Buried B-25's

[MIflyer]

One of my college professors was an infantry Lt in the ETO in WWII. After the war his unit was stationed in southern Germany and was told that 100 war weary B-25's were coming in for them to dispose of. He proposed to take the radios out of the airplanes and use them to build a radio net for US forces in southern Germany. A general officer arrived and told him he would definitely NOT do that.

The 100 B-25's landed and they wrapped primacord around the fuselage aft of the wings and around each wing and blew them apart. Then they pushed them in a big hole and covered it over with dirt, radios and all. Presumably they are still buried there. The radios probably are still good...

 

[fubar57]

Seen photos of them doing that to P-38s as well in the South Pacific

 

[vikingBerserker]

That's just depressing.

 

[MIflyer]

Well, not really. They're still there! 100 each BC-348's, BC-375's, SCR-274-N, and probably SCR-522, too. I have no idea where they are and I wish I had asked my professor for more info.

 

[vikingBerserker]

Yea, but it would be like trying to assemble a 2,000 part chair from IKEA. You're going to have parts left over and it's going to look like a refrigerator.

 

[MIflyer]

Well, it is like that old TV commercial: "Parts is Parts."

And disposing of those airplanes that way is not the worst possibility. I read where one A-20 unit deployed in France in 1944 was requipped with A-26's. They were instructed to fly their A-20's to an airfield in Scotland. Once there, they got out of the airplanes with the engines still running and a ground crew team pushed the throttles forward and jumped clear, to let the A-20's sail off a cliff into the ocean.

 

[Andy]

My father was stationed at Rhein-Main Airbase in Germany during the end of the Korean War into 1954. The Corp of Engineers was doing practice work on base and dug up a mountain of German aircraft engines. They pilled them high and destroyed them. My father got a piston from an engine used in a FW 190 D, and an impeller from an engine used in the ME 109. They were taking a connecting rod and making ash trays out of them. My father never did, and I still have them.

 

[Andy]

oops, were

 

[ecartar1950]

One of my college professors was an infantry Lt in the ETO in WWII. After the war his unit was stationed in southern Germany and was told that 100 war weary B-25's were coming in for them to dispose of. He proposed to take the radios out of the airplanes and use them to build a radio net for US forces in southern Germany. A general officer arrived and told him he would definitely NOT do that.

The 100 B-25's landed and they wrapped primacord around the fuselage aft of the wings and around each wing and blew them apart. Then they pushed them in a big hole and covered it over with dirt, radios and all. Presumably they are still buried there. The radios probably are still good...

My father was with the RAAF on Manus Island in 1945 and tells of the USAAF just heaping piles of material and setting it alight or pushing aircraft off barges into deep water just outside the harbour.
He was also at RAAF Amberley in 1946/47 and tells of lines of Mustangs, Bostons and other various aircraft been stripped and then melted down.
I remember riding my bike around the perimeter fence of Amberley in the late 1950's and still seeing aircraft parked near the fire dump.

 

[Capt. Vick]