Flt Sgt Copping's P-40 From The Egyptian Desert

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15 years 5 months

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Thanks shepsair!

Member for

24 years 2 months

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You have seen this one Bruce. :)

Mark

Yes, I know which one it is now - tail only recovered from Russia; dates about 1998/9

Bruce

Member for

12 years 5 months

Posts: 797

Should Have Gone To Specsavers.......!

I wouldn't like to comment on when those photos were taken, but I find the huge number of daft comments surprising. It's obvious they are real -Blindingly so. :rolleyes: Argh..

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12 years 1 month

Posts: 442

Here is a link with some pics for comparison.

http://hmvf.co.uk/forumvb/showthread.php?25848-Libyan-Desert-Wrecks

Most of those look far more convincing... Just found some similar P-40 crash photos, the props are still attached but the tops of the cowlings aren't.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c7/Crashed_Kittyhawk_I_260_Sqn_in_NAfrica_1942.jpg

http://www.mts.net/~royb/images/crashed_el_alamien.jpg

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19 years 5 months

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How likely is it that an intact aircraft in that environment would not have been seen before now?

Yes, the Sahara is big, but THAT big?
It's been a half century since the "Lady be Good" was found.
I don't think there are many surprises left to be found in the desert.

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24 years 2 months

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Actually, the Dove looks eerily similar to the P40; paint blasted off in a similar way for a start.

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13 years 2 months

Posts: 865

FAKE OR REAL?? you tell me

My money is still on first three 100% fakes....the last ones, definitely not!

Anyway, I'm just off to do me some digging at Piltdown. Man, you wouldn't believe what some people fake!

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24 years 2 months

Posts: 3,208

Anyway, I'm just off to do me some digging at Piltdown. Man, you wouldn't believe what some people fake!

I hope you'll take a copy of Hitler's diaries with you as reading material whilst you're away.

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The windscreen has cracking in the same place from the inside and the outside view. Looking through the left hand aspect there is an object on the floor visible which i am trying to correlate with items on the sand.

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12 years 1 month

Posts: 442

How likely is it that an intact aircraft in that environment would not have been seen before now?

Yes, the Sahara is big, but THAT big?
It's been a half century since the "Lady be Good" was found.
I don't think there are many surprises left to be found in the desert.

Try Google Earth!

If this is not a model then why was it posted on a modelling site?

Member for

19 years 5 months

Posts: 9,821

Try Google Earth!
If this is not a model then why was it posted on a modelling site?

I'm not saying it isn't real, only that I'd really expect that it would have been found (or stripped by the locals) by now.

The internet is home to a lot of people with seemingly nothing better to do than make phoney discoveries.

Sorry, until proof arrives, I'm skeptical.
And in that vein, I'd ask why the photographer didn't take a photo with his friends alongside..or park his truck a bit closer to the wreck...and post those as well to help prove authenticity. In this day and age, anyone would have known there would be doubts about such a find.

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24 years 2 months

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Looking at it from another direction -the cockpit shot is certainly real -where is it?

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20 years 7 months

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Some recoveries where paint has not faded.
Beaufighter VI, which P-40 is shown in your pic? Thanks!

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18 years

Posts: 256

I'm staggered at some of the comments on this thread.

The first three images scream fake to me. The last two are much more convincing, but are probably photoshopped/got- at versions of real photos.
Whatever, I brand them fakes as they are from the same source.

DD

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24 years 2 months

Posts: 10,029

Yes, I know which one it is now - tail only recovered from Russia; dates about 1998/9

Bruce

..er no. Just the tail was BP926.

This BF VI shot was a very complete but substantially bent example.

Mark

Member for

12 years 1 month

Posts: 442

I'm not saying it isn't real, only that I'd really expect that it would have been found (or stripped by the locals) by now.

The internet is home to a lot of people with seemingly nothing better to do than make phoney discoveries.

Sorry, until proof arrives, I'm skeptical.
And in that vein, I'd ask why the photographer didn't take a photo with his friends alongside..or park his truck a bit closer to the wreck...and post those as well to help prove authenticity. In this day and age, anyone would have known there would be doubts about such a find.

I too am sceptical!

But, let's look at the evidence a la Through The Keyhole:

1. Photos 1, 2, 3 look fake. And if they are not fake then they are crap photos. Who stumbles across a crashed aeroplane and takes a shot like photo 1? I reckon we are looking at a fairly small scale model.

2. Photo 4 looks real, but could and I repeat could, have been done by a modeller. I reckon it was, albeit on a much larger scale. It looks suspiciously set up if you ask me, perhaps over detailed, like with the shattered perspex pieces. I don't like the bullet holes either.

3. Photo 5 looks the real deal and you can see the same terrain through the windscreen if you change the screen contrast.

So, did someone have a genuine cockpit photo and feel like messing around with an airfix kit? People are saying that modellers couldn't be that good, but they are the ones who know all the details. I have the feeling that these could be traced back to someone's kitchen table.

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12 years 5 months

Posts: 797

Not that big. Bigger.

How likely is it that an intact aircraft in that environment would not have been seen before now?

Yes, the Sahara is big, but THAT big?
It's been a half century since the "Lady be Good" was found.
I don't think there are many surprises left to be found in the desert.

The Sahara IS vast. Hardly anyone lives there. Stuff gets lost in it's vastness. In one place you can see tyre tracks from the 1930's. In another, tracks are wiped-out in hours and buildings and vehicles lost. During the war, the RAF regularly buried supply dumps. It was not unusual to lose them. The British authorities cleared the main battlefields of scrap in the years after the war. Did they scour the rest? The 99.99r%..? Of course not...
As for looking on Google Earth...well, at full resolutiion, you'd probably spend the rest of your life scanning the Sahara, and then you be wasting your time, as the resolution is poor and many areas will have totally changed since the photo was taken.....:rolleyes: It's the gap between looking at a PC and the real world.

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24 years 2 months

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The cockpit shot is a real P-40 -therefore where is that P-40 bearing in mind that survivors are very well documented!

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12 years 1 month

Posts: 442

The cockpit shot is a real P-40 -therefore where is that P-40 bearing in mind that survivors are very well documented!

That's why the scenery through the windscreen is baffling me.