General Posts #258

"Paul Bellamy":
It is relevant as it's historical information that is on the verge of being lost forever, if it hasn't been already.

In much the same way as we're able to say that your Grandfather lived on Site 8 while he was stationed at Deenethorpe, which means he would have lived in 18'x60' Jane's Hut designed to sleep up to 24 men, which was a timber framed building with an asbestos pitched roof, clad externally with vertical corrugated iron and internally with chicken-wire with a felt covering. There would have been a single coke-fuelled stove in the middle of the building, which would have smouldered all evening while the guys tried to keep warm, and would have glowed brightly at night, making it too hot to sleep before the early-morning call to mission briefing.
Each morning he would have walked to a brick-built ablutions building which could only accommodate 14 men at any one time to wash and shave, before walking a quarter-mile south to the Combat Mess for breakfast. On mission days this would normally be in total darkness outside, with nothing more than a hooded flashlight to guide the way if he was lucky.
After breakfast he would have gotten into the back of a GMC 6x6 truck and been taken to the Briefing Building, where he would have collected his flying clothing, life preserver, parachute and harness and gun barrels, before heading out to a fuelled and armed Mary Alice waiting on her dispersal.

But which dispersal? Did he have a short walk to the nearby ones, or was it a mile away at the other end of the airfield with the weight of his gear digging into his shoulder and try to get a ride in a truck?
Well, we know the 615th were fortunate to have their aircraft parked on the dispersals closest to the briefing building, so he would have had a short walk to the plane. Depending on the date, Mary Alice could have been on any dispersal between No. 23 and No.33, arrowed in green below:



All the best,
Paul

"Phoenix":
Paul,

Brilliant explaination old son and a brilliant aerial photo as well, is that from that file you were going to copy for me 😃

"Phoenix":
Paul,

Brilliant explaination old son and a brilliant aerial photo as well, is that from that file you were going to copy for me 😃

@ Mary A, if I could just add that knowing this information means that the likes of Paul and myself can locate within reasonable accuracy the exact spot where aircraft sat. We can visit the spot be it now grass, ploughed field or bushes, make photographic records, soak in the history and more importantly show folk like yourself who come to visit the airfield exactly where their family members ate, slept, relaxed, got briefed and started their missions to occupied Europe, it's what honouring history is all about. We need to act fast before it all disappears under the ever increasing pressure for more housing.

Dale

"Phoenix":
Derrick,

I know you will look at this so I'll tell you that I tried to get photos of 'Mary Alice's' dispersal on the forum but I am having mega problems with the accursed photobucket so I have e-mailed them to you. Now if you can put them on the forum please do so 😉

Yohoho

Dale

"Phoenix":
Derrick,

You sure did get them in the right order 😃 great stuff and I hope you enjoy them, now me and photobucket have some serious issues at this time :evil:

All the best

Dale

"Phoenix":
Derrick,

Do you have a set of the Air Ministry plans of the airfield? That would be the plans that Paul used to show the position of the pics, if not I can get you a set sent over if you so wish.

All the best

Dale

"Phoenix":
All,

Ok I know I've carpped on about this before but I want to keep this alive. There must be some way of finding out on which dispersal each individual aircraft was usually parked without hacking into the Pentagon :shock: . I remember Paul mentioning something about mission briefs or similar but how do we access them and for that matter any other offical data? I await answers in great anticipation 😃

Roger dodger

Dale