Old aircraft wrecks in the UK
Just found this thread,my comments on this hobby having been involved on for over 30 years mainly as a researcher for the BAAC.(Gary Brindle)
Pillaging of sites especially exposed ones will always take place,mostly small items by casual visitors.A few people are more organised and will target sites with the intention of selling items ,unless a serial is stamped on the part..very unlikely…it would be very difficult to prove origin .
Some people recover parts with licence and then sadly have no storage facility inside, the parts continue to corrode example , the Wellington and Hudson parts in the long grass at Baxterley airstrip in the Midlands.
Ill informed comment in the press can ruin the chance of getting land owners permission for a properly run recovery. The most common tactic is to spread the story that the site is a war grave,this then creates such an emotive reaction that the landowner just says no. In my local area of the Scottish Highlands a substantial area of Lancaster wreckage has been neglected on the moorland 8 miles north of Kingussie for this reason. Indeed one collector claims it as his wreckage because he has visited it many times !
In my view it is time for a list of sites with visible wreckage to be collated by an organisation BAAC perhaps and then a priority of recovery efforts made.
The idea of leaving sites as a memorial is just nonsense, to the uninformed they are just a pile of scrap.Actual memorials on site will remain rare because generally the cost is to high to cover all known sites.
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