The BBC2 programme Two Men in a Trench was on the other night, exploring the site of Hornchurch airfield in Essex.
Not a very interesting programme, but neither was the one they did on the Firth of Forth's ww2 defences.
Anyway, they excavated a likely looking site they saw on an old aerial oblique, and discovered it was an Ack-Ack emplacement. Then they excavated a Tett turret, and discovered another three which brought the total known to have survived up to nine.
Then they did a stupid thing-having excavated the underground entrance to a pillbox-about seven feet down-they clambered in to explore it without shoring up the sides of the excavation. Now, I
know we've all done it, but these guys are supposed to be professionals!You could actually see the water flowing out of the entrance (the site of the airfield is now a country park with lakes) while they were climbing in. Not the best example for the kids.
Tonight's was better. They explored the 1689 battlefield of Killiekrankie in Perthshire. Not only did they establish the building from which the Covenanters sniped at the government lines, but by finding hordes of musket balls on a natural terrace just in front of the government line, they finally explained why the Covenanters were able to survive the hail of fire from government troops; there was only a limited field of fire (and time) to get a volley in from the time the highland charge suddenly appeared before it smashed into their line. Not only that, but the government troops wouldn't have had time to fix their new-style plug bayonets into their muzzles either.
A much better programme, but I still prefer Time Team! Speaking of which, one of the landscape surveyors from that programme was carrying out a three week survey of Dunstanburgh head Castle in Northumbria recently for Historic England. As well as the visible mediaeval stuff, he also discovered the landscape terraces built by Italian pows in ww2, and rediscovered a CHL station whose exact location had been previously lost.
I nearly forgot. For anyone interested, there is a website which collates all the daily archaeological news from newspapers world-wide. This isn't necessarily ww2 news, but there is the occasional snippet from that era. The site is usually updated by early evening each day.
www.archaeologica.org/NewsPage.htm
Regards,
Gordon
[ 18. March 2004, 06:13 PM: Message edited by: The_Historian ]