http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2271153/The-ghost-rises-Ambitious-plan-salvage-WW2-Lightning-fighter-sea-Welsh-coast.html

Probably my favorite of all the WW2 fighter aircraft.

It looked like they were walking on the plane in the shallows.

Yeah, it does.  Amazingly preserved in the sands.

Always loved the P-38. I remember building a Revell model of it as a kid. About 10 years ago (maybe more) I had the privilege to sit in Lefty Gardner's "White Lighting" at the Lakeway airpark in Texas. Would have loved to take it for a spin.

http://p38whitelightnin.com/

Yep, pretty cool plane and a pretty cool project. I've heard kind of a similar story about buried Spitfires in Burma but I'm not sure those stories are real.

I really like to see it when we uncover a hidden artifact.  This is one I'm following too http://www.maam.org/p61/p61_rest.htm also one of my favorite. I remember when I was stationed at RAF Alcounbury UK, I volunteered to help transit alert launch and recover airplanes during our airshow.  I was able to get very up close and personnel with a ME-109, RAF F-4U Corsair (that radial motor made the most beautiful sound I ever heard), P-51D, Spitfire, Fieseler Fi 156 Storch "Stork" (damn thing rolled about 5 yards and was already in the air, with a moderate head wind). 

Thanks VJ for the link.


Cheers
Ron

Methinks it shan't remain a secret location for long.

My most favorite plane of all time. Built many scale models of it. Read almost every single book and story about it in my youth, could not get enough of it. Thought the prototypes were much more beautiful than the production models, but the war time planes were brutes and fearful "Fork Tailed Devils". Not many left.

Maybe the Spitfire recovery is true. Fly Magazine had this piece on it in late December.

http://www.flyingmag.com/pilots-places/pilots-adventures-more/work-set-start-burma-spitfire-recovery

Should be interesting to watch. I hope they have thought to document the recovery on film so we all can check it out.

Read about the Burma Spitfires in another magazine. I won't believe it till I actually see planes being unearthed. After WWII fighter planes and most all other planes not actually at bases were surplus and the gov'ts were not going to spend the time and effort to either maintain them or try to sell them much less spending the time and effort to pack them up for storage in the utmost worst environment on earth and then dig huge holes and then bury them in secret and then keep that secret for almost 70 years as budgets were being slashed even as the atom bombs were being dropped. This is way so few remain, they were scrapped, thousands of them. Hard to believe this story.

"Griffon-engined fighters", rare indeed. I agree that this sounds too good to be true. But if true, that would be sweet!

Read about the Burma Spitfires in another magazine. I won't believe it till I actually see planes being unearthed. After WWII fighter planes and most all other planes not actually at bases were surplus and the gov'ts were not going to spend the time and effort to either maintain them or try to sell them much less spending the time and effort to pack them up for storage in the utmost worst environment on earth and then dig huge holes and then bury them in secret and then keep that secret for almost 70 years as budgets were being slashed even as the atom bombs were being dropped. This is way so few remain, they were scrapped, thousands of them. Hard to believe this story.

This is the story as to why they were buried. "With the threat of a Japanese occupation looming, the Allied forces decided to bury the aircraft within their crates, where they sat just a couple weeks later as the use of atomic bombs brought the war to an end -- and have remained entombed ever since." Apparently they were never un-crated.

I'm going to say that planes shipped to a particular place were packed for that particular cruise, I doubt a plane packed to be shipped on board a sea going vessel woulod be properly packed to withstand almost 70 years in a super wet, high humidity evironment, even if it was under sand. And I seriously doubt that with Japanese occupation looming, folks are going to figure out the vast logistics involved and the sheer manpower,planning, time and equipment needed to do that when in reality they were merely thinking about their next meal and how to evade, escape, and survive Japanese occupation. Again, hard to believe that they would expend that much effort towards the end of the war when Allied victory was eminent to pack, dig, bury and then keep secret for almost 70 years planes that were for all intents and puposes scrap. A few well place hand grenades would have accomplished rendering them useless to the Japanese anyhow if keeping them from being captured was the intent. 

I'm going to say that planes shipped to a particular place were packed for that particular cruise, I doubt a plane packed to be shipped on board a sea going vessel woulod be properly packed to withstand almost 70 years in a super wet, high humidity evironment, even if it was under sand. And I seriously doubt that with Japanese occupation looming, folks are going to figure out the vast logistics involved and the sheer manpower,planning, time and equipment needed to do that when in reality they were merely thinking about their next meal and how to evade, escape, and survive Japanese occupation. Again, hard to believe that they would expend that much effort towards the end of the war when Allied victory was eminent to pack, dig, bury and then keep secret for almost 70 years planes that were for all intents and puposes scrap. A few well place hand grenades would have accomplished rendering them useless to the Japanese anyhow if keeping them from being captured was the intent.

No argument here. If they were actually buried, regardless of how they were buried, I would expect major restoration to fly again. Just saying throwing them in a hole in their original shipment crates to keep them out of Japanese hands is a little more credible. But like you I remain skeptical. But it is a nice dream. Glad someone else is risking the considerable bucks to follow up. Kind of like the infamous Greenland glacier aircraft.

Check out "WWII" magazine for the article they had, they are basically skeptical and provide some back ground on the folks involved. I highly doubt that the Japanese would stage an all out attack on an air field so late in the war by army troops that would have no use for planes or by air forces that by then were more concerned about Okinawa and Iwo Jima and using pilots with just hours of training to use as kamikazes against our navy. By that time in the war, the Allies would have had supreme air superiority and to prevent these planes from falling into enemy hands they could have just simply flown them to another nearby air field. I hope I'm wrong, but I could go on and on as the the flawed logic on why there may be planes buried secretly in the ground in Burma almost 70 years after the war ended and just now the story breaks. We'll see.