Hellcats in a mine shaft near airfield in north England

Good point, that was a disused quarry, but it’s not beyond the realms of possibility that this could have become a “mine shaft” as the story progressed over the years.
Pete

Sorry Pete… I meant quarry…posted in haste at lunchtime,I did actually volunteer for the RAF expedition to recover some items circa 1982 but unluckily/luckily did not get accepted LOL

rgds baz

There is an article in Flypast this week about stuff dumped in a quarry, though there is now a housing estate on top of it.

Althorn is an Aerial farm these days I seem to remember a PA-28 with a rough running engine at night spotted the runway in the moonlight, flew an approach and made it down, when he got out he realised it was an aerial farm and in daylight they couldn’t understand how he missed all the cables, they had to strip it down and truck it out.

Hellcats were sitting around for quite some time (long enough for them to ‘liberate’ the fuel on *several* occasions!)

You’d be surprised how long some stuff sits around. Back in ’92 I bought a 1952 (or ’53) former USAF Chevy aircraft fueler*. I paid $200 for it & was told “there’s some old avgas in the tank”… indeed there was, the purple 145 octane stuff which was promptly sold off to a few local drag racers & some went into my bike. Not sure how old it was, but there was nothing wrong with it 🙂

*It had never been off the base, had about 6000 miles on it ….

You can discount Woodvale.

No mineshafts anywhere close, and the water table (sea) about 12ft below ground level

Moggy

Burying aircraft below the water table does not seem to be a problem in other rather better known cases!

Thanks for the replies chaps.

Lyffe, that is a very sensible suggestion. Seeing as I don’t know his father that well, I have emailed my friend asking him if he wouldn’t mind asking him one last time if he remembers and if not, would he mind obtaining his service record…

No mines adjacent to Inskip either, just good agricultural land. Much the same to be said for Woodvale, with Burscough not far away.

ptg,

To find where he was ‘in the north of England’ I suggest you ask the gentleman concerned to obtain his service record. That will list all the units in which he served, and since you have a time frame it should be easy to identify the airfield. As he is still living you will not be able to obtain the information yourself.

Details as to how to proceed are at https://www.gov.uk/requests-for-personal-data-and-service-records#how-to-apply-for-service-personnel-records

Hmm, very interesting Martin:

“At the end of the war American Naval Aircraft were flown into Blackcap to be broken up for disposal. The Aircraft Maintenance Yard at Blackcap meant that the airfield continued to operate and, at its peak, handled one third of all Fleet Air Arm Aircraft and all its spare engines.”

American Naval Aircraft mentioned explicitly and a great number thereof. The only thing is, I’m sure my friends father said that these Hellcats were sitting around for quite some time (long enough for them to ‘liberate’ the fuel on *several* occasions!) before then being unceremoniously dumped. It sounds as though at Blackcap the pace was frenetic and the quantity prodigious, so either there were so many aircraft coming through that the Hellcats had to wait their turn and/or were dumped in order to speed up the process as Lazy8 suggests. Certainly it is galling to know that quite a few old planes were not scrapped, smelted and turned into something useful and not even just dumped, but sometimes burned and buried. Such a terrible waste.

Either way, Blackcap must go on the shortlist, so thanks!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RNAS_Stretton_(HMS_Blackcap)

Near Warrington, slightly south of the Lancs coalfields, but not much.

Could this be a memory merge of the following story and aircraft scraping post war? My family is from Millom and I have heard plenty of stories in my time surrounding local post war activities and stories about mining (my own Grandad was in the “Ranks Of Down Below” at Haverigg Hematite) but never heard of the two meeting

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lindal_Railway_Incident

Hellcats, being American and thus Lend Lease airframes, would have been disposed of as quickly as possible. Lend Lease stuff had to be handed back, paid for, or ‘written off’. There was plenty that the UK didn’t want to pay for and the Americans really didn’t want back. If there’s truth in it, this story could be just the land-based equivalent of pushing planes off the deck of a carrier at sea.

You can discount Woodvale.

No mineshafts anywhere close, and the water table (sea) about 12ft below ground level

Moggy

Thanks to all for replies and welcomes so far. Seeing the number of and in some cases protracted threads on similar subjects I am actually quite pleased that so far the replies range only from ‘healthy skepticism’ to ‘resigned cynicism’! 🙂

Beermat, MerlinPete and sopwith – in particular, many thanks indeed for your replies. I almost wrote in my thread starter that it was the ‘north west’, but resisted so as not to lead any replies too much. Also, as you rightly suggest, it may very well be that we are not talking about a ‘mine shaft’ at all. The first step is certainly to narrow down the list of possible airfields before possibly taking a trip in order to have a gander. I have found a good map showing what I think is all WW2 airfields and it helpfully lists the nationality and service arm that used them. As well as Anthorn, other FAA airfields ‘in the north west’ are:

Inskip (HMS Nightjar)
Woodvale (HMS Ringtail 2)
Burscough (HMS Ringtail) poss only Radar training

…and further south in the west Midlands, though with more possibility of being near a mine shaft/pit perhaps?
Hinstock (MHS Godwit)
Peplow (HMS Godwit 2)
Bratton

Other FAA stations ‘in the north’ are on the Borders or actually in Scotland.

I think there are a few to be getting on with though. The next step would be to find disused mines/shafts/pits/quarries near these places. Fortunately there seems to be quite good resources on the web for this, including groups that explore some of them. That should either directly and quickly confirm the duds or perhaps provide some other leads.

Any extra info about the airfields I mentioned would be great: Beermat’s info that Hellcats were stored at Anthorn is gold and any similar data that can help confirm or discount any station’s place on a shortlist is gladly accepted. Thanks again for interest and help so far.

Probably dumped down the mine on top of some crated Spitfires :dev2:.

But on a more serious note- Blackburn’s did a lot of mods etc to imported American Naval types, so could have been an airfield used by them “Sherburn perhaps ?” lots of coal mines around that area.

Bob T.

And of course there were the AW Albermarle a/c shoved into the old mine near Aspatria up in cumbria…that was also true 🙂

Good point, that was a disused quarry, but it’s not beyond the realms of possibility that this could have become a “mine shaft” as the story progressed over the years.
FAA aircraft were stored at at least three Cumbrian airfields, and the quarry yielded American parts as well as Albermarle fuselages and other British parts.
There is at leat one other quarry in the locality which was used to dump recognisable pieces of airframe, but that one has been filled in.

Pete

And of course there were the AW Albermarle a/c shoved into the old mine near Aspatria up in cumbria…that was also true 🙂

..and look what happened when someone followed up rumours of a buried WW1 tank in France

http://www.tank-cambrai.com/english/home.php

never say never – but always have some sort of confirmation from the archives if you can find it!

..and taking it seriously – FAA Anthorn, in Cumbria, handled Hellcats at the end of the war. The FAA museum’s example was stored there – http://www.fleetairarm.com/exhibit/grumman-hellcat-ii-ke209/2-4-17.aspx

Can’t be right. Nobody wrapped them in corrosion proof paper! But at least this story has a valid reason for the action, easy disposal of surplus kit.

PTG, welcome. Don’t be too disheartened if the story is greeted with a small measure of scepticism, it’s nothing personal.

You are most welcome here. Stick around and contribute more by all means.

Moggy

Propstrike – Brilliant!

Oh dear…here we go again….!!!!!