Article P-38 Found on Welsh Beach

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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.

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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 due to
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 U.S.-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.

"The difficult part is to keep such a dramatic discovery secret.
Looting of historic wrecks, aircraft or ships, is a major problem, in
Britain as it is worldwide," Gillespie said.

British aviation publications so far have been circumspect about
disclosing the exact location, and local Welsh authorities have agreed to
keep the plane under surveillance whenever it is exposed by the tides of the
Irish Sea, he said.

Based on its serial number and other records, "the fighter is arguably
the oldest P-38 in existence, and the oldest surviving 8th Air Force combat
aircraft of any type. In that respect it's a major find, of exceptional
interest to British and American aviation historians," Gillespie said.

Officially, the U.S. Air Force considers any aircraft lost before Nov.
19, 1961 - when a fire destroyed many records - as "formally abandoned," and
has an interest in such cases only if human remains are involved.

The twin-engine P-38, a radical design conceived by Lockheed design
genius Clarence "Kelly" Johnson in the late 1930s, became one of the war's
most successful fighter planes, serving in Europe and the Pacific. Some
10,000 were built, and about 32 complete or partial airframes are believed
to still exist, perhaps 10 in flying condition.

Another P-38, part of a "lost squadron" of warplanes marooned by bad
weather in Greenland while being flown to Europe in 1942, was recovered and
extensively restored with new parts. Dubbed "Glacier Girl," its attempt to
complete the flight to Britain earlier this year was thwarted by mechanical
problems.

The Wales Lightning, built in 1941, reached Britain in early 1942 and
flew combat missions along the Dutch-Belgian coast.

Second Lt. Robert F. "Fred" Elliott, 24, of Rich Square, North
Carolina, was on a gunnery practice mission on Sept. 27, 1942, when a fuel
supply error forced him to make an emergency landing on the nearest suitable
place - the Welsh beach.

His belly landing in shallow water sheared off a wingtip, but Elliott
escaped unhurt. Less than three months later, the veteran of more than 10
combat missions was shot down over Tunisia, in North Africa. His plane and
body were never found.

The discovery in Wales was stunning news for Robert Elliott, 64, of
Blountville, Tennessee, the pilot's nephew and only surviving relative, who
has spent nearly 30 years trying to learn more about his namesake's career
and death. All he knew of the Wales incident was a one-line entry saying
Elliott had "ditched a P-38 and was uninjured," he said.

"From the time my uncle was shot down in December 1942 until 1978 we
knew nothing. So this is just a monumental discovery, and a very emotional
thing," said Elliott, an engineering consultant. He said he hopes to be
present for the recovery.

Gillespie, who last summer led TIGHAR's ninth expedition since 1989 to
search a remote South Pacific island for clues to the 1937 disappearance of
famed aviator Amelia Earhart, said the P-38 case is unusual because the
crash site is in a populated area.

"This just never happens like this," he said. "They're always in the
most inaccessible places."

As the disabled P-38 could not be flown out, "American officers had
the guns removed, and the records say the aircraft was salvaged, but it
wasn't," Gillespie said. "It was gradually covered with sand, and there it
sat for 65 years. With censorship in force and British beaches closed to the
public during the war, nobody knew it was there."

It was first spotted by a family enjoying a day at the beach on July
31. British authorities said it probably was an unmanned drone used for
aerial target practice from the 1950s, but a local aviation enthusiast
recognized it from a local newspaper photo as a Lockheed P-38.

That person notified TIGHAR, which "quickly and quietly" organized a
team to visit the site. Due to the threat of looting, "we saw it as an
aviation preservation emergency," Gillespie said.

He said that since the survey in October, the sands have again buried
the plane, and "whether and when it will reappear is anybody's guess."

David Morris, curator of aircraft at Britain's Fleet Air Army Museum,
called the P-38 "an exciting discovery" that merited a careful approach to
"make sure that the aircraft stands the best chance of survival."

Gillespie, whose father flew 25 bomber missions from England during
the war, said his team found some British still feel "a strong feeling of
gratitude" toward the young Americans who did that.

"That's very much a part of British history, and among people we
talked to, this is not just an American plane," he said. "As the lady
proprietor of our hotel said when she saw a photo of the plane on my
computer screen, that's one of ours.'"
 
Last edited by a moderator:
Wonder where they recovered it to and if they restored it at all?
 
The decaying wreckage of a Second World War fighter plane, exposed after 65 years by changing tides on the Welsh coast, is to be removed.

Known as the Maid of Harlech, the Lockheed P-38 Lightning fighter aircraft was discovered in July 2007 after decades hidden under the sands.

It was the first time the rare United States Army Air Force (USAAF) fighter had been seen since it crashed off the Welsh coast in 1942 while on exercise.

p38 maid of harlech.jpg
 
This person is also involved in an investigation into finding Amelia Earhart's plane that Amelia Earhart and Fred Noonan landed, and eventually died, on Gardner Island, now Nikumaroro in the Republic of Kiribati. . They carried out an excavation of a WW1 airfield in the US. They had a discussion about some of the objects and were baffled by some, black clylindrical things with a white deposit on the surface. I had to almost laugh because they were dry cell batteries very degraded. The zinc had oxidised away leaving the core and graphite rod in place . These would have been in brown wax paper cartons. All the experts had their say and all wrong. I told them and it went down badly and they never corrected the information. I suppose those batteries were something to provide potential in starting up or ignition coils back in the days when you had to swing the prop. https://tighar.org/Projects/projectslist.html
 

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