Up onto yet another Whernside in Yorkshire, this one above the Ribblehead Viaduct (pictured). Interesting weather and light throughout the day, Mick got some good snaps.
A relatively easy walk, only 12k and not too much ascent to see a couple of WWII wreck sites. What with having had swine flu and so on, we weren't up for a mad yomp. Nice walk, and down in time for tea for once.
Despite High Ground Wrecks being as rubbish as ever in Yorkshire, we found both sites we were going for. I hadn't realised how much these two sites had been picked over by wreckologists until I did the post-walk research. Sad. But then they are sad.
What appear to be wing/ hardpoint components from this Barracuda torpedo bomber which crashed into Whernside on 15th December 1945.
There apparently used to be a big chunk of wing here, but it was probably stolen by the "York Aircraft Preservation Society".
What a fantastic name for an organisation which destroys wreck sites, it's worthy of George Orwell's 1984.
Of course like all of these loose associations of saddoes it has disbanded in time, and its stolen "treasures" have gone missing, who knows where.
Those imagined museums never come to fruition quite as you hoped, do they lads? Maybe a few pointless bits of tangled metal are collected in some unvisited Nissen hut somewhere, but more usually items (all too often stolen from war graves) are collected simply to be thrown out by your parents for those few of you who go on to get a life.
Don't imagine I'm implying that all involved are of school age, just that they probably live with their parents. And need to get a life.
Location SD 74201 80331
A drystone wall "repaired" with bits of torpedo bomber. Click on pic to zoom in if you can't see it.
I'm not sure I agree with the suggestion that this is supposed to be a wall repair.
It just looks like the standard farmer's trick of throwing bits of aircraft wreckage to the edge of the field to me.
Two reasons why I don't think it is a repair-there's no hole in the wall, and in the National Park farmers get paid to repair dry stone walls properly.
In National Parks farmers are more like caretakers, really.
Location:SD 74246 80387
You missed a bit, anoraks! A lonely fragment of the eight and a half tonnes of bomber which crashed into the hillside on 21st April 1944 whilst on a cross country flight from Hixon.
There are closer shots of it over on the flickr site, I just liked way the sky looks in this one.
This may well be all that is now left above ground at the site, as it has been been serially looted since then by "enthusiasts", many of who amusingly refer to themselves collectively as "Preservation Societies", as discussed previously.
No-one outside the world of "aviation archaeology" knows where the rest of this 'plane is, and even in that world, no-one is telling.
Location: SD 74157 81562
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A long trek over boggy terrain above Kettlewell in the Yorkshire Dales yesterday yielded only one confirmed site, this collection of scraps from a Flying Fortress crashed in cloud in May 1945.
Location:SE 00053 72764
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