7. P-40 Kittyhawk
After more than 70 years of being missing, an RAF pilot’s body was finally found, located in the Egyptian desert. It was in 1942 that they had first been reported missing after he never returned to the air base after being out on a mission. This was an astonishing discovery made over seven decades later and it showcases what amazing discoveries can be lurking just around the next corner if you know where to look.
It had been a Curtiss Kittyhawk fighter jet that he had been flying and it is believed that this plane had crashed in the desert. The pilot in question was named as Flight Sgt. Copping and it was initially believed that it was the Luftwaffe who had shot him down close to the Libya-Egypt border. They subsequently figured out that he had in fact managed to get lost in the midst of a huge sandstorm and he ended up crashing after becoming disorientated while flying over a desert that had no features.
The plane wreck and body were discovered in 2012 by a team of Polish Oil workers. They made a report of their findings to the authorities who subsequently discovered the aircraft which had been somewhat destroyed alongside a parachute. Therefore, Sgt. Copping seemingly survived the initial crash and had tried to get back to base by foot, but he was undoubtedly killed in the end by the extreme desert heat.
The reason why this plane had remained in such good condition was because of the extremely arid conditions, which meant that there was little to no corrosion of the plane’s metal surfaces. This is why aircraft boneyards prefer these types of conditions. There are currently plan in place to have this plane brought to a British museum. In total over the years, there were about 13,738 P-40s manufactured, with only about 28 of them still being airworthy.