2011:148 - MONEYDARRAGH, Donegal

Excavation was carried out under the supervision of FarrimondMacManus Ltd on behalf of 360 Productions, as part of ongoing research into World War II aviation history in Ireland, with the aim of recovering the remains of a Spitfire aircraft from an area of upland bog along the Inishowen Peninsula, where the aircraft crash-landed shortly after take-off from Eglinton airport. Excavation of the Spitfire was carried out on 28 June 2011.

While the vast majority of the material recovered from the aircraft was in a poor state of preservation, in so far as it survived as compacted and entangled debris, it is possible to reconstruct how the aircraft came down. The angle of all the recovered guns (six in total were recovered by us; the other two were recovered in 1941) suggests that the aircraft was in a near-vertical dive when it hit the ground. The port (left) battery of weapons were recovered from the peat/clay in a near-vertical arrangement and, given the distribution of the guns in the peat as compared to the clay, it appears that the port wing struck first—those guns being buried 1m deeper than the starboard (right) weapons. The cockpit damage suggests that the port side took the brunt of the impact a split second before the starboard side disintegrated. The seat runners show a vertical force bending substantial components from port to starboard, while other substantial items (such as control column pipes etc.) show damage that indicates a vertical shearing impact.

It appears, therefore, that the P8074 Spitfire aircraft just about cleared the higher slopes to the west of the crash site and struck the ground at an estimated 350mph in a near-vertical dive (the engine was recovered directly beneath the fuselage wreckage column). The port wing was the first section of aircraft to hit the ground and propelled those parts of the wings to the greatest depths. As the plane disintegrated and the velocity decreased, the starboard guns did not penetrate so deeply, remaining in the peat layer above the underlying geological substrata. A substantial proportion of the wings survived on the surface—as is commonly found—along with the main undercarriage assemblies, while the remainder of the aircraft was propelled and compacted down to a depth of c. 9m. Those elements of the aircraft which were aligned along the vertical axis of the plane, i.e. radio antennae and vertical tail-fin and rudder, remained remarkably intact, as the initial impact opened a void in the peat/subsoil through which the bulk of the wreckage drove.

FarrimondMacManus East Belfast Enterprise, 308 Albertbridge Road, Belfast BT5 4G