Ju-87B in Chicago

[Topfmine]

And the real tragedy was how much of this intriguing materiel was destroyed by neglect and a savage winter just after the war. All those aircraft, left out in the open for "future evaluation" (including some interesting "experimental' jobs), suffered water ingress from all that lovely English "liquid sunshine".

So, winter rolls around with a vengeance, the water freezes and "pops" riveted joints all over the place.

Enter the bulldozers and fire-axes (and the scrap merchants), to make the place look "tidy".

How many "surplus" British aircraft conveniently suffered the same fate post-war? Probably, nobody cared; they just wanted their saucepans back. And thereby, hangs another tale.

With the onset of war and rationing, nutrition became a serious problem. As was later discovered in India, aluminium cookware is NOT a good thing for folk with a low-iron diet. You get iron from red meat, or VAST amounts of certain green, leafy vegetables. The alternate source is the microscopic amounts scraped from iron vessels during preparation and cooking.

A notional return to old-fashioned iron pots during the rationing times may have provided just enough dietary iron to keep things working.

In the absence of sufficient iron, aluminium is toxic to the human system and causes serious nervous issues, by accumulating in the brain and playing merry hell with its function. A famous example is Buddy Ebsen, of "Beverly Hillbillies" fame who was the original actor to play the "Tin Man" in "Wizard of Oz". All that Aluminium-powder "make-up" got to him very badly and the rest is history.

As soon as the Hawker Typhoons landed up at Lasham airfield just after the the war from their return from Europe they were scrapped by the crusher on the airfield in turn, thats why you dont see many of them.
Its also a shame they cant house the Victory and the Warrior war ship at Portsmouth under cover like the U 505 as these sit out in the elements year after year rotting away and have to be restore on a regular basis.

[browningautorifle]

As soon as the Hawker Typhoons landed up at Lasham airfield just after the the war from their return from Europe they were scrapped by the crusher

I spoke to a flight surgeon that did duty on an airfield during the war, in England and he said when the end was declared, the fitters and riggers headed out into the airfields with sledges and axes and started smashing up aircraft. Within short order, nothing on the strip was serviceable. You can imagine they knew exactly where to strike to separate wings and frames...sad actually...

[Flying10uk]

I believe that in an old magazine article somewhere, probably my attic, I saw a picture or 2 of surplus U.S. aircraft being blown up with high explosives here in the U.K.. From memory, this would have been at the end of the war and the reason stated was that it was the simplest way to dispose of unwanted airframes. They may not have actually been airworthy aircraft and it probably wasn't worth making them airworthy just to get them back to the States then to put them into storage.

[Peter Laidler]

They were still destroying them at the Wootton end of Honeybottom Lane in Abingdon, the North end of the long runway, right up into the 90's. That's how Whitecross Metals at Abingdon and Coopers of Swindon started life. Coopers were destroying hundreds, if not thousands of bombers at Wroughton. Living at nearby Chiseldon as a little boy we'd always be cycling over to the perimeter to watch and steal things from them. I am still the proud owner of an 'A crown M' marked fire escape axe from a white and grey painted Lancaster(?) Want a Catalina? Bottom of Lock Erne there's plenty

[mrclark303]

Just down the road from Wroughton at Kemble the situation was much the same, with hundreds and hundreds of bombers stacked wingtip to wingtip on every inch of avalable grass and hardstanding.

Unlike the US we never had the climate, space or I suppose will (people sick and tired of war) to store the vast numbers of redundant aircraft after the war .. mass scrapping was the only real option.

My uncle as a fresh faced brand new RAF aircraft fitter in 1945 was involved in cutting up brand new Bristol Hercules Radial engines, delivered straight from the factory, among many other things including aircraft, even 60 years later he remembered how terrible it felt to light the gas cutter and destroy those beautiful pieces of engineering..

[browningautorifle]

an 'A crown M' marked fire escape axe from a white and grey painted Lancaster

I remember that story, you told us once before...

[mrclark303]

They were still destroying them at the Wootton end of Honeybottom Lane in Abingdon, the North end of the long runway, right up into the 90's. That's how Whitecross Metals at Abingdon and Coopers of Swindon started life. Coopers were destroying hundreds, if not thousands of bombers at Wroughton. Living at nearby Chiseldon as a little boy we'd always be cycling over to the perimeter to watch and steal things from them. I am still the proud owner of an 'A crown M' marked fire escape axe from a white and grey painted Lancaster(?) Want a Catalina? Bottom of Lock Erne there's plenty

I can remember the Vulcan, Canberra and cancelled AEW Nimrods being scrapped at Abingdon in 1989 Peter, along with the long stored oil sprayed ex BA VC10's patiently waiting for their turn in Filtons Tanker programme for the RAF..

[Flying10uk]

I have heard "stories" that at some of the RAF bases where aircraft were broken up/scrapped some of the resulting metal and material was simply buried in the ground on areas of land on the base not in use. I don't know how much truth there is in this but I have seen at the Yorkshire Aircraft Museum a Gun Turret that was dug up from the camp dump at South Carney Airfield*, if I remember correctly.

*Called something else now I believe because it's now an army base.

[browningautorifle]

Well, there's the Spitfires buried in Burma...

[mrclark303]

Well, there's the Spitfires buried in Burma...

So they say Jim, the question is has anyone found them yet?