Warbird Information Exchange

After the Second World War there were A LOT of trainers left over at the BCATP (British Commonwealth Air Training Plan) air bases in Canada. Lots of planes were sold as surplus, I've heard of people buying Tiger Moths for $100 fueled and ready to fly away, or buying Lysanders for less than the cost of the fuel in the tanks, which farmers drained, then stripped down anything they could use and then leave the rest of it to rot in the field. That is actually the history of our Lysander at CWH. The most tragic story that I have heard, however, involves the Faithful Annie, the Avro Anson. These poor planes were stacked in many, many piles, about 5 planes high, taking up quite a bit of space... and lit on fire. Guess it makes it that much more worth it to have the few examples around of these beautiful machines. I've also read an article in the past about Lancasters being torn apart and melted down into Ingots in England. Oh the Humanity! lol.

Don't forget Ian Cottril in the UK who in the late 70's dug up 52 Harleys still in crates.... If that wasn't amazing enough, the crates were on the back of duece & a halfs that had been loaded up & driven into 2 parallel trenches on a farm in Devon... I worked on 4 of those harleys.

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Those who possess real knowledge are rare.

Those who can set that knowledge into motion in the physical world are rarer still.

The few who possess real knowledge and can set it into motion of their own hands are the rarest of all.

ZRX61, When I was in high school in the early seventies there was persistent 'urban story' going around about mil surplus Harleys for fifty bucks still in the crate. Later it got around that they were also still in cosmoline and you had to pay for the whole lot to be shipped over to get one. The same bikes?
My dad is ex Navy air and told about unloading 'stuff' from LST's in the port of Galveston. They quickly consumed all the 'good stuff' and were stuck with the rest like tropical cheese, tropical chocolate and mutton carcases. yukko! The cheese was chunked in the bay from the back of a truck on the causeway in the dark of night. The mutton was buried with a backhoe at the edge of the base, that being an ex coastal blimp base at Hitchcock, Texas. That's on the mainland just NW of sunny Galveston. He had volunteered to cook and thereby avoided mothballing brand new Avengers and Helldivers out in the Texas sun. Dad's still a pretty good cook. I'm wondering if some building contractor has ever uncovered a few thousand headless sheep skeletons out there.

Canso42

Canso, the Blimp base is still completely undeveloped. The pillars for the big hangar are visble from miles around, especially from the bay side. Some of the old base buildings are still standing as they were used for many years to house offices for thr Mecoms. After they sold out many have gone derelict. Who knows what may be buried around there.

The Mecoms had a big auction out there many years ago and I believe some CAFers bought the remains of an AT-10 ? One of the last known examples.

I was just reading some old AT-10 threads here the other day, Rick. Your post
makes me wonder if that is the AT-10 recovery Obergrafter was talking about?
Indeed a rare bird...

EDIT:
OOPS...went back and re-read OberG's comment. Not the same bird, they found theirs
at Ballenger in west Texas.

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DBF

The pisser about thsoe Harleys is that a friend & I were also on the trail of them. We'd narrowed it down to 2 possible farms & Cottril beat us to em by taking a flight in some Cessna & clearly spotted the outlines of the trenches from the air. There were also tank parts on the back of other trucks in the trenches. No idea what became of the trucks etc. I heard that Cottril just hoisted the Harleys out & left the rest there.

_________________
Those who possess real knowledge are rare.

Those who can set that knowledge into motion in the physical world are rarer still.

The few who possess real knowledge and can set it into motion of their own hands are the rarest of all.

A good friend who flew Skyraiders in Vietnam tells a story of an airplane which was set down on an emergency strip following engine trouble. A maintenance crew went out and worked on her and my friend was later ferried out in a C-123 to bring the airplane home. The airplane ran up fine but, on takeoff, it was a mess. He barely nursed it around the patch to return to land. He tells me that there was no time left for troubleshooting so they bulldozed a tench and pushed the airplane in. He's always promised to point on the chart where that strip is (Laos, I believe) ... although the bird might need some engine work ... I'd still like to know.

Ken

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"Take care of the little things and the big things will take care of themselves."

Rick H. I passed by the blimp base site many times on the Santa Fe RR tracks between summer '77 and '80. I remember it as you described it and there was a rail spur into it until about '79 or '80 when it was pulled and the track ran straight past. At that time I think a construction company was parking equipment there. It might have been a Mecom related company. I tranferred up the Bellville in mid '80 and stayed there until the RR decided they didn't need a bunch of us anymore, so I haven't seen it since then.
Daddy told me about a bored Navy pilot there who flew a Fairchild L-bird throught the hangar (just a big storage barn by 1945) when the doors were open. After that, the WAVES in what passed for a control tower made sure the doors were always closed just enough to make it difficult.
The Army had Camp Wallace "just across the hiway" with their guys also marking time. I don't know of any surviving evidence of that facility but there's probably some stuff buried there too. Or thrown in the bay.

Canso42

The elusive and mysterious mass burial of weapons at Camp Maxey continues to baffle those that have searched for the burial site. The weapons, mostly brand new, of the 49th Armored Division were all deeply buried, after being cosmolined and placed in metal containers, in 1946. BARs, grease guns, Thompsons, M1s, Colt 45s, bazookas, flame throwers, mortars were all preserved before being put in the pit. Tanks and vehicles went in also. This is probably the largest stash of preserved WW11 weapons still in hiding. If only the rolling hills of northeast Texas could talk.

Okay guys, educate me. I'm still in the learning curve on warbirds
(and loving it). What's an AT-10?
Airnutz, did any of those old AT-10threads here have pix?
Overfly the Camp Maxey with a magnetic anomaly detector airplane. That stash should toast the MAD instruments big time. Be like finding a sunken ship out there.

floats up!
Canso42.

I wonder if using google earth could help find a depression in the earth to where something was buried? b/c ive seen old bomb craters all over Europe with it.

Canso42;

Beech AT-10:

(photo courtesy of NMUSAF website)

Scott

That amount of iron would be *extremely* easy to locate. Or doesn't anyone in Tx have one of those magnetic anomaly seeking thingummiebobs?

_________________
Those who possess real knowledge are rare.

Those who can set that knowledge into motion in the physical world are rarer still.

The few who possess real knowledge and can set it into motion of their own hands are the rarest of all.

Back in the early 60's I was a Captain on a Central Airlines DC-3 and had a FAA Inpector on the jump seat checking the operation. While landing to the northeast at Muskogee OK (a WWII P-38 training base) he noticed the construction activity on 13-31 and as we crossed it at the intersection he asked what they were doing. I advised him that the runway was being rebuilt and a parallel taxiway was being added. He nervously asked how deep they were digging there at the center of the airport. Of course, I had no idea but since he seemed very concerned, I asked him if there was any special reason to know.

His comments: After WW II was over, he was a 2nd Lt. and low on discharge points so he and a couple of GI's were left to await disposal or shipment of tools, spares, work stands, machine tools, Allison P-38 engines, props, etc. He was advised that as soon as this was done he would be discharged to civilian life. After a month or two of calling and waiting for answers, he was told to dispose of them any way he could locally. So he went to town and hired a bulldozer and operator. They dug a big pit right in the middle of the airport and in everything went and was covered up nicely. He advised the higher powers that the supplies were disposed of locally (not how) and "When can we get out?". Within a week they were civilians again.

I guess the cache is still there because I never heard of anyone discovering it. He figured the Statute of Limitations had run out by then but he was still concerned by the digging!

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It's what you learn after you think you know it all, that counts.

My Dad worked at NAS Corpus before and after the war and told me of burying GB-2s, SBDs, and others after the war right on the base. While the GB-2s might not have much left there might be something of the others to salvalge. Shouldn't be to hard to find. Has anyone else heard this story? My Dads been gone for several years, and I kind of wished we would have taken a fishing trip down there. Of course I can remember when he passed on $1600.00 Mustangs (where would we put it), I've already got a Bonanza what would I want with one of those things? Oh to have a time machine for one day.