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.

21 minutes ago, B series said:

Thank you for the additional information Ash Collection. (when this covid stuff is over, I will pop over again for  another visit to catch up).

Further info on Smiths cranes:

00 EX 10 served with 408 Bridge Tp, RE based at Hameln, Germany

03 FX 46 served with Port Division, Army School of Transport

03 FX 56 was sold at 178th Ruddington sale April 1983

03 FX 46, 47, 50, 51, 54 & 55 were sold at 179th Ruddington sale. I was at that sale, and impressive they looked all lined up, but many of the tyres were completely deflated, so much so that some vehicles lent against the next one. If I remember correctly, they were all in deep bronze green, and some did not look as if they had been used very often.

 

03 FX 48 does not appear in the Ruddington catalogues,  cannot find it in many other MOD sales catalogues.  I presume therefore it was donated by Army/MOD to the Museum of Army Transport.

 

 

 

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.

20 hours ago, B series said:

 

Regarding the Smiths cranes.

I know of the following ERM:  00EX10, 03FX15, 03FX46, 47, 48, 50, 51, 54, 55 and 03FX56.

 

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.

13 hours ago, paul connor said:

I would just head to the National Archives at Kew. Most places are unknown to the locality, subject to oral histories which become deep routed within a community based on subjective interpretations. This is the same with local level museums and local records offices, they contain limited data. If an area was used, at any stage, the war diaries, or in the case of WW2, cabinet minutes, or WD orders will exist. There are very few real mysteries of WW2 in regards to UK maneuvers, it is just the path of least resistance is localised research, not archival, which is laborious and takes time. 

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!

17 hours ago, Listerj123 said:

where about's up north is the red one

 

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

play day

blow the dust off!

its still alive

9 minutes ago, andy brown said:

m

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.

16 hours ago, MrEd said:

this is very much like the buried tanks thread. No real evidence to be honest, just hearsay and conjecture etc.

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.

21 minutes ago, 11th Armoured said:

So now it's the Canadians not the Americans preventing us from scrapping them? Thanks for clearing that up...

And you have some photos of tanks three years before they were buried? I dare say I do, too...

And "Patience"...? Of course, we wait with bated breath... 🤣

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.

1 hour ago, 11th Armoured said:

I'm probably missing something here, but Churchills weren't in any way lend/lease as far as I know, so why would it matter to the US whether we scrapped them or not? Or did you say that they were buried as another one of Mr Churchill's mythical 'reserves' hidden away for the 'next war' - I forget.

Also as an an archaeologist who has some experience of dealing with contaminated sites, I can guarantee that if anyone's run a magnetometer or ground-penetrating radar across the site, then they will have discovered Caesar's lost armoured division. The same goes for any boreholing & trial pitting that is usually undertaken as a matter of course on any brown-field site that destined for residential use...

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.

5 minutes ago, andy brown said:

As a ten year old I wasn't given a portfolio at the meeting .the tanks could have been in lieu of or we might have owed the Canadians  or they could have been those that my father and others had swopped for scrap ones in the low as countries in 45 ..take your pick ..

 Burial site not checked by munitions clearance team  ..as I keep saying scrambled signal on gpr when I tried .but wasn't bothered as map he gave me in 1959 matched the aprons exactly so wasn't as problem ..ps do have pics of tanks three years before burial and no you can't have them yet ,took me ten years and a great deal of expense to get them. .....  Patience........

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.