Ninety Year Old Vigilantes.

It sounds as though it was dreamt-up by an eight year old.:rolleyes:

There Must Be A ‘Better Ole’.

Davistow Moor is certainly a God-forsaken spot. It must have been a very depressing and unpopular posting. It had a very poor reputation for operability due to weather and visibility during the war. It’s only good point was that it was sometimes above the fog….! I think some hardy microlighters still use it, but despite having spent a lot of my life in the SW I confess that I had no idea there was any museum there.

Harrowbeer was built on a moor too, but near the south, rather than north coast of the peninsula, and probably at a somewhat lower elevation. It was closed after the war, but when some of the locals heard that there were plans to move Plymouths airport from it’s cramped pre-war site to Harrowbeer, they had the runways torn-up. Ironically, many of those same activists were eastern ex-RAF eastern Europeans who had had settled in the area after the war…..

Plymouth Airport is too small and the local council have, as they usually do, allowed far too much building to encroach upon it’s boundaries. There were more recent suggestions of using Harrowbeer, but it’ll never happen. It’s just a common used by dog-walkers now. At ground-level, there is little to see now, except a few fighter-pens, but from the air it shows-up very well.

Chalk & Cheese.

Aaah – the ‘Flying Venetian Blind’. An ideal glider-tug, but so sloooooooww. So many seem to end-up being abandoned to algie & moss. Hard to believe that they Aerospatialle followed the Rallye with the likes of the TB20….an different animal – fast, and very nice to fly too…:)

TGFE

Like Nick, I’ve used eB for a long time. I pretty much agree with what Nick says. Logic tells me that there is no reason why de-identifying activity should be a problem. Irrationally however, I used to quite like to see who was pitching-in, and where stuff was coming from – and going too….! If I really needed an item I could contact them and plead for it and vice-versa. Either way, without eB, there’s no way I’d have tracked-down some of the more arcane items I’ve found, and they’d probably have ended-up in a skip.

TGFE
(Thank God For eBay.!) 🙂

Bombs Away.

They’ll be OK as long as they haven’t been moved to Lympne….;)

Ah, Yes, but…..

Interestingly, I was talking to the family of one of several people who bought that a/c after the war as a memorial for CB. Of course, it was appropriated by the Birmingham Science Museum after CB closed, but strictly, I understand that it doesn’t actually belong to them. (..and presumably still does not..!) Funny old world…:). I do recall the BBMF had the airscrew away many years ago. 🙂

The old Science Museum used to get some flak, but I always liked it’s industrial feel and gravitas. I don’t even know where the ‘Think Tank’ is…!

Histoy – What History..?

Just to play devil’s advocate for a minute but what is the point of ‘real archaeology’?

I’m not disputing that archaeology has made significant discoveries of ‘what we do not know’ but rather what is the purpose of knowing ‘what we do not know’? What is the actual benefit, moving forward?

Personally, when bemoaning the almost total lack of History taught today, I take the view that, if we do not understand the past, how can we understand the present and control the future. Rather a philosophical standpoint I know, but the core truth…:) ‘Always condemned to repeat the mistakes of the past’ etc…
….and…isn’t all knowledge based on history..?

True.

I agree. Although the exact boundaries are vague, and with the greatest respect to archeologists, some of this so-called ‘aviation archeology’ is absurd. If we can look in a book, and see drawings, photos and films, we already know the answers, or can even go and ask a participant….we’ve hardy strayed into the realms of archeology…..! Some of this bunkum is touted about as the reasons to go and dig-up a/c where it’s either known, or suspected that human remains exist. We already know all that needs to be known about most a/c, certainly the more recent types. If they want to dig-up sites with no remains – fine, but it’d be better to label these as something more akin to ‘treasure hunt’, rather than meaningless twaddle about ‘archeology’ & ‘history’.

As for the ‘Amelia’ thing, well – we already know all the basic facts and they knew then even when she disappeared. They got lost, ran out of fuel and died. What more is there to know. It’s all a pretty pointless exercise.

Of course, ‘nonesense history’ isn’t confined to aviation. We’ve been inundated with hype of late about Richard III. All this hype was about a grave whose existance and site was previously well known. The conclusion now, we are told, is that yes, Richard the III was a hunchback – and met a violent end in battle. Again, all well known.

Not exactly following in the footsteps Heinrich Schliemann or Howard Carter….! :diablo: