Fascinating story about a WWII Spitfire (yeah, that’s probably redundant) that crashed in a bog in Co. Donegal in 1941. Last June, it was found and removed from the bog. The unique conditions had preserved it so well that the machine guns could still fire.
BBC News – Spitfire redux: The WWII guns firing after 70 years buried in peat.
They don’t build them like that anymore.
The Word Hoarder 
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November 15, 2011 at 3:30 pm
Tessa
Fascinating. I met Johnny McNee recently at a reception in Toronto, hosted by the son of the “rich Canadian industrialist” mentioned in the story. I was particularly interested in his story, because my father had spent WWII scraping crashed planes off Irish mountains and bogs. Not sure how he missed the Spitfire Johnny excavated.
Although Ireland was neutral, Dev did agree to hand over all warplanes that landed or crashed in Ireland to the Allies. My father, who was in the Irish Air Corps at the time, was given the task of gathering and identifying the planes. I still have the joystick from a Messerschmitt 109 that crashed in Donegal. When Dad and his crew arrived at the site, there was nothing to be found of the plane at first. Then the locals came forward and sold the plane to them, piece by piece. When it was over, some of the crew had the joystick mounted on a wooden shield, like a hunting trophy, and presented it to my father. I was recently offered a thousand dollars for the artifact by a Swiss professor, who wanted it for his collection. But it has become a weird family heirloom, which I intend handing on to my son.
November 15, 2011 at 7:06 pm
Rich
Sounds like you should blog some of the stories your Dad told you about those days. Sounds like an interesting view on the war.