Airfield Archeology On A Small Scale

Remote Hardstandings

When we were busy getting Perranporth back into shape (and fighting the local council off at the same time) a local military trust came up one day for a look around with a good selection of ww2 jeeps and other assorted machines.
Having been shown the blast pens and underground battle hq they were slightly disappointed that we did not have an aircraft gun butts on site.
Using this as an excuse to get in more “jeep” time i took the convoy (about 10 trucks) down to a remote “pan handle” that faced the sea and had no obvious purpose.
Explaining that this “MAY” have been used for testing guns was good enough for a detector to be produced and within a couple of minutes piles of 20mm canon case were being produced.
This provided quite enough excitement for one day so i held back on the “buried merlins joke”.
It was only last year that i came across a complete spigot mortar site on Kenley airfield (in a wooded area now private)

Denis,

I think I have the bottom half of the gas-ointment jar! Or at least a part that looks very much like it.

Ah, but it might be to this bit. All found on a dispersed site next to the Gas Clothing and Equipment Store location.

Also found on the airfield itself was this ‘Motley Stalk’ AA gun mount.

Interesting find at Burtonwood. I know that lots of aircraft were scrapped over on A & E sites and bet there is loads of stuff in and inside the grass on the North side of the motorway.

Denis,

I think I have the bottom half of the gas-ointment jar! Or at least a part that looks very much like it.

I went up to Stoke Orchard last week and had a mooch through the tip. Found various ink/ointment bottles, enamel cups/bowls, shoes/boots and the old bit of electromechanical junk but nothing with a part number on I could identify anything by.

Sadly I only seem to find building fixtures and fittings these days and not the bullets, battledress buttons, cap badges and aircraft panelling I used to find about 20 years ago. 🙁

Merlinpete, that 50 cal looks in very good nick , must have taken a lot of work to bring it back to that kind of standard? What was left of the jeep?

All this makes me want to head up north to Bishopscourt,Ballykelly or Eglinton and have a bit of a look around !

Has anyone ever had anything from RAF Burtonwood? The site was finally cleared nearly two years ago but the taxiways are still there on A & E sites.

Paul
This is one of two 0.50″ Cal MGs which were dug up there. We used to take it along to shows and kids played with it as you can see, but I don`t have it anymore because it was in full working order, all I ever did to deactivate it was remove the firing pin and associated hardware. Too risky these days, plus I don`t have any real interest in firearms.
It was an aircraft-mounted gun originally, we made the tripod.
It came from a friend of mine near there who said they had found the remains of a Jeep at the same place.

Pete

Worth finding the airfield maps first and looking for any underground air raid shelters which are no longer visible especially on an airfield where large scale scrapping took place at the wars end. The reason I say this is that we dug ( with the owners permission) an air raid shelter around 1990 which had been filled with old equipment. It yeilded new Merlin exhaust stubs, used spitfire thottle assemblies and a complete Barracuda instrument panel amongst others (parts were passed to a musem). We stopped digging when we got to boxes of plasma and other medical supplies. We also recovered several wheels and tyres from a building Anson/Proctor.
American bases should be of particular interest as what they weren’t taking back to the states was destroyed and dumped. This was still the case when they pulled out of the Holy Loch in recent years. Anything that wouldn’t fit on the USS Hunley was dumped overboard, tools, cabinets, boats and spares.
The pile on the seabed was so large it had to be removed at British tax payers expense. A wartime US Navy base near me has had a lot dumped in the sea and buried on shore which I’ll ferret over once the foliage has died down.

Has anyone ever had anything from RAF Burtonwood? The site was finally cleared nearly two years ago but the taxiways are still there on A & E sites.

the back end of British 30ib Incendiary.

Many thanks redhillwings!
I wonder what that was doing on a nightfighter airfield!

Here are some of the bits we found on a few of the USAAF sites, we have a dedicated section in the Wings Museum remembering those early days, I think the golden years have pretty much gone but still things to be found, in those days it was just lying there! the “eng No. 3” fuel cover was found laying in a ditch beside a main road that now cuts through the airfield. On another site I found a Spitfire 303 link chute laying on the surface next to a tango drinks can!

The access panel was found on Hardwick airfield laying on the surface, the lucky thing was that it had the aircraft serial no. stenciled on the back, a bit of research identified it to be from Bungay and was salvaged at Hardwick after crash landing on the airfield, the aircraft was called “hard to get”. I also heard of a complete Mustang instrument panel being found complete with radio call sign plate, wonder who has that now!

One of the photos Denis posted, 3rd pic down on the far left (the steel item with brass locking ring for the tail unit) is the back end of British 30ib Incendiary.

why do dud sparking plugs not show up more often?

Both sparking plugs and cracked exhaust stubs do turn up within throwing distance of airfield dispersals, I have heard this from a few people.

Pete

Blimey!
Not good!, bad enough turning up 20mm, let alone one of those!

A couple of months ago i noticed that one of the dispersal areas of a local ww2 airfield had been ploughed. (Probably the first time since closing in 1946). As a footpath passes through the area i decide to have a little look. The first thing i came across was this.

Newark’s leased site is based around two concrete dispersal points of the former RAF Winthorpe, which was home to 1661 HCU. Over the years a few small items have been recovered but nothing of any significance.

However the drainage dyke that separates the leased site from the Southfield Site (the land that the museum owns) has been slightly more productive. Each year this watercourse is cleared by the local drainage authority and it often turns up items. These are mainly of a ‘domestic’ nature i.e. wartime crockery, cutlery etc – these items are now displayed in the small objects display area at the museum.

Each year the ‘digger-driver’ is actively encouraged to go a little deeper and wider in his excavations is a vain attempt to locate the fabled RAF Winthorpe Stirling that is reputed to have helped form the culverting for this watercourse.

This process was recently completed but again to no avail for the Stirling fuselage – still there’s always next year! 😀

I have found a huge ASV radar antena in really good condition off a Liberator, and exhaust stubs and rudder mass balance from Lancasters at the St Eval dispersals years ago.
Ironically at Llandow and St Athan and the linking taxiway where mass scrappings took place post-war I haven’t found anything aircraft related!

This was found at a former USAAF base in Northern Ireland a few years back hiding in a hedgerow.

Peter,
I can very well imagine that the odd round that fell out of the system was hurled “into the long grass”!
Can I ask – as a mere archaeological meteorologist – why do dud sparking plugs not show up more often? I can imagine that Engine Fitters would hurl recalcitrant plugs into “the outer darkness”. Or were they such valuable items such that they were sent back to the MU/Manufacturers for refurbishment/re-issue? (I used to recycle the spark-plugs on my 2-stroke motorbike!!).
HTH (from an old East Anglian)
Resmoroh

When Martlesham Heath was converted into a housing estate work had to be stopped on several occasions and the bomb squad brought in. Many .5 live rounds turned up from what had obviously been dispersals where the Thunderbolts and Mustangs had been rearmed.

I can well imagine loose rounds being trodden into the mud as an every day occurrence.

No doubt there were lucky? householders who turned up such interesting relics in the gardens

Thanks guys, I always thouth the hardstandings might be overlooked..Think of the servicing that went on there. I have done field walks over here at old bases and it is surprising what can be found on or just beneath the surface.