enthusiast believes found 50 Nazi Focke-Wulfs FW-190 buried below Turkish airbase

A Turkish military enthusiast has claimed he has found the final resting place of 50 German Second World War fighters donated by Hitler in 1943 in a bid to encourage Ankara to join the Axis powers.

 

The Focke-Wulf FW-190s were handed over to the Turkish air force who had only about 300 pilots at the outbreak of hostilities.

 

The FW-190 was an advanced, lightweight fighter, which was more than a match for the early versions of the legendary Spitfire.

 

According to the Daily Sabah, Uluhan Hasdal, amateur aviation historian believes the aircraft were dismantled and carefully buried beneath an air force base in the city of Kayseri.

 

The 50 aircraft disappeared at this time, although Hasdal believes instead of being destroyed, the aircraft were carefully dismantled, wrapped in oil soaked clothes and buried at the airbase for future possible use.

 

However, with the arrival of the jet age, radial-engined aircraft were no longer of any military value and were forgotten.

 

The aircraft enthusiast approached the Turkish government last year for permission to begin excavating the former airbase but faced a mass of bureaucratic red tape.

 

Then plans to begin the dig were further delayed due to the recent coup.

 

However, Hasdal is confident he has found the location of the aircraft and believes returns from a metal detector survey are proof they exist.

 

Hasdal said the aircraft were built for rugged conditions and may have survived 70 years buried beneath surface.

 

Nejat Çuhadaroğlu, founder of Hisart Museum wants to exhibit any of the aircraft that are recovered from beneath the airbase.

 

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3839195/A-warplane-graveyard-50-German-Focke-Wulfs-disappeared-WWII-wrapped-sheets-buried-old-Turkish-airport.html

 

 

A spectacular news! we hope well.

Lets say 20% are able to fly again with work,can you imagine their value???

I believe this if they're dug up.

 

A very similar thing happened last year (or one before) with some Spitfires, where there was a lot of noise drummed up which came to nothing.

... there was a lot of noise drummed up which came to nothing.

Yep, I thought the very same when I saw that news. Provided it's true, we don't know at all what can be left, but who knows. Burma Spitfires turned out to be a bluff, I hope this time it's not just a guy trying to get money from sponsors for nothing.

 

 

S!

Interesting if it's true, but I cannot imagine that a military like the Turkish simply "forgets" about 50 airplanes.

@ Burning B., I agree with you.

Sounds like a repeat of the Burmese Spitfires. "Disassembled and carefully buried" usually means chopped up and thrown in a pit. Al-Taqqadum is the only case I've heard of where a buried plane has been found reasonably intact.

This is making the rounds all over the new since a week or so, but fate of the aircraft was a known thing among aviation enthusiasts here for a long time.

 

Hisart Museum has recently bought and put on exhibit a Bf-109 (I'm yet to see myself thuogh, as I live about 800km away from İstanbul), and if they can really dig up and bring up to at least display status one of the Fw-190s, it would be amazing indeed.

 

It is pretty annoying to know that this country had P-40s, Spitfires, Fw-190s, He-111s, some of the coolest aircraft of that era from both sides of conflict, and yet there is a grand sum of about zero of any of them in any museum... I imagine if a museum had an example of all 4 types, it would not only be flocked by locals, but also likely by foreign tourists too.

 

I don't know whether it's truth or exaggeration of stories, but, rumor about Turkish Spitfires and Focke Wulfs say that, they were first chopped up by axes before being buried, so if this isn't an exaggeration, I wouldn't expect much.

 

 

Edit : Oh BTW, "Nazi Focke Wulfs", really? :D So uuuhhh... operating all of the above aircraft, I guess Turkey was "Nazi Yankee Brits" back then? :D

Edited October 18, 2016 by WinterH