Huge hauls of brand new Harley Davidson motorbikes, watches and jeeps are buried under the British countryside - left by departing US troops during WW2, locals claimed this week.

People in Devon and Cornwall say American GIs left behind millions of pounds worth of kit and leftover equipment - which they couldn’t take home.

Rumours have always circulated that the troops - based in the Westcountry where they trained for D-Day - simply buried it all when they left.

The supposed treasure burial sites include an area now used as an industrial estate and housing developments near Heathfield and Kingsbridge in Devon.

Other people have also claimed that relatives remember kit being buried as far as Cornwall.

The area is famous for its part in the D-Day landings, as around 3,000 people had to be evacuated from the area to make space for training exercises.

Locals now they believe motorbikes and jeeps were buried in the earth.

One local, posting on an online forum dedicated to vintage motorbikes, said: “It is well documented that the Americans used this site as a dumping ground before the actual invasions took place.

‘’Included in the burial where literally dozens of new Harleys still in their crates.

“A few years back, before phase two of the estate was built, a large dig took place to try and locate the buried dump, but alas nothing was found.

“A late friend of mine discovered a Jeep dumped on another site and covered in brambles.

“He fully restored it and won many prizes at vintage rallies.

“Oh! to find those Harleys though...”

Another posted: “It transpired that whilst rabbiting on Chudleigh Knighton Heath he had uncovered several boxes of these watches all wrapped in oil cloth, buried by the Americans at the end of the war

“The outcome of my enquiry was that they had been abandoned and he was allowed to sell them.

“When I mentioned this to my mother she related that she had been a clerk for the Americans when they requisitioned the Exeter Golf course and at the end of their tenure buried vast amounts of armour under the 18th fairway in pits 40 feet deep.”

Another wrote: “The Americans used to turn up in brand new trucks full of stuff, and just leave them running and bury them as they were. Many of these were full of munitions, and are now under a housing estate.’’

When the war finally ended in 1945, hundreds of millions of guns, artillery pieces, tanks, military aircraft, and naval vessels had been produced and were in active circulation.

For larger pieces of equipment, such as vehicles of all varieties, a lot of them were simply dumped into the ocean.

An example of this policy (applied across the various theatres of war by a number of Allied powers, but particularly by the United States) can be seen at a place called Million Dollar Point at Espírito Santo, an island of the Vanuatu archipelago in the Pacific. This spot is named for the millions of dollars’ worth of US equipment that was dumped into the ocean here after the war ended.