Jessie The Jeep

Any planes considered 'War Weary' were broken up in the UK or continent. Generally, it was the low hour airframes, or those considered in good condition which made the ferry trip home. Most had the same fate at either end of the flight. At Kingman, AZ, they had a crane with a 6100 lb blade which was used to chop up the aircraft into parts small enough to get in the smelter. A guy in the model club I was in a few years ago was in the RAF in India, working on B-24's and Mustangs. At the end of the war, rather than leave the aircraft for the Indians, they drained the oil from the engines and ran them till they seized. On the B-24's, they parked them in the revetment banks, tied a tanker to each main leg and pulled the legs apart so the plane fell and broke the mainspar on the revetment banks. The P-51's were immobilised with several sledge hammers!!!!! If only I had a time machine. Steve

If you don't have nuts on, you'll end up like Jack's Jimmy did!!!!! :-D Steve

Surprisingly, Ball Turret Gunners had one of the best survival rates of all positions. It was a small cramped position, but it was also a small area to hit, and not a primary aiming point for fighters. If I was going to make a Nav position, I'd just make the 5 feet area where the table is, and the fuselage side to just above the windows. See diagram below. I'd make the table, seat, fuz side and then probably work towards the lamp and oxygen gauges etc at that position. But it would still need to be easily transportable, together with the other stuff I need to carry about. It may be impractical, but it's just throughts buzzing around my head at present. So to go back on topic, what other toys did people get??? Steve

Just build your Flying Control caravan first. We'll work on building a 1:1 scale B-17 next! Steve

I got a few WW2 aviation manuals, actually bought a couple of months ago along with two aircraft First Aid Kits. 'Guide to the Army Air Forces', 'Aircraft Electrical Systems Manual', 'Aircraft Radio Shop Practice', 'Radiotelephone Proceedure', 'USAAF Report for the Secretary of War' Also bought dad some Map and Aerial Photograph manuals and some navigation plotting instruments. http://www.sacarr.co.uk/jeep/access/nav/plotter1.jpg[/img] http://www.sacarr.co.uk/jeep/access/nav/plotter2.jpg[/img] http://www.sacarr.co.uk/jeep/access/nav/elem_map.jpg[/img] http://www.sacarr.co.uk/jeep/access/nav/adv_map.jpg[/img] http://www.sacarr.co.uk/jeep/access/nav/math.jpg[/img] I quite fancy building a navigators table, seat and the side of the fuselage to display it all in, but have to work out if I can make it portable. Steve

At the end of the day, what is said off the forum we have real no control over. If a person using a screen name or real name says anything on the forum that they shouldn't, it won't be long before the post is deleted and the person is banned. Steve ( aka Jessie the Jeep )

My camera is the Nikon D50 DSLR. Ground pics are taken with a 18-55mm lens. For flying pics, I use a 70-300mm zoom, sometimes with a X2 converter. I usually have it hidden in this wooden box, made to resemble a K24 aerial camera. This way, if I get caught in someone elses picture, I don't look too out of place by having a modern camera with me. Steve

It sure has worked hard this year ( actually every year!! ), but I bought it to play with, not to be a 'Hangar Queen'. Steve

I quite like the look of that! Steve

In the first week in November, we went to Stainton Camp for the day. This is now an industrial estate, but the local community are planning some display boards around the camp to show what its wartime activities were. We were there to support their fact finding and open day. This was the last event of the year. We have been out in the jeep a couple of times since, just to keep it alive, but otherwise, it has gone to bed. We still bring it out every so often over the winter and run it every week, but there are no more events for a while now. We need a rest anyway, it's been a busy season! The jeep now has 6103 miles on the clock since getting it in April 2005. Hope everyone else had a fun year, despite the weather. Steve

Mid October brought the Wartime Weekend on the North Yorkshire Moors Railway. We bumped into Clive Stevens at this event, a long way from home. This was Clives first trip to the NYMR event, Hope you enjoyed it Clive. I only saw you once before the parade and then never found you again after that.

A week later again, we were at Stewert Park for a one day living history event. This event covered all eras of history. Two weeks after that, we were at the Wensleydale Railway to check it out for a possible future event.

We missed one local show as we were travelling home, but a week later in early September we were at the NE Aircraft Museum for the 'Jeeps & Jets' Weekend. A week after that we went to the Embsay Railway weekend, but without the Jeep as we just happened to be in the area when it was on.

After Ursel, we spent the last week of August in Holland, finally meeting up with Joris and Enigma for a tour around Arnhem.

At the end of the weeks holiday, now around the third weekend in August, we set off to Ursel for the show. There we met up with other members of the MVT(NE) who just came for the show. They would all return home after the show, where as Lynne and I we travelling on to Holland for another week.

Lynne and I also spent one day heading across to Belgium to see the Atlantic Wall Museum and the Menin Gate at Ypres.

Druridge Bay was in late July. By early August, we, and several other MVT(NE) members were heading to Europe for a weeks holiday in France before heading to the 'Wings and Wheels' show at Ursel, Belgium. While in France, we toured around several WW1 and WW2 museums. These first three pictures are from our camp site, a coastal gun battery where there was a 280mm rail gun, and the Memorial at Dunkirk.

Our next event was back home, a fund raising event in Bishop Auckland Town Centre. We raised over £600 for the Butterwick Childrens Hospice. A week later, I was heading north for a one day show at Druridge Bay.

The last two Bolero pics are also from Parham

The day after visiting Thorpe Abbotts, we packed up camp and headed off down the road to Parham, our base for 'Operation Bolero'. For the next three days, we toured around Norfolk and Suffolk in a convoy that must have been two miles long. Plenty has been written about Bolero, so I'll just add a few of the hundreds of pics I took! The pics are from Debach again, Hardwick and Parham.

A few days after Bungay, we went to Thorpe Abbotts Airfield for a photo shoot, intending to recreate a wartime picture of a jeep by the tower, the jeep that my jeep was copied from. We also took a few other pics dressed up with the museum buildings as back drop. Surprisingly, the rain stayed away this day.

Cheers! After Debach came our weeks camping holiday leading up to 'Operation Bolero'. This week saw the start of the rainy season. In our first couple of days, we visited the Bungay/Flixton Aircraft Museum which was having an MV day. The BBMF Dakota displayed along with Maurice Hammond in his P-51. Oh yes, it rained there too.

First trip out with the trailer was a camping trip to the Weardale Railway Wartime Weekend at the beginning of June. The weather was great, very warm, probably the last weekend before the Monsoon season began. A week later, we headed south for the Debach Airfield Open Day and hangar dance. The weather was still holding out, just!

Mid April saw a one day Classic Car event at Hartlepool Historic Quay. This was followed a month later by the Yorkshire MVT 'Wheels & Wings' Event at the Yorkshire Air Museum. A couple of weeks after that, I bought myself a trailer for the jeep as I was starting to collect too much stuff to carry around in the jeep.

Next came the MVT(NE) Crank Up event at the end of March, which was a road run to the Weardale Railway, through Hamsterly Forest and ending at the Shildon Railway Museum.