Ashcollection

the old girl hasn't been out in a few years, but she still shines up well with an oily rag

chatted to a mate of mine who was in RE airfield repair, he said all the concrete pads and runways where like swiss cheese after the Engineers finished there, and another thing he was trained on was looking for under ground bombs, so any big unknown magnetic signatures would probably have been found at some point.

luck it was donated, I bet the others got cut for their axles, tyres and engines!

I've heard of numbers of 6 or 12 produced out of a contract for 52 that was cut back. So it looks like it was probably 12. the prototype has been scrapped but we stripped lots of parts off it first, I have 03FX48. there is half one left at Nelson Greens yard don't know that ones number, all the rest must have been cut up straight out of Ruddington, as there's no evidence or pictures of any others beyond that point.

the survivor we have that used to be at the Museum of Army Transport is 03FX48

Hi PM3D so whats your view on how many where actually made?

not quite, the red one is privately owned but at the Norfolk tank museum. its, not theirs, the yellow one is still in the Ashcollection.

Very true about the "oral histories and Subjective interpretations" I ran a machine shop out in the country side for a company that did interesting work., at a random party at a local farm once I spent a couple of hours earwigging a conversation of a group talking about the "Bomb Factory" and all the secret dangerous stuff they did and weather it was illegal or not! haha. It was far more interesting than the MOD work we really did.

So it is a conspiracy then🙂. and yes lots of money changes hands. and yes they build really crappy houses. so what's the big issue. Would you rather leave the derelict airfields and derelict vandalised relics and build all these crappy houses on green field sites? I have it on very good authority that if they find these tanks they will be very excited!

its not up North now, check out fleabay.

ok so you have found a site where they mix chemicals to produce smoke or a chemical waste burn pit. still not getting your angle haha you could have said this at the start. "If I relate to the facts as they occured I cannot be condemned for distorting the facts ,that it doesn't suit some is expected and could quite get worse from their point of view" you are still trying to put the Spooky take on the subject. i said "spooky" as its halloween haha.

and there you go again in that post implying a conspiracy, we don't think this because of your water beach posts, you are doing it now as well haha

I think you will find Andy, its the Conspiracy Theory tone and the "feeding bread crumbs" manor of the posts that cause the problem. there are some serious military historians and serious collectors on this site that dedicate their lives and incomes to the cause. playing the whole "victim" of a conspiracy line just winds people up. facts with back up count. and in one of your posts you got it about the tanks being there. that would have happened earlier probably without the game playing.

not been much posted here for some time. so heres this 20210925_131124.mp4

play day VID-20210925-WA0001.mp4

blow the dust off! VID-20210922-WA0009.mp4

its still alive VID-20211002-WA0000.mp4 VID-20211002-WA0000.mp4

Think you will find a huge amount of people think "whats through the gates" in my younger days when I could hop over tall fences before getting a beating from the land owner I often looked behind the gates! been inside about 30 ROC posts, also control towers, scrap yards, closed mod bases, closed factories. all would be considered at least trespass! Not everyone is as brave as you Andy. A closed gate means keep out. and now I'm fat old and slow it does to me now as well haha

hmm see Andy now why don't you start your posts with the last messages, with what you have actually found out. There's loads of places in the country that where early 40's defences just after Dunkirk, most have just been forgotten, its not any conspiracy just at the time it was local guys doing it and they are dead and what they did has been lost. Fascinating to find though. Bit like the home guard training area and the "tank in the orchard" They found it and they dug it up then found the evidence that the whole valley had been set up as a killing ground with ditches and defences. All found from an old story that a tank was buried there. so yes it does happen but forget the conspiracy line, it don't help the cause of bringing forgotten history to light.

its another conspiracy

we will know very soon the hangers and hard standings are going next, the developer would love to find something! and to be honest it would be impossible to keep secret, all those lads working there for contractors have mobile phones and it would be a massive operation to move 325 tanks to a scrap yard where again everyone would have mobile phones. if they exist we will know soon.

my dad was RE in the early post war years and he was involved in demonstrating lots of the old WW2 kit to foreign governments for sale, or donation. didn't ever bury any, it was worth something, use it, sell it or melt it down.

its like the stories of rows of buried B17 engines and jeeps in crates buried on old airfields in Norfolk and Suffolk, so far after 70 odd years has found any, the buried dumps are just that, dumps of scrap and junk. interesting junk though.

haha so all this time you have had pictures of the tanks!

Well for a delay of 6 months on a few acres of a thousand acre site and a £325 million pay out on a load of ww2 German tanks and the world wide publicity would be well worth it. You seem to be forgetting the effort and money thats spent on archaeological digs on these sites, Roman, Saxon finds etc being dug out with a tooth brush and trowel. the tanks can be hoofed out with a dozer, much quicker. We will all soon know.