Brussels and Dixmuide

Nive one Steve. I was well impressed with the place when I went.

Neil, there’s also the Ijsertoren (Ijser Tower), which has a number of really quite innovative displays around the First World War, including an actual British Army dugout from Passchendaele which was discovered a few years ago and was moved in its entirety into the tower where it now stands as a very powerful exhibit. The smell of the original wood stays with you for days afterwards. Ijsertoren is 6 Euro to get in, the Trench is free to enter. But in all honesty, cost doesn’t matter. It’s the experience that counts. Both places are very moving.

Steve
thanks for the Dixmuide pictures.. I’ve been to that area several times for ‘bike events but never knew that was there.. looks like a good reason to visit again sometime, and theres the beer of course..!

Neil.

Just looking at a pic of said FW190 gun pack, and the barrels in Steve’s pic look much closer together than the one on the Focke-Wulf, so I shall take a large slice of humble pie. Yes I want fries with that, and a Coke! 😉

I didn’t think the JU88 HAD an underbelly pack?? It still looks to me like the underwing pack off one of the Focke-Wulf 190 variants.

Both the Ju88 C and S certainly had one, and I think the G had it as well. The gun pack is almost surely not from a FW-190, it does not have the correct shape to fit under the wing, it IS an underbelly gun pack!

I didn’t think the JU88 HAD an underbelly pack?? It still looks to me like the underwing pack off one of the Focke-Wulf 190 variants.

I spent a long time looking at the gunpack a couple of weeks back and in the end I came to the conclusion it was from a Ju88. The reasoning behind that is; it is german and it is an underfuselage pod. That would make it something from a twin (otherwise you will shoot off the fan), and from memory the only operational twin to carry under-fuselage gun pod, in any numbers, was the Ju88. If someone knows any better, I’m more than happy to stand corrected 😀

Daz – sorry mate, no Spit images, camera was acting up I’m afraid. The gunpack seemed to me to be too big for an FW190; I was thinking more like Ju88 / He219, that kind of thing.

Okay, so that was Brussels, but what’s Dixmuide? It’s a town in the west of Belgium, on the River Ijser. Now, I apologise in advance for the lack of aviation content on this bit, but I visted Dixmuide on the way home on Saturday, because I’d heard there was a stretch of First World War trench which was still there. It’s known locally as Boyaux de Mort; the Trench of Death. For four years, from October 1914 until a few weeks before the Armistice, the Belgian and German armies faced each other across the River. For ‘faced each other’, read shot, bombed, shelled, and killed each other. For four years, the front line didn’t move an inch.

At the end of the First World War, this section of trench was preserved as a memorial, and has recently been restored. To walk through this trench, peer over the top across the river, and realise that for four years your enemy was right over there, is spine chilling. The final one of these five photos shows how narrow the river is, and therefore just how close the two armies were. For four years. As I say, sorry there’s no aviation content, but this was a very moving and thought provoking place to visit, and in all honesty, of all our forums on here, I guess you guys are the folks who are most likely to have an appreciation of what the place is like.

Good stuff, Steve (PLEASE tell me you got some Spit stuff?! lol)

That gunpack looks like something from a FW190 to me? :confused: