Gloster Meteors WA971 and VZ518

I've been up to Sliddens Moss twice in recent weeks with Pat, and Matt. Last week's outing turned up this engine, which I hadn't seen on previous outings. 

Location: TBA

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Gloster Meteor F Mk.4 RA487 : Looting

Nipped in on our way past the other day to find that all that remains at the Hagg Side crash site is this bit of armour plate. Shame on you, looters!

Gloster Meteor F Mk.4 RA487

Another bit of an outing with Pat to the Hagg Side Meteor today showed that the wreckage pile has grown (click on the picture for notation showing which bits are new)

Usually wreckage piles just shrink as the anoraks take bits home, never seen one grow before!

Anyone know what these new bits are, and where they came from?

It has been suggested elsewhere that these have been added to the pile "by curious walkers", but I've been to the site several times before and searched the vicinity from various directions and I've never seen them (or indeed any other substantial scattered bits) before. Apparently they were already there last June.

Location: SK 16579 89040 (supersedes previous, this one is the average of 150 readings)

Howden Moor Incident

Tiny Tree, Howden Moor
Originally uploaded by seansonofbig

Following this comment, (and a nasty weather forecast)we decided to scratch yesterday's planned visit to Wales, and to investigate the claim that we (along with more or less everyone else) are wrong about the location of the V1 crash on Howden Moor. It was also an opportunity to practice my map and compass navigation, ready for a Mountain Leader training course I'm doing later in the year.

Howden Moor is the focus of all sorts of strange stories, of covert military operations, UFOs, Meteor impacts, Ghost Planes, Drug Smuggling, and IRA weapons caches. That someone might suggest that a crater was caused by a parachute mine rather than a V1 seems quite prosaic compared with the other wild tales.

The problem was, we'd never seen any sign of the tree "Tomsk" refers to anywhere near the V1 crater, and we never would have seen this tiny tree if there hadn't been a complete whiteout on the day.

Location: SK 18494 96603

This is the only tree anywhere near the V1 site (albeit much further than 40 metres away), but there was no sign of a second crater in its vicinity. Can't see anything in Google Earth either on Howden Moor or Macclesfield Forest locations, despite Tomsk's claim.

We had no difficulty finding the previously located crater using map and compass only, despite the weather. Hmm.

And how about the other stories? The Howden Moor incident is a favorite of UFOlogists, who allege that a UFO crashed and exploded on the moor in 1997, and there has been a subsequent coverup.

We would suggest that of all possible explanations, this is the least likely. An optical illusion is surely the most likely explanation. Sorry, spacecadets.

Gloster Meteor F.8 WA794

IMG_0034
Originally uploaded by seansonofbig

The circular scar where this Meteor from RAF 5 CAACU met a wall of granite on Yr Eifl in poor visibility on 11th October 1957, unsurprisingly killing the pilot.

The pile of boulders below the scar allegedly covers the small wreckage not looted by the usual suspects, but we found not a scrap of metal at the site.

Location: SH 36068 45892

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Gloster Meteor F. Mk.8 WE904

Meteor:Millthorpe
Originally uploaded by seansonofbig2

First of the day, this memorial to a mysteriously crashed Meteor in Millthorpe

Location: SK 31732 76318

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Gloster Meteors WA971 and VZ518

Meteor wreckage around informal memorial cross at:

SE 06872 02901



We visited this site on 12th April 2007, 57 years to the day after a mid-air collision between two RAF Meteors. There are huge chunks of wreckage easily visible all around these coordinates, which refer to the location of the informal memorial cross from which this picture was taken.
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Gloster Meteor RA487

RAF Meteor wreckage and accompanying crater:
SK 16573 89041






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