A charity has announced plans to next year retrieve the wreckage of a rare World War II fighter plane buried

under sand and waves on a UK beach.

Conservationists are in discussions with museums over hosting the United States Army Air Force fighter

thought to be the oldest surviving aircraft of its type.

The Lockheed-P38 Lighting, known as the Maid of Harlech, crashed on the Gwynedd coast in 1942 when its

engines cut out while taking part in secret training exercises.

The pilot, Second Lieutenant Robert Elliot, walked away from the crash uninjured but was reported missing

in action three months later during a campaign in Tunisia.

In 2007 shifting sands revealed the plane for the first time in decades and the International Group for Historic

Aircraft Recovery (TIGHAR) set about protecting it.

Ric Gillespie, leading the TIGHAR team hoping to secure enough funding to pull the plane from the sand,

said: “It’s one on the most significant WWII-related archaeological discoveries in recent history. Nature has

done a good job hiding the wreck. However, removing the plane from the sand promises to be a mammoth

and delicate operation. Conservationists expect the fighter to be severely eroded due to the number of years

it has been exposed to sand and salt seawater.

“Museums have raised historic aircraft from salt water in good condition and at great expense only to see

them crumble to white power in a matter of months,” said Mr Gillespie.

“Techniques for conserving and stabilising metals recovered from nautical environments have been

developed and tested but have never been applied to a complete aircraft.

“We are working to develop a recovery and conservation plan that will enable the Maid of Harlech to be truly

conserved.”

The Imperial War Museum is thought to be the museum most likely to take the plane.