Bruce, unless you actually go, then you never know. You may be right , you may be wrong. All we can draw upon is past experience. Lady be Good crew members remains were found exposed on the surface by searchers. Why not Lt Copping?

I quite agree!

So your answer is that my credibility is questionable, what a surprise!

pat1968. I like a number of people on this forum have a credibility gap with casually finding the pilot’s remains as reported variously as 5-8 kilometres from the crash site. That is millions of square metres of search area. I offered a reasonable and possible answer to your question… “but i struggle to come up with a scenario which would benefit them if they lied about it?”

You may well be right with regards to finding the pilots remains, I can neither confirm or deny any of the Italian claims. As for your scenario as i have stated quite clearly it doesn’t stand up to scrutiny. If the Italian team wanted to obscure human remains as they represented a complication to a potential recovery why report them at all? Sorry scenario yes, reasonable and possible nonsense!

As I know what the costings were to get the P-40 to El Alamein, I also have a credibility gap that you were personally going fund an operation in excess of £100k…if the P-40 was to be professionally dismantled and transported at minimal risk to the aircraft and the participants. Perhaps you can confirm if you had a sponsor in mind.

You are clearly having some difficulty understanding what i am saying. The sponsorship would have come from the production company. They document the search and recovery and provided security. The aircraft could surely have been dismantled by the RAFM experts? I have never said that i would fund a recovery personally. As far as £100K to dismantle an aircraft and transport it a few hundred miles after loading it into a container as many others have said I would love to see where the money was spent! But again that won’t be forthcoming will it! I recovered two container loads of aircraft dismantled them, packed them into two shipping container transported them hundreds of miles through a war zone, had them loaded onto a container ship and transported back to the UK for a fraction of that cost. If you have/had an issue with my credibility with regards to recoveries why did you generously (as you put it) give me the coordinates for the spitfire?

Having generously given you the Spitfire co-ordinates, yes, I can see why the information you gave me re the Spitfire was confidential…and the two weeks to the recce, became six months plus, and then never. I considered that freed me of our agreement and the image you referred to, which I never saw, and from the source you referred to, was total ‘tosh’. The site has been inspected by satellite and on the ground. Minimal steel Spitfire remains only.

I am afraid i have credibility gap when it comes to believing that you do anything out of generosity! You haven’t mentioned your generous finders fee and desire to be involved in any documentary that may or may not have materialised. The idea that I agreed to carry out a recce in two weeks is nonsense and i am not surprised that you can offer a BS reason for unilaterally going back on promises that you make. I know it isn’t the first time either do you remember publishing pictures of the Hinds when you were asked to keep them under raps? Selective memory it seems when it comes to sticking to agreements! As far as my sources are concerned i will happily discuss this with you face to face when we meet again.

As you have failed to answer my question I assume i can use the Italian rationale and use that as a means of assuming your lack of credibility!

Tony,

They did not cooperate with the team that collected the aircraft. As ever, there is much obfuscation here.

John,

Pat at least knows some of the background to this. You do not, and have no clue as to the process that led to the route chosen. I don’t either, so I ain’t going to comment on that aspect of it.

Bruce

Actual they do explain their rationale for the route chosen on the website , here is an extract from the link given by Tony;

Today we have a task all the more difficult and impossible and that, after having previously studied the paper, reports and surveys done on the ground, groped to retrace the path the battered Sgt. Copping may have undertaken in the vain hope of finding salvation: 40 about 50 km towards 123 ° oasis of Farafra.

We know that he made a landing “controlled” but the impact on the ground has been violent and perhaps wounded; It has little water available, about 1 or 2 liters (had to make a transfer flight of about 20 ‘).

28 June 42 was very hot (45 degrees), about how in these days (have been exactly 70 years !!!) and then would move only at night with the cool.

He dismantled the radio, blasted the IFF (identification friend or foe) cut the seat belts, made a shelter with a parachute near the plane and maybe you stayed close for at least a day.

Certainly shocked, bewildered, he asked the paper and determined that perhaps can get to Farafra or at least pick up a track (the old track passes close to Ain Dalla charted); and so he walks towards his bitter fate and almost famous.

We make all these reflections, over a cup of tea, and there is a sadness and a bit of anxiety.

We will have to walk several kilometers in the plain degrading as were a series of concentric basins in the center of which lies the oasis, but we plan to narrow searches to a radial of 123 ° to maximum 15 km.

We know that we will reach the maximum distance when the sun is high in the sky with temperatures higher than 43 ° 45, so we load in backpacks, besides the equipment, even a fair supply of water that eventually will be hot …..

We distance ourselves about 300 meters apart and set off.

This is far from exhaustive, and is clearly translated from Italian. There is a great deal more information contained on the website.

N.B. For ‘Paper’ read Map

….hence opening up this thread again with the most flimsiest of unsubstantiated and uncredited rumour?

That reminds me i must buy a lottery ticket!

By the way it’s either ‘the flimsiest’ or ‘the most flimsy’

Did you consider that if the Italians had plans possibly to facilitate their own recovery of the P-40, or perhaps to make a TV documentary, both for commercial reasons, the relevant permissions required from the Egyptian Military/Government would be complicated and compromised if there were human remains actually on site rather than 5-8 Km away from the P-40?

Mark

That is possible but I think about as far fetched as finding spitfires buried in Burma! The Italian team have a long record of recovering remains and making sure they have a proper burial, why bother making the claim at all if the intention was to carry out a recovery and remove any complication? If the intention was to scupper someone elses plans they could say the remains are at the crash site? Then it becomes a defacto war grave? In any event this would have taken place prior to the media frenzy. Sorry but that doesn’t really stand up to any real scrutiny. Its just another convienient Italy bashing, and more than a little far fetched, theory. The only people I can categorically say have been arguably underhand and dissingenuous at best are the RAFM and friends.

Why did the RAFM museum not consider the offer to recover the aircraft at no cost, over the much more risky let’s swap a spitfire for what in the end turned out to be nothing?

My understanding is that the only people to see the bones (whatever they were, and Laurence Garey did confirm they were human from an examination of the pictures), and photograph them, were the Italian team. I further understand that they had been asked to provide details of the location by representatives of the AHB, but no reply was forthcoming. I suggest that no testing was ever done, and this is no more than a red herring sadly. From the point of view of the family, they would be perfectly entitled to find out why they had been lied to.

As i have stated a mass of misinformation was issued by the MOD but we are still to consider them to be a reliable source of information? The bones in the picture were human that is a fact or do you question Laurences’ identification?

I am afraid selecting an unsubstantiated claim from a British source over and unconfirmed Italian one doesn’t prove anything beyond the fact that some Brits consider themselves above the Italians (and Egyptians). Is there actually any evidence to support one claim over the other?

Were they?

As the Italian team never stated where they had found the remains, despite being asked, how do you expect anyone else to find them? Which direction are you going to go?

I think the Italians might dispute that? How is saying i am in the know but i can’t tell you different for the Brits (and Americans) but not the Italians?

I have no idea where the remains were found i was not privy to that information. The Italians stated that this information was passed on to the Egyptians and the British Embassy. Remains were then apparently tested at an as yet unidentified location. Information was then released to the family which even the most cursory review demonstrated was absolute nonsense. Despite this we are apparently to rely on the assertion that the location was never received. All a little selective in my opinion!