It was interesting… but I’m still waiting for the program we were promised about the 78 minutes of film footage, and the 150,000 glass negatives. As far as I could see, the only use made of the the negs was to overlay pretty (trench?) lines on them without explanation, and to superimpose excessive CGI over them. And we saw maybe a minute of the 1919 film, several times over.

There are two enormous and neglected sources there, and frankly we were denied meaningful sight of them. Bring on the serious, intelligent documentary! Ah, bu**er, we can’t make those these days…

Adrian

Hard to say from the photo, but I’m not sure that the curvature on the blade is right for a propellor. Might it be a test club (I think that’s the term), for running an engine on a test rig? That might explain the shortness and possibly the width, as it seems quite wide in relation to its length. It might even have been an apropriate presentation for his job….?

Adrian

The radar masts were visible for miles if you head for Dover – but I believe that one has been taken down, so I think it’s just two standing now. Very distinctive, even without the “arms”. But just drive towards Dover along the A2 and if the MOD haven’t done for them, you can’t miss them.

Adrian

Yet (and not a lot of help to Hindenburg – sorry!) there’s footage in a documentary on YouTube that I can’t currently find of a Horsa pilot getting it wrong and piling into a Matador lorry. Suffice to say that the Matador comes off a lot worse!

My interest? It’s just beyond a signal square labelled “GS”…

Adrian

Strip field patterns? As seen in Roman Catholic Quebec, France and only in one or two places in the UK, it being a supplanted farming practice from the mediaeval period in Britain. I’ve visited Laxton.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_field_system

Right sort of idea, James! I was told about 16 years ago in an area with a confusing mixture of very big and very small fields that the smaller fields were the result of Catholic families dividing farms up between siblings, rather than it going wholesale to the eldest son as in the Protestant tradition. I don’t know how true that is, but it fitted the landscape round there.

There’s some very interesting subdivision going on in one of those photos, that looks like no pattern I’ve yet seen in the UK, and it almost certainly came about from breaking up much larger fields for whatever reason. As for whether it might give us a clue to location… we need a German geographer, I think!

The coast may not be that much of a help, as an awful lot of 1940 Germany’s coast is now in Poland or Kaliningrad…

By the way, you are ahead of me on Laxton. I live (and have an allotment on) an unenclosed common, but I’ve never yet got to Laxton…

Adrian

For those who wish to know without offending forum sensibilities (suffice to say that it caused the largest windmill-ordure interaction that the forum has ever known, with the potential to close the whole thing down – or at least that’s how I recall it. Certainly it was messier than a very messy thing), may I suggest that you find a copy of Grub Street’s fine tome “Finding the Few”, which lays out the reasons for his continued status as “Missing”. With a little local knowledge applied, all should become clear.

In the meantime, a thought has been given for Sgt Williams and his compatriots, deprived of a grave by whatever circumstance.

At the going down of the sun and in the morning…

Adrian

Well, G-AGPG may look rough, but at least she’s in the dry, which is more than could be said when I saw her last at Brenzett in 1993 (I presume there weren’t two E K Collins Ansons about?).

I don’t even want to think about what would be needed to restore her.

Adrian

The thing that makes me laugh are the American ACW reenactors who mostly are about 3 times the size in all directions of the real soldiers of the period.

Dunno if it’s still up, or of one of the people pictured has sat on it, but it’s well worth Googling “Fat re-enactors”…

Adrian