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| Military History The place for non-WWII military history discussion. |
July 15th, 2004, 03:14 PM
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Just noticed this one hasn't had any input for a while.
Anyone been exploring/buying books on defences/found new a/c wrecks etc?
Martin, you MUST have been on a BAAC dig by now?!
Regards,
Gordon
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July 15th, 2004, 05:07 PM
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No, I haven't - all the digs seem to be in the North/Midlands.....
As the South vanishes under concrete, motorways and Monopoly-game-housing guess there's not much left to find 
But I live in hope..... [img]smile.gif[/img]
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July 15th, 2004, 06:11 PM
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There was BBC programme screened a while ago as part of the 'Meet the Ancestors' series. A team went to France to excavate the remains of (later Group Captain) Billy Drake's Hurricane I, shot down by a Bf-110 on 13th May 1940 having been bounced after shooting down a Do-17.
The excavation was fascinating and accompanied by Drake himself, the team recovered the engine, some the Hurricane's guns, reflector sight, the instrument panel and all sorts of odds and ends, including a piece of armour plating with a dent from a bullet strike just where Drake's head would have been.
The other great thing about the programme was to see the number of local villagers who remembered seeing Drake bail out and land, and watching the Mayor of the village throw a reception and give a speech in his honour.
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July 16th, 2004, 03:17 PM
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I remember seeing that, GJ, it was well done-for a change.
Chin up, Martin!
One piece of news myself. As you probably know, many replicas of the Atlantic Wall were built around Britain before D-Day, as part of the training. There are a few moors in the country which have the ruins of Hitler's Festung Europa gracing them.....
Anyway, our very own Sapper Brian's mob (246 Field Coy RE)built replicas of their D-Day objectives ("Hillman" & "Morris") in the hills around Moffat in the Scottish Borders in the winter of '43. I mentioned to him that I was going to try and find them, and he kindly emailed me with an excerpt from his book which had enough info to send me in the right direction. I have now got the excuse to disappear southwards for a weekend 
If I locate them, I'll try and post the pics in here for everyone else's benefit.
Once again, thanks Brian  |
July 16th, 2004, 05:02 PM
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Drat ! I missed the Billy Drake programme...
( BTW, Gordon - don't fall down the Grey Mare's Tail... [img]tongue.gif[/img] )
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July 19th, 2004, 02:45 PM
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Got the perfect answer to that, Martin.....but I fancy being a member here for a while yet! 
Regards,
Gordon |
July 25th, 2004, 07:53 PM
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Driving back through Kent today, stopped off to visit the Lashenden Air Warfare Museum, a quite delightful little museum run by volunteers. It occupies wartime buildings on the old Lashenden ALG which was used by 'Johnnie' Johnson's Spitfires among many other units.
They have a remarkable collection of recovered Battle of Britain aircraft parts ( including several complete engines ).
I bit my knuckles at a series of photos taken in a wood in Kent in the very early '60s by a 'man walking his dog'. They showed several large, recognizable pieces from a crashed Bf109E which ,soon after, were removed and...... scrapped ! [img]graemlins/no.gif[/img]
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July 26th, 2004, 12:09 AM
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Yes Martin I know the feeling. When I was a boy the local Austin airport had an abandonded P-38 sitting by the road, complete except for flat tires and being dirty and run down. It too got scrapped.
In the 70's in Galveston there was a Lockheed Connie at the airport, intact but also scrapped along with a DeHavlland Bever. What a waste of history.
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July 26th, 2004, 06:32 AM
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To say nothing of the two Mosquitoes which rotted away on their undercarriages at Thruxton.... 
( On a brighter note, just found out that 'Screwball' Beurling also flew Spitfire MkIXs from Lashenden... )
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September 9th, 2004, 09:46 AM
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A very odd find reported in the National press today.
A lady digging in her front garden in Welwyn Garden City, Hertfordshire struck a metal object with her spade. She contacted the local museum who arranged a 'dig'.
To the amazement of all, the rusting remains of a complete 1936 Ford V8 Pilot saloon car was unearthed.
The car had been buried, reinforced with concrete and railway sleepers and was intended for use as an air-raid shelter (  ).
The local museum are now wondering what to do with it.....
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September 9th, 2004, 10:32 AM
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Reminds me of the story in Shortwave Magazine years ago... farmer in England decided to dig up what he thought was a buried car on his land, and discovered a complete wwii Y-Service listening station! No-one even knew it was there, as the official records had been shredded at some point. No equipment in it, unfortunately...
Just spent an interesting day with the secretary of the UK Fortifications Club surveying some sites in Fife...an HAA site, an LAA site and some anti-tank blocks on a beach which had been re-used to mount a navigation hazard warning sign-by the crew of a ship he later served on himself!
An interesting day, with another three trillion pics for the collection
Regards,
Gordon |
October 4th, 2004, 12:45 PM
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Just got several packs of photos from my mate in Portsmouth. Last month, he surveyed the old Heavy AA practise camp at Burrowhead in Dunfries & Galloway in the Scottish Borders.
This is now a picturesque holiday camp, but in WW2 they used to launch De Havilland Queen Bees (the radio-controlled version of the Tiger Moth) into the air for target practise. The War Diary of 36 AA Brigade is full of accounts of units being sent there for "rest". Lots of original buildings survive, so it's another place I'm going to have to get around to visiting.
The day before my mate went there, he and a few other hardy souls visited the island of Inchkeith, in the Firth of Forth. This place has defences going back to the 16th century, but was most heavily fortified in WW2. Its not for the faint hearted; apart from the difficulty of getting on (and off!) the island, a lot of the old buildings are death traps. Plus, the unmanned lighthouse on the island is powered by depleted Uranium. Bet Greenpeace don't know about THAT! [img]graemlins/no.gif[/img]
Maybe I won't volunteer to go next summer after all.
Regards,
Gordon |
October 4th, 2004, 05:42 PM
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I'm actually quite envious that many interesting WWII sites are left in Scotland - here in the overcrowded South East relics are still vanishing at an alarming rate.... [img]graemlins/no.gif[/img]
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October 5th, 2004, 12:37 PM
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Martin,
So am I actually. Might be because so much of Scotland is still quite rural.
As well as the Defence of Britain project, the database run by the Royal Commission on Ancient & Historical Monuments in Scotland ( an organisation actually set up during the war!),called CANMORE , tends to have a lot of sites that never made to the DoB. The man who runs it spends a lot of time looking at old recce pics, and then adds anything he finds to the database as raw data. People like myself then take it on ourselves to go visit the site and give him an updated report on its current state. I've managed to expand my own files purely by finding things on CANMORE and then going exploring. You can get it on web page. You'll need to register, but there's no fee and no time limit.I recommend the CANMAP facility for pure ease of use.
Speaking of unknown sites, my mate discovered an unknown (to us anyway) wartime munitions factory in darkest D&G. Need to go look at some point.
I used to holiday in Dorset when I was a kid, and you could hardly move for pillboxes, camps and airfields. Wonder how many still survive?
My wife thinks I'm a basket case, btw....getting excited over bits of old concrete 
Regards,
Gordon
[ 05. October 2004, 07:41 AM: Message edited by: The_Historian ] |
October 15th, 2004, 12:34 AM
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See they're about to start on a resurvey of all the sites in the Defence of Britain database.
Idea is to revisit as many sites as possible and report on any damage/environmental change, as many of these sites were originally surveyed in the early '90s (some as far back as the '70s privately).
Can think of at least one which the owner was threatening to demolish as I looked at it...think I managed to scare him enough with tales of all the "asbestos" in the roofs to put him off though Not that far from the truth, actually. My old man was a GPO Telephone Engineer, and until the early '70s was based in an old Bevan Boy camp. When they moved to a purpose built place, it took TWENTY years to demolish the old camp due to the amount of asbestos on site. It's now a college.
Just as a complete aside, do any of the British members of the forum have an INTACT barrage balloon site near them? I've seen the remnants of quite a few, I just wondered if one had managed to miraculously survive...
Regards,
Gordon |
November 3rd, 2004, 11:47 AM
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Just came across this website-CAIRN; Conflict Archaeology International Research Network CAIRN
Apparently it only started earlier this year, prompted by excavations at the English battlefield of Towton. They are hoping to get a referreed journal published annually, starting next year, and are looking for submissions.
So now you can stop letting all that research gather dust, can't you?
[ 03. November 2004, 06:58 AM: Message edited by: The_Historian ] |
November 19th, 2004, 10:03 PM
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This story is a perfect example of what people like myself are up against.
Battery Removed
Never mind the country's heritage, how much money can we make...sheer bloody vandalism... [img]graemlins/no.gif[/img] |
November 20th, 2004, 06:41 AM
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A depressing but all-too-familiar story. Still, nice to se that 'developers' are so deeply concerned about youth issues and structural safety ( )......
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November 20th, 2004, 09:23 AM
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Too true, Martin.
If memory serves, that type of pillbox was rarer than rocking horse droppings too.... [img]graemlins/no.gif[/img]
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December 1st, 2004, 09:58 AM
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I'm sure Martin will join me in a hearty round of applause for this one:
Control towers
And this one:
Shipwreck law
[ 01. December 2004, 05:18 AM: Message edited by: The_Historian ] | |
