Elidir Fawr
Originally uploaded by seansonofbig2
A Wales trip yesterday, we set out with no great hopes of finding any of the three known, and one disputed wreck sites on Elidir Fawr and Elidir Fach. Elidir Fawr has a power station hidden inside it, and is therefore also known as Electric Mountain.
On top of "Electric Mountain", in that cloud somewhere, might well be some remains from the crash of Piper Tomahawk G-BOCC, but we weren't up for the final ascent on the day. The Tomahawk's pilot spent several hours conscious and badly injured hanging over a long, steep drop before he was rescued. Not his best day ever, I shouldn't imagine.
The crash site is allegedly very close to the remains of a Beaufighter according to the Snowdonia scrap dealer's list. They don't call themselves scrap dealers, they think they are aviation archaeologists. However, since most of the stuff they "recovered" quasi-legally from the mountains of Wales ended up weighed in for scrap, it seems the fairest description. Archaeologists do not deal in scrap metal.
We did find wreckage where these Diddycoys said they found Hercules engines from a Beaufighter. We understand however that majority opinion would be that this wreckage is from a Skua which crashed there, or even from the Blenheim crash site (600m away, according to "High Ground Wrecks"). Skuas did not have Bristol Hercules engines. They did however have Bristol Perseus engines. These have 9 cylinders, vs 14 for the Hercules. Could it be that they just couldn't count that high? Of course, if the grave-robbers hadn't weighed the identifiable bits of the the 'plane in, we'd be in a better position to comment on what they saw!
We also found some bits on the slopes of Elidir Fach which were unarguably from Blenheim V6099. It doesn't appear on the previously mentioned list, but it's definitely on the hill.
So we found a fair bit more than expected, and were back down in time for a spot of fish and chips. All good.
Since we posted this we have had some correspondence which suggests that we should not criticise people we have not met.
OK, we take it all back. That guy Hitler was probably just misunderstood too. What do we know, we never met him.
