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Interesting photos - BoB era wrecks


Grey Beema

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Not sure where to put this.  I was looking for the BoB GB for next year but couldn't find it.  So I'll stick the link here and perhaps others can paste it where it needs to be...

 

Photos of aircraft wreck from the 1940-42 era.  Now it is the Dail Mail so treat captions with a pinch of salt but the pictures are interesting..

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7070249/Rare-photos-Nazi-plane-wreckages-littering-UK-fields-Battle-Britain.html

 

Hope they are useful to someone...

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The 16th photo from the top is interesting, the one captioned,

"This time an RAF airman and a Royal Artillery soldier examine belted 7.92mm rounds in the wreckage of a Messerschmitt 109 shot down at Chelsham, near RAF Biggin Hill on 30 August 1940. Bullets were popular although dangerous souvenirs, and became valuable 'currency' to schoolboy collectors. The fact that bullets or cannon shells were live and dangerous mattered little to collectors."

 

The soldier on the right has Royal Artillery epaulette slips and what looks like  Royal West Kent cap badge. Best guess would be he is a member of an AA unit.

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On 5/26/2019 at 5:57 PM, Roger Newsome said:

The 16th photo from the top is interesting, the one captioned,

"This time an RAF airman and a Royal Artillery soldier examine belted 7.92mm rounds in the wreckage of a Messerschmitt 109 shot down at Chelsham, near RAF Biggin Hill on 30 August 1940. Bullets were popular although dangerous souvenirs, and became valuable 'currency' to schoolboy collectors. The fact that bullets or cannon shells were live and dangerous mattered little to collectors."

 

The soldier on the right has Royal Artillery epaulette slips and what looks like  Royal West Kent cap badge. Best guess would be he is a member of an AA unit.

Highly likely. My father joined up in 39, with the Kings Shropshire Light Infantry at Shrewsbury. Later on they were retrained as Artillery and he became a gunner/driver. In the meantime he served somewhere along the coast presumably on anti-invasion duties? before the KSLI were retrained as artillery on 25pdrs and eventually off to Normandy finishing up in Hamburg where he was transferred to an anti aircraft unit until demob in 1946 ! From that it looks like a soldiers lot was to be employed in many roles as needed.

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My Gramp worked at the Northern Aluminium Company depot in Banbury in the War.

He biked from Brackley to Banbury 12 miles each way for each shift day and night.

Good chance he delt with these.

Paul

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On 5/28/2019 at 8:22 AM, Admiral Puff said:

Can anyone identify the truck that's towing the He-111?

Thanks to the expertise of Gordon Whittaker and his colleagues it can be identified as a Fordson Agricultural Tractor which has been heavily modified.

Note the centrally positioned steering wheel and the larger rear wheels.

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