://www.28dayslater.co.uk/forums/sho ... e-May-2012