Do you have any other pics of these parts?

No more pics of the cockpit sections, sorry.

I wish I had been born ten years earlier, as I was really too late to make much of an impact upon sites like those in the photos. However, even in the 70’s and 80’s, there were still yards worth exploring.

You’ll recognise this? One of several a pal and I salvaged from another Manchester yard in the 1980’s – sadly also now gone.

It was “in a right state”, but shows what can be done with ancient, corroded scrap, with just a little t.l.c. Only fit for static display, though!

anyone able to comment on the what the site’s current state is? Is it still a scrap yard? Is the pond still there etc.?

All gone, I’m afraid. The whole area was cleared and tidied up not long after the Firefly noses etc were removed. Even the pond was filled in, if I recall correctly.

Hawker Typhoon or Tempest cockpit sections in a yard, circa 1966-68, I believe. I don’t know much more about these, except that they were viewed by N.A.P.S., who presumably felt them to be too far gone, or perhaps too expensive, not interesting enough, whatever. They are said to have been in a Stockport yard, now long since redeveloped.

Times have changed, of course, and you have to wonder what projects such as these would be worth nowadays.

Odd, too, how so many Typhoon cockpit sections seem to have survived for so long. I’ve always thought it had to do with their steel structure having limited scrap value, and with all that cockpit “clutter” to be cleared away from it, perhaps the scrappies just left them to rot away in the undergrowth at the back of the yard?

Just down the road a few miles at 27 M.U., R.A.F. Shawbury, c. 1968-70. This is a Shackleton T.4 in the scrapping area. It was surrounded by the remains of the Beverley and Hastings fleets. I think there were still a few Anson XIXs there too.

These are Hurricane centre sections being scavenged for parts before scrapping, in the 1970’s. They had been salvaged from North Shore Demolition (?) in Blackpool, some years previously, by N.A.P.S. The plan was that they would be offered amongst B.A.P.C. groups. For reasons unknown to me, the plan fell through and the frames became a nuisance. They went back to a scrappie…

Aeroplanes have always fascinated me and are a part of my earliest memories, despite there being no family connections.

As an about-to-be teenager, I bought Veteran and Vintage British Aircraft by Kenneth Munson, a slim tome published by Ian Allen in 1963. There were two things about this book that caught my attention: each brief chapter on an individual aircraft type listed the production totals, e.g. twenty odd thousand Spitfires, 8,000 Mosquitos, 11,000 Wellingtons, 7,374 Lancasters etc etc. Then, at the end of the book was an all too short section listing surviving airframes. I simply could not understand how so many aeroplanes had disappeared only twenty years after the wars end.

That triggered my interest in aircraft preservation and I spent many happy years as a member of the Northern Aircraft Preservation Society, helping in whatever way I could.

Later on, I started to build up my own collection of artifacts and I still do to this day. See you at next years aerojumbles!

Me again!

It resembles a Mk. IIC, 8 day clock, as fitted to many wartime aircraft, usually as a pilots watch, rather than a navigators chronograph.

However, the chromed bezel and lack of a mounting plate make it unusual. The mounting plate was only held on by screws at the back and it might have been discarded. The bezel was usually black painted brass, though. And the hands and numerals would usually be either luminous or fluorescent finish and the ones in your photo look like they have a normal, domestic type finish. Hmmm…and there’s no Air Ministry Stores Reference on the dial either. It just doesn’t look right for a standard Air Ministry item, unless you can tell me the Stores Ref. is on the back of the case?

Mk IXF* indicates an ASI reading to 420 knots. Most wartime ASIs were of the Mk. IX type. The letter (F in this case) denotes the speed range and the “*” denotes a gauge calibrated in knots.

The Mk. IXF* was used in Seafires, for example, while its M.P.H. equivalent, the Mk. IXF, reading to 480 M.P.H., was standard for most later Spitfires.

The fact that the bezel has been painted yellow around a portion of its circumference suggests test use…and the A&AEE stamp tends to bear this out. The gauge is also unusual in that the scales are reversed, i.e. the lower speed range is inside the higher one. Plus, the dial is marked in increments of 2 knots – service issue ASIs tended to have simplified markings with fewer increments – this also suggests it may have been chosen for testing/calibration work? It’s also missing a 6A/*** Stores Reference No. which agains suggests it’s not a standard issue item.

It’s a nice, collectible item…and free from any radiological hazard as far as I can tell…enjoy it!