Allison JohnsonIts not wingeing, its a deep concern that the lessons of the 1970s and 1980s, when large amounts of wreckage were removed from Scotland for “preservation” only to be lost at a later date have not been learned.
To be quite honest, I wonder what your motives are. You obviously have done little research beyond reading accident cards and checking the legality of what you are doing. Your atitude is just a tad too gung-ho for my liking.
As I have stated above, the Spitfire is hardly a rare breed in UK museums – the vast majority of the people living in the UK live within 50 miles of a preserved example. Very few remain where they crashed. It is not good archeological practice to remove them all.
Preservation can take many forms. The fact that the Spit cannot be seen is not important. The fact that it is there will be enough to make people reflect; perhaps more so than if it becomes a small pile of parts displayed to a minority at some museum far from where it crashed.
I am not saying that all wreck recovery is a bad thing – indeed there have been a few successes where a lot of thought, research and planning led to significant recoveries – but there have also been significant failures. Iin too many cases the “preservation” movement has forgotten that these wrecks are part of the nation’s heritage, and are not the property of some self-appointed clique.
Best wishes
Steve P
My motives? My motive is to get something from WWII into the NE Aircraft Museum. Once there it wouldn’t be lost it would be worked on and then it would be put on static display. Gung-Ho? Now there’s nothing wrong with enthusiasm to see these things searched for and recovered. If you don’t like my enthusiasm I can’t help that so if something happens to move towards a search and then a recovery to a museum then don’t offer to help.
Ali
Allison JohnsonMark 12 did a thread not long back about wrecks in PNG.Get it out girl.Take plenty of good quality pics to go with the display,restoration and thank everyone involved in the recovery and restoration(if it comes to that).Everything in the past will dissapere eventually if left to the elements.
We have to find out if it’s still there first. Trying to put together a search with toys. The only thing that we know that is true is the fact that the aircraft went in there. You have seen the accident card so you know I aint making it up I’m just reading it out. There are stories that it was recovered but no hard evidence.
Lets see if it’s true and then get the thing into a museum and the rest who think it should stay there can whinge all they like. I am a keen lover of the NE Aircraft Museum (being a Yorkshire lass) and if I made an appeal for on the side grunts to help me I am sure they will be there by the bus load. I’m sure, despite some here who think it should stay, if I made an appeal here the same response would happen.
Ali
Allison JohnsonA couple of questions.
1. Who technically owns (should it be there) the aircaft today? The MOD? The custodian of the lake?
2. What authorization would be needed to either search for it, or raise it should it be found?
3. What is the manager of the fishing center basing his statements on? Personal experience? Local lore?
Answers
1 The aircraft is property of the crown.
2 To search you would need the land owners permission. To raise it you would need a licence from the RAF/MOD
3 The statement is based on local lore. I can’t find anyone who has seen it recovered but I did find something else.
During the 50s and 60s the locals would get drunk and use the iced up lake for curling with cars (youthful prank I feel) and sometimes a car would go through the ice and take the people with it. I found a retired local guy who owned a commercial diving company (he has proved who he was and I have seen documentation as to his business) and he was called out to recover the bodies. He saw the wreck in the 50s or 60s, he can’t remember exactly when as he was called out there numerous occasions. He doesn’t have an exact position but has narrowed down the ballpark. I spoke to the manager of the fishery and he said that only one car went into the loch despite this commercial diver saying it happened on numerous occasions. The big question is, what is true? It’s true that the Spitfire ditched as you can by the accident report.
Ali
Allison JohnsonScott’s base in Antarctica certainly doesn’t have an infinate life.The climate is distinctly changing down there and cans of food are now rusting away quite merrily.
The climate in Antartica whilst fairly benevolent doesn’t ensure long term preservation – indeed a number of BAS structures are being dismantled down there because they are distinctly unsafe.
Sounds like it all comes back money again. Perhaps a project could be put together using the excuse “It WAS going to be OK but because of global warming etc etc etc” and see if some lottery money could be made available.
Ali
Allison JohnsonAli,
I’ve left it 12 hrs to cool off my reply on your link post to Elliot.
Have you noticed the last line of the Q&A reply to the diver asking about Moray Firth Defiants?
Ross McNeill
Yes I did but with so many stories going around there’s nothing wrong with going up there and scanning to look see. At least one of two things will happen, we will either find something or we will put the stories to bed. It’s not just the Defiant story that I want to follow up but the story of a Spit in the Loch too.
Ali
Allison JohnsonCould you use a Nimrod to detect underwater wrecks? It has some sort of magnatometer thing to detect subs, doesn’t it?
Would love to but I don’t happen to have one hanging around. Seems as though the last person that borrowed it didn’t give it back. 😉
Ali
Allison JohnsonI would say that Scotts base has an infinite life insitu but the Spitfire has a finite life in its present position, if it is there! Find it before it is too late.
I couldn’t agree more.
Ali
Allison JohnsonYes it would but so what?
A different example but the same point – Captain Scott’s base hut in Antarctica still remains. It is, in my book, worthy of preservation. It would be easy to dismantle and ship it back to a UK museum where far more people would have access to it than now. Yet nobody has. Ask yourself why.
Best wishes
Steve P
Looking at how cash strapped most of the museums are I would say they couldn’t afford it. Anyway, it’s not really the same. If someone wanted to see Scotts base hut they could always travel there to see it but a Spitfire at the bottom of a lake is completely different. It’s lying there at the bottom of a lake where nobody can see it. We could erect a plaque but that’s all.
Ali
Allison JohnsonExcellent video, thanks for the link. When oh when will we see one fly in the UK…..@ Legends preferably. Stuff the piston engine rule !!
Excellent video. Loved it. It’s nice to see so much effort putting one of these back in the air again.
Ali
Allison JohnsonAs a historian, I am advocating leaving something for future generations of historians to examine. The Spitfire is hardly a rare breed in museums.
Best wishes
Steve P
But surely it would be easier for them to examine when it’s sat in a museum.
Ali
Allison JohnsonThe scrappies were rather efficient in removing the wrecks from the hills near where I live. People who could remove an entire Halifax from 2900ft up a hillside, miles away from a road would have no problem in recovering a Spit from shallow water in Central Scotland. With the state of the economy in 1945, Britain needed all the scrap it could get.
On another note, do we need to recover every piece of Spitfire wreckage that still remains on the hills and under water? People died in many, if not most of these crashes. Why not leave what little remains as memorials?
Best wishes
Steve P
Find a wreck on a hillside is one thing. Finding an aircraft that is as small as a Spitfire in a large lake is something completely different. If you read the accident report you will see that the pilot was injured and not killed. If he was injured the chances are the aircraft is still in one piece so why not try and recover it. There are precious few early Spitfires around and I believe the only flying MkII is the BBMF one and if this one comes up then there will be another.
I find it a bit strange that someone who is an aviation enthusiast (I think that’s why you’re on this forum) and you advocate leaving a possible intact MkIIa Spitfire at the bottom of a lake that isn’t a war grave.
Ali :confused:
Allison JohnsonAli,
Rememember Loch Doon and the Spit found by the Dumfries & Galloway Museum. All it takes is persistence. You cannot think a wreck is lying in shallow water waiting to be recovered. But if you pick a promising site (such as this) and invest time, effort and a lot of sweat, it will usually pay off. but be sure to do your homework first, but you know that already. Talk to eye-witnesses if you can find them.
Good luck
Cees
I have already spoken to a first person witness. The technique would be to use a magnetometer on the whole lake and this can be confirmed using GPS. This would get you in the ballpark but if they had used a Mag on the Loch Doon Spitfire they would have found it sooner. They did have the use of one temporarily but didn’t scan the area where the aircraft was and I feel that if you are going to search a lake then you have to do the lot. On the diving club website they did say that the aircraft was located just outside the area of the mag sweep. The mag will pick up any ferrous metals (even if encased in concrete) and using a 3D cartography software package you can build up a magnetic map of the bottom of the lake. Then you would use the Sonar in the area where the magnetic anomolies are to try and pinpoint the wreck. If you can’t pinpoint it then it’s likely to be buried under silt and you would need a sub bottom profiler to look through the silt and then you would see it and then the position would be known. The mag, sonar and the sub bottom profiler are all plugged into GPS units at all time. With modern underwater search tools it’s easy to scan bodies of fresh water but as is always the case, it’s the recovery that’s the difficult bit.
Ali
Allison JohnsonI think the large chasm which might be perceived to exist is possibly looking at the information you have posted because the ability to preserve in the U.K is increasingly lagging behind the ability to find aircraft. Without knowing the ‘ins and outs’ of various bits of kit it seems to me that cost of locating aircraft is dramatically falling in terms of man hours and the chance of finding and recovering at greater depth increasing.
These are very exciting times ahead for preservation – certainly the chances of seeing something like a Barracuda in the flesh again must be very real.
As for the legalities of wreck investigation – the people who we need to worry about are those who don’t abide by the rules and seldom post their intentions on internet forums -luckily there are very few of them. If preservation in the U.K can imbrace the new technologies in diving and actually preserve as well as our Canadian and European counterparts we should be able to fill quite a few gaps in our aviation heritage.
I have a friend of mine who is now working with the North East Aircraft Museum and has set up a diving team with them. Their mission is to seek out and the mission of the museum is to get the things out with the help of the divers. This is purely a volunteer operation and will probably a “tented” operation and done on the finest shoestring possible but at least it’s started. There is even talk about setting up a charitable trust for classic aircraft recovery so they have a forum for fund raising from corporates anywhere so lets see how it goes and lets see how it blooms.
Ali
Allison JohnsonI quite agree David, especially about our ability to preserve. I would still like to see Hendon’s Halifax restored properlly as was originally planned when it was recovered. The Loch Ness Wellingon proves what can be achieved.
Therefore I hope that Ali does find a Barracuda/Whitley/Skua/Stirling or anything else that is missing and that we will one day see it in all its glory.
Lets encourage and help her in her labours.
Steve.
Thanks for the words of encouragement Steve. I have just started up another thread about a Spitfire that went into a lake which I feel is still there but I would like people to check if there is something that I have missed.
Ali
Allison JohnsonCool it please.
Moggy
Moderator
OK
As I said in my reply to Ross
SOAPBOX MODE=OFF
Ali
🙂
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