bdk wrote:
If you know anything about construction, an underground vault made from reinforced concrete (a bunker if you will) would be required to keep the tons of earth above from crushing some relatively flimsy wooden crates flat. These were supposedly shipping crates, right?
When you dig a tunnel, you are making a cavity in well packed earth. The top of the tunnel essentially supports itself like an arch. In the case of these Spitfires, you have loose earth pushed into a hole with bulldozers or hand shovels. Even a modern steel shipping container would collapse under these circumstances. To make a vault strong enough you would need a foundation to keep the walls and roof from punching down over the aircraft like a staple through a few sheets of paper (the foundation would have to float on the soil below). And then the walls would need to be strong enough to keep from buckling and finally the roof would need to be strong enough to bridge the distance across each crate.
I've seen Spitfire sized wooden shipping crates (with a Spitfire inside actually) and I suggest it was much less strong than a modern steel shipping container.
Maybe this is a modern miracle or some very special engineering was done to protect these aircraft, but this engineer has his reservations that these aircraft are in any condition resembling intact. I suspect they will be at least as crushed as Glacier Girl and likely more corroded.
Even if my expectations are realized, I hope these are recovered and at a minimum the identities can be used to create more flyable aircraft.
Post of the thread.
It may well be 'the greatest warbird find ever' when they're
found and
extracted in some useful form - at the moment it's still under speculation.
Regards,
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