GeoLog

Buried beneath the soils of Burma lies a mystery that has been almost 70 years in the making: were a shipment of Spitfire aircraft concealed beneath a British airbase at the end of the Second World War? Dr Adam Booth, a geophysicist at Imperial College London and regular GeoLog contributor, is part of an archaeological team who are trying to unearth the truth in this tale. He’s posting to GeoLog from the field: this Part 3 of the series arrived late due to unreliable internet connection in Burma, but we hope it was worth the wait! Read Adam’s other posts on the Spitfire search here.

13 January 2013

Good afternoon from Yangon! I know it’s been a while, but the geophysics team hit the ground running, surveying almost from day one ahead of this week’s digging. I’m now just grabbing half an hour to begin updating this blog ahead of a reception at the British Ambassador’s residence…! We obviously have made some friends in high places in Myanmar!

Despite a wealth of new geophysical data, acquired by Roger Clark and Andy Merritt of University of Leeds, and myself of Imperial College, I’m afraid I’ll have to leave you with baited breath about whether there are Spitfires buried at Mingaladon! Our business partners are finalising details of our excavation but we’re hoping to break ground very soon. So, I can update you on the geophysical side of the project and how it is to work in Myanmar – but if you’re checking this blog for confirmation of buried Spitfires, you might just have to wait for another few days…!

A typical day of geophysical survey starts around 8am, when we get a taxi from our hotel to Mingaladon Airport, where we are met by our security supervisors and our industry colleagues. The airport is about seven miles away from the hotel, and the journey through Yangon’s chaotic traffic takes around 45 minutes. I say ‘chaotic’, although I’m not entirely sure that’s the correct word: there’s something ordered to the way the Burmese drive, but a bus performing a sharp U-turn across a busy dual carriageway is not something I think I’ll get used to! However, there’s a lot to take in during that 45-minute spell and it’s one of the only times that I enjoy sitting in a traffic jam: mingling amongst the very friendly Burmese is fun, and seeing the sunlight glint from the roofs of golden roofs of pagodas is really special. On several nights, we’ve returned to the hotel via crowded and colourful market streets, and I truly love people-watching.

Clockwise from top-left: Some friendly commuters driving through Yangon; A road-side watermelon seller; A pagoda by night; A giant chinthe, carved from a single piece of stone, stands guard at a pagoda.

In 2004, when we did our previous survey, I was here during the monsoon season, when there was rain like I’ve never experienced since: the field area was a swamp and, whilst it was humid, it wasn’t too hot. Now, in January, it’s both hot and humid – the dry ground makes for better survey conditions, but the downside is that the humidity really saps your strength. Our first task has been to map the micro-scale terrain across the site. Whilst the area appears flat to the average onlooker, our archaeological colleagues can interpret where features may potentially be buried from small-scale topographic lump-and-bumps. Andy Merritt takes charge of this using a Trimble differential GPS system. Whilst I might complain about the heat and humidity, I really have no right to as Andy notched up a walk of over 17 km around the site yesterday!

However, it’s not like Roger and I are simply sat around watching Andy walking around…! While he maps terrain, we use the EM-34 (our electromagnetic kit) to extend the coverage of the 2004 survey grid. From these data, we are able to map the infrastructure of the 1945 base, thereby allowing the conflict archaeologists to ensure that we’re digging in a place that is indeed consistent with the eyewitness accounts. However, a direct comparison of the 2013 and 2004 EM acquisitions has proven difficult, since the ground is now so much drier than it was before and there is subsequently a different electrical conductivity regime.

Left: Andy Merritt about to start the long work, conducting differential GPS measurements. Centre: Roger Clark brings in the EM-34 equipment after a long day’s surveying. Right: The bane of this trip…! An electrode from the electrical resistivity survey.

Our third piece of kit, the ERT (electrical resistivity tomography) has also been deployed both over and away from the 2004 EM anomalies. I have to say, from a purely practical viewpoint, this is my least favourite of the three pieces of equipment… its cables are prone to tangling, and my hands are blistered from repeatedly hammering 48 electrodes into hard-baked ground…! Nonetheless, from a geophysical viewpoint, it has shown a strong suggestion of structure close to the 2004 dig site, confirming that it is indeed worth a second look. I’m really looking forward to meeting whatever causes these anomalies face-to-face!

I should also say, thanks to everyone who commented on the previous blog posts. It’s really great to see the interest that the project has generated. I’m therefore sorry that I can’t currently give you the news that you’ve been waiting for – however, the digging is due to start very soon! It’s still exciting times, and I’m looking forward to hearing the engine of our JCB-provided excavators warming up. More to follow, but now I must spruce up for the embassy reception!

By Adam Booth, Imperial College London

Buried beneath the soils of Burma lies a mystery that has been almost 70 years in the making: were a shipment of Spitfire aircraft concealed beneath a British airbase at the end of the Second World War? Dr Adam Booth, a geophysicist at Imperial College London and regular GeoLog contributor, is part of an archaeological team who are trying to unearth the truth in this tale. He’ll be posting to GeoLog from the field. This is Part 2 of the series; read his other posts here.

5 January 2013

All is set for the journey to Burma, and the geophysical crew leaves tomorrow. My flat in London currently looks like a geophysical store room, with four sets of equipment squeezed into it – along with Dr Roger Clark and Leeds PhD student Andy Merritt! We’re pretty excited to be moving one step closer to discovering the truth behind the buried Spitfires story. It’s a 16-hour journey from Heathrow to Yangon’s Mingaladon Airport – hardly an inconvenience for such a great survey opportunity!

From Britain to Burma…! Burma is highlighted in red, and the white star shows the location of Yangon. (Credit: Google Maps)

I thought I’d introduce the geophysics we’ve done to date, and explain why it supports the story of a burial taking place at Mingaladon Airport. I’m an ‘exploration geophysicist’, meaning that I use geophysical principles to locate and characterise some subsurface target (a well-known application is using seismic methods to detect hydrocarbon reserves). In archaeology, geophysics represents a cost-effective means of assessing the archaeological content of a given site prior to digging, and thereafter allows expensive excavations to be targeted at priority locations.

For the survey at Mingaladon Airport, the target is, obviously, a buried Spitfire plane (although, more correctly, there are understood to be a few-dozen of them!). The story goes that each Spitfire is ‘deconstructed’ inside a wooden delivery crate, which itself is the size of a modern shipping container. The image below shows a crated Spitfire being unpacked: the photo is taken in Malta, but crates similar to this are what is thought to be present at Mingaladon. Eye-witnesses report that the crates were hauled side-by-side into a channel that crossed the base, and then covered over. The suggestion is that the bases of the crates may be up to 10m beneath the modern ground surface!

British airmen unpacking a Spitfire from a delivery crate, in Malta, in 1942. (Photograph used here under the terms of the Imperial War Museum Non Commercial Licence.)

To a conflict historian, a buried Spitfire may represent a rich source of archaeological evidence, while a veteran may see it as a blast from the past; the exploration geophysicist sees it as something rather more mundane – a heap of metallic components buried at some depth in the ground! However, locating a target is all about exploiting contrasts in the properties of that target, compared to the soil in which it is hosted. Most of the metal in a Spitfire is aluminium, although its engine and cannons are made of steel. A good way to locate a buried Spitfire could be to consider the electrical conductivity of the subsurface. Soils are typically electrically resistive, whereas metals are obviously conductive: areas of elevated conductivity could correspond to the burial site. As steel is magnetic, the Spitfires could also be detected with magnetometry: buried steel will disturb the Earth’s natural magnetic field, so potential burials could be located from a map of magnetic field strength. The most comprehensive interpretations of the subsurface are obtained where recordings from different survey techniques are combined. As such, my 2004 survey comprised data acquisitions to measure both electrical conductivity and magnetic properties.

The image below is a subset of the electromagnetic (EM) dataset, acquired using Geonics EM34-3 equipment, which provides a measure of electrical conductivity. You’re looking at data in map-view: the survey grid is 180x100m in area, and the colours correspond to electrical conductivity – the highest conductivities are coloured in red. For reference, Mingaladon Airport’s runway heads along the bottom edge of the grid (see the lower map). Very obviously, there are two anomalous, high conductivity, areas at the site. It should be noted that the EM34 would lack the resolution to image individual components of a Spitfire, at least at 10m depth, and it instead shows the bulk conductivity trend. What strikes me about these anomalies, however, is their ‘straightness’. I employ two rules of thumb when interpreting data: nature doesn’t do right angles, and nor does it make straight lines. As such, these areas are immediately ‘suspicious’ of some sort of human activity.

EM data acquired in 2004 at Mingaladon Airport, showing electrical conductivity.

Location of the EM grid at the Mingaladon Airport site. (Background image credit: Google Earth)

However, it would be inappropriate to interpret ‘Spitfires!’ from these data. While the electrical conductivities are sufficiently high to be indicative of metal, a war leaves behind a great deal of metallic debris and we could simply be looking at a bulldozed dump-site. However, what is compelling about these data is that the location of the left-hand anomaly exactly matches the burial site identified by certain eye-witness veterans. A trial excavation in 2004, over this anomaly, revealed wooden planking at a depth of around 5m – an isolated plank, or the top of a delivery crate…? Unfortunately, our group’s arrangement with the government did not extend far enough to check. So near but so far, the hole was backfilled – Mingaladon would hold onto its secrets for another few years…

…Until now! Starting in a few days at Mingaladon, the first task of the geophysics crew will be to confirm and update the previous EM survey. Thereafter, our archaeologists need an estimate of target depth in order to design the excavation. The depth of an anomaly cannot be constrained reliably from EM data, and electrical resistivity tomography (ERT) is better-suited to this task. Andy Merritt uses ERT in his PhD research, and he’ll be acquiring ERT lines through the centre of the EM anomalies. The expectation is that we’ll be able to make a nearest-metre estimate of the target depth.

The next update will be posted from Burma itself, when I’ll hopefully have some hot-off-the-press geophysical images for you, and some information from the archaeologists about how they’re planning to excavate and recover whatever we find. Stay tuned to GeoLog!

By Adam Booth, Imperial College London

Buried beneath the soils of Burma lies a mystery that has been almost 70 years in the making: were a shipment of Spitfire aircraft concealed beneath a British airbase at the end of the Second World War? Dr Adam Booth, a geophysicist at Imperial College London and regular GeoLog contributor, is part of an archaeological team who are trying to unearth the truth in this tale. He’ll be posting to GeoLog from the field. This is Part 1 of the series; read his other posts here.

19 December 2012

Hi, and thanks very much for your interest in this project! Over the next month or so, I’ll be sending back a series of field blogs from our archaeological survey in Burma. It’s quite a unique story and I hope you’ll enjoy the insight into archaeological geophysics! We’re heading out to Burma in January 2013 so, in this first EGU blog post, I’ll introduce the survey team – and do my best to explain quite a strange archaeological tale!

I’m Dr Adam Booth, a near-surface geophysicist at Imperial College London. I use a variety of geophysical methods to image subsurface features in environments ranging from Arctic glaciers to the Arabian desert. My involvement in this project started in 2004, when I met Mr David Cundall while between projects at the University of Leeds.

Me! Dr Adam Booth, during some archaeological fieldwork in Egypt.

David Cundall is as unique an individual as his story itself! A farmer from Scunthorpe, UK, he is also a keen aviation enthusiast. Sixteen years ago, he met a former American airman who mentioned that a number of Spitfire aircraft – an iconic British fighter plane – were buried at an airbase in Burma, at the end of the Second World War. Never assembled, never even removed from their delivery crates, they were simply buried when the British abandoned the base in 1945 – or so the veteran’s story went. Incredibly, David managed to track down eye-witnesses who claimed to have performed the burial. On trips to Burma with David, they independently identified the same spot at the airbase where the alleged burial took place. However, the abandoned base wasn’t exactly abandoned anymore: it had become Mingaladon Airport, the main passenger airport outside the Burmese city of Rangoon.

To persuade the Burmese government to investigate at such a sensitive site, David realised he’d need harder evidence than some eye-witness accounts. Geophysics was one such means of doing this – it wouldn’t confirm the burial of aircraft but it could at least reveal if there was anything ‘suspicious’ in the subsurface. David therefore approached geophysicists at the University of Leeds, specifically seeking out Dr Roger Clark (who was to become my PhD supervisor, and colleague thereafter).

Left – David Cundall, and a Spitfire aircraft at London’s Imperial War Museum. Right – Dr Roger Clark (both photos: Simon Turnbull, University of Leeds).

Roger advised David on performing his own geophysical surveys, but it soon became apparent that some specialist geophysical knowledge would be required on-site. With his full teaching schedule and me with time to kill, Roger suggested that David approach me about performing the survey.

I remember David’s phone call, when he asked me to travel to Burma with him. Somewhat surprised at the suggestion, I thought he’d said Birmingham, and I only realised I was wrong when he started talking about flights…! Six months later, I was stood in a swamp at the side of the airport’s runway, dodging a monsoon and the odd snake, using geophysics to measure the electrical conductivity of the subsurface – essentially, ‘metal detecting’ on an industrial scale. I’ll go into more detail in a future post, but the results were very encouraging! Directly where the eye-witnesses had located the burial, the geophysical data showed highly-elevated electrical conductivities, strongly suggestive of buried metal in the ground.

But is buried metal the same as buried Spitfires? Maybe not, but the evidence was certainly sufficient to convince the Burmese to permit an excavation. Earlier this year, with the financial backing of software company Wargaming, David signed a recovery contract with the newly democratised Burmese government.

The current phase of the project is led by three experienced specialists in the field of conflict archaeology – namely, Martin Brown, Andy Brockman, and Rod Scott. Theirs is one of the fastest growing branches of archaeological science. Using archaeological techniques, conflict archaeologists interpret the material traces of communities preparing for or involved in conflict. Their experience at this site is vital: Mingaladon was heavily bombed during the war, hence excavating there requires care and expertise. Unexploded ordnance is a risk, and we must also be sensitive to the possibility of human remains. Furthermore, whatever is uncovered may be very fragile and recovering it will be a delicate operation.

Our three conflict archaeologists. Left – Martin Brown. Centre – Andy Brockman (photo: Simon Turnbull, University of Leeds). Right – Rod Scott.

According to Andy, the burial of never-assembled Spitfires is “unprecedented” – can we even be sure that the eye-witnesses knew what was in the crates they were burying? Combined with an absence of records from the normally comprehensive military archives, it’s safe to say that the archaeologists are rather sceptical about the possibility of Spitfires at the site! However, they agree that the geophysical data suggest something is there, and it will be a fascinating archaeological find whatever it is!

If there are Spitfire aircraft there, David Cundall is convinced that we’ll see 30 original World War Two planes fly again. However, there’s only one way to find out – the dig starts on January 5th, and Roger and I will be performing new surveys to guide it. Watch this space for updates!

By Adam Booth, Imperial College London

Today GeoLog features a guest post by Mona Behl, a Visiting Fellow at the American Meteorological Society. Mona explains why Earth observation satellites are so important and why the future of Earth observations, sciences and services might be at risk.

The year 1957 marked the birth of Sputnik I, the world’s first artificial satellite to be launched in space. This launch ushered in an exciting era of growth and change in science. Over the past 50 years, the advent of Earth observation systems (including ground, oceanic, atmospheric, and satellite-based resources) has truly revolutionized the way we see our planet. Satellites are not only our “windows to the universe”; they also provide a unique and revolutionary vantage point from space with global images and data about the Earth and its environment. The exploration, exploitation and application of satellite data drive Earth observations, science and services (OSS) and society as a whole.

However, the fate of Earth OSS appears to be in peril.

A recent report by the American Meteorological Society points out that federal budget deficits and economic downturn are putting a strong hold on building and maintaining Earth OSS. The findings of this report stem from a workshop held by the AMS Policy Program. Describing the technological advances is relatively easy compared to measuring the economic and social benefits of Earth OSS. This study reveals the importance of Earth OSS and how it is integrated into the very fabric of our society.

Whereas space-based observations provide a major contribution to the Earth observation system, observations that are based on land, air and sea are important and provide us with an accurate, global, yet independent view of the Earth. Our society faces a number of challenges today. We rely on Earth OSS not only for increasing the accuracy and breadth of weather information, forecasting and warnings, but also for improving the management and protection of terrestrial, coastal, and marine ecosystems. To understand, assess, predict, mitigate, and adapt to the changing climate, Earth OSS is important. Observation-based data not only serves the government but also has immense private, academic, nonprofit, and public use. From national security to providing information and understanding about environmental factors affecting human health to water resource management, to combating desertification and promoting sustainable agriculture, Earth OSS are imperative to our well-being.

Despite the importance and interconnectedness of Earth OSS to society, why does its future still look grim?

Another study conducted by the U.S. National Research Council concludes that, in the near term, budgets for NASA’s science program will remain inadequate to meet the country’s pressing needs. As a result, the U.S. may have to rely on data from European or other satellites.

However, Europe seems to be headed for a crash as well. In April this year, the European Space Agency declared the demise of Envisat, the world’s largest Earth observation spacecraft. Envisat contributed valuable information to Europe’s Global Monitoring for Environmental Security program by providing measurements of atmospheric chemistry, rising sea levels, plate tectonics, greenhouse gas emissions, and land subsidence. The end of this mission is likely to lead to significant gaps in satellite data.

Envisat (Credit: ESA)

The decline of Earth OSS may be a beacon of a future calamity.

The quality of life, as well as the ability to protect our nations, manage our environment, and adapt to a changing climate are all dependent on the use of the Earth observation systems. Given the enormous potential benefits that Earth OSS affords humankind, society faces a need to rethink priorities and put a concerted effort into ensuring the adequacy and continuity of Earth OSS over the short, intermediate, and longer term.

One of the key recommendations the AMS report makes is to foster private-public collaborations in order to improve and expand Earth OSS. Interagency participation in addition to private-public collaborations is required not only at a national level but at the international level as well. For years, the science and technology communities have discussed and understood the need to link our Earth to its observation systems. However, to ensure the success and growth of our Earth OSS, investment in sound government policies is critical.

The need to monitor and observe the Earth’s environment is now more urgent than ever.

By  Mona Behl, American Meteorological Society

Abstract submission for the EGU General Assembly 2012 (EGU2012) is now open. The General Assembly is being held from Sunday 22 Apr 2012 to Friday 27 Apr 2012 at the Austria Center Vienna, Austria.

You can browse through the Sessions online.

Each Session shows the link Abstract Submission. Using this link you are asked to log in to the Copernicus Office Meeting Organizer. You may submit the text of your contribution as plain text, LaTeX, or MS Word content. Please pay attention to the First Author Rule.

The deadline for the receipt of Abstracts is 17 January 2012. In case you would like to apply for support, please submit no later than 15 December 2011. Information about the financial support available can be found on the Support and Distinction part of the EGU GA 2012 website.

Further information about the EGU General Assembly 2012 on it’s webpages. If you have any questions email the meeting organisers Copernicus.