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

[michaelharadon]

How about in the Baltic? I've seen photos of several hundred year old sailing ships on the bottom still intact, and I hear that the water-temp, chemical composition, lack of marine life, favors the preservation of objects, including aircraft. Has anyone gone searching yet?

[sandiego89]

I think lakes and deep oceans will continue to be a source.

I was amazed at the images that that the R/V Petral captured of the US aircraft around the Lexington and other ships. Sadly it looks like Paul Allen's legacy with this effort will not continue. Cant help but think there were thoughts to bring some of those up.

[PinecastleAAF]

I think there is still an intact P-40 similar to the one found in Egypt a few years ago somewhere in Northwest Canada.

[Dave Hadfield]

The Black Sea. A few years ago Ballard found Roman ships down there with ropes still in the pulleys. The depths are almost totally anoxic due to the sea-influxion 8,000 years ago.

Off the west coast of the Crimea there are bound to be Stukas...

[Dan Jones]

I think there is still an intact P-40 similar to the one found in Egypt a few years ago somewhere in Northwest Canada.

There is supposed to be, as a deceased friend of mine tripped over it one afternoon flying a Turbo Beaver back into a place called Fort Simpson, NWT, and Ron knew his airplanes. He was mildly lost and scud running through snow showers, but he flew right over it, low, saw it, and circled it a couple of times. He told me about thirty years ago "It's an E model, on it's belly, the prop is bent, and the canopy is open." He also said it's about a hundred yards from a powerline cut, about a hundred miles south of Fort Simpson. But he looked and looked for it for a couple of years afterwards and could never find it again.

[Michel Lemieux]

If the HS-2L survived since the 20's with intact fabric in Canada.......I can only imagine what could be found that was lost with all the ferrying that happened between Canada and the UK.

http://warbirdinformationexchange.org/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=72160&p=634095&hilit=Quebec#p634095

[Richard W.]

There's a section in Rick Atkinson's book about the US Army's Italian campaign, The Day of Battle, where he describes the huge black markets that sprang up everywhere as towns and cities were liberated.

He mentions--although without citing a source--that brand new, crated Bf109s could be had for a few hundred dollars.

If it's true, I wonder if any were sold to souvenir crazy GIs. Someone in supply, maybe, with access to trucks and port facilities...

[CoastieJohn]

FWIW.....I don't think anyone found the bomber that landed in the river in Cincinnati and then floated down river for a bit.? You don't hear too much about that one anymore.

[PinecastleAAF]

I think there is still an intact P-40 similar to the one found in Egypt a few years ago somewhere in Northwest Canada.

There is supposed to be, as a deceased friend of mine tripped over it one afternoon flying a Turbo Beaver back into a place called Fort Simpson, NWT, and Ron knew his airplanes. He was mildly lost and scud running through snow showers, but he flew right over it, low, saw it, and circled it a couple of times. He told me about thirty years ago "It's an E model, on it's belly, the prop is bent, and the canopy is open." He also said it's about a hundred yards from a powerline cut, about a hundred miles south of Fort Simpson. But he looked and looked for it for a couple of years afterwards and could never find it again.

I keep hoping it will be found, it's been on my mind for a LONG time.

[wendovertom]

I tend to be pessimistic on hidden finds but I love to dream that someone could / would find all those P-47s that were dumped into a South American river - was that Guatemala / Brazil ? And supposedly a missionary friend of mine saw a big "twin boom" plane somewhere in the jungles on Cebu. But these are all pretty big dreams.

Tom P.

[ZRX61]

The Brits had a secret base behind German lines in Albania where they used Swordfish...

[Cubs2jets]

Sooooo...

What's to be found in the flooded sub-basements of Tempelhof airport? Rumors of 109's and 190's once abounded...

C2j

[blue3992]

I think a lot of folks missed this part.....

This would NOT include underwater, wrecks in jungles, parts & pieces scattered about.

While it's intriguing to imagine secret tunnels full of forgotten aircraft, I think your picture was telling. The caption mentions "tunnels under the city are quite extensive and hardly touched since they were vacated after the war," but the picture appears to show someone giving a guided tour. Doing a Google image search turns up many similar images of guided tours of "secret Nazi tunnels" in Germany and elsewhere in Europe. Are there still tunnels and bunkers somewhere in Europe that remain undiscovered? I find it hard to believe that 75 years after the end of the war anything would still be hidden. It seems possible, but unlikely. Notable exception in the fiction world; Clive Cussler's intrepid hero Dirk Pitt found a hidden squadron of Me-262's in Japan (I think) in his novel Dragon.

I think it's more likely that ones and twos may crop up here and there, particularly as their original owners pass on, as someone further up the thread pointed out. Who knows what could be hidden in the back of a barn/warehouse/hangar in the out-of-the-way corners of the US and the world.

I'd assume a disassembled and crated-up aircraft would be more likely to have remained undiscovered, as opposed to a fully assembled aircraft. A P-51 would take a couple of big crates, but again, the US is full of big warehouses and other industrial buildings, to say nothing of what may be in other countries.

Interesting to daydream about....

[CoastieJohn]

This link is semi-related to the topic. There are a few old photos of aircraft. The Japanese planes in South Korea is interesting in that I didn't know any were left there. Likewise, the BF being pulled out of the bushes makes me wonder if there are any other aircraft hidden in the bushes somewhere waiting to be found.


https://www.reddit.com/r/WWIIplanes/com ... a_in_2002/

[Warbird Kid]

I lay awake at night sometimes and wonder, what ever happened to the remains of the Excalibur? The VS-44 that crashed on takeoff in 1942 at Botwood, Newfoundland. The nose and rear fuselage broke away and were never recovered. But the main center section and wing was. I've read that the wing may have been preserved and could be there still today, somewhere. I've also tried to contact local diving teams in Montevideo, Uruguay, to see if they ever found CX-AIR, also known as Exeter. It crashed on August 15, 1947 while landing in the River Plate off Montevideo when (allegedly) returning from a smuggling flight to Paraguayan rebels.

That and I've heard about an intact S-42 in Canada and S-39 in Alaska.

And am I the only one holding out hope over Ron Carlson's missing Avenger? I'm half expecting a news story to break about an Avenger being found in the middle of the dessert after 10+ years.

Last edited by Warbird Kid on Sat Dec 19, 2020 10:03 am, edited 1 time in total.