I take it this is a new effort? Seems like i recall a lot of stuff dug up previously, including 190 parts, and the gear leg covers for Spit VII EN474 at the NASM. Seems like that was a long while ago though.
Found it. I remembered it from Twin Cities Aero Historians. 1998
Freeman Field Dig
by Dick Phillips
While several of our members are aware of what the present Freeman Field Research Project is all about, I'm sure that there are several that may be hearing about it for the first time. In the summer of 1945, an ambitious effort was made in the ETO (European Theatre of Operations), to obtain as many German aircraft as possible, selecting the most airworthy examples of each type, to send them to the USA for testing and evaluation. The code name for this project was LUSTY. It was under the command of Col. Harold E. Watson, and the pilots and the men involved became known as Watson's Whizzers. Over several months, they collected whatever aircraft the Luftwaffe had left at overrun airfields and ferried them to ports in France. There they were loaded on board several ships. Among them were the HMS Reaper and the liberty ship, Richard J. Gattling. On arrival at Newark, the crated aircraft were put on railway flat cars and the many tons of spare parts were loaded into box cars for the trip west to Wright Field at Dayton, Ohio. One of the requirements when collecting the German aircraft was that they had to be accompanied by a year's supply of spare parts to support the flight-testing program. This included spare engines, tires, landing gear, control surfaces, instruments and any other parts that could not be readily available at Wright Field. Therefore, many crates of parts came over with the aircraft.
By the time the material was arriving at Wright Field, it had been decided to use Freeman Field, Seymour, Indiana, as the evaluation site. Freeman was about 90 miles northwest of Dayton. Freeman field had been built as a twin engine training field and had been used to train over 4000 pilots in the AT-10 "Wichita". Freeman was also used for a short time as the first training field for the R-4B Sikorsky helicopter. This was a brand new and radical type of aircraft in those days.
Several of the crated war prizes were assembled and a test flight program was initiated in the late summer of 1945. Not only were there Luftwaffe machines on had at Freeman, but a similar project had been undertaken with Japanese, Italian and even a few English aircraft. The list of German types on hand was extensive and included the very familiar Bf-109, FW-190, JU-88, Ju-87's plus jets such as the Me-262, He-162, Ar-234 and even V-1 and V-2 rockets. There were also many trainer, bomber and transport types on hand. Now keep in mind that all these types came over accompanied with many crates of spare parts.
Even though the war in Europe had come to an end and the bombs were being dropped in Japan, they had managed to make almost 2000 flights from Freeman in the aircraft that had been made airworthy. However, with the end of the war, there was no need or budget for the evaluation program and it rather quickly came to an end. Some of the planes were transferred to Davis-Monthan Air Base in Tucson Arizona, some to Wright Field and some to Orchard Place Army AirField just northwest of Chicago. Need I explain to anyone what became of Orchard Place?
By early 1946, the mission of Freeman Field was over and all the military material was being disposed of by selling it, giving it away, or by the easiest way digging a hole and burying it. Now, for you German aircraft fans, think about all the existing Luftwaffe machines that still reside in various museums today in the USA. That would include the ones in the Smithsonian, the JU-87 hanging in the Science Museum in Chicago, the ones in the Planes of Fame-West at Chino and the other few scattered around the country. All of these were from the collection at Freeman Field.
By April 30th, 1947 the military had finished their disposals and clean up of Freeman, and had officially returned it to the City of Seymour, and it became the civil airport for Seymour and Jackson County, Indiana.
Now, if we do a little inventory here, we find that several of the "War Prize". aircraft had found new homes in museums, Only a handful could be accounted for in that manner. We are sure that some of them were actually scrapped, meaning cut apart into small pieces and melted down. However, scrapping took on another meaning to some people in those days. It meant simply getting rid of it by whatever means were available. In addition to the several dozen aircraft remaining on hand, there were dozens of railroad box cars still on hand that had been used to store the hundreds of tons of spare parts that had never been used. When an individual aircraft was given to a museum, it didn't necessarily have all its spares with it. Many of the spares were still crated and stored. Since there had been a fair amount of Luftwaffe's Jet and Rocket powered aircraft there. They were of great interest to the US military in the early post-war years. Much of the flyable and new or like-new jet/rocket equipment was taken away and a lot of it ended up with the US Navy and US Air Force for further evaluation. Even with that, the inventory list left a lot of material unaccounted for at the time of the turnover of Freeman to the City of Seymour.
From 1947 until 1992, little or no interest was given to the items that were buried at the airfield. The runways were still there and it remains an active airport. Although, a couple of the runways had been closed. The ramps and hangers remain. A fixed base operator runs the fuel sales, hanger rental and flight instruction that goes along with most any civil airport. Rhodes International, a small cargo-hauling airline flying C-47s and Convair 240's had a facility and maintenance hanger and a few corporate aircraft were based there. The main part of the base that had contained the barracks, mess halls, offices and all the buildings found on a busy military base, had become a giant industrial park.
In 1992, Charles Osborn of Louisville, Kentucky, heading a group named "Blue Sky Aviation", made some contacts and received permission to do some digging for the "treasure" rumored for many years to be buried there. After several months of exploratory holes and many pits and trenches dug, they had nothing other than plain trash to show for it. And, I'm not saying plane trash. Blue Sky decided to abandon the project, feeling that little or no aircraft material was there, only the trash typical of any normal dumping site.