Especially given the Libyan leadership’s more receptive stance towards the west these days…
My theory has always been that when aircraft come down for whatever reason, they either get recovered or left, dependent usually on the terrain and conditions at the time. Recent years have seen – and still are seeing – some wonderful finds coming out of Russia, Papua New Guinea, northern Norway, Greenland etc, all of which are places where recovery would have been either impossible or impracticable during the war. Even if you made comparitively easy treks up many British hillsides in recent years, you’d have come across substantial sections of rare or extinct aeroplanes – Mickle Fell Stirling, Beaufighter tail on Aran Fawddwy, Whitley wings up on Scottish Moors.
The desert is another such place – we all know the story of the B24 ‘Lady Be Good’ which was discovered in the desert some 15 (?) years after its disappearance, and when you consider the amount of aircraft which were used in that conflict, well I really cannot believe that there’s nothing out there. Okay, the local bedouin tribes will have had sixty years of picking the bits off any exposed airframes, but I’m convinced there’s still a lot to find out there. Baltimores, Wellingtons, Marylands, Kittyhawks, Beaufighters, Hurricanes, Ju52s, Ju87s, Bf109’s…
(climbs off hobby horse…)
Steve,
As long as they haven’t gone the same road as the recent HP Hermes expedition where a few years earlier the wreck had been smelted on site by making a bonfire out of the fuselage. Things do turn up all the time.
As recent as last weekend I found out that a very substantial tailsection of “the other” bomber was found.
More about that later when the time is right 😎
I agree fully with JDK that while a lot of people are discussing things, others are actually recovering airframes (not intended as an insult but more as a fact).
Cheers
Cees
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