Yes there have been a few stories like that...
Some were true, like a bunch of new RAAF spitfires being dumped off a carrier off the Queensland coast at wars end etc. A fisherman did actually pull up some bits at one stage but it was all completely rotten etc. But from memory he couldn't find them again! Another one which was actually verified by wartime colour footage, was a bunch of F4U Corsairs being pushed overboard etc.
The burying stories have some basis in fact. On Bougainville they discovered US arms caches buried in the sand amongst the coconuts. Left for a retreat that never came, as they advanced towards Rabaul. Covered over by planks and sand they had fuel drums full of 30-06 ammo, 30 cal MG's, Thompsons, 45 ACP ammo, grenades, mortar rounds etc. Sadly the local kids often find these things first and sometimes blow off an arm or get blinded, by wacking them to see if they work... They still have UXB teams disarming this stuff, trained by NZ or OZ military. WW2 weapons like that were used in the Bougainville rebellion in the 1990's and are still being used in West Papua by the OPM against the Indonesian occupation force. The allies just moved on and left it all behind. There wasn't much of a clean up effort after 45'...
There are many missing WW2 pacific aircraft wrecks still out there, hundreds in fact. But if you know that part of the world you know that the ocean is very deep and the jungle very dense, with steep mountainous terrain. You can be almost of top of something and not see it. Proof of this was in PNG a decade or so back when they were widening a road for trucks etc. They discovered a USMC fighter upside down, buried up to the cockpit in the ground with the pilots skeleton still hanging in the straps, even had his rusty 45 colt still hanging from his waist in his webbing belt. He was only about 20 yards off the road and had sat there undiscovered since 1943...
Who knows one day they may even find my missing relative (mothers cousin) who was shot down in 1943 over Munda.
But to give you an idea I dived and trekked around there several times in the early 1990's , as there are a bunch of aircraft wrecks in the Roviana lagoon, and piles of wreckage on land. Whilst there I spoke to old locals who back in the day were teenage members of the coast-watchers network, actively searching for and retrieving downed allied air crew etc. They recalled being told an RNZAF P40 had gone done there but never saw any sign of it. As they said, diving at high speed and out of control, they could miss the islands and wind up in 3,000' of water in a few seconds. And if they hit the hills the aircraft often just disintegrated and got overgrown within a year or 2.
But every year or so another one gets found...
The place to find really decent wrecks these days is North Africa and Russia etc. The permafrost or desert keeps things pretty well and the areas are so remote. Like that RAF P40E that popped up in Egypt a couple of years ago. Once again there are so many of these things missing... All it takes is time and $$$ and often a change in the weather to shift the sand or warm the frosted ground. Expect more to surface as the locals have cottoned on to the value of such stuff. Often again its oil workers etc, who stumble upon these things.
The shame is they are often idiots and it becomes a scavenging "free for all" until a bonafide recovery team gets involved. In Vanuatu a few years ago (never invaded but regularly probed by the Japs and a huge allied FOB) a villager found a crashed US WW2 bomber of some description (I think maybe a Mitchell or B26 or similar) in the hills. They did tell the US embassy in Vila but by the time they got there (only a day or so later) the bones had been piled up outside (not exactly CSI) and the instruments and guns stolen. You aren't exactly dealing with rocket scientists I'm afraid, although it is touching that even to this day, the locals have great respect for the allies who gave their lives to set them free from Japanese occupation, they sure as hell didn't like them much!
