Intrepid spitfire hunter David Cundall plans to restart his dig at Rangoon’s Mingaladon Airport in January next year, saying he has new evidence that shows the exact location of perhaps 36 or 37 fighter aircraft which were buried at the site toward the end of World War II.
Speaking to his local Birmingham Mail in England last week, the 63-year-old farmer produced fresh 2D and 3D images which he claims indicate manmade objects buried in crates up to 11 metres deep.
The aircraft enthusiast told the UK newspaper that the surveys were taken at a site about 30 metres from the airport’s main runway.
Cundall said the Burmese team’s consultant geophysicist Professor Tin Htut confirmed that the electromagnetic images looked like a man-made structure, and that the two anomalies in the picture are parallel trending.
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“The latest images are an exciting development in Mr Cundall’s 17-year quest,” said the Birmingham Mail.
Despite losing his main sponsor, online games company Wargaming, Cundell has long maintained he believes he will find the secret cache of British spitfires which were deemed surplus to requirements as WWII neared its end. Cundall said he believes that the last Viceroy of India, Lord Louis Mountbatten, ordered the burial of at least 36 spitfires in Burma in 1945.
He said he also believes some spitfires are similarly buried at a site near Myitkyina in Burma’s northern Kachin state.
But Cundall’s theory has been ridiculed by many aviation experts and archeologists. Andy Brockman, who participated in a dig in January, said the only documentary evidence he found was in British air force logbooks which indicated over 100 planes were broken up in 1945 and distributed to locals as scrap metal.
The January dig was halted by the Burmese authorities citing the danger of hitting underground cables connected to Rangoon airport.
The airport authorities now want Mr Cundall to produce a plan from civil engineers to prevent any damage to the runway, or undermine it in any way, before the dig can get under way again.
The unrelenting treasure hunter from Birmingham plans to wait until Burma’s dry season when he can attempt drilling at the site.
The airport authorities now want Mr Cundall to produce a plan from civil engineers to prevent any damage to the runway, or undermine it in any way, before the dig can get under way again.
The unrelenting treasure hunter from Birmingham plans to wait until Burma’s dry season when he can attempt drilling at the site.
