JCBs dig for Spitfires in Burma

Diggers made by Staffordshire-based JCB are being used in an attempt to recover crates containing pre-assembly Spitfires that were buried at three sites in Burma by American engineers as the Second World War drew to a close.

The company has provided a 20-tonne JS200 tracked excavator, a 22-tonne JS220 tracked excavator and a 3CX Eco back-hoe loader to one of the sites — at Rangoon
International Airport — and it has sent the leader of the JCB Dancing Digger display team, Oliver Keates, to operate the machines and offer advice on the operation.

JCB chairman Sir Anthony Bamford said: “As the designer of the Spitfire, Reginald Mitchell put Staffordshire on the map in the 1930s, so it’s very fitting that JCB — a modern-day innovator and engineering company based in the same county — should be providing the excavators to dig up the planes.”

Newcastle-under-Lyme businessman Julian Mitchell, the great-nephew of the designer, said: “I’m delighted that JCB is involved in helping to recover the Spitfires. Staffordshire is a great manufacturing county, and I’m sure my great-uncle would have been pleased that a modern-day British engineering success story was playing such an important role in this project.”

The dig follows a 17-year search for the Spitfires that was led by aviation enthusiast David Cundall. The on-line games developer War-gaming is funding the project.