The topic of grave robbing is an extremely emotive one. It is a reprehensible act but does happen when unscrupulous ‘archaeologists’ carry out unauthorised digs and are then only too happy to tell people about human remains placed in jars. The full weight of the Law should be brought against them.

Since first starting out on aircraft digs it has been a sharp learning curve for all within our group and indeed we are still learning.

Firstly Kev I could say out of all the people I have talked to I have never heard anyone having “Human Remains” in jars and if you know of anyone that has talked about this then I would suggest you let the police and indeed the MOD police know of their identity.

I only know of a well documented case which is abroad where a rear gunners spine sits on a guys fireplace. The law has been made aware of this and apparently there is nothing they can do about it. This was the situation as I knew of it but am happy to be corrected if anyone knows of any other details.

I have to agree that the FULL weight of the law should be carried out on anyone that takes parts of aircraft without a licence and that anyone not following procedure on a licenced dig should be prosecuted.

In my experiance it appears to be very hard for the MOD to prosecute people for anything along this nature as they have to prove wrong doing and even when they do people seem to get away with a lot.

Here is a brief description of what you would have to do to get a licence as I understand it.

1) Locate the target aircraft.
2) Carry out research to establish beyond doubt the ID of the aircraft.
3) Ask landowners permission.
4) Get paperwork from MOD for licence application.
4a) At this point consider if there was a bombload on board and that ALL crew have known graves.
5) Fill out application including as much additional info as possible.
6) File any reports such as the county archaeologists report and site safety report by landowner if required by the MOD.
7) Await confirmation or rejection of licence.
8) carry out excavation
8a) consider where the items will go after the dig whether to private collection of public museum who actually want the items. Our local the NMS museum of flight will only accept items that can be cared for in a resonable way ie they are not rusting or falling to pieces.consider what it is the museum can provide in terms of care for the items or even if after say 5 years they should or will be scrapped as having no place anymore in the collection.
9) file an end of excavation report into your findings and so the MOD can strike of the parts to your ownership as they are crown property until you file this report. This also lets the MOD consider if what you have is sensative material or something they would like to retain. Mostly you will receive full ownership.

Notes:-

if all crew are accounted for ie. have a known grave you will likely be granted a licence unless not enough of the body was recovered. In this case it is not impossible that you will get a licence but unlikely.

If some crew are not accounted for then it is unlikely you would get a licence.

If the bombload was onboard when it crashed you will be unlikely to get a licence.

If there are known graves then the crashsite is NOT a war grave as all the men have graves.

If you find human remains or suspect that you have found human remains you must stop the dig and inform local police NOT MOD police. the local police should bring the coroner out with them. Ask for an incident number to protect yourself of any further questions from MOD or Police this can then be used as a reference of you reporting remains.

If the above happens phone the Police right away while you are at site if possible but defiantely on the same day.

If you find ordanance then the same procedure as above applies but the police should bring out the EOD team with them.

As everyone will be aware on finding ordanace this should be given up to the police and the EOD team. I think they are evermore worried about these crash sites being used as a souce of explosives for the use in terrorism so we are quite lucky to still be able to do these digs.

If anyone is thinking how horrible it is to go digging up these old aircraft please remember all the hours and hundreds of pounds that goes into the research and excavation of these aircraft and if it were not for these people then the story of the crew and the aircraft may be lost in time forever. Also remember the persons who dig up the aircraft are 9 out of 10 times the people who raise the memorials to the crew.

The people who carry out excavations legally do so as little more than a hobby and interest much like any one would who digs their garden or collects model trains and as such should be congratulated on the great job that MOST of them do.

The minority of people make a bad name for the majority of those who do it by the book.

With the F-86 gone and the Draken now in Scotland

Where in Scotland has the Draken gone too???

seems aviation is going through a bad time.

thats just the thing though. Aviation always will be on a bad patch because at any one time there is always something bad happening in aviation. We can only hope and pray for the people that have been lost and for the people that put their lives at risk for aviation.

Flight is a thing man or women for that matter had hopes and dreams of and then it was gifted to us and man and women still have hopes and dreams of flight from historic aircraft to airliners.

To quote someone before and I cant remember who it was but I think this quote is true of a lot of people I have known and of a lot of people on this forum.

“It’s not tragic to die doing what you love.”

To prevent a major incident? :rolleyes:

Or perhaps to ground an entire fleet of Rapides just because of one MINOR incident.

The CAA have eyes and ears. Lets wait and see what they say in their report.

I must say this one last thing though. I would rather see a whole hangar of rare and endangered aircraft burn to the ground if it would save juxt one life.

having done some firefighting training. remove persons and any casualties from the area before tackling fire and only then if there is no sinificant danger to the operator.

Indeed not a good thing heroics if you get your fingers burnt.

A couple of low quality digital compact photos for you cropped and reduced in quality for forum of the Cat in her new colours.

Sorry about the quality.

I must apologise for most of the East Fortune crowd today as most of them had already left by the time the big cat had arrived. But in fairness most of the crowd had been drenched about 4 times by this point if they hadnt sought shelter in the elephant shed (sorry hangar).

East Fortune VE/VJ day celebrations. been told there will be an enhanced flying display to blow our minds.

Also Duxford in july and Leuchars in september.