Golf Hotel Whiskey

Chasing Spitfires in Burma: A fool’s errand?

We have already noted the quest to find Spitfires in Burma, now known as Myanmar, but now there are reports that there could be as many as 140 or three to four times the number of airworthy ones known to exist and just waiting to be dug up in the country. Moreover, the Spitfires are believed to be rare Mark XIV fighters equipped with the more powerful Griffon type of engine rather than the more famous Rolls-Royce Merlin engine.

The Spitfires had been brought to what is now Myanmar near the end of the war inside crates about 12.2 meters (40 feet) long, 3.4 meters (11 feet) high and 2.7 meters (9 feet) wide but the war ended before they could be unpacked and put into action against the Japanese. It was actually the US army that was in charge of burying the aircraft and British aviation enthusiast David J. Cundall, who has been leading the search for them, has apparently interviewed over 1,000 mostly American war veterans to try and determine their fate.

After searching since 1999 for the locations of the Spitfires, Cundall has since negotiated a two-year contract to recover 60 planes in the first phase with any others to be recovered in a second phase while the Myanmar government will get one plane for display at a museum along with half of the remaining total. DJC, a private company that Cundall heads, will get 30% of the total while his Myanmar partners will get 20%.

Of course, I do have to be skeptical as to how well any crate has held up after being buried for close to 70 years in a tropical country with a monsoon season plus one has to wonder whether any locals have gotten to the sites first when the country was largely isolated from the world to sell anything they found for scrap. And if they only find a few Spitfires in good condition, who gets to keep those – Cundall, his local business partners or the Myanmar government? In such a case, things could get rather messy.

Hence, we want to ask you our readers what you think: Will they find any Spitfires in pristine condition or a pile of rust/rot or nothing at all or just end up squabbling among themselves over what is found? Tell us what you think in the comments section below and we would love to hear from anyone who served or had a close relative or acquaintance who served in Burma.

Video: Cargo plane bounces on a road (missing spectators) before landing

Hat tip to David Cenciotti for finding and posting this video of a decommissioned C-160 Transall cargo plane touching down first on a road in front of the runway and then on the actual runway in Germany:

The 63,935-pound aircraft had obviously flown the approach too low only to bounce on the road before touching down again on the runway. Luckily, no one was injured as there were at least 1,000 people watching the aircraft, which is destined for the Wernigerode Air Museum, try to land at the Ballenstedt airfield.

Certainly, the incident shows the need to watch your approach when coming in to land – especially if you are landing a 32-ton aircraft!

Last Cold War Vulcan bomber to be grounded

Next year will be the last time to see Britain’s only flying Cold War Vulcan bomber fly as the aircraft is being grounded in part due to soaring restoration costs according to reports in the Daily Mail, This is Lincolnshire and several other papers (the official press release is here). Since its restoration back in 2007, Vulcan XH558 has been seen by more than ten million people in over 60 different locations while three million alone turned out to see her during the 2012 Diamond Jubilee season.

However, the Vulcan XH558 had also been given a technically determined number of flying hours that will be exhausted next year with the Yorkshire Post noting that it already costs an estimated £2m a year to keep the aircraft airborne and that it will need another £200,000 improvement in 2013. Hence, Vulcan to the Sky Trust has decided not to ask its contributors to take the risk of funding another expensive restoration.

Likewise, Engineering director Andrew Edmondso also told in the Harborough Mail that when suppliers close or lose the ability to remanufacture or refurbish key components, it can be prohibitively expensive to re-source them and that:

We know, for example, that the set-up costs to remanufacture a main wheel are more than £70,000. If the approved engineering drawings are no longer available, it can be practically impossible given any amount of money.

Moreover and from the start of the 2014 season, it would be unlikely that the charity could accommodate any engine failures plus the aircraft’s set of engines would be out of life with no more airworthy engines available while refurbishment would be both difficult and costly.

GolfHotelWhiskey.com: Help return the Vulcan XH558 to flight...

No word on when or where Vulcan XH558’s last flight will be plus the Vulcan to the Sky Trust still needs to raise £400,000 within months to fund its winter service. In the mean time, check out the following videos of the Vulcan XH558 in action:

Michael O’Leary on flying, Guardian readers and kiwifruit…

Michael O’Leary, the chief executive of Ryanair, talks about flying, Guardian readers and the kiwifruit:

“The chattering bloody classes, or what I call the liberal Guardian readers, they’re all buying SUVs to drive around London. I smile at these loons who drive their SUVs down to Sainsbury’s and buy kiwi fruit from New Zealand. They’re flown in from New Zealand for Christ sakes. They’re the equivalent of environmental nuclear bombs!”

“Plane Speaking: The Wit and Wisdom of Michael O’Leary” by Paul Kilduff, published by Aurum Press is available from Telegraph Books for £8.99 plus 99p p&p.

Behind the scenes of ‘The Plane Crash’

If you saw the recent Channel 4 documentary “The Plane Crash,” The Independent has a lengthy article about the four year quest to crash a Boeing 727 in order to make the documentary. That’s because US aviation officials would not allow a crash on its soil for fear that control over the aircraft would be loss and National Geographic, the programme’s co-producer, pulled out. Moreover, the jet that was intended to be used contained depleted uranium in its wings – something that would not fly with authorities nor with environmentalists.

Mexico’s civil aviation authority eventually granted permission for the British production and the Discovery Channel to stage the crash in a remote and uninhabited corner of the Sonoran Desert with the aircraft being piloted by James “Jim Bob” Slocum, a captain with FedEx who has survived three plane crashes. He and the crew parachuted a few minutes before impact with the aircraft being flown remotely from an aircraft behind it before it was sent plunging into the ground (You can view the crash sequence on The Independent’s website)

After the crash, scientists descended on the crash site and made the following, perhaps not so shocking conclusions that: 1) The pilots and front-row passengers would almost certainly have been killed, 2) Passengers in the centre would have survived with minor injuries and 3) Passengers in the rear would have been mostly unharmed.

I am not so sure if those are ground breaking conclusions given that the plane was intentionally sent nose first into the ground but it does suggest that cockpits and the front section of commercial airliners could use some strengthening.

Of course and as usually, there were some interesting and rather amusing comments posted with the article, including:

They need to make a film about our current government, which is a real “plane-crash in slow motion”

And:

Could have saved all that bother by wiring up a regular Aeroflot flight using a Russian rustbucket.

Plus:

Plane nose dives into ground. Scientists surprised that front is destroyed, rear less damaged.

But one of the best comments was:

Idea for new BBC show, ‘Celebrity Plane Crash’. Graham Norton and Jessie J try to land a passenger jet after a mid-air engine failure over the Andes. Viewers can adjust the plane’s flaps using the red button.

As for the documentary’s producer Geoff Deehan, he is looking for other “big bang” projects so long as it has “a scientific purpose” and no doubt, can generate some ratings! So perhaps we can look forward to watching a staged train crash or nuclear meltdown…

Accident report faults pilot for severely damaging a Tiger Moth in Wales

Back in August, we noted the story of a Tiger Moth pilot who managed to walk away after clipping a tree and crash landing in Denbighshire in north-east Wales but now the official report by the Department for Transport’s Air Accident Investigation Branch is out about the incident and naturally the pilot does not come out looking very good in it.

To recap, the pilot had phoned a local named Pam, also a member of the Mold Camera Club, to ask who owned a field next to hers and whether he could use it to land. He later did a fly by of the field, flew a little lower for a second look and on the third attempt, clipped some trees because he could not pull up due to powerlines.

According to the official accident report as noted by the Wales Air Forum, the unnamed pilot had identified the field as a possible landing site three years earlier and he walked it twice on the morning of the accident which made him aware that it would be a difficult landing site approximately 200 yards long that steeply sloped upwards for its first half and less steeply for the second half. Moreover and at the northern end of the field, there was a “small earth bank, a low fence, two trees and power and telephone lines.” Hence:

It was evident to him any go-around decision would need to be made in good time and would require careful flying to avoid the wires and trees.
However as the pilot had recently completed a lengthy series of flights and had a good deal of recent flying practice he was confident a safe landing could be made.

When the incident happened, the pilot made a flypast and an initial approach that had to be abandoned because the aircraft was too fast. On the second attempt, the pilot crossed a hedge but he also became aware that he was not only too fast to safely land, he was also too low to climb above the obstacles at the other end of the field. Hence, he opened the throttle to maintain flying speed and fly between the trees but while concentrating on flying through the space between the fence and the wires, he instead hit tree branches with the aircraft’s right wing tip.

According to the accident report:

The pilot observed the choice of landing site was not a good one and he had not adhered to his own pre-flight plan to go-around if the approach was not entirely satisfactory.

Of course his observation was made after he severely damaged a 73-year old aircraft and nearly killed himself along with the mother of Pam who was standing in the spot he crashed a few moments before. No word on when or whether the aircraft will be flying again – along with the pilot…

Golf Hotel Whiskey: for pilots and aviation enthusiasts