Martin J Cobb
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Mercedes-Benz 300SL Gullwing, left abandoned for years underneath palm trees and banana trees in Cuba. Spanish photographer Miguel Llorente went hunting for the same Mercedes Gullwing hiding in Cuba back in November 2012 and has now shared his photographs of two rusting 300SLs on his site, This European Life. The Gullwing shown is in its shockingly decayed state. Stripped of its engine, its doors broken and most of the interior gone, it’s still shockingly impressive. Llorente says it was sharing a yard in a rural village outside Havana with an Abarth Zagato, some Hispano-Suiza race car and a Chrysler Thomas Special by Ghia – all hugely collectable cars.
In May 2012, Polish oil company worker Jakub Perka was on an expedition in Al Wadi al Jadidi, 200 miles from the nearest town when he discovered a crash landed P-40 aircraft. In that remote location no one had disturbed it, and the entire plane remained relatively intact; a makeshift shelter had apparently been constructed outside the plane using a parachute. There was no sign of the pilot’s remains. Perka documented the site and contacted the the Egyptian military who immediately seized the fighter plane’s guns and ammunition for safety reasons. Soon after its discovery was reported, locals also began stripping the plane for scrap metal.
Flight Sergeant Dennis Copping was on a routine flight in 1942, returning a P40 Kittyhawk fighter to an RAF base after repairs, when he got lost over the featureless desert and ran out of fuel. His perfectly preserved aircraft was found in the Western Desert, in Egypt, last year by an oil prospector. A makeshift shelter close by, and signs of an attempt to repair the aircraft’s radio, suggested that the 24-year-old pilot had survived the crash and at some point had set off to look for help — never to be seen again. Shortly after the discovery of the Kittyhawk, a team of Italian archaeologists found bones, along with scraps of a Second World War parachute, three miles from the crash site — but Flight-Sergeant Copping’s surviving relatives have been told that the Egyptian authorities have been unable to establish their identity. His nephew, John Pryor-Bennett, was initially invited to fly to Egypt to supply a DNA sample, but was then told not to bother, as the bones no longer contained any DNA. However, that claim has been disputed by four forensic pathologists advising the family. They hope to travel to Cairo to examine the bones themselves, to give Mr Pryor-Bennett and his family a definitive answer.