Residents living in an interior village of North-east Indian state of Manipur recovered wreckage of an aircraft that was built during the Second World War.
Members of the youth club of Senjam Chiran village thought they hit a jackpot when ruins of the main engine of the WW II aircraft were found at Konu hill in Senapati district on 30 December.
The craft weighs nearly 300 kg, which was recovered with 14 pistols of the time amid the wreckage, officials told PTI on Friday.
They had been on their way to a temple of deity Konu Lairenbi when they discovered the remains of the WW II aircraft, which is believed to belong to the Allied Forces while they had engaged in a battle with the Japanese forces in Manipur. The remains were fully retrieved by the officials.
In January 2012, fragments of a US military aircraft, used during the same period, had been recovered in northern Tripura by a team of 34th Battalion of the Assam Rifles. After careful study of the remnants, it was discovered to be a C-47B, which had crashed during World War II.
"The majority of Allied crashes were caused by inhospitable weather, mechanical failure or navigational errors. The American Joint Prisoners of War and Missing in Action Accounting Command (JPAC) had identified 16 known crash sites in northeast India where Allied forces aircraft had crashed during World War II," an official had said then.
