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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsBritish WWII fighter found in Egyptian desert (amazing pics!)
Fuck an excerpt, click here to see more cool pics of this plane (including the controls) and read the story behind it. Amazing how well-preserved that thing is.
It's a little...eerie.
PB
DevonRex
(22,541 posts)Does that say "Fuck an excerpt" at the beginning? Or do I need to get up and clean my glasses?
Totally cool pictures. Poor guy. Can't imagine trying to walk out of that terrain.
Poll_Blind
(23,864 posts)...but I figured "Why bother? This shit is hotter than a silk t-shirt."
BTW, props to Make7, DU's unofficial excerpt code tailor.
PB
DevonRex
(22,541 posts)I thought you meant to say For an excerpt click here but autocorrect really got you good.
Poll_Blind
(23,864 posts)Yeah, talk about desolate. How desolate? Compare it to this, amazingly similar landscape:
That's the surface of Mars!
PB
DevonRex
(22,541 posts)After all this time, too. It's just unreal, like he walked out last week. It's chilling. Yet hot. Really, really hot looking.
Old Troop
(1,991 posts)tail section is partially stripped?
arbusto_baboso
(7,162 posts)That would be more likely the earlier the model of P-40 that it was.
warrior1
(12,325 posts)Like a pointer to where he would have traveled, if he survived.
BiggJawn
(23,051 posts)Left horizontal stab looks like it caught something from below and those holes in the rear fuselage.
I wonder if the plane flipped, too. The landing gear were stuck "down", and now they're either collapsed or torn off. I hope they publish more about this plane as they figure it out.
Got lost. shades of "Lady Be Good". He's around there someplace.
freshwest
(53,661 posts)hlthe2b
(101,730 posts)Interesting...
frylock
(34,825 posts)my cousin recently found a wrecked WWII aircraft while hiking Sombrero Peak.
Kaleva
(36,147 posts)I tried to find info on how many Brits are listed as MIA from that war but haven't been able to find it.
-..__...
(7,776 posts)the P-40 Tomahawk was made famous and best known for it's use by the 1st American Volunteer Group, (aka "The Flying tigers" , with it's distinctive "sharks mouth" nose art.
As a vintage aircraft buff, it's always been one of my favorites.
Codeine
(25,586 posts)liberalhistorian
(20,809 posts)episode and how much it reminded me of this! That was one of the eeriest episodes, especially the ending.
According to the article, it looks probable that the pilot lived and that he likely walked off trying to find some help any way he could. What a horrible death from heat and dehydration that must have been, let alone the emotional agony of it.
Recursion
(56,582 posts)Amazing
petronius
(26,581 posts)The pilot, then 44, never returned, and, until recently, it was not known whether his plane went down in the mountainous back country on the mainland, or somewhere in the Mediterranean Sea in between. In May 2000, a French professional diver found the remains of a P38 plane in 230 feet of water off Marseille - in the same area that a fisherman two years earlier had brought to the surface a bracelet inscribed "Saint-Ex."
"The zone containing the pieces was very large, one kilometer long and 400 meters wide," said the diver, Luc Vanrell.
...
One of them bore a manufacturer's number, 2734, that researchers finally confirmed corresponded to the military number given to Saint-Exupery's plane - 42-68223.
hifiguy
(33,688 posts)fairly softly. Not much weather out there to rot the wreckage, just heat and more heat.
That landscape really does look like the pic of Mars posted above. Not a good way to go.
Meiko
(1,076 posts)I hope it winds up restored in a museum somewhere.
alphafemale
(18,497 posts)As a quick cursory, I think he took off the propeller and fabric off the tail to make a lean-to shelter. Animals would have dragged off his carcass long ago. What a lonely death that must have been.