Prague, July 13 (CTK) – There are many old military planes buried underground across the Czech Republic, which wait for being uncovered by Jan Pohorelec, an “aviation archaeologist” from east Bohemia who focuses on detecting such planes and their debris, Mlada fronta Dnes (MfD) writes yesterday.
To detect crashed planes, Pohorelec uses a rod like diviners who use it to seek underground water.
Besides, he spends a lot of time in archives. He wants to open a unique museum to present his finds, the paper writes.
Pohorelec, a pensioner who previously worked in engineering industry, admits that sometimes people mock him.
“They think I’m dowsing in search of water, but I search for aircraft. [The dowsing rod helps me] detect an anomaly underground caused by a crashed plane,” he told MfD.
He says some items in his collection are not reminiscent of plane parts at all.
What a layman may consider a mast, is in fact a wing of a plane. A giant engine, similar to a tank one, comes from the Junkers JU-52 aircraft which Pohorelec found at the foot of Snezka, the country’s highest summit in east Bohemia 16 years ago.
“It was on the territory of the [Giant Mountains] national park, in a no-entry area…We transported it away by a helicopter,” Pohorelec is quoted as saying.
He says he has pursued his hobby since 1997 when he found and unburied StuKa (Ju-87), a widely-feared German dive bomber, near the Trebosice village, east Bohemia.
He has gathered his so far most interesting finds on the yard of his house in Cepi.
Plots’ owners often do not believe that a plane lies buried below their feet, as nothing indicates it on the ground surface.
It is far from easy to dig out such planes, since some are buried as deep as nine metres underground, Pohorelec says.
In the museum he plans to open in a reconstructed firefighters’ centre, he wants to put his finds on display along with the photographs of complete aircraft and the stories of the planes that crashed in Bohemia during WWII.
At present he is about to uncover another “buried” plane. He keeps the locality secret in order to protect the find from possible other “hunters.”
“I’d like to uncover a Mustang. Certain symptoms indicate its whereabouts,” Pohorelec said.
