26. Hitting the Library

19th January 2013

“Archaeology is the search for fact. Not truth. If it's truth you're interested in, Doctor Tyree's Philosophy class is right down the hall. So forget any ideas you've got about lost cities, exotic travel, and digging up the world. We do not follow maps to buried treasure, and 'X' never, ever marks the spot. Seventy percent of all archaeology is done in the library. Research. Reading.

Dr. Henry Walton "Indiana" Jones, Jr

“Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade.” Screenplay by Jeff Boam, story by George Lucas and Menno Meyjes.

Professional archaeologists usually wince at any comparison with Indiana Jones and the Raiders’ films of Steven Spielberg and George Lucas, but in this case Dr Jones is quite right.  In fact he may even have underestimated the percentage of time spent researching a project in the library, the national and private archive and, increasingly today, in the labyrinth of gold and dross which is the Internet.

Before we even got on the plane to Yangon, the Burma Spitfires team had undertaken detailed documentary research focussed on the RAF Museum and UK National Archives at Kew.  All with the aim of trying to ground the story of the lost Spitfires of RAF Mingaladon and the context for the story, not in the fallible and selective memories of witnesses, but in the hard documentary evidence written down by the military authorities and government bodies in 1945 and 1946 during the period the legend of Mingaladon and rumours of buried Spitfires first became current.

The documentary research began almost as soon as the story of the Burma Spitfires first broke in the Daily Telegraph in the Spring of 2012.  Beginning with a case file supplied by David Cundall it rapidly expanded to encompass a fresh search for deep background and historical context, which by October 2012 involved three specialist researchers and interviews with witnesses and experts carried out for the documentary feature which is being made about David Cundall’s search for Spitfires by Room 608 Productions.

This detailed, objective interrogation of all the available documentary material is vital because, in archaeology, context is all. 

An object recovered from the ground is simply an object, even if it is something as beautiful and iconic as a Spitfire.  Conversely, an object recovered from the ground which can be studied alongside its documentary and physical context is a Story given deeper meaning, resonance and value on account of demonstrable links to the time, place and people. 

^{The British Library Reading Room}

All our research has been focussed on the following broad questions which are designed to provide hard information which will ground the story of the lost Spitfires in the reality as people perceived and recorded it in 1945/1946 and to bring that context to the search at Mingaladon/Yangon International Airport…

1. Is there documentary evidence for the burial of Spitfire Aircraft in the Burma Theatre in general and RAF Mingaladon in particular between August 1945 and the Spring of 1946 as the legend suggests?
2. Is there documentary evidence for the political and military background suggested by proponents of the legend, such as a burial of aircraft in support of ethnic groups in Burma and the involvement of Lord Mountbatten?
3. Is there documentary evidence which might demonstrate how the legend as we know and understand it came about?

We have also looked at detailed questions related to the physical context of the site at Yangon International Airport.

1. What information do we have about the physical environment and engineering capabilities of RAF Mingaladon at the time the legend grew up in 1945/1946?
2. How has subsequent development of the site by the RAF until 1947 and then post-Independence, changed the physical space occupied by the site at Yangon International Airport and does this affect the perception of witness evidence?
3. Using documents and aerial reconnaissance photographs can we quantify the risk for the finding of unexploded ordnance and human remains on the dig site at Yangon?

We regard it as irresponsible, deeply disrespectful to lost servicemen and women and their families and potentially lethally dangerous to undertake any excavation on a military or military aircraft site without undertaking such a risk assessment; which has to be carried out by professionals in the field.  In our case this work has been coordinated by Field Director Martin Brown who has extensive experience of liaising with the casualty authorities of various nations through his work on the “Plugstreet Project” in Belgium, and by the Defence Infrastructure Organisation Historic Environment Team and Field Archaeologist and UXO specialist Rod Scott, lately of the Royal Logistics Corps.

We are now embarking on the phase of the project which will see the library work transferred into the field, where it will inform, moderate and perhaps be contradicted by the work of the excavation team under Martin Brown, supported by Rod Scott and expert digger operator Manny Mercado.  To use the language of landscape archaeology, the team have begun to “groundtruth” the Legend of Mingaladon, testing the theories and documentary research against the evidence in the soil.   The documents tell part of the story and that part is often fascinating and vivid, even when it describes the minutiae of British military bureaucracy, but true to Indiana Jones’ precepts, there is no X Marks the Spot here.  Even the Geophysics is only suggestive of potential targets which the team needs to investigate. 

However, taken together, the documents are beginning to tell a compelling and very human story about what actually happened at RAF Mingaladon as the Second World War came to a close and the people of Burma struggled and prepared for Independence.  We are about to find out if that story is consistent in with the Legend of Mingaladon and whether it is corroborated or contradicted by those “facts in the ground.”