http://www.americanpress.com/news/state/20151115-WWII-Buried-Treasure

Sorry, It's not the public's stuff. What is below the ground on land owned by the Federal Government also belongs to the Government. So it will basically benefit no one, other than military musuems, if it is ever dug up.

There's a place in Texas where this rumor is also told. It was in a book I have, will find it and report back later tonight.

Somewhere in east Texas, right? Like most of the equipment of an armored division, if I recall correctly.

Yes.

Unsolved Texas Mysteries Chariton, Eckhardt, Young. Page 13, "Guns of the 49th Division"

Claim is that the 49th was one of the fake divisions used to deceive Germany about D-Day. Was to be activated for real for invasion of Japan, and was training at Camp Maxey, 8 miles NW of Paris, Texas. By the summer of 1945, it was fully supplied and ready to go to Japan the following February.

Supposedly all the gun, ammo, and equipment was buried in 1946. Claims are that people heard automatic gunfire in the area in the 1950s and 60s, and one visitor claimed to see the front end of a Sherman tank sticking out of a creek bank. Also a wad of .45 pistols in a clump of cosmoline.

As fascinating as it is to dream of an entire division's worth of brand new pistols, rifles and machine guns in drums full of cosmoline....color me skeptical.

Yeah, what would be the point of burying it? Why wouldn't they put it in storage, sell it, melt it down and use it for parts?

How is burying it the best option they could come up with? (This question applies to both the Louisiana story as well as the Paris Tx story.)

I don't think you grasp the magnitude of the equipment. We had 12,000,000 men and women in uniform. The guns, bullets, vehicles, etc. to support that many people is a massive amount.

You're not going to surplus out the machine guns, tanks, etc. to the public. Are you going to build a massive armory for them, and then pay to guard them? Even melting them down is a daunting task.

Also, we'd just been through a depression. Uncle Sam had millions of rifles, thousands of jeeps, tons of clothing, bedding, etc. etc. Are you just going to turn those loose on the American economy? No one would have bought a pickup for the next 10 years if you could get a $100 jeep. No gun company would be able to sell a gun for 20 years, with all the .45 pistols and M-1s on the market.

I find the bury-in-a-trench stories hard to swallow, too. But I totally believe that the wholesale dumping of material happened.

Fair enough!

On a related note, what in blazes are they dumping at Camp Maxey now?

Google Maps

My Grandfather watched them dump tons of stuff of ships off the coast of Calcutta, India in 1945-46. Guns, trucks, tanks, P-51's, you name it.

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On a related note, what in blazes are they dumping at Camp Maxey now?

Google Maps

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They are not burying it for sure.

My Grandfather was a Medic stationed at Camp Maxey for the duration of WWII. Because he had married my Grandmother, who lived nearby in Wolfe City, TX and was already "home" he was asked to stay and help with the shutdown of the medical facilities after the end of the war. He told me that there were long pits the width of a bulldozer blade that they carried and trucked everything into and then covered it over.

I sense an archaeology project on the horizon.

If he's still around, get him a map and a pencil

And archeogy would be fun, but I think it's still federal property.

He passed away in '99. But, most of it is state or federal property with the Texas National Guard training area, Lake Pat Mayse and the State Park. Plus considering that part of the state park was closed to clean up unexploded ordinance a few years ago, I'm not digging in the dirt around there.

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We had 12,000,000 men and women in uniform. The guns, bullets, vehicles, etc. to support that many people is a massive amount.

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Ammo, yes. The fact is, you can't recycle it very easily because you don't want to throw a bunch of objects loaded with gunpowder in a furnace to melt them down. However, everything else, from tanks to planes, etc. has a huge value in terms of simple raw materials. A few planes, etc. in a foreign country that cost more to ship home than you can ever recoup, and who you don't want to go to that country or anyone else? Maybe. That's why the Spitfire story a couple of years back was plausible.

In the U.S., not so much. A handful here or there.

All this being said, there was a myth when I was at A&M about buried Nazi tanks hidden in a secret chamber under Simpson drill field. I was very skeptical...but also really wanted it to be true!

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All this being said, there was a myth when I was at A&M about buried Nazi tanks hidden in a secret chamber under Simpson drill field.

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I think it's funny that wild stories like this pop up. There was no such rumor when I was there. And while I understand the skepticism about it happening in the states, something being buried in public, like at A&M, is far different than on a military base. On a base, you can do it out of the public eye, and threaten the people doing the work with prison if they blab.