Warbird Information Exchange

I know there is a lot of garbage on this subject.

But; not all of it is Urban Legend.

My Grandparents and Great Grandparents worked at Mare Island Naval Shipyard durring and after WW2.

The base was used as a de-mob center for both service men and ships. As the ships would come in, those that were destined for the scrapper or the Reserve fleet were emptied of Ammunition, Small Arms, Food, and lots of other neat stuff.

The ammunition was placed into storage at the south end of the island and the other "stuff" was placed into one of several large warehouses near the Reserve Fleet.

Eventually room began to run out and ammunition was dumped everywhere including the sewers. Now before anyone starts to shake their head you should read the official EOD report from the guys that are still exploding UXO that is being found 11 YEARS after they closed the base. These reports are part of the official BRAC reports.

So; what to do? Easy load up a barge with "Stuff" and take it out to the Faralons and dump it into the ocean. It soon became known that for a "fair consideration" you could meet the barge/tug ( that my Grandfather crewed) and buy yourself some pretty interesting toys and all the ammunition you can carry. ( Incidently there was a story in the Times-Herald of Vallejo a few years back about a case of Fragmentation grenades that were found in a hedgegrove )

How do I know this? My Grandfather crewed the tug and unloaded the barge and I am looking right now at an M1 Garand and 1911 that my grandfather gave me when I turned 18. All my cousins got the same. And there were 54 of us.

Other things of interest include the AAA battery that got burried at the end of the war because it was an Army thing and the crew were told " As soon as you turn in your equipment you can get your discharges". Well the people they were supposed to turn thier stuff into had alread "demobed" themselves and left. So; they dug a big hole and shoved the "stuff" in and left. In the early 80s a group of boys dug up a couple of 1919A4s. the rest was brought up when the housing development went through at Sand Piper Point.

Oh, yeah and the Marine Amphip Tanks that ended up in the Rose hill land fill.

Not everything was disposed of according to "the book".

People in a hurry to get home, insuffiecient storage and greed all played their part in the post war era.

Joe

Joe,

I've been researching Second Air Force installations from WWII and have consistently been told of great piles of buried equipment at most airfields. These usually turn out to be the urban legend stories, but I have met a great gentleman that was a Supply Officer in Alaska--I have forgotten which depot he was stationed at, but after the end of hostilities his commanding officer told him to dig a hole large enough to shove all surplus material into so they could get the he** back to the States. He complied, but he told me it made him feel bad to scrap so much of the taxpayer's goods. Another fellow was stationed in the Marianas after the war and was told to dump a quantity of new avionics material in the ocean. When he complained about the waste, he was told it would cost more to ship the stuff back to the U.S. mainland than it was worth, especially since there were warehouses full of the same parts stateside.

Nobody ever said war was an economical business venture!

Scott

Cool Story,

We have found a old base here in Texas and will start searching sometime soon.

I wish my grandfather had a couple M1 Garands for us grandchildren. Just a single 1876 Winchester that everyone is drolling over.

On a related subject, Gary and I met a gentleman at Oshkosh who is writing a book on the scrapping of aircraft after the war in England. His father took lots of pics of the scrapping he was doing, and man were they horrific! About a thousand P-51 fuselages stacked like cordwood! B-24s tossed in a pile. It was disgusting!

There is probalbly more out there than we realize.

This worked out real well for the gentleman who dug up a couple P-40s up in Alaska at a closed AAF(I forget specifics, anyone know?) a few years back.

Some very intersting (Nazi) things have been dug up at Freeman AAF just recently I hear.

So they are out there.

Shay
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Semper Fortis

Shay,

If you don't already have them, pick up Lou Thole's excellent "Forgotten Fields of America" series of books. The first two volumes have chapters on Freeman Field and the efforts to excavate aircraft parts before redevelopment of the land took place. They did indeed find some interesting goodies, including most of the rotating parts of a Jumo 004 engine, propellers (both allied and axis) the vertical fin of a FW 190, and even personal equipment such as gloves, oxygen equipment, and other items. Ellen and I are quite passionate about the Nebraska and Kansas 2AF airfields and have done quite a lot of snooping and research. We know of people who have excavated the disposal dumps, but the main thing that seems to come out of the ground is day to day items like Coke bottles, broken dishes, medical supplies etc. At McCook, used/damaged/worn airplane parts do come to light from time to time, but nothing earth shaking has been found as all new stock was shipped back to the Oklahoma City Depot when the Base closed. It would be nice to find six or seven 3350's in sealed cans, but I don't see it happening!

Scott

One of the neat things about being a Palm Springs resident is that there are a lot of retired folks that print books regarding their life experiences.
One of the books was about a man who made his living for 5 years after WWII in the Pacific prospecting for those huge dumps. They would bid against other scrappers and excavate and smelt the sites down. Certain items, like a huge catche of PT boat engines in their boxes was deemed special scrap, and the engines were escorted from the Phillippines by a Navy Officer on their shipment back to a yard in Burbank where they were first smashed for the camera before being melted down. Both Japanese and American salvors worked the Pacific area until the 1950's.

So what should they have done with 100,000 worthless airplanes, anyway? Put them in a park?

Yes.

_________________
Shop the Airplane Bunker At
www.warbirdbunker.com

Are you in the wrong forum?

Is this the guy Shay... Dick Odgers?
http://www.pacificwrecks.com/people/pho ... index.html

Aye, That be him, Jim-lad.


Shay
_____________
Semper Fortis

There is an old WW2 glider base 8 miles north of my house. About 95% of the main hanger is still there and I've been looking around the area for anything interesting, but nothing yet. I did drive inside the hanger, though, and it looks like it would be a neat place to convert to a big house/hanger. The property is currently for sale, but I haven't heard any details.

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If I were doing any better, I'd have to be twins.

a friend of mine came over a while back and showed me an old picture of a mint/new p51 being towed down a quam road that he took at the end of the war, then he said he wished he could of found the pictures of the p40s that they through off of a barge he was operating out past the breakwater. He said he was amazed at how they were ordered to load them up and then crane them off the barge to watch them sink...I wonder how deep the water is out by the island?

I just read an article a couple of weeks ago from a vet that was with a P-38 squadron in the canal zone and said after the war their P-38's were dumped in the Gulf Of Panama. I would assume that they were dump not far from the airfield they were located on.

Mike