Introduction

An aircraft wreck can be a repository for technical, technological and social material relevant to the development of the ‘type’ to the pursuit of aviation, to warfare (if it was lost in that context) and to the lives of the crew.
These are important issues for both archaeologists and site managers. So too are the ethical questions involved in the excavation of any aircraft where it constitutes a grave or tomb in the strictest sense of the word.

In respect of ethics of excavating and recovering crashed aircraft, the matter is further compounded by the problems conservators and museologists are presently having with almost every metallic vessel and machine raised from a long-term bed in sediments and /or foliage on land or from a saline marine environment.


Site Formation Processes -

Archaeologists seek to document site formation processes at any wreck site in order to better understand the present state of the remains and to then be in a position to make valid comment and inferences based on the remains themselves.
In knowing how a wreck disintegrates and how the site forms over time as a result of natural site formation processes, such as time, tide, corrosion etc., cultural formation processes (the results of human activity) is better understood.
An example appears at the site of the flying boat wrecks at Broome in Western Australia. There questions such as, were the wrecks salvaged during the war for munitions or essential spares, or were they blown up after the war as navigation hazards, apply.
While the study of site formation processes in terrestrial archaeology and on wooden and iron wrecks sites is well-established, aircraft are a relatively ‘new’ study with two recent examples, research into the ‘Black Cats’ scuttled off Rottnest Island as part of WWII Lend Lease requirements and the Catalina wrecks in Darwin Harbour appearing on this site.
There have been some surprises!
While the fall of engines (propellor downward from submerged high wing aircraft), for example, is to be expected over time, partly as a result of differential corrosion of the steel engine supports in an aluminium airframe; the inversion of the wings in an entire suite of wrecks was not. In the Darwin case Silvano Jung illustrates and reports on the effect of fire, or explosion in the fuselage of seaplanes with intact outboard floats, showing a characteristic inversion of the wings as the hull sinks and the wings break at the roots. These same phenomena were experienced at the wrecks in deeper water at Broome on the Western Australian coast. At Broome, this was once thought to be the result of large ships anchoring above the wrecks and literally tearing them to pieces as they dragged in the high winds, or cyclones common in northern Australian waters.
Readers are referred to Silvano’s report appearing on this website, to his extensive Master’s thesis and to a number of articles written on the subject. In those works the beginnings of the study of site formation processes at the submerged aircraft is manifest in a compelling manner.


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Conservation science -

Non-disturbance underwater ‘aviation archaeology’ as it is practised in site inspection programs and in the production of management plans that encompass site access projects for local recreational divers and for tourists, is especially dependent on good conservation/biological/human impact advice to help ensure that the wrecks are best managed for the often conflicting needs of the present and the future. If sites and materials are being examined with a view to their being excavated and raised in part or whole, then conservators and/or experienced restorers are best placed to advise on the state of the materials under scrutiny.
There are many variables to be considered, such as the presence of dissimilar metals e.g. copper/aluminium rivets on an aluminium airframe, steel/aluminium-working methods, water movement, oxygen levels, the depth of burial in sediments, the presence of sulphate-reducing bacteria, and the like. As a result, like the iron or steel shipwreck, the corrosion found on aircraft is expected to vary greatly, not only on individual airframes as a whole, but also on its various parts within one particular wreck. Again none of this is new to those who have experienced it, but it can come as a great surprise to those first presented with what otherwise appears to be a strong wreck, lying intact on the ground or the seabed.
Another factor to be considered in some environments is the presence of concretion, a rock-hard matrix of corrosion-products and sea-life that serves to totally cover metallic objects in a warm-water, coralline environment. This concretion can mask the extent of the corrosion and giving a totally false impression of its extent and of the strength of the metallic remains underneath. After removal of this rock-hard layer, sometimes only empty casts of the original hull remain.
This situation is of considerable importance for those interested in the raising and exhibition of any historic aircraft raised from a saline, warm-water environment. Decades of corrosion will ensure that after it is deconcreted for conservation the sunken plane can be a terrible disappointment to those who once looked on what appeared to be an intact aircraft.


Too often does an object look and feel strong to the diver or archaeologist, for example, but when raised from a saline environment turns out to be a hollow concretion with no intrinsic strength or substance at all. Too often is a heavily concreted object raised, cherished and then sometimes abandoned when its de-concretion and conservation proves too difficult, too time consuming or too expensive. Solutions are being found and there are an increasing number of examples reflecting the work of the specialist wreck conservator, with the laboratories and workshops mentioned in the projects listed on this site, just a small, yet active, number representing a much broader interest.
As a result, the raising of any historic aircraft must be undertaken with the full understanding of this fact and in the knowledge that its conservation requires a long-term commitment of both time, staff and funds, for with the exception of the small submarine, an intact wrecked or abandoned aircraft is perhaps one of the most easily removed or all archaeological sites and there are hundreds of examples where. Again none of this is new to the aviation fraternity—some of whom have spent thousands in money and years in time recovering, refurbishing and re-presenting aircraft, some in working order.
There have been some amazing examples of successful recoveries of aircraft from forests, jungles, ice-fields and lakes. To date there have been few from a saline environment, though Marco Giannitrapani, Dave Mcdonald and Alfonso Colla’s account of a P.40L Kittyhawk recovered from the sea near Latina in Italy may be a pointer of some success in that medium. In general it is not considered a viable proposition however.
One example, where a feasibility study conducted into a proposal to search for and recover aircraft scuttled at sea under the WWII ‘Lend Lease’ program, found against the plan is found in the author’s ‘Black Cats’ study on this web-page. There, the recovery of a Catalina wreck was mooted as a much-needed memorial to a famous class of aircraft and their crew, but the problems, difficulties and potential costs led to a decision to not proceed. Not happy to have received such a bleak prognosis, the proponents then searched the world for a suitable alternative and sourced one in America. Transported to Western Australia, it now lies in store awaiting placement in a special memorial to the flying boats in WWII at the old flying boat base on the Swan River near Perth.



The aircraft as an archaeological site -

An undisturbed aircraft has the potential to provide a medium with which to preserve machinery, information and artefacts for examination now and (much more importantly) for the long-term future. A driving force in the location of lost aircraft sites throughout the world in an amazing variety of locations and situations (e.g., in jungles, swamps, under the sea, in ice even) has been the growth of interest in aircraft wrecks as restorable units or as a source of parts for other aircraft, or materials for museums. Dive shop owners, recreational dive clubs and tourist bodies also view the sunken aircraft as an asset and actively seek new sites. Kurt Amsler, Gavin Anderson, David Oldale’s description of three sites, a P38 Lightning in France, a Grumman Avenger torpedo-bomber in the Firth of Forth and a Savioa-Marchetti Sparviero (Sparrowhawk) torpedo bomber off Kas near Turkey are but three stunning examples that appear the popular magazine Diver. There are many others in the aviation magazines, websites and literature and all attest to the widespread appreciation of the submerged aircraft as a valuabledive site.
One very recent work is the fascinating book ‘Hunting Warbirds’. Produced by Carl Hoffman in 2001, a perusal of its contents shows that it is very aptly sub-titled as ‘the obsessive quest for lost aircraft of World War II’. Here the author details a number of search and recovery missions, including a number of complex underwater projects.

Carl Hoffman's book 'Hunting Warbirds'

The search for planes underwater reflects the search for ships soon after the invention of the Aqualung and a parallel of direct interest to the underwater archaeological fraternity are the words of one couple, Syd Jones and his wife KT. They had worked for Mel Fisher recovering the 17th century Spanish plate ship Atocha and are mentioned in one of the projects mentioned in Hunting Warbirds. Apparently ‘tired of treasure hunting’ they turned their attention elsewhere and transferred their love of heritage things to aircraft recovery and restoration. Their words provide a very important insight.

'When we were doing the Atocha we had thousands and thousands of five-hundred-year-old artefacts, but no people . . . we could only make assumptions about the people and the artefacts we found. But the guys who flew these airplanes are still around. We can talk to them. They come here all the time…'

For good reasons and partly because many do not accept that both the aircraft—and the very act of recovery and restoration itself—are important now and more so in the future, newly-found aircraft crash sites on land are quite late in being recognised as potential archaeological sites. This is partly because so much is known about the construction, history, crew, and working life of most service aircraft and partly because the pilots and crew are often still alive, providing on the one hand an invaluable and inspirational ‘touchstone’ for people like the ‘Jones’, but at the same time serving to infer that nothing new can be learned—largely because the very people who built and operated them are still alive.
A parallel to this idea was the study of iron and steam ship. There, the late Keith Muckelroy, one of the doyens of maritime archaeology, saw the study of iron and steamship wrecks as an unnecessary duplication of information appearing in archives and museums. Anthropologists, on the other hand, have long-since argued strongly against this position and opted for a ‘cross-temporal’ approach; one that is not encapsulated in a specific period of the past. Professor George Bass, a leading maritime archaeologist, specialising in the shipwrecks of the ‘classical period’ and producer of innumerable works on underwater archaeology noted ‘the value of archaeological research on ships recent enough for photographic records to be available’, for example. His was a sentiment echoed by many in the underwater archaeology field. Some, including the author, and well-known anthropologist Professor Richard Gould of Brown University were, or still are (in Gould’s case), active pilots.
In a parallel instance the author’s examination of the archaeology of the submarine, as a class of iron/steel ship, it became quickly evident that an operational submarine was a capsule, that ‘flies’ though a hostile and unforgiving medium. It can contain, not only the accoutrements of warfare, but a range of materials of wider significance, e.g., personal items that reflect society and the forced adaptation to life in an enclosed, restricted and hostile environment. The aircraft is little different, and though it is less like to reflect this possibility, given that it is in the air for a maximum of a few days rather than weeks, the general observation that ‘new’ insights might be obtained from a study of the remains still holds good.

In that context, a properly-constituted archaeological focus on not just the technology, but also the people and the associated assemblage of cultural materials (artefacts) allows us to view the archaeology of the lost aircraft as a valid ‘new’ area of study within a theoretical framework for archaeology and maritime archaeology as a whole. The 15 Flying Boats at Broome for example are significant, not just as examples of the wartime Catalina, Dornier and Short Sunderland type, but also as carriers of over 8000 civilian and service refugees over the space of a few short weeks in WWII. When destroyed at anchor, they contained a remarkable range of materials telling us a great deal about refugees fleeing ahead of an advancing enemy, who were severely constrained in what can be carried within the aircraft.
As Bradley Rodgers, Wendy Coble and Hans Van Tilburg also noted in their analysis of the Kaneohe Bay PBY 5 Catalina at Pearl Harbour, the properly constituted study of the newly-found aircraft wreck can also be a form of historical archaeology and here the archaeological evidence (the aircraft wreck and its contents) is analysed along with written material i.e. the archives, oral histories, plans, books, logs, diaries etc. as both complementary and potentially conflicting data-bases.
On reflection none of this is really new to many aviation buffs. The examination of the crash site, both recent and ancient, the recording, the analyses, the subsequent dismantling of the engine components for inspection, the metallurgical reports, the painstaking observations and research, and the objective conclusions have long-since been one of the bench-marks for technical forensic analyses (of the archaeological type) generally.
So too with the management of any human remains found within the wrecks and there are many examples of best practice at lost aircraft sites that long precede us. In some ways, one could suggest that those who have been dealing with crash sites, especially those tasked with the recording, recovery and burial of lost service personnel, have been waiting for the archaeological world to catch up and to realise what important information can be had and what innovative methods are being used in this field!
There are many instances where little attention is paid to the full recording of a site before materials, or the entire wreck, are removed for conservation, restoration and exhibition, however. In these cases, pre-disturbance records, field and day books, artefact registers, the photographic and video records, if they existed, are not kept after the project was finished, or are not available, partly because the work is not considered of historic or archaeological importance.
In general it can be observed that if it is accepted that a particular aircraft wreck or suite of sites can be considered as an archaeological site (i.e. capable of providing ‘new’ or otherwise unobtainable information about people and how they operated in an aviation environment), then it needs be afforded as much consideration from a methodological and ethical perspective (e.g., conservation, excavation and exhibition) as is afforded the terrestrial site or the shipwreck.


Management options at aircraft sites -

As indicated, aircraft generally are subject to a number of processes serving to alter the original machine from an operational unit into an archaeological site. On a physical level these are natural and cultural site-formation processes and on a philosophical level these are changes in public, academic and official perceptions or attitudes to the remains. Added to these perceptions are the changes that occur in its legal status over time.
An interesting example is the case of the Broome flying boat wrecks, and the gradual change in public and official perceptions of them over time. First they were a casualty of war still owned by their parent service, with strategic importance as a source of munitions and spares. Then they were a post-war salvage prospect, more as a navigation hazard than as a source of sell-able items, then they were viewed as a source of souvenirs of a bygone age. In the 1960sthey came to be seen as a ‘resource’ providing museum objects and also materials for the growing band of aircraft restorers. Lastly they have come to be recognised as former war graves, as historic sites and as cultural tourism assets in both an above water and below water mode.
Many of the activities occurring over time at these sites were conducted without official sanction and later, as the legislation became known, proposals and schemes for the recovery of materials were required to fit within the framework of the legal situation applying to each case. Here we found the various services first stressing their rights, then allowing the remains to be managed by a variety of formal and informal heritage strategies under the umbrella of heritage authorities. One such agreement even mirrored the existing Australian Netherlands Committee on Old Dutch Shipwrecks agreement in respect of the management of the Dutch aircraft.
The submission prepared in late 2002 to the Western Australian Heritage Council that appears on this website, seeking the protection of the wrecks under the 1990 Heritage Act shows how far the wheel has turned in that respect.
Many modern management strategies have been developed as a result of understandings arising out of the lessons learnt in the shipwreck case and all are inextricably linked to legal considerations, both international and local. In the following appendix the general situation appears in précis form, though there are many regional variants.
From the lessons learned at the shipwreck site and in a review of the reports and literature emanating from aviation sites it is evident that some of the options available at aircraft wrecks are:
i) To do nothing on-site and to allow the wreck to decay naturally with a minimum of cultural interference. This is effected by relying solely on the protection of international agreements (between formerly warring parties for example), protective legislation or informal understandings.
ii) To proceed as in (i) above, but to facilitate access for ecotourism, recreational or other reasons. The visitor could be provided with interpretive material and the wreck could be marked with a plaque set into the surrounding land or the seabed alongside with a view to the identification of the wreck and an explanation of its salient features. This could be followed by the production of interpretive materials of public, conservation and museological value in the form of books, maps and pamphlets.
iii) To conduct a full non-disturbance site inspection study aimed at physically recording the external features of the wreck and its context according to traditional archaeological standards and to then proceed as in i) or ii) above, but with regular monitoring.
iv) Where after due deliberation an aircraft wreck is earmarked for possible raising, to perform a full pre-disturbance, physical, biological and electrochemical study such that an informed comment can be made as to the extent of corrosion, concretion and animal/plant growth on the site. A full understanding of the nature and effect of the soil or underwater sediments on which or in which the wreck lies is also required.
v) The recovery of the remains be conducted in such a manner that material is not lost in the transit from the site (jungle, ice or seabed, for example) and that the pit from which the wreck has been recovered is fully examined as soon as possible after it has been removed. Great anger was expressed, for example, when one of Australia’s most historic aircraft Kookaburra was recovered from an inland desert without this step being completed to the satisfaction of some stakeholders.

Conclusion

An historic wrecked aircraft lying on land or underwater has the potential of providing technical and technological information and it can also contain material of relevance to the people that flew in them as passengers and crew and to the pursuit and the progress of aviation. This information can be gleaned both from the wreck and from an archival study focussing on its remains.
Lost aircraft has the potential of preserving important information sometimes within a recognisable capsule, thereby better-preserving contents of increasing technical and social importance as the generations pass.

The lost aircraft can also be a grave in the true sense of the word and where a crew has been lost, their very presence would normally render the wrecked aircraft inviolable unless there were strategic, religious or social imperatives to the contrary and until the remains were properly attended to in accordance with the religious and funerary customs of the parent country.
The wrecks of military aircraft remain the property of the country in whose service they were lost, unless rights were ceded as an act of surrender in war.

References -

Anderson, A., Amsler, K., and Oldale, D., ND In Diver: 29-38.
Giannitrapani M., and McDonald, D., 2000. Sole Survivor. In Classic Wings Downunder. Issue Twenty Seven. 14-17.
Hoffman, c., 2001. Hunting Warbirds: The Obsessive Quest for the lost Aircraft of World War II. Random House. Australia.
Jung., S.J., 1996. Archaeological investigations of the Catalina wreck sites in east Arm, Darwin Harbour. Bulletin of the Australian Institute for Maritime Archaeolgy. Vol 20 (2): 23-40.
Jung, S.J. 2001. Wings Beneath the Sea: the aviation archaeology of Catalina flying boats in Darwin Harbour; Northern Territory. Unpublished MA Thesis, NTU. Darwin.
McCarthy, M. (1998) The submarine as a class of archaeological site. Bulletin of the Australian Institute for Maritime Archaeology, 22: 61-70.
McCarthy, M. (1997).
The 'Black Cats'. Report into the feasibility of locating, raising and conserving one of the four Catalina Flying Boats scuttled off Rottnest Island in the years 1945–1946. Report - Department of Maritime Archaeology,
Western Australian Maritime Museum, No. 125.
Roach, J.A., 1996. Appendix: sunken warships and military aircraft, Underwater archaeology and the Titanic: The legal considerations, in Jarvis, A., et al, 1996. Proceedings, IXth International Congress of Maritime Museums. National Maritime Museum, UK.
Rodgers, B.A., Coble, W.M. and Van Tilburg, H.K., 1998. The Lost Flying Boat of Kaneohe Bay: Archaeology of the First U.S. Casualties of Pearl Harbour. In Historical Archaeology, 32 (4): 8-18.
Smith D., Kookaburra (to finish)

Appendix: - top

Sunken Warships and Military Aircraft (Reproduced from Roach (1996: 84-5)
Warships, naval auxiliaries, and other vessels owned or operated by a State and used at the time they sank only on government non-commercial service, are State vessels. Aircraft used in military, customs and police services are State aircraft. International aw recognises that State vessels and aircraft, and their associated artefacts, whether or not sunken, are entitled to sovereign immunity.
In addition, such shipwrecks and sunken aircraft are historical artefacts of special importance and entitled to special protection. Many such ships and aircraft have unique histories making them important parts of their country's traditions. In addition, these ships and aircraft may be the last resting places of many sailors and airmen who died in the service of their nations.
The practice of States confirms the well-established rule of international law that title to such vessels and aircraft is lost only by capture or surrender during battle (before sinking), by international agreement, or by an express act of abandonment of government property. Once hostilities have ended, belligerents do not acquire any title to such vessels or aircraft through the act of sinking them. Likewise, title to such vessels and aircraft is not lost by the mere passage of time.

A coastal State does not acquire any right of ownership to a sunken state vessel or aircraft by reason of its being located on or embedded in land or the sea-bed over which it exercises sovereignty or jurisdiction. Access to such vessels and aircraft and their associated artefacts located on or embedded in the sea-bed of foreign archipelagic waters, territorial seas or contiguous zones, is subject to coastal State control in accordance with international aw. It is the policy of most Governments to honour requests from sovereign States to respect, or to authorise visits to, such sunken vessels and aircraft.

Access to sunken state vessels and aircraft and their associated artefacts located on or embedded in the continental shelf seaward of 24 miles from the baseline is subject to flag State control and is not subject to coastal State control. Access to sunken state vessels and aircraft and their associated artefacts located on or embedded in the sea-bed seaward of 24 miles from the baseline is subject only to flag State control.
Except for opposing belligerents while hostilities continue, no person or State may salvage or attempt to salvage sunken state vessels or aircraft, of their associated artefacts, wherever located, without the express permission of the sovereign flag State, whether or not a war grave.

Once hostilities have ended, sunken state vessels and aircraft containing crew remains are also entitled to special respect as war graves and must not be disturbed without the explicit permission of the sovereign.
The flag State is entitled to use all lawful means to prevent unauthorised disturbance of the wreck or crash site (including the debris field) or salvage of the wreck.
Disturbance of any shipwreck or crash site is necessarily a destructive process. In virtually every instance, once recovery activities are undertaken, the site cannot be restored or replicated. Any recovery effort which disturbs the site denies other properly authorised persons the opportunity for scientific discovery and study.

Accepted principles of marine archaeology, naval history and environmental protection require thoughtful research design, careful site surveys, minimal site disturbance consistent with research requirements, adequate financial resources, preparation of professional reports, and a comprehensive conservation plan before artefacts should be permitted to be recovered and treated. These principles apply particularly to sunken state vessels and aircraft.

These rules do not affect the rights of a territorial sovereign to engage in legitimate operations, such as removal of navigational obstructions, prevention of damage to the marine environment, or other actions not prohibited by international law, ordinarily following notice to and in cooperation with the State owning the vessel or aircraft or otherwise entitled to assert the sovereign immunity of the wreck.Roach, J.A., 1996.

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