News 17
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News 17
FEATURE gend: The Spitfires that never were covering a prized cache of World War II-era fighter aircraft in Myanmar. But how did this myth become widely accepted as fact?
Team members of the Spitfire excavation team Tracy Spaight( right), director of special projects at Wargaming, and project archaeologist Andy Brockman look out over Yangon International Airport, where aviation enthusiast David Cundall believed there could be 36 aircraft buried, during a visit in January. Photo: Wargaming. net / AFP
been deposited, likewise drew a complete blank.
As for other eyewitnesses, their depositions were mostly hearsay or secondhand and would be discounted as evidence in a court of law. One British eyewitness, Stanley Coombe, was present at the evening occasion and although he did not speak, Andy Brockman described his evidence as important. He would, however, offer another hypothesis for the crates that Stanley Coombe had seen as a young soldier in 1946 from the back of an army truck: that they had contained Auster spotter aircraft which had indeed been delivered by sea from Calcutta in the spring of 1946. Four aircraft arrived on April 17 and another 14 on April 30.
The legend deflated by senior personnel based at Mingalardon
Not mentioned during the evening was the fact that several British personnel, both military and RAF, have now written to discount the legend based on their own extended operational experience at Mingalardon during 1945 and 1946 as commissioned and non-commissioned officers. They include from my own knowledge two RAF pilots, a senior air mechanic and an accountant who were all based at Mingalardon, as well as a British army warrant officer in charge of an adjacent vehicle park and an officer commanding an Indian Engineering Unit.
These“ witnesses” have all made the point that, quite simply, no burials could possibly have taken place without them knowing – and, I would add, without scores of Burmese workers and staff at Mingalardon, not least pilots and ground crew under training for the Burmese Air Force that came into existence in January 1947 knowing either. Mingalardon was throughout the final years of British rule as thoroughly penetrated by Burmese intelligence agents working for General Aung San and the patriotic forces as any US military base or airfield in Vietnam was by the Viet Cong.
Apart from the operational files available for public consultation at the National Archives in Kew, which were a source of evidence during the evening, I would add that the British Library at St Pancras in Central London is the depositary of a substantial number of private and other official papers, some top secret, recording events at the time. These would surely have confirmed the burial of large numbers of Spitfires if that had taken place for whatever reason. In my own research I could find not a hint of any such burial anywhere in these private papers.
All’ s well that ends well?
I am delighted that Leeds University felt able to say during the presentation that their involvement in the project had given them invaluable experience and that their engagement had coincidentally resulted in agreements about future academic cooperation with and support for Yangon institutes. Wargaming would also seem to be very pleased with their involvement and they are actively supporting the renovation project for the Dornier 17
140
The number of Spitfires said to have been buried in Myanmar
which was recently recovered from the Goodwin Sands, a 16-kilometre( 10-mile) sand bank in the English Channel.
David Cundall, meanwhile, continues his search for the Phantom Spitfires, about which I first wrote in The Myanmar Times on February 4. At the time I expressed both my incredulity that these aircraft could have been disposed of by burial in this remarkable way when they were so much in demand throughout Southeast Asia until the mid-1950s and even later. I also stated my disbelief that they could have remained undiscovered all this time when Spitfires were so much sought after by the Myanmar government after independence. Their burial could not possibly have been concealed from General Aung San’ s military and political supporters.
I hope Leeds University will not mind if I say that I was a little surprised that they maintained their interest for so many years when the historical evidence was so thin, though I can well understand that they might feel that they could not reach any definitive conclusions until they had studied all the evidence made available to them. I also heard during my visit to Myanmar in May that there is puzzlement still in Myanmar that Prime Minster David Cameron should have raised the issue with President U Thein Sein in April 2012 without No 10 Downing Street first doing even a basic check on the reliability of the information. But the level of British engagement with Myanmar is nowadays at such a level of intensity across the political, commercial, development and even defence spectrum that the UK has no doubt long been forgiven in Nay Pyi Taw for the latent feeling that they might just possibly have been a trifle misled.
So is all well that ends well? I have the niggling feeling that this saga was in retrospect a waste of time and resources, a legend based on oral myth that used the charismatic icon of the Spitfire to seduce all and sundry. It was a classic case of mass hysteria induced by irresponsible media hype and a rich source for the sociologist and psychologist seeking to explain the gullibility of so many normally intelligent people who so uncritically abandoned their common sense.
We all pray though that David Cundall might still uncover something, almost anything.
Derek Tonkin is chairman of the nonprofit Network Myanmar and an adviser to Bagan Capital Limited.