WWII Bomber Hard Stand Dimensions

Sorry for my 140 inch frying pan!!The one on 204 sqdn was in a bad state of repair and seemed only to be a covering of tarmac as the aircraft wheels often ended up in depressions which ended up as ice pools in the winter,apart from the wheels being iced in, the chocks(large wooden ones)would also be stuck and required a few good kicks with your boots while sitting near those props whizzing around!!All good exciting stuff.

Hi Facflaggie, will be sure to give you a bit of notice and thanks for the extra photos.
Cheers
Type683

[ATTACH=CONFIG]223183[/ATTACH][ATTACH=CONFIG]223184[/ATTACH]couple more.

Ha ha brilliant thanks,give me a bit of notice and Heath and safety(and the boss)permitting you could prob have a look about yourself.

Thanks for those excellent photos Facflaggie. I’ll buy you a beer next time I’m up that way staying with my Aunt in Cleethorpes.
Cheers
Type683

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[ATTACH=CONFIG]223166[/ATTACH] the dispersial is the one in the bottom right of the first picture…other pics not uploading to large,i can email pics if that would be easier?

The slabs didt look to be a uniform size,pics will be up tmrw.

🙂 No problem, it filled a bit of time between meetings and my trawling through the Archive for details of airfields in West Lindsey – plus we had a couple of flypasts (Kingair and C17) whilst the tape measure was out!

In the past I’ve given talks to a couple of local history groups and on both occasions some aircraft tie downs have been described to me from RAF Winthorpe; sadly these are off the main site close to where the bomb dump was, which is now on private land. Perhaps I need to make a few phone calls to try to get permission to check the reports out!

Thank you so much Facflaggie and TwinOtter23 for going the extra mile on this, I really do appreciate your efforts. Certainly a wide variety of slab sizes. Looks like the tie down slabs would have been more than adequate to keep a Lancaster secure. I’ll look forward to seeing some photos. Thanks again.
Type683

Whilst over at NAM (formerly RAF Winthorpe) today I took a few measurements, which paint an interesting picture.

I couldn’t access a complete dispersal point to get the full diameter of the main pan, but I was able to measure the width of the approach concrete to the pan. For the Hangar 1 approach this had an average width of 48’ 9”.

The individual concrete slabs also showed no standard size. On the approach concrete and on the circular dispersal pan the following widths were noted:
16’ 10”
16’ 9”
16’ 6”
16’ 4”

The lengths of these slabs were typically:
20’ 6”
30’ 10”

I know that these concrete sections have been surveyed properly so I will try to gather some further detail from that source.

The blocks are 6ft at the base tapering to 4ft 5ft wide at the base with a large 3in steel loop out of the top and one from the side(pics will show better later)ours have been moved into position post war to form a perimeter to this dispersal possibly collected from across the whole airfield?

How big are the tie down blocks? And were these standard additions at bomber stations, or a post war addition?

The pan is 130ft across the clearest eg measurable slab is 13x21ft,the tie down blocks are 10000kg+ not 5000,pics ltr when I get back to the computer.

We use them as test weights for Hgv trailers they are all around 5000kg.

around the perimeter of the “frying pan”we also have large concrete blocks with steel loops cast into them I am told were lanc tiedowns

If you consider that a Lancaster in flight can lift seven crew, several thousand gallons of fuel and a 12000lb Tallboy they’d have to be pretty big concrete blocks to serve as a Lanc tie down

Moggy

No probs will get some pics tmrw am,around the perimeter of the “frying pan”we also have large concrete blocks with steel loops cast into them I am told were lanc tiedowns,I once measured the tie downs cast in the floor and they are 6inches off the undercarrige of a lanc.

Hi Facflaggie, if it’s not too much trouble I would greatly appreciate a measurement as you’ve got one that close.
Like Vultee35 I’d also be very interested to see the tie downs if that’s possible please. Cheers
Type683

Any chance of some photos of the tie downs?