Aviation archaeology
[1] It is an activity practiced by both enthusiasts and academics in pursuit of finding, documenting, recovering, and preserving sites important in aviation history.
[citation needed] The activity dates to post-World War II Europe when, after the conflict, numerous aircraft wrecks studded the countryside.
[2] Old abandoned US Army Air Corp auxiliary fields and those converted to city municipal airports provide archaeological sites to be researched and investigated.
From detailed GPS data & maps, to researching accident reports information, numerous resources help create a complete picture of the historic event.
Most federal and state laws are, however, explicit in describing cultural resources as either ‘objects, sites, or otherwise, of historic value’[10][11] or ‘military or social history’[12] and deem the time limit as over fifty years old.
The National Register deems aviation wreck sites as “any aircraft that has been crashed, ditched, damaged, stranded, or abandoned”.
The SMCA includes penalties associated with any unauthorized disturbances of sunken military craft as a fine and a liability for the reasonable costs incurred in recovery of archaeological or cultural information, storage, restoration, care, maintenance, and conservation.
For the wreck-chasing hobbyist there is a self-regulating body, the British Aviation Archaeological Council (BAAC),[18] which defines ethical standards of behaviour, coordinates activities and provides a forum for discussion for its member groups.
Aviation history sites on land that can be subject to archaeological survey or excavation can include airports (which can contain hangars, terminal, other facilities, etc.
The crew survived and was rescued, and some avionics removed from the site, and it currently is the subject of a teaching aviation archaeology field school in various years.
In 1990, 1994, and 1998, archaeologists investigated, using airborne remote sensing studies and limited excavation, a vintage hangar of the Huffman Prairie Flying Field Site at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, Ohio.
The geophysical and remote sensing investigations revealed magnetic, electromagnetic, and ground penetrating radar anomalies and infrared thermal images associated with the hangar structure.
The remains of the USS Macon Airship and its associated F9C Sparrowhawks are located at around 1500 feet in the Monterey Bay National Marine Sanctuary.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) has run survey expeditions to the site, creating photomosaics to track deterioration.
Many tasks are established and the research is a long process that requires the detailed review numerous and various sources of information.
The complexities include a great deal of preparation, extensive training, precise planning, and very technical equipment and coordination.
This has resulted in numerous studies and reports, including some cross-fertilization or ideas, theory and techniques with practitioners in other parts of the world, with a strong emphasis on the involvement of conservators.
[28] Underwater aviation archaeology commenced in Australia at the wrecks of the Dornier, Catalina, and Sunderland Flying Boats destroyed by Japanese fighters at Broome in WWII.
[32] In America, aviation archaeologists, crosstrained in other areas of study, are found in the employ of Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command (JPAC), traveling to former war zones throughout the world, to search for the remains of American servicemen and women that have been lost.
A group of volunteers, under the banner of "The BentProp Project", have pursued American military wreck sites and remains without disturbing them; their findings are forwarded to JPAC.
In Australia and in some other parts of the world, where there are human remains involved, a tendency has been for the armed forces to secure the services of forensic anthropologists and crash investigators.
