WIX Archives

Warbirds pickled in sea water

Posted by Ron Henry on Tue Jan 22, 2002 09:29:32 AM

In reply top Re: Warbirds Recovery in Oz posted by Tony on Tue Jan 22, 2002 05:31:14 AM

: Is this the same Daniel hultgrun, who runs a website dedic
: ated to Australian and tunnels and cave systems, that are
: supposedley full of war surplus and aircraft?
:
: I visited his site some time ago, it seemed very long on X
: -files theory, and very short on physical evidence, photog
: raphs. His "message" board is odd too. I remember one thre
: ad where someone kept coming back with "There's nothing th
: ere mate, I know, I live there", to which Daniel kept igno
: ring, and posting more comments with exclamation marks, in
: the vein of "P-51 Mustang found in tunnel in Sydney shopp
: ing mall!" "CAC Boomerang found behind Dunny on sheep stat
: ion!"
:
: That's not exactly what he said, but you get the idea.
: These Sydney aircraft have come up before, I've previously
: posted pictures, of the carriers actually setting off fro
: m Sydney, to dump the aircraft, so there is no doubt it ha
: ppened. Howver, the condition of the aircraft after all th
: is time, is very very very likely to be pants. As KiwiDave
: says. one bit has been hauled up, and it was in very very
: very poor condition. On another thread, someone was talki
: ng about a Corsair that had ditched off the californian co
: ast, and how components had started to fizz badly, and it
: had only been in the water 3 days.
:
: Still, this gentleman has his dreams, and I'd never take t
: hat away from him
:
: Tony



Tony

Your use of "fizz" has given me the word I've been looking for -

Yrs ago, probably in 1978, I saw a wreck that had been hauled out of the ocean - it may have been on display at Pima County. It was a good, straight aircraft - single engined naval fighter, IIRC (Hellcat?) - that had been pulled out of the Pacific from some good depth not many yrs before I saw it. I think maybe the recoverers had ideas of restoring it, but its condition had quickly deteriorated on exposure to air: most of the metal in it reminded me of experiments in the chemistry lab at school when metal was dipped into acid and started to fizz.

Since then I just can't see the point of pouring large amounts of cash into hauling aircaft out of the sea. In every (?!) case I can't see how they could even be fit for parts recovery. Even for static display, there's the prob of removing large amounts of hard marine growth from fragile (probably) metal....

Ron

PS I've made another small, negative (unfortunately), contribution to the Balado Bridge thread.

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