I had a chat with the lass conserving parts at the MBCC last weekend. Apparently the two main ID plates were probably fastened with magnesium rivets, which would have fizzed to nothing in no time at all in sea water, while of two other plates one had been broken off while its opposite number had been cut out. Someone, somewhere…. So it looks as though we’ll have to wait and see what evidence emerges from under the sea life. I think now it’s fairly obvious that it had laid on the open sea bottom ever since it was shot down, and was never hidden by the shifting sands, so it’s a minor miracle that as much as there is has survived.

Adrian