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Buried NZ P-40's fact or fiction

Posted by Cees on Fri Jul 05, 2002 01:01:12 AM

Also from Barnstormers (old)

SIX P-40's BURIED INSIDE CRATES! Some years back I was living in New Zealand. I was a regular attendee glider pilot at a nearby NZ Air Force base. One of the "old hands" who were ex-RNZAF personnel on this particular base mentioned that at the end of hostilities in 1945 the USAAF, who had been at the base with various airplanes, had some weeks previously taken delivery of six P-40's in crates, still in waxed paper protection. Not able to transport these now obsolete planes back to the U.S., they bulldozed a large rectangular hole in the center of the field and lined the crates up side by side, then backfilled it! The area is now the grassy area way out in the middle of the airfield. He told me he was part of the bulldozer team who were ordered to carry out the task. Contributed by Duncan Stuart. -- Posted: 7/14/98


Is there any truth in this story, Dave, do you know more?

Cees


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