NEW YORK – Sixty-five years after an American P-38 fighter plane ran out of gas and crash-landed on a beach in Wales, the long-forgotten World War II relic has emerged from the surf and sand where it lay buried.
Beach strollers, sunbathers and swimmers often frolicked within a few yards of the aircraft, unaware of its existence until last summer, when unusual weather caused the sand to shift and erode.
The revelation of the Lockheed Lightning fighter, with its distinctive twin-boom design, has stirred interest in British aviation circles and among officials of the country's aircraft museums, ready to reclaim another artifact from history's greatest armed conflict.
Based on its serial number and other records, “the fighter is arguably the oldest P-38 in existence, and the oldest surviving 8th Air Force combat aircraft of any type,” said Ric Gillespie, who heads a U.S.-based nonprofit group dedicated to preserving historic aircraft.
Gillespie's organization, the International Group for Historic Aircraft Recovery, learned of the plane's existence in September from a British air history enthusiast and sent a team to survey the site last month. The group plans to collaborate with British museum experts in recovering the fragile but nearly intact aircraft next spring.
“The difficult part is to keep such a dramatic discovery secret,” Gillespie said. “Looting of historic wrecks, aircraft or ships, is a major problem in Britain, as it is worldwide.”
British aviation publications have been circumspect about disclosing the exact location, and local Welsh authorities have agreed to keep the plane under surveillance whenever it is exposed by the tides of the Irish Sea, he said. For now, the aircraft is again buried under sand.
Officially, the U.S. Air Force considers any aircraft lost before Nov. 19, 1961 – when a fire destroyed many records – as “formally abandoned,” and has an interest in such cases only if human remains are involved.
The twin-engine P-38, a radical design conceived by Lockheed designer Clarence “Kelly” Johnson in the late 1930s, became one of the war's most successful fighter planes, serving in Europe and the Pacific. About 10,000 of the planes were built, and about 32 complete or partial airframes are believed to exist, perhaps 10 in flying condition.
There is a P-38 on the ocean floor off San Diego. That plane was ditched after it was damaged off Torrey Pines in 1943.
