WPG STATEMENT the suggestion of “planting something to find” is just outrageous! Not only is this hugely condescending, but it goes against everything that archaeology stands for! Surely that statement is a massive embarrassment for L.A.I.T.?

Hi Lee – As you have mentioned me by name several times in your post, I obviously feel compelled to reply – Though, firstly I would like to clear up the matter in the quote from your post above – I did not make any suggestion about planting finds – I simply responded to what was clearly flippant suggestion by another poster on this thread. I fail to see how anyone would take this seriously and to suggest that myself or anyone from our group would in anyway interfere with a site as a spoiler for another group is IMO quite out of order.

Other than that – Thank you for posting this “statement” as it is the first public indication of what actually happened on this project to have come from your group and is highly informative. It is good to hear that you surveyed the site and have such experienced members – However I do find it a little odd that you say we are “on the same-side”, yet I have never heard of your group, nor am I aware of any of the 400 investigation / excavations you have carried out – even though you are on our doorstep – so to speak. I do find this strange as we correspond with many other groups, including sharing research, resources and occasionally projects – perhaps you could let us know more about yourselves?

I am sorry if you feel my comments were in any way mocking you – they were certainly not intended as such, I was simply making observations based on my actual experience and knowledge of the site – NOT merely assumptions. When I first suggested investigating the crash site of HeIII, Werke No. 2989 – I did get a few raised eyebrows from members of our group and other groups we contacted – But we had clear and achievable aims for our project, based on our ongoing research project into the incident – i.e. to pinpoint the impact site and carry out a detailed electronic survey of the area. Personally I am satisfied that nothing remains at the site – but I am quite prepared to be proved wrong and wish you luck – We come across many of these stories concerning buried aircraft remains – we would all like to think that surely some of them must be true?

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Our meagre finds – The parts we can attribute with reasonable certainty to the aircraft – the two larger circular objects to the bottom centre are: left; part of an ammeter from the aircraft’s instrument panel and right; a tap from an oxygen bottle. The small aluminium buckle is, we believe, from part of a crewmember’s equipment as it matches similar buckles we have seen found at other crash sites. There is only one bullet cartridge casing in this photo, which is definitely German and of the correct date and calibre – we did also find several similar broken ones.

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We found several of these scattered over the area – it is all that is left of a German magnesium 1kg incendiary bomb after it has completely burnt out – probably relics of an earlier air raid.

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Souvenier apparently made by one of the barrage balloon crew that were partially credited with bring the HeIII down – it is made from aluminium from the aircraft and we understand each of the balloon team got one of these – it was given to one of our members during our research, interviewing witnesses to the incident and relatives of those connected to it.