CAMBRIDGESHIRE, ENGLAND—A team made up of researchers from Oxford Archaeology East, the Defense Archaeology Group, Operation Nightingale, and Historic England is recovering a World War II-era aircraft that crashed into what is now the Great Fen Nature Reserve. Pilot Officer Harold Edwin Penketh was killed in 1940 when the Spitfire X4593 crashed during a training flight. According to a report in Cambridge News, witnesses said the aircraft broke formation with two other planes and went into a dive. It seemed to make a partial recovery at about 2,000 feet before reentering the dive and hitting the ground. It is thought that the oxygen system may have failed, causing Penketh to lose consciousness, since he did not attempt to use his parachute. So far, the team has found oxygen tubes, ammunition, and fragments of aluminum. Major components of the plane, including the engine, are expected to be recovered as well. To read more, go to "The Archaeology of World War II."
