Lost WWII plane uncovered on beach in Wales

[unhappycamper]

Specialists inspect a World War II fighter plane recently found on the Welsh coast. The American P-38 aircraft had made an emergency landing in 1942 after it ran out of gas, and was buried under water and sand for 65 years until revealed by beach erosion in July. Experts hope to recover the plane for a British military museum.


Lost WWII plane uncovered on beach in Wales
By Richard Pyle - The Associated Press
Posted : Wednesday Nov 14, 2007 15:11:11 EST

NEW YORK — Sixty-five years after it ran out of gas and crash-landed on a beach in Wales, an American P-38 fighter plane has emerged from the surf and sand where it lay buried — a World War II relic long forgotten by the U.S. government and unknown to the British public.

During those decades, beach strollers, sunbathers and swimmers were often within a few yards of the aircraft, utterly unaware of its existence just under the sand. Only this past summer did it suddenly reappear because of unusual conditions that caused the sands to shift and erode.

The startling revelation of the Lockheed “Lightning” fighter, with its distinctive twin-boom design, has stirred considerable interest in British aviation circles and among officials of the country’s aircraft museums, ready to reclaim yet another artifact from history’s greatest armed conflict.

Ric Gillespie, who heads a Wilmington, Del.-based nonprofit group dedicated to preserving historic aircraft, finds romance as well as historic significance in the discovery. “It’s sort of like ‘Brigadoon,’ the mythical Scottish village that appears and disappears,” he said. “Although the Welsh aren’t too happy about that analogy — they have some famous legends of their own.”

Gillespie’s organization, the International Group for Historic Aircraft Recovery, known as TIGHAR, learned of the plane’s existence in September from a British air history enthusiast and sent a seven-member team to survey the site last month.

It plans to collaborate with British museum experts in recovering the nearly intact but fragile aircraft next spring. The Imperial War Museum Duxford and the Royal Air Force Museum are among the institutions expressing interest.


Rest of article at: http://www.airforcetimes.com/news/2007/11/ap_lostp38_071114/