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UNESCO and WWII crash sites

Posted by Rob Rohr on Sun Feb 22, 2004 10:55:15 PM

Hi All,

Just got home from monthly meeting of the Maine Archaeology Society. One of the topics that was discused was the Sebago Lake Corsairs and the UNESCO laws pertaining to crash sites.

Lets say it got alittle heated with me being the only one their who even has been involved with recoverys. It was decide to do nothing about these planes after I had to brow beat the memebers.

One thing that came out of this was some discussions on now crash site through out the world. If we all go by what the UNESCO rules state then aircraft like Swamp Ghost came be claimed and recovered by the USA since they are a signie of the 1970 Ancient Arteifact Act.

In 1995 their was an amendment to include WWII sites. What this means is their complicated to get into and their are many sections but the easiest way I can put it, is that War sites like PNG airfields are consider historical sites and are protected. Which means that the PNG goverment who also are singnies are requirered by law to stop all scrap drives.

Also part of the law states that any historical items must be return to their countrys of origian. If you take this by its base then Swamp Ghost and all the other aircraft at PNG must be return to the USA, Austrilia, Japan.

This also means that other air crash site through out of the world must be return to their countrys.

Now I'm not going to try to say that these are right or wrong, what I'm trying to show their might be a way for us in the Warbird Community to get the USA and other Countrys to start looking at some of these aircraft.

I would like to hear how the rest of you feel, please let me stress this is just a discussion and keep it clean.

Cheers Rob

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