Close Encounters with a Time Capsule

Image Source: (29 March 2012) © Jakub Perka @ Picasaweb.

Steven Spielberg's Close Encounters of the Third Kind  (1977) starts with World War II airplanes found in the Mexican desert, miraculously in perfect condition, after having disappeared 30 years before. Gizmodo reported on 10 May on a similar eerie discovery (although no accompanying sign of aliens): a Polish oil worker, Jakub Perka, discovered a crashed P-40 Kittyhawk which has been preserved in the Western Desert in Egypt, 200 miles from the nearest town for 70 years.

Image Source: (29 March 2012) © Jakub Perka @ Picasaweb.

The report:

In what historians are calling the aviation equivalent to finding King Tut's tomb, a World War II fighter plane has been found in the Sahara desert 70 years after it crashed. Even more impressive, the plane is perfectly preserved—it hasn't been touched and hasn't even been seen until now.

The discovery of the single-seater fighter plane, a RAF Curtiss P-40 Kittyhawk, was made by Jakub Perka, a Polish oil company worker who was exploring the desert in Egypt. It's amazing to see the plane in such good condition, the cockpit is still intact and the plane was even loaded with ammunition, until it was removed by the Egyptian government for safety reasons. It's like finding a time capsule hidden in the sands of time.

The plane was supposedly flown by Flight Sgt Dennis Copping, who was 24-years-old at the time. He was ordered to fly the plane to a British airbase in northern Egypt for repairs but ended up crash-landing the plane in June of 1942. No one is quite sure why he had to crash-land, there are bullet holes in the plane, but Copping was never seen again.

... See more pictures of the World War II fighter plane here. [Telegraph UK, Daily Mail, Vintage Wings]

The Kittyhawk's cockpit. Image Source: BNPS via Telegraph.

See videos of the airplane and the Close Encounters opening scene below the jump. Sadly and inexcusably - according to reports - the story was made public, and experts from the RAF Museum in London have not traveled to the site quickly enough; scavengers have been picking over the plane and removing items from the site for over a month since it was discovered.

Discovery of Flight 19 in Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977) © Columbia Pictures. Video Source: Youtube.