I was lucky to find even this one of the few remaining scattered bits of wreckage at the Helmsley Moor crash site of this Lancaster Bomber.
Location: SE 58808 92116
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Showing posts with label lancaster. Show all posts
Showing posts with label lancaster. Show all posts
Saturday, 24 July 2010
Avro Lancaster Mk X KB701
I was lucky to find even this one of the few remaining scattered bits of wreckage at the Helmsley Moor crash site of this Lancaster Bomber.
Location: SE 58808 92116
More info
Monday, 23 November 2009
Avro Lancaster Mk. III NE132
This appropriately sombre picture shows the memorial to the crew of Lancaster NE132 at the site of their fatal 6th February 1945 crash.
It lies in the middle of an extensive (but nevertheless hard to find) wreckage trail down the flank of Rhinog Fawr in South Snowdonia, Wales.
It's pretty accessible by high ground wreck site standards, though the 50mph winds and driving rain reduced accessibility a bit for us last Saturday. Without assistance from Matt ZX, we'd undoubtedly have blanked here as we did on our last attempt. The site is a very long way from the High Ground Wrecks coordinates.
This is the only crash site listed as a War Grave in Wales, but this didn't stop someone taking away the only two engines on the site which were not completely shattered around ten years ago.
As we know, wreckologists aren't squeamish about graverobbing, but for whatever reason, the shattered remains of much of the 'plane and two of of the crew are still there on the hillside, rather than gracing some sad anorak's shed.
With the new rules from CADW, they will hopefully now remain undisturbed for years to come.
Location: SH 63736 28879
Tuesday, 7 April 2009
Avro Lancaster W4929 Coded AJ-J
Lancaster
Originally uploaded by seansonofbig
Six straight hours of being rained on whilst tramping through a bog yielded only one find yesterday, the crash site and this memorial to the crew of a bomber downed (for reasons still unknown) north of Fan Foel in the Brecon Beacons.
We failed to find anything at the Moel Feity Liberator site reasonably nearby, but visibility was poor, and other excuses.
The poppy wreath is from the inmates of Swansea Prison. Anyone know why?
Location: SN 82792 23892
Avro Lancaster W4929 Coded AJ-J
AVRO LANCASTER W4929 CODED AJ-J
Originally uploaded by seansonofbig
The bent crankshafts from two Merlin engines in the foreground and just behind Mick are some of the largest bits in this 4m by 20m scar left in the hillside by the impact of a Lancaster bomber.
Location: SN 82793 23892
We have received the following information about this site from the aircrew remembrance society:
Lancaster W4929 H.C.U. crashed on the 5th September 1943 with the loss of all the crew:
Took off from Winthorpe for a night cross country training flight. They flew into a heavy storm over the Brecon Beacons and crashed at 23.20hrs.
Two of the commonwealth crew are buried in Hereford Cemetery (F/O Folkersen R.C.A.F. Fl/Sgt. Buckby R.A.A.F.), Sgt Curran was interred in Bath Cemetery. P/O Duxbury and Sgt Holding are buried in Standish, Wigan. Sgt Wilson is buried in Clitheroe Cemetery, Sgt Pratt at Hemel Hempstead, P/O Johnson D.F.M. was cremated at Woking Crematorium.
Friday, 2 January 2009
Avro Lancaster Mk. I W4326 'C' Charlie
An update on what happened with respect to the Dolwen Lancaster is in order, as the information we have received since our original posting has proved so interesting. We know that the "Aviation Archaeologists" who we usually refer to as scrap merchants were ungifted amateurs, but this is the saddest story yet!
We hear that one of the scrap merchants (who we might refer to as Rhys) applied for a licence to dig this site (where seven men died) in the late 1980s.
Now, applying for a licence to dig is not the big deal that wreckologists make out, and even at death sites like this one, they don't seem to check that you are even who you say you are, or care too much whether you have any relevant qualifications, or ask what you intend to do with the "recovered " items to any degree of rigour.
They don't even seem to care much if you have previous convictions for grave robbing. Grave robbing is an important concept here. It is the basis of the legislation which is supposed to protect these sites.
When records show that a body was recovered, that only means that 7lb (3kg) of remains were found. The rest is quite possibly still in the ground. All sites where deaths occurred are grave sites, though naturally the grave robbers dispute this.
Still, someone couldn't wait: we are told that one of the other scrap merchants (let's call him Bethesda Dave) heard of this and decided to beat him to it, excavating the site without a licence, and taking away two of the engines, and a few other saleable bits.
There is a picture of the dig in process in Edward Doylerush's "No Landing Place". Obviously "Rhys" wasn't pleased by his mate nicking what he considered to be his scrap, and this caused something of a rift back at the scrapyard.
One of the engines was broken up and sold in pieces. Some of these bits have since appeared on eBay.
The other engine is apparently in the Caernarfon Airworld"Museum", unlabelled as to its origin, and with various bits replaced with bits obtained elsewhere. They do not own it, it is merely on loan from the person who illegally recovered it.
Bits which couldn't be sold were left in situ, crowned with the added insult of a Welsh flag marking the graves of the entirely non-Welsh crew, signifying perhaps the feeling of ownership diggers have for wreck sites, and belying their so often made false claims of honouring the war dead.
Whether the man who makes little model aircraft from melted down plane wreckage bought scraps of illegally dug wreckage on eBay or simply collected it himself, we do not know. We do however know that he is advertising models made from the fabric of this aircraft.
Short of digging up one of the crew's skulls and taking a dump in it, we can't see how much more immorally and illegally these people might have acted. Yet nothing seems to be happening to them.
Can we call these people "Archaeologists", as diggers like to style themselves?
What sort of archaeologist cares about nothing other than the showiest items, and leaves everything else behind in piles?
What sort of archaeologist claims the site for his country, irrespective of the origin of the human remains to be found there?
What sort of archaeologist only displays items in a mickey-mouse "museum" which cannot even be bothered to label its exhibits?
What sort of archaeologist breaks up what he excavates, and sells it on eBay?
No sort of archaeologist at all, and I'm not just talking about the Welsh contingent. Pretty much all of you other sad anorak BAAC amateurs are as pitiful as this lot, just a little less uninhibited.
We also read that when "Time Team" decided to swim in the murky waters of "Aviation Archaeology" by digging up a Spitfire in France, they unearthed human remains too. Glossed over that bit in the programme, despite the French having no law to protect crash sites.
At least they didn't feature wreckologists in home made jumpsuits with "Air Crash Investigator" badges (no doubt sewn on by their mums), as they did in certain other episodes. If you are willing to humiliate yourself that much to get on the telly, you should be auditioning for "Big Brother".
We got the following comment from the guy who makes little models from bits of crashed 'planes:
Your comments on your blog have been brought to my attention and I am concerned about them.
You have taken it upon yourself to question my companies integrity further more you have put a link to my web site with out my permission . This I fined very offensive.
My models are all made from legally obtained parts . Therefore I ask you to remove the link to my website, your comments about me, and publish a public apology. Within the next seven (7) days from the date of this letter. Your frailer to comply with my requests will leave me with no alternative but to seek professional advice re further action to be taken, regarding the deformation of my character.
With regards
Mr R Ruddock
We replied:
So someone has wound you up, and set you going, have they?
I suggest you go and get that legal advice before you write again. You seem not to understand your legal position.
Your legal advisor will tell you that a person who buys from thieves has not made a legal purchase, and that there is no legal requirement to ask permission to place a weblink to someone's web site.
My information is that no licence has been granted for this site. I will withdraw my comment and apologise unreservedly if you show me proof that the excavation which produced your raw materials was done under MOD licence.
Perhaps you could tell me who you bought your metal from, and whether you have seen a copy of the MOD licence to excavate?
In the absence of such evidence, I will continue to believe what I have been told, which implies that your company is making models (and money)from metal illegally removed from a war grave. Like any reasonable person, I consider this contemptible.
Some spelling lessons might be an idea too. Legal threats are so much more convincing when they come from people with an apparent reading age above ten, unlike yourself.
The words you were looking for were:
Company's
Without
Find
Failure
Defamation
Regards
Seán
We hear that one of the scrap merchants (who we might refer to as Rhys) applied for a licence to dig this site (where seven men died) in the late 1980s.
Now, applying for a licence to dig is not the big deal that wreckologists make out, and even at death sites like this one, they don't seem to check that you are even who you say you are, or care too much whether you have any relevant qualifications, or ask what you intend to do with the "recovered " items to any degree of rigour.
They don't even seem to care much if you have previous convictions for grave robbing. Grave robbing is an important concept here. It is the basis of the legislation which is supposed to protect these sites.
When records show that a body was recovered, that only means that 7lb (3kg) of remains were found. The rest is quite possibly still in the ground. All sites where deaths occurred are grave sites, though naturally the grave robbers dispute this.
Still, someone couldn't wait: we are told that one of the other scrap merchants (let's call him Bethesda Dave) heard of this and decided to beat him to it, excavating the site without a licence, and taking away two of the engines, and a few other saleable bits.
There is a picture of the dig in process in Edward Doylerush's "No Landing Place". Obviously "Rhys" wasn't pleased by his mate nicking what he considered to be his scrap, and this caused something of a rift back at the scrapyard.
One of the engines was broken up and sold in pieces. Some of these bits have since appeared on eBay.
The other engine is apparently in the Caernarfon Airworld"Museum", unlabelled as to its origin, and with various bits replaced with bits obtained elsewhere. They do not own it, it is merely on loan from the person who illegally recovered it.
Bits which couldn't be sold were left in situ, crowned with the added insult of a Welsh flag marking the graves of the entirely non-Welsh crew, signifying perhaps the feeling of ownership diggers have for wreck sites, and belying their so often made false claims of honouring the war dead.
Whether the man who makes little model aircraft from melted down plane wreckage bought scraps of illegally dug wreckage on eBay or simply collected it himself, we do not know. We do however know that he is advertising models made from the fabric of this aircraft.
Short of digging up one of the crew's skulls and taking a dump in it, we can't see how much more immorally and illegally these people might have acted. Yet nothing seems to be happening to them.
Can we call these people "Archaeologists", as diggers like to style themselves?
What sort of archaeologist cares about nothing other than the showiest items, and leaves everything else behind in piles?
What sort of archaeologist claims the site for his country, irrespective of the origin of the human remains to be found there?
What sort of archaeologist only displays items in a mickey-mouse "museum" which cannot even be bothered to label its exhibits?
What sort of archaeologist breaks up what he excavates, and sells it on eBay?
No sort of archaeologist at all, and I'm not just talking about the Welsh contingent. Pretty much all of you other sad anorak BAAC amateurs are as pitiful as this lot, just a little less uninhibited.
We also read that when "Time Team" decided to swim in the murky waters of "Aviation Archaeology" by digging up a Spitfire in France, they unearthed human remains too. Glossed over that bit in the programme, despite the French having no law to protect crash sites.
At least they didn't feature wreckologists in home made jumpsuits with "Air Crash Investigator" badges (no doubt sewn on by their mums), as they did in certain other episodes. If you are willing to humiliate yourself that much to get on the telly, you should be auditioning for "Big Brother".
We got the following comment from the guy who makes little models from bits of crashed 'planes:
Your comments on your blog have been brought to my attention and I am concerned about them.
You have taken it upon yourself to question my companies integrity further more you have put a link to my web site with out my permission . This I fined very offensive.
My models are all made from legally obtained parts . Therefore I ask you to remove the link to my website, your comments about me, and publish a public apology. Within the next seven (7) days from the date of this letter. Your frailer to comply with my requests will leave me with no alternative but to seek professional advice re further action to be taken, regarding the deformation of my character.
With regards
Mr R Ruddock
We replied:
So someone has wound you up, and set you going, have they?
I suggest you go and get that legal advice before you write again. You seem not to understand your legal position.
Your legal advisor will tell you that a person who buys from thieves has not made a legal purchase, and that there is no legal requirement to ask permission to place a weblink to someone's web site.
My information is that no licence has been granted for this site. I will withdraw my comment and apologise unreservedly if you show me proof that the excavation which produced your raw materials was done under MOD licence.
Perhaps you could tell me who you bought your metal from, and whether you have seen a copy of the MOD licence to excavate?
In the absence of such evidence, I will continue to believe what I have been told, which implies that your company is making models (and money)from metal illegally removed from a war grave. Like any reasonable person, I consider this contemptible.
Some spelling lessons might be an idea too. Legal threats are so much more convincing when they come from people with an apparent reading age above ten, unlike yourself.
The words you were looking for were:
Company's
Without
Find
Failure
Defamation
Regards
Seán
Tuesday, 23 December 2008
Avro Lancaster Mk. I W4326 'C' Charlie
Dolwen Lancaster
Originally uploaded by seansonofbig
Serial numbers and inspection stamps on the discarded wreckage. Click on and zoom in to see clearly.
Avro Lancaster Mk. I W4326 'C' Charlie
Dolwen Lancaster
Originally uploaded by seansonofbig
The smaller of the two wreckage piles with its home-made memorial stone.
Someone seems to have claimed the site for Wales, despite the crew being from Canada and New Zealand in the main, and the aircraft having flown from 101 Group in Yorkshire.
Location: SH 95433 09203
Tuesday, 2 September 2008
Boeing Flying Fortress B-17F 42-3134 Memorial: Bala
Fortress B-17F 42-3134 Memorial: Bala
Originally uploaded by wreckhunter
Those who fixed the commemorative plaque to the crew of the Fortress crashed on Arenig Fawr on the Old Town Hall in Bala may not have foreseen its conversion into a Chinese restaurant.
The hoardings unfortunately stopped us seeing if the plaque is still there.
We visited this as a convenient stop-off 50 yards from a cafe where I had an excellent fry-up.
The days' main targets were another Fortress with some controversy as to its identity, and a Lancaster (NE132) which was supposed to be easy to find by virtue of being in quite big bits.
Got the Fortress but not the Lanc. We now understand (from MattZX) that we missed the Lancaster because the High Ground Wrecks coordinates are unusually inaccurate at the site.
Nice walking though, for once dryer and sunnier in Wales than in Derbyshire.
As ever, we'll be back with more info to find the ones we missed on the first pass.
Location: SH 92615 35974
More info
Friday, 16 May 2008
Flying Lanc
I see on Sky news this morning that the last UK flying Lanc. is going to make a few passes over Derwent Dam today. We are however off to Wales, and we have seen it before anyway, when we had our own personal overflight out on the moors...
Thursday, 22 November 2007
Avro Lancaster Mk.X KB993
IMG_0026
Originally uploaded by seansonofbig2
We also verified that we had correct location and identification for wreckage local to Memorial to the Lancaster on James Thorn.
This wreckage pile gets moved about a lot, it looks different and usually smaller each time it is photographed..
Location: SK 07921 94775
More info
Tuesday, 9 October 2007
Avro Lancaster Mk.I NF908
Roaches:Lancaster Wreckage
Originally uploaded by seansonofbig
A big scar on the moor, but no really big chunks of wreckage at this wreck site centred around SK 00155 63607 on the Roaches.
More info here
Saturday, 26 May 2007
Blackburn Botha W5103; Avro Lancaster PA474
Had an interesting trip yesterday. Found the remains of a RAF Botha at:
SK 11077 97532.
More info
Whilst searching for a Wellington a little way away, we had several flybys by a Lancaster, got a few pics:
Also a video. As we understand there are only two left airworthy, this isn't something that happens every day! PA474, the Battle of Britain Flight flying Lanc was supposed to be at Headingley on the 25th, but the other one (FM213 )is owned by the Canadian Air Force.
Maybe it was something to do with this years' remake of "The Dambusters".
SK 11077 97532.
More info
Whilst searching for a Wellington a little way away, we had several flybys by a Lancaster, got a few pics:
Also a video. As we understand there are only two left airworthy, this isn't something that happens every day! PA474, the Battle of Britain Flight flying Lanc was supposed to be at Headingley on the 25th, but the other one (FM213 )is owned by the Canadian Air Force.
Maybe it was something to do with this years' remake of "The Dambusters".
Friday, 18 May 2007
Hawker Hurricanes PZ851,PZ765 and PZ854 ;Lancaster PA411 RAF;Lightning P38J 42-67207
Tuesday, 10 April 2007
Avro Lancaster KB993
This is very close to the Dakota, it may have been hard to tell where one wreckage field ended, and the other began.
Memorial local to Lancaster wreckage
SK 07931 94775
Below is what we assume is left of the Lanc, ten feet from the memorial. The Dakota wreckage field is however very close, and it has been suggested that this is part of the Dakota. We are looking into this, and also into which of the other wreckage we logged and photographed in the area is from the Lancaster if this isn't. We checked, and this is indeed the Lanc.
More info
Memorial local to Lancaster wreckage
SK 07931 94775
Below is what we assume is left of the Lanc, ten feet from the memorial. The Dakota wreckage field is however very close, and it has been suggested that this is part of the Dakota. We are looking into this, and also into which of the other wreckage we logged and photographed in the area is from the Lancaster if this isn't. We checked, and this is indeed the Lanc.
More info
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