Five years ago last easter I travelled down to London to pick up an ejector seat. I thought I’d make a weekend of it and spent the Friday before grubbing around the old Hawkinge aerodrome.
I was on the northern edge of the old airfield, behind some long-demolished buildings when I noticed that a trench had been dug nearby by contractors. A quick rummage through the spoil unearthed the following items.
Hawkinge was built in the First World War and there was much RAF activity between and during the first and second wars there. Armed with my After The Battle book, I learned about much that had gone on there and the battles that had raged above and, regularly, had taken place on the ground too.
There was much broken glass in evidence, probably as a result of the air raids as much as from demolition afterwards.
The L-shaped green and yellow item is the nav light lens from an unknown-type aircraft. It appears to be a Second War type and has a yellow leading edge in use later in the war.
The rectangular plate was the cover off of a lighting switch box from a 1920’s aircraft.
Object lower centre was the bottom end of what appeared to be a high-quality cut glass salt cellar.
The rustly blob is, in fact, a steel fabrication with the pick-up points for rigging. It has a timber frame within it and has been severely burnt. There was a disastrous hangar fire at Hawkinge between the wars and a lot of aircraft were burnt out. I wonder if it could be part of one of those?
The 3ins x 2ins piece of leather was found in disturbed earth at the end of what had been a wartime runway extension.
Anon.
Sign In
June 8, 2011 at 10:34 pm