Supermarine Spitfire

Heard this story enough times before. In answer to their question, "Is there a squadron of Spitfires buried beneath Birmingham?" - the answer is 'Nooooooooo'.

SimonGee;116549 wrote:

Maybe I'm missing something here, but after WW2, with TONNES and TONNES of potential scrap metal lying around, wouldn't have been more cost effective simply to flog the lot to the scrappies - ?

There was examples of scrap metal being sold off after WW2. For example at Llandow and St Athan hundreds of Beuafighters, Lancs, Sterlings and Halifax were broken down. Some off them came fresh off the production line only to be broken down again.
All the reusable metal was sold off and the rest such as engines or dials were buried in a pit.

With all the airfields around the place at the end of the war, surely it would have been easier to box the aircraft up and bung 'em in a few hangars in case you needed them again, against the Soviets or whoever, rather than burying them in a big hole so you couldn't get at them easily any more.

Steve

Alas Al, no holes were dug at Llandow. The landowner told me that he remembered all the planes being broken up on the surface. The RAF sold the scrap off, to a scrap merchant in Barry. The wanted bits were boxed up and the remaining bits were left on the surface and covered over. The bedrock is only 75cm below the ground surface across the West Site, as most of the ground surface had been skimmed off during the excavation of the Bronze Age Barrows in the late 1930s by Nash-Williams, prior to the construction of the airfield. We also carried out geophysical survey across the site in advance of the National Eisteddfod occupying the airfield. One of our remits was the possibility of unknown pits full of who knows what, but none were found.

I remember the Albermarles in a quarry near Aspatria,Cumbria.
I did volunteer to go on this expedition but wasnt 'let go' from UEF at Abingdon (or maybe the RAFM wanted stronger folk )

Quote from Mike Bacon...

Early in 1982 a group from the RAF museum (?) started excavating an old quarry near Westnewton in West Cumbria. Some Albemarles had reputedly been dumped there after the war when some of the old bases and storage depots were cleared out. Under a layer of farm rubbish including dead sheep and cows several Albemarle airframes eventually emerged. I live a few miles away and used to take my 6 year old daughter there from time to time to follow progress. Somewhere I have a picture of her beside a pile of the airframes (stainless steel tubes) which were kept in a field a few yards from the quarry. I pretty sure they had a "Queen Mary" (WW2 aircraft transporter) there to take them back to Hendon. They said the intention was to at least partly restore one of the airframes for exhibition. One day we went to find they were abandoning the site and loading the remains onto their vehicle. They had been recalled as trouble was brewing over the Falklands. Did anything happen to the Albemarle restoration project?

As he said - the expedition was cut short by the Falklands kicking off....any Albermarle remains been seen ??

After having a quick look at SLG's - I guess that the Albermarles had been at Brayton Park SLG,there are one or two quarries close by

A bit OT, but - at the five Air Ministry Forward Filling Depots, after everything had been 'successfully decontaminated!', the pipework and much of the plant was cut into pieces and placed into the empty mustard pots which were then 'sealed'. Decades later the pots were opened and in some cases containers of active mustard gas were found inside amongst all the metalwork. Interestingly around the same time the same thing was happening at Windscale / Sellafield. Dubious items were thrown into one of the cooling ponds. Naturally there were warning notices around these areas telling staff to keep away. Unfortunately pigeons and seagulls can't read resulting in them being classified as low-level waste. Two women who kept pigeons in a nearby village found themselves having the top layer of their garden soil removed in 1998.

This made me smile, despite not understanding a lot of the references!

Seen this before.

Excellent. Well funny.

Malc.