Nighthawking, a new word to me!

There you go, my rant wasn’t so bad after all.

Perhaps you’ll do me the honour of quoting my entire post next time…

…you’ll find it far harder to cherry-pick something to find offensive.

Firstly, the cost of setting a precedent; where do you draw the line, there are millions of missing British war-dead scattered across the world. Until the Falklands conflict it wasn’t even policy to bring the known dead home. We have, finally, a few more impressive national memorials to honour the dead and the missing.

Secondly, Britain and half of Europe would be simply littered with memorials to those killed (and in some cases still missing) in air-crashes.

In the United Kingdom, at least, the number of ‘missing’ is not that high I think; anybody got a figure?

Sorry your comprehension of the English language is so limited, Creaking. [To others: we’re on a first-name basis.] Care to explain the best possible interpretation of litter? Your posts 1 through 8867 may have revealed that, as a master of word usage, you are God’s gift to us mere mortals, but the next one litters this forum. This is just my knee-jerk reaction. No more from me on this subject, for everyone’s sake. Naturally, I should have sent you a PM on the subject.

WOW…littered with memorials to those killed. Let’s see…a definition of the verb litter: “make (a place) untidy with rubbish or a large number of objects left lying about.”

Creaking Door, unlike you, I fail to see a memorial of this kind as litter…even hundreds of memorials.

Thank you Matt Poole. Thank you for extracting the worst possible interpretation from my comments; please feel free to check through my nine thousand odd posts to see if you can find any other words that have more than one meaning that you can twist to support whatever it is you are insinuating. Lots of words have more than one meaning, for example:

jerk (noun): a quick, sharp, sudden movement.

Of course, that word can have more negative meanings too.

I don’t think my views are in line with the majority of forum members on this topic. Governments have an obligation to their servicemembers to give them a proper burial. Especially if they know where the servicemembers remains lie. Wartime aircraft crashsites are not sacred ground once the servicemembers remains have been removed. There is nothing on a Consolidated B-24 Bomber that I would consider a “Treasure Trove” . Goverments have an obligation to remove and dispose of ordinance. Private collectors play an important role in preserving vintage aeroplanes. Many members of the public with no intetest in old aeroplanes, save vintage aircraft components because of a perceived value of those parts. Without private collectors that perception of value would not exist. Governments that don’t recover and bury their dead servicemembers, that don’t provide adequate funding to museums to honor and promote those sacrifices, have no right to interfere with private collectors who are trying to cover their governments shortfalls.
Just my rant for the day.

…Secondly, Britain and half of Europe would be simply littered with memorials to those killed (and in some cases still missing) in air-crashes.

WOW…littered with memorials to those killed. Let’s see…a definition of the verb litter: “make (a place) untidy with rubbish or a large number of objects left lying about.”

Creaking Door, unlike you, I fail to see a memorial of this kind as litter…even hundreds of memorials.

There are certainly more ‘missing’ Luftwaffe aircrew in the UK, but you’d be surprised how many sites there are where remains of Allied aircrew were not recovered. I haven’t got an exact figure but it is certainly up in the many dozens. And to answer 43-2195, and just to clarify, the Eastbourne site does not involve missing aircrew but is a memorial site to where ten men died. Interestingly, standing on this spot (if you know where to look) you can see the location where two missing airmen do still lie, and not more than two or three miles distant.

Firstly, the cost of setting a precedent; where do you draw the line, there are millions of missing British war-dead scattered across the world. Until the Falklands conflict it wasn’t even policy to bring the known dead home. We have, finally, a few more impressive national memorials to honour the dead and the missing.

Secondly, Britain and half of Europe would be simply littered with memorials to those killed (and in some cases still missing) in air-crashes.

In the United Kingdom, at least, the number of ‘missing’ is not that high I think; anybody got a figure?

If your government know the remains are in the ground, why don’t they recover them and give them the proper military buriel to which they are entitled to (and rightly deserve). Together with a memorial marker for the community to remember them and honor their sacrifice.

…..and a blobby map of a far eastern airfield that apparently disclosed the burial place of… well, never mind.

Moggy

…but still not one comment re the exposure of the geophysics and geospatial errors by the ‘professionals’ and the convenient omissions that did not fit their customer’s exit strategy.

Why is that?

Ah..from Blackadder to Nighthawk. The years have not been kind…..

.

.
(Joke!!)

Isn’t that called Cheesing?

not round here it isn’t

The Protection of Military Remains act is in force at night as well as during daylight. The perpetrators are still guilty of unauthorised and illegal excavation of a protected site, whatever the time of day.

Anon.

Ahh that’s cleared that up – I thought it was to do with exhibitionism in car parks :rolleyes:

Isn’t that called Cheesing?

they would think twice if hit with a charge of grave robbing that wouldn’t look good on their c.v

They would think twice if one of them hit a charge of RDX or similar

Oh, c’mon. What do you expect? It was a report in the Evening Argus, which always has had a preference for jargon rather than plain English!

Ummm…

It wasn’t a totally serious suggestion. 😀

The irony was obviously wasted on me…….!!!

…I wouldn’t necessarily expect a historic aviation forum to appreciate that aspect when I look at the way buried aircraft wrecks are unceremoniously ripped out of the ground with no regard to normal archeological procedures… 😉

Normal archeological procedure to discover what exactly…

…unless you’re suggesting that an aircraft crashed through an earlier archeological site?

And I appreciate that, in Western Europe at least, that isn’t as far fetched as it sounds.

Just exactly what do the diggers hope to gain, and the UK Government think they are losing?

They not only hope to gain, the very frequently do – by illegally detecting at night when nobody is around to stop them, often on known sites of historic interest for which they would not be granted permission to search in the first place, these low lifes make very good money from the antiquities they rob from such sites. There are always plenty of ‘collectors’ out there quite happy to pay for something rare and valuable without worrying about where it came from. Equally, there are others out there who never give a second thought to the possibility that the antiquity they are buying might have been stolen from someone elses property by these robbing detector users.

What does the Government lose?? For a start, they (or at least the nations museums) lose out on historically important items, and worse than that, they lose the reference point of where such things have been found, and thus lose the relationship to other artefacts or historical events tied to a particular site. Many of the items that these nighthawks search for and find are items which would be ruled as treasure trove by a court, so there is a loss there too (both to the landowner concerned as well as the Government).

There is also the matter of the damage (effectively vandalism) which is done to historic sites by the random and insensitive digging for buried objects, but I wouldn’t necessarily expect a historic aviation forum to appreciate that aspect when I look at the way buried aircraft wrecks are unceremoniously ripped out of the ground with no regard to normal archeological procedures 😉

Ahh that’s cleared that up – I thought it was to do with exhibitionism in car parks :rolleyes: