Lancaster Easy Elsie project

Over thirty years ago I made several trips onto the moors above Glossop to look around the various crash sites up there armed with a copy of Ron Collier’s Dark Peak Wrecks. Looking at more recent photos drums home what’s going to happen to this wreck if it’s left where it is. Granted, its location will slow down the process but it will reach the point where there’s not enough to warrant the expense of recovery to a secure site.

Not quite sure about the efforts to ‘preserve’ it in situ ! I recall a picture in a 1980’s FlyPast article which showed a military helicopter salvaging a turret from it -I presume they needed permission to do that ? As for ‘not every museum needs a roof’ -fine in concept however aluminium is not designed to withstand prolonged exposure with no surface finish applied so any notion that it will withstand prolonged exposure is fantasy.

Lot of discussion about the rights and wrongs of salvaging this aircraft from a Swedish swamp most of which seems to center around it,s pre-crash history, and while I agree that gives it a certain unique angle it must always be remembered that it also has a significant history after it,s demise centered around the efforts of the local community to save and look after what parts of the air frame they can.

The ‘Just because we can’ argument holds little water in this one, in my view it’s history, since crashing into it’s current location is far more extensive that it’s pre-crash one , maybe not to us but it is firmly rooted in the current location it occupies and the authorities are quite correct in refusing to consider moving it.

Those that flew it and accomplished extraordinary achievements will not be forgotten by leaving it were it is and possibly a better use of resources here would be to offer the local custodians what specialized assistance and financial help can be gathered up towards preserving what remains in situ. For future generations to enjoy, after all not every museum has or needs a roof.

Lancaster NX611 has a Martin 250CE which was sourced in the U.S and would have been the correct fitment for her .

Hi All,
Many thanks for the answer Mr Burke :eagerness:

Geoff.

The midupper was taken out as where it protruded into the fuselage impeded the fitting of an overload fuel tank, taken from a Vickers Wellington. Its hardly a field mod, as even as early as Chastise there were Lancasters without midupper turrets. The only portion left in situ is the mounting ring which is built into the fuselage structure – and its still there on site.

The turret frame shown in the documentary is all thats left of the FN5 front turret.

Your argument of leaving NF920 be doesn’t stand up. If its left there it will end up the same as many UK high ground wrecks that are protected, yet pilfered relentlessly. In the absence of a genuine Operation Chastise Lancaster, some of a 617 Sqn aircraft is better than none. NF920 isn’t a war grave, but she’s the last example of any bomber variant of Lancaster other than standard. If future generations want to be able to visit it, see it, be close as they can get to a genuine piece of history; then someone somewhere needs to pull their finger out and get it out the swamp.

Whether thats into Porjus, Tromso, UK, Australia… wherever.

Hmm,

As Peter said before, the turret lifts out quite easily. The fairing around it would also come away without chopping the aircraft about. I would think that as long as they had more than 2 hours notice, it would be relatively easy to remove the turret and fairing, and attach a simple cover over the hole.

A fair point Peter, but a photograph taken of the crash site immediately after the crash and before the engines and other equipment was salvaged by the Svenska Flygvapnet shows the mid upper to be missing.

It is known that for these long range operations the mid upper was sacrificed to save weight. This is consistant with photographs of the 617 Lancasters which force landed in Russia a few weeks earlier where the mid upper is also missing and the location skinned over. Therefore on balance it is most likely to be a field mod for the operation. It is also the case that elements of the training and elevating mechanism which were more difficult to remove, but did not weigh as much or have the same drag effect as the rest of the turret including the weapons, were left in situ. The engineers simply removed the guns and chopped off the elements of the turret which were proud of the fuselage. Not pretty, but it worked.

Even so there was something like a two ton overload for aircraft on Operations Obviate and Chatechism carrying a full load of fuel plus auxilliary tanks and a Tallboy.

Andy B

Andy, highly unlikely scenario with the midupper,, more likely it was chopped out after the crash and subsequent salvage attempts.

Easy Elsie at Porjus

Hello Everyone,

As part of the shoot for “What the Dambusters did next,” I carried out a survey of the current state of the wreck of “Easy Elsie” outside Porjus, Sweden. You saw a very small part of what we filmed in the resulting documentary.

I can confirm that the mid-upper turret had been very crudely removed in what looks like a field modification to allow the turret to be skined over to resolve the immediate problem of saving weight for long range missions such as the attacks on Tirpitz. This is consistant with the series of modifications made to the Lancasters for the Tirpitz Operations which also included scrounging Merlin 24 engines from across 5 Group and fitting additional fuel tanks taken from other aircraft types. I am in the process of writing up the survey and other material the producers were not able to include in the documentary and I hope it will be available in print form later this year.

Visiting “Easy Elsie” is a powerful and moving experience in a remote and very beautiful part of the world. It is not an environmental hazard and the aircraft is in as stable and secure a situation as any remote aircraft crash site. As a result, and having seen how well the site is displayed by the local community, as well as having benefited from the excellent work done by the Porjus Arkiv Committee and other Swedish researchers in recording the story of Bill Carey and his crew, I feel the aircraft would lose all resonance and meaning if it were to be removed to Britain. The story of the aircraft and the crew is now a shared one and it would be inappropriate to try to renationalise it, which is what removing the aircraft to the UK would in effect be.

A simple question to focus this. Bill Carey was Australian as were a number of members of 617 Squadron. Because of his skills [and a dollop of luck] the crew of “Easy Elsie” was able to walk away from the wreck which leads me to ask should she, for example, go to the Australian War Memorial because it was the crew management skills and airmanship of an Australian, which put her down safely on the bog in Porjus in the first place?

As to the 617 Squadron connection, it is important to remember “Easy Elsie” was not lost on the Dams raid and the crew did not fly on the Dams raid. She is simply an aircraft which flew with 617 Squadron.

Neither is she one of the Dams BIII [Specials]. Her adaptations were for a different reason. To remove her from a Swedish resting place because of any sense of connection with the 617 of the Dams raid is to do the crews who flew Operation Obviate and the other Tirpitz raids, including the equally skilled, but much less well known, 9 Squadron, a disservice.

I pose you this scenario.

“Easy Elsie” is recovered from Northern Sweden and conserved and displayed at great expense as a 617 Memorial. Then suppose David Maltby’s Lancaster lost on Operation Garlic is located in the North Sea, something which given the advances in remote sensing underwater is distinctly possible. Does that trump “Esie Elsie” as a 617 Squadron memorial because Maltby flew on the Dams raid? Suppose Maltby’s aircraft is indeed then recovered and conserved at great expense- it could be done and then AJ-A, Sqd Ldr Young’s aircraft lost on the return from the actual Dams raid is located; an aircraft which actually flew on the Dams raid and dropped an Upkeep? Short of locating some of the remains of G George, Gibson’s own aircraft, isn’t that as close as we can get to the foundation myth of 617 Squadron, the Dambusters and all that means for British culture?

Then someone sees a Sterling on the multibeam sonar; not so immediately resonant with the public, but in the historic aviation world…

I would argue that a much more effective, progressive and achievable strategy would be to work with the Swedes and others to promote such sites as historical assets and memorials and to work with Law Enforcement to put in place protection plans and ensure that anyone cought stealing, trafficking, selling or in possession of illegally obtained aircraft parts is prosecuted. Something which is beginning to happen in the UK with the increased targeting of metal detectoists who steal from scheduled and protected sites and the monitoring of collector and dealer networks.

To end on a slightly tongue in cheek note- remember the line given to Jeff Goldblum in “Jurassic Park”.

“Just because we can doesn’t mean that we should.”

It is as true of major heritage projects as it is of recreating dinosaurs and thankfully Lancaster’s are not extinct.

Best wishes

Andy Brockman

There’s a photo on the Warbird Registry website but I thinks its more than a few years old!

Mike and David, Yes, that is what I was saying, and I think Paul actually agreed with that.

Thanks for clarification Bruce, I assumed (and hoped) that was what you meant,it just didnt seem clear (to me at least) from your post. Yes, am in total agreement, and also agree that any preservation “diorama” should be a full re-creation of her current resting place too, as you say, no small undertaking for any museum to devote that much floor space/cash to one.

As to turret removal – I’m no expert, and I can’t remember exact words used in the documentary but I wonder if the fact the necessary mods were (IIRC) said to have been “hurried”, plus perhaps colloquial use of ‘chopped’ rather than “removed”, ended up giving the impression that the removal was a little more “brutal” than was actually the case?

That’s it, I’m done. I’ll now sit and watch the thread with interest.

That’s what I thought. I’ll have to watch the programme again, but I do recall chopping!

You simiply unbolt and lift out the turret.. no chopping off needed…?? :confused:

Easy Elsie’s mid upper turret was chopped off in a rather crude fashion prior to the raid to reduce weight if I recall John Nichol’s programme correctly. Something that was of historical interest itself.

Lancaster NX611 has a Martin 250CE which was sourced in the U.S and would have been the correct fitment for her .

Hi All,
The upshot of it all is that whatever is to be done with the remains it needs to sorted out before it deteriorates any further, weather this being here or in Sweden. Just one question of the turrets which survived the crash ? and couldn’t some rarer parts if feasible be used as patterns for NX611 and the other Lanc’s but thinking along the lines of a mid upper turret for NX611 if not already have one under restoration ?

Geoff.

I don’t think the thought process goes that far, it seems to be along the lines of ‘It’s a Lancaster, it’s ours, we must save it’!

I don’t log into Facebook , so can’t see the relevant page. I’m just trying to understand what is going on – can anyone clarify whether the current enthusiasts think there is a substantially complete and intact wreck that just needs bringing back to the UK to have an impressive exhibit?

Mike and David, Yes, that is what I was saying, and I think Paul actually agreed with that.

I’ve been trialling brevity in some of my recent posts, and I don’t think its working out!!

Personally, I would leave it where it is; in order to be well interpreted in a museum setting, it should IMHO be laid out with the parts in their correct positions. That’s a lot of space for a small museum. The danger is that it will get recovered, and end up on shelving, with only a few parts on display. It is mostly significant in that it has lasted as long as it has. Had that same wreck been in a country with a less spread out populace, it would have been scrapped years ago.

I’m not sure how you can possibly draw that inference from Bruce’s post Paul F. To me, it is very clear that he is saying that members of the general public will immediately think ‘Dams raid’ when they hear ‘617 squadron Lancaster’ mentioned, and that ‘some clarity is required’ to disabuse them of this misinterpretation.