One man's war to find lost Spitfires

Extraordinary plans to raise a lost squadron of Spitfires that has lain buried in Burma since the end of the Second World War were revealed this weekend as David Cameron, Britain's Prime Minister, visited the capital, Rangoon.

Now, the Lincolnshire farmer who devoted 15 years of his life to finding the planes has spoken about his quest to recover them and get them airborne.

David Cundall, 62, of Sandtoft, near Scunthorpe, has spent pounds 130,000 of his money, visited Burma 12 times, persuaded the country's secretive regime to trust him, and all the time sought testimony from a dwindling band of Far East veterans in order to locate the Spitfires.

His treasure hunt was sparked by little more than a throwaway remark from a group of US veterans made 15 years ago to his friend and fellow aviation archaeologist, Jim Pearce.

Cundall said: "They told Jim: 'We've done some pretty silly things in our time, but the silliest was burying Spitfires.' And when Jim got back from the US, he told me."

Cundall realised the Spitfires would have been buried as they had been shipped, still in their crates.

Before they were shipped to the Far East, they would have been waxed, wrapped in greased paper and their joints tarred, to protect them against the elements. There seemed to be a chance that somewhere in Burma, there lay Spitfires that could be restored to flying condition.

The first step was to place advertisements in magazines, trying to find soldiers who buried Spitfires. "The trouble was that many of them were dying of old age," Cundall said.

He visited Burma over and over again, slowly building friendly relations with its military junta. "In the end, they [Burmese minders] trusted me so much they would let me hold their AK-47s while they ate the lunch I had bought them."

Finally, he found the Spitfires, at a location that is being kept a secret.

Cundall said: "We sent a borehole down and used a camera to look at the crates. They seemed to be in good condition."

In August 1945, the Mark XIV aeroplanes, which used Rolls-Royce Griffon engines instead of the Merlins of earlier models, were put in crates and transported from the factory in Castle Bromwich, in the West Midlands, to Burma.

Once they arrived, however, the Spitfires were deemed surplus to requirements.

The war was in its final months and fighting was by increasingly confined to 'island-hopping' to clear the Japanese of their remaining strongholds in the Pacific. Land-based Spitfires, as opposed to a carrier-based variant, Seafires, did not have the required range.

The order was given to bury 12 Spitfires without even unpacking them.

It is possible that a further eight Spitfires were then buried in December 1945, bringing the potential total to 20.

Cundall said: "In 1945, Spitfires were ten a penny. Jets were coming into service. Spitfires were struck off charge, unwanted. Lots of Spitfires were just pushed off the back of aircraft carriers into the sea.

"On land, you couldn't leave them for the locals - they might have ended up being used against you."

To meet the pounds 500,000 cost of the excavation, Cundall enlisted the help of Steve Boultbee Brooks, 51, a commercial property investor who also runs the Boultbee Flight Academy, in Chichester, West Sussex, which teaches people to fly in a two-seater Spitfire that Brooks bought for pounds 1.78 million in 2009.

Ground radar images showed that inside the crates were Spitfires with their wings packed alongside the fuselages. The Britons want to work to restore as many of the 20 Spitfires as possible and get them flying. There are only about 35 flying in the world.

Cundall said, "Spitfires are beautiful aeroplanes and should not be rotting away in a foreign land."

The final obstacle to recovering the Spitfires, however, is political: international sanctions forbid the movement of military materials in and out of Burma, and it was also feared the Burmese government would not allow any foreign excavations.

However, because of the new, reforming stance of the Burmese government, the sanctions on movement of military material will be lifted on April 23.

With the help of Cameron and his visit to Burma, a deal is being negotiated and hopes are high that it will conclude with Thein Sein, the president of Burma, granting permission for the dig.

Brooks, who returned to his home on Saturday, after helping open negotiations, said, "Our hope is that we can be digging them out in the next three or four weeks."

He added: "They have been in the ground for more than 65 years, so it is not a case of taking them out of the crates, putting them together and flying them. There is a lot of work to do. We may have to use parts of many planes to make perhaps a couple airworthy.

"But if the crates didn't get waterlogged, the Spitfires might be in pretty amazing condition. It's also encouraging that they put teak beams over the crates so they wouldn't be crushed by the earth when they were buried."

Cundall also raised the tantalising prospect that there may be more buried Spitfires.

"It's possible there are other Spitfires buried around different sites in Burma. I have heard about 36 in one burial; 18 in another; six in another. And when they were buried, they would have been brand new, never taken out of the box."