I found this building yesterday in a field just over the Northern boundary of Glasgow Airport. It is not recorded by RCAHMS as far as I can see and I have no idea what it was for so have not started a page. The field has bases in it and a bridge over a burn. The surrounding fields have banks of demolition debris bulldozed along their edges.
The building has 2 rooms to the west and one larger room to the east. Whatever it was used for it required heavyduty earthwiring right round it and over the roof. Opinions are sought.
Unqualified thoughts are the obvious - this is an ex-RNAS area, RNAS Abbotsinch, so could be a leftover.
There's also the Postwar option as the civil airfield developed, and the mention of what would appear to be more earthing than normal could suggest buildings used for early radio installations for the site, or even early Radar installations, test, or development.
RNAS Abbotsinch is probably a good starting point though. I've mentioned it elsewhere, but not yet attempted to track any details down.
Geez Fox, I'm really disappointed in myself at not recognizing this building at all. I used this side road (is it the one that goes down to the Rid Smiddy?) a great deal, yet don't recall ever seeing the building. It has a buffer wall so it likely had some wartime function, and as Apollo suggests, probably associated with the Abbotsinch Fleet Air Arm base.
I posted a link to this on the WW2 forums, there are a couple of members of the Airfield Research Group on there. Hopefully they'll be able to give you an answer .
Right road Dugald but at most times of the year it is hidden from the road by a large Hawthorn hedge so would not be that obvious. Mind you I have been down the same road thousands of times and never saw it but then I wasn't looking for anything.
Thanks Historian the more brains the better. It seems to me that it must have been built for something specific, probably as Apollo says connected with RNAS Abbotsinch but until we have an idea of what it is it would be difficult to give it a page. I certainly cannot recall anything else with the heavy earthing cables or with similar baffle walling.
First opinions are that it might be an ammo/pyrotechnics store, as much due to the blast wall & ventilation as the amount of earthing. Not cast in tablets of stone, though.
I think it is too far away from the old Renfrew Airport and more likely to be associated with Abbotsinch or some other wartime base in the area.
Something I hadn't thought of which someone in another forum suggested was that the heavy wiring was in case of a lightning strike. Possibly it was an ammunition store.
I don't think I'd go along with the ammunition-building suggestion. just guessing, but the building has the appearance more of an air-raid shelter. The baffle wall at the entrance is consistent with the air-raid shelter guess. I'm not sure either that heavy wiring was a part of an ammunition building... and weren't they usually pertially underground?
It's not an air raid shelter, since they were generally single room constructions if built from bricks, and the pre-cast concrete Stanton shelters were usually covered with earth for extra protection. I would tend to agree with the ammo/pyrotechnics explanation for now, since the magazines at HAA batteries were internally divided into five compartments in order to separate the charges from the warheads. Still never seen such an unusually-shaped blast wall though.
I wondered of anyone was going to pick up on the blast wall shape.
Not only is the shape interesting, which must be a clue, as the effort of building that as opposed to a rectangular lump must indicates some purpose, but there is also the aspect of the single door at the opposite end of the building, which has no similar protection.
Perhaps the structure is not a blast wall, since it's unlikely an attacker would play 'nice' and not launch an assault against the undefended access to the opposite end of building, and you can hardly assume bombs will fall at one end of a building, and not another.
Such blast walls would be defensive, and play no part in protecting personnel in the event the building was some sort of explosives store. This would require surrounding earth banks on all sides, intended to deflect and dissipate the initial force upwards rather then outwards. Falling debris may be hazard, but less so so than a direct, adjacent explosive blast.
We may be looking at an incomplete picture, with only this single building and the shaped wall at one end.
For example, the wall shape would afford defenders cover to shoot from, unlike the more usual flat blast wall, and allow them to defend to their sides. This would be impossible with a flat wall, which would merely provide a 'killing corridor' for the attacker to clear. And a determined attacker could make a run for the protective middle of the W formed by the walls, and lob a grenade or two over the top to despatch the defenders fairly quickly.
Then again, the three area formed by the walls could just be for the Maintenance Group, forming sand, cement and gravel pits, with the tools stored in the building!
Lots of other possibilities, it would be nice to think a definitive answer will appear.
Yes the baffle wall are yet another mystery. One thought that occurred to me was the possibilty that they were designed to trap any light spilled from the 2 doors. Mind you it seems a lot of bother to go to. There could have been a similar wall at the other end which the farmer could have taken down to make entry/exit easier for animals as it has been used as an animal shelter.
Interesting point, Fox. If you've ever seen the dispersal area from Macmerry airfield at Gladsmuir Junction, at the end of the two 'E-pens' is a crew standby building. Difference is that it's raised off the ground and reached by steps at both ends. It also has ventilation slots and no windows, but is one big room. It's also like the Black Hole of Calcutta inside. There are no blast walls apparent though. This building doesn't appear to be anything like the same idea, since painting the interior walls white would defeat the purpose of letting the aircrew acquire night vision naturally by sitting in a room lit by red light bulbs. Just a thought though.
I showed pictures of the building to an ex army chap tonight and his immediate reaction was that it was an explosives store and that the wiring was anti lightning. The baffle wall is designed so that if something blows in one store room it will blow out the door (weakest point) but the blast will be directed across the angles and back into the room and consequently not affect the store room next door.
Can I dispel the lighting theories? I didn't want to jump on the suggestion earlier, but it's moving into the "Credibility By Repetition" zone.
Lighting conductors are placed on tall structures in the hope of diverting lighting strikes attracted to the structures as a result of the high electrical field they (the structures, not the conductors) cause in the surrounding air. Contrary to popular belief, the conductor doesn't attract the strike, the structure does. When the field becomes strong enough, the air breaks down and the lighting heads for the nearest attractive path to ground - this is initially the structure, not the conductor, which only come into play when the strike nears it. The plan being that as the strike nears the structure, the points on the conductor will cause increased air breakdown and ionisation, resulting in the strike going for the conductor rather than the structure - it doesn't always!
The conductor's job is to sacrifice itself, in the hope that the strike will pass preferentially down the metal strap of the conductor and to earth, where the charge is dissipated. In the course of conducting thousands of amperes to ground, the conductor will most likely be vaporised, so is very much a one-time defence, lighting can, and does, often strike twice or more in the same place, since it has a ready made ionisation path through the air after the first strike, and the vaporised conductor has coated a handy path to earth on the once protected structure. With luck though, the source will have moved on, so the second strike chance falls somewhat.
The last thing you would do with an explosive store is put a lighting conductor ON it. You might want to put one one tall structures nearby, but you certainly wouldn't want to be deliberately causing thousand of amperes to be flashing over the outside of a building with explosives, and worse still, detonators inside it.
A brick building is not a Faraday Cage, which would actually be perfectly safe with megavolts dancing and arcing away on the outside.
I think someone was looking for a bell-pull attached to a leg tonight
That building would fall apart if a single box of hand grenades went off inside it, and the idea that an adjoining room in the same building could be unaffected by an explosion through the wall?
If the initial bang didn't do the job, then there is indeed a fair bet that the reinforcing/amplifying effect of the secondary blast reflected back into the confined room space from the angles walls would finish the job. The idea of reflecting blast back into the enclosed space it just came from just beggars belief. Explosive handling/safety looks for ways to dissipate any blast, preferably upwards, as any sideways component has the capacity to take out personnel and equipment. Even falling debris is (relatively) safer.
(You can tell I'm the one invited to leave the room at Brainstorming Sessions, can't you? )
I've actually got some pics of a structure with earth straps bolted around the outside for radio use, but I can't get hands on them as they PC they're is playing up and the drive's not accessible unless I dismantle it and slap it in another one. There was definitely VHF kit in use (100-150 Mhz), for distance of 30 miles or so, and there might have HF too, around 30 MHz,to get further, but I'd have to dig up the history to confirm that.
My we are a tad vitriolic today!.. There is no chance the chap was pulling my leg. He was involved in setting up a military museum in Ireland a few years ago and spent his life in the Irish military. He went on to say that during the troubles explosives had to be accounted for and guarded at all times and the he had been involved in building an explosive store which had a somewhat similar layout including the earth wires. He said they had a great deal of trouble driving the earthing spikes into the specified depth. The main room would have been for the gelignite etc. which required ventilation to prevent it sweating and the smaller rooms for fuses so we would not be talking about a building stacked from floor to ceiling necessarily.
It could have housed demolition charges to render the airfield useless in the case of invasion.
Today I showed the pics to a retired British army officer who had not seen such a building but thought it was probably a weapons or ammunition store. He thought the baffle walls might have beeen stacked with sandbags and have been the place where you pointed your weapon at the bags and proved it was clear of ammo before handing it in.
So as usual you pays your money....................
The walls, including the inner ones are quite thick. Check the position of the vents externelly and then internally. Aerial pics give the impression that the roof is inset, i.e. it has a parapet round it. Given there is a line of bricks offset near the top of the walls this is probably related to the height of the roof. In which case it is quite thin.
Concencus on 28DL is that it is a Small Arms Armoury used for storing machine gun and light anti aircraft ammunition. Apparently they are usually much bigger than this one. Heavy wire is there to discharge an electrostatic discharge from any source. ( Knowledge of electrostatics would have been much more limited in those days.
The baffle wall is designed to protect from blasts in both directions and more modern versions exist at Greenham Common.
Fox, I've had another good look at the pictures and I hang my hat on it having been an air-raid shelter, with perhaps some modifications carried out later... such as the wiring and rear door. Could it have been used as an armoury? Yes, i suppose it could have at some time been used as an armoury, but than so could virtually any building have been used as an armoury... the main thing is for the building to be dry. I doubt that it was ever built as an armoury, nor as a munitions dump.
An ordnance/bomb disposal building? If it had been used for storage of ordnance, surely there would be other, similar buildings in the vicinity, if not, for good reason, immediately adjacent. Such a building at RNAS Machrihanish, HMS Landrail, was located on the fringe of the airfield. According to local report, a fatal accident took place within the building suringf a disposal operation, resulting in the flat roof being blown off and deposited at a short distance from the remains of the walls of the building.
This would account both for the isolated location of the building, and the peculiarities noted in its structure. An air raid shelter, to have any real purpose, would have to be located in the vicinity of personnel engaged in some task, while an armoury would not be located in an isolated position, such that it would require special security measures.
I also disagree with the air raid shelter scenario. It's too big, and even civilian shelters had a four inch thick reinforced concrete roof. What kind of 'postwar modifications' would have justified the expense of altering it?
The air raid shelter is a non-runner, simply because the building is neither underground, nor does it have any practical protection from blast, so offers little protection and is actually more dangerous than just standing outside - if the walls blew in, you're gone.
The pic below is one version of the standard airfield shelter that was used. This offered protection by earth banking against the walls to deflect blast upwards, and sometimes had a building at its centre. The arrangement of walls and warren ensured there was no direct path to the occupants, for blast (or, I suspect, fire from an attacker).
The small armoury seems a distinct possibility, but having looked at the pics again, looking at the door frames, these are not designed to be particularly robust in terms of security, or to allow the passage of anything other than hand-held items (ok, small-arms), I'm thinking in terms of moving ordnance. It just wouldn't be effective or efficient.
There may also be something in Fox and Passerby's observations (thanks for posting btw - we've been on tenterhooks waiting for you after the gems dropped into the Main Site pages ), thinking back to the suggestion that the roof appears to be of lighter construction than the wall (I'm inferring that difference from what I can see in the pics) as this would mean it would 'pop' before the walls, blowing and sending blast upwards rather than sideways, with the external V wall doing its bit for anything that was blown out of the doors.
Incidentally, trying to be tactful the doors are not in centre of the V of the external walls, therefore blast or debris exiting the door would not be 'reflected' back into the room as suggested above, but would return and strike the wall to the side of the door.
Is the arrangement of the interior as per the blindingly obvious, with half the building dedicated to a single large room to the east with a single, unbaffled door , and the west part divided equally between the two rooms with the baffled doorways?
The real question concerns the walls. From the pic of the two adjacent doors, this dividing wall is only a single course of bricks, as would the wall containing the doorways appear to be. Are the remaining walls similar? If so, the whole building is not as strong as that curious wall, which may also be significant.
Are there any internal apertures or similar between any of the internal spaces, or are the walls complete and uninterrupted? This would mean no communication or internal transfer of any contents between the rooms, other than by walking around outside the building.
Considering the robustness of the baffle to the west, I think it may (ok, I'm setting myself up far a fall) be safe to assume the door to the east never had a baffle, the reason for this being the lack of any foundation being visible. They might knock it down if it was in their/animal's way, but they'd be unlikely to remove the foundation and make good the ground with soil to a proper depth. Animal feet and rain would soon erode a thin layer of soil over concrete/brick, revealing anything solid just under the surface.
Yes one big room to the east and two apparently identical ones to the west.
Well spotted. Yes it does appear that the western wall is single brick but all the partition walls seem to be 4 bricks thick. If the pic of the 2 doors had been taken from the south it would look identical. If you look at the internal shot and compare it with the spacing of the vents from outside the internal walls must be 4 bricks thick too. The rooms internally had no features apart from the vents. No communication between them or up to the roof that I could see hence only 1 pic.
As to the eastern door I didn't see any evidence of a baffle wall or fell any walking about.
Small arms armoury and weapons store. The east room reserved for 'safe' weapons only, those with no ammunition, and no live ammunition stored with them. This makes the dividing wall the protection, hence no wall at the door.
The west room reserved for ammunition and issue and return of 'live' weapons. As noted above. weapons could be proven to be 'clear', and any accidental discharges that escaped the room would be retained by the double bounce around the V, and not be returned to the room if they happened to rebound from the wall, as might happen with plain, flat wall.
If they stored items such as grenades, or mortars for defence, these may have been stored on the west, with fuzes, detonators, primers etc to the west.
I'm not 100% sold on the static/earthing side of things (and why run it on the outside, it should be on the inside, and could have exited at the floor vent), although procedure could require it. Detonation by such things as sparks is a movie myth (for common materials at least) as the activation potential is way above the energy such sparks can deliver. Think of the life for the average soldier if there was even a remotely realistic chance of his ammunition or ordnance going off as he moved around normally, let alone while in action. The enemy would just have to keep him moving... and wait.
An armoury is a place where Small arms & Ammuniton are stored. Now this piece of knowledge is really something very elementary (especially on this forum!) and this, together with the fact that I don't know what fettled means, and Apollo saying, "...there must be a technical term buried somewhere." leads me to wonder if i am missing something or if I'm being led up that proverbial path... which is it Fox?
Fettled means fiddled about with a bit! I hadn't noticed that I had put 3 ls in small.
I think the name might come from it being a store for ammo not only for hand rifles and machine guns but also light anti aircraft guns. You may be right that it is still an armoury. If I am leading you up a garden path then this is unintentional and fortunately virtual.
Fox, thanks for the info. With regard to the use of the word armoury, they had an armoury in the Territorial Drill Hall on Elder St. in Govan and they kept all kinds of personnel weapons and mortars, but not any light anti aircraft guns in it... unless the Bren gun was consodered a light anti aircraft weapon.
Amazing how much can spring from an innocent little thought
Artillery and gun batteries are fairly straightforward, their ammunition is stored in magazines, building (or isolated store in a ship) remote from the guns to minimise the chance of blowing up the whole place in the event of an incident involving the guns.
Amoury is an obvious choice in this case, since we appear to be referring to small arms, but in this particular case I'm reluctant to go down that particular route because of the isolation of the building. My concept and definition of an armoury is storage of weapons and ammunition, generally under secure conditions to avoid misappropriation. Some even add a requirement that the term be applied to places where training is carried out too, but I wouldn't go that far.
The isolated building, and relatively small, light doors (the frames suggest no heavy security) implies, to me, that the security aspect was not emphasised, relative to the safety aspect of the wall guarding the doors. The conditions would be less than ideal for weapons, and unless packed for storage rather than use, would soon have become rusty. A couple of small holes in the wall do not ventilation make, and there is no provision for heating. Even if there was not a guard posted, I'd like to think that an armoury would have been placed where it was actively seen, and could have been reached to get hold of the weapons quickly.
I also wonder about the rules that might have been applied with regard to storing arms and ammunition together at the time.
Even cars and bikes were supposed to be disabled if being left unattended, to deny the enemy their use.
I was just thinking that the building might have had some sort of name assigned to it, reflecting its purpose on the site.
Small Arms Store, or Small Arms Ammunition Store seems fine, but it just struck me that Small Arms and Ammunition Store seems a bit of a mouthfull, and having the two together might not have been likely, given the convenience of having both in the one place if the wrong people gained access.
What we don't know, or rather I don't know is where the boundary fence of RNAS Abbotsinch was at that time. Given it's proximity to the present boundary fence it could easily have been inside the secure area.
Guilty as charged - I do admit to assuming that this building was relatively isolated with respect to the rest of Abbotsinch.
My thoughts were that it would have been trashed with the rest of the station if it had been near any of the populated areas, and that it had been located remotely because of tis function and the protective wall.
On that thought, I wonder how many, or if there are any, buildings remain from Abbotsinch, scattered about the area? There are bound to be plans of the airfield knocking around.
I've used one or two business (ie. not farms, although there's no reason why they wouldn't have claimed buildings too) located along the tracks there, and it occurs to me that they may be in ex-Abbotsinch buildings, and that some 'little old houses' planted there might actually be ex-Abbotsinch too.
I can't prove it, and it's been so long is I've been there, but they may, and I emphasize the may me some that are built of the red, smooth-faced brick that sometimes features, but I'm not saying this for sure, just as a hazy memory from long ago. It would need a look to confirm one way or another.
It would have been at the NW corner of the airfield at that time. The road went straight across the present runway to Paisley. A runway extension scheme when it became Glasgow Airport meant diverting the road up to the motorway.
I can't say that any other brick buildings ring any bells. I think there are remains of a couple of the pillboxes with one of them being used as the foundations of the flying club.
The phrase Small arms and ammuniton store came from a couple of apparently knowlegable guys on 28DL.
I was unaware that we were still speaking about the mysterious Abbotsinch "storage building". Anyway, Ive changed my mind about my definition of an armoury :
"An armoury is a place where Small arms & Ammuniton are stored."
I believe now, in view of Apollo's, "generally under secure conditions", that the use of "armoury" would imply the building was in a "built-up" area, not in an isolated location.
I should add that the definition is very much what I have come to understand an armoury to be over the years - I didn't want to start quoting dictionaries since they are based on etymological definitions, rather than practical application (should be the same, but words change over time - think of an armoury a few hundred years ago to see what I mean).
From visiting stately homes, an armoury means something different there, compared with say the armoury on an aircraft carrier today. Consider an armoury today, which would probably be a nice warm place, with armoured doors and controlled access, an armourer in attendance to control weapons issue, and room with rifles, hand-guns, automatic weapons and similar small arms, plus ammunition, all neatly racked out.
I still think that building, even in wartime, would not have been considered environmentally suitable for weapons storage. It would have been cold and damp (there's no chimney or proper ventilation), so anything made of steel would soon have started to rust of not constantly maintained.
Some sort of constant use would almost have been essential, to keep the contents 'fresh'.
Aerial pics at the time of the photographs seemed to show that the roof was below the level of the building's walls and therefore probably thinner than it looked as if it should be. This would be in accord with the storage of explosive devices as the blast would take the roof off and save the main structural walls.
Older pics show a different roof than Google's, with different markings.
The length of the shadows in the new Google images as cast by the east wall inside the structure appears to be the same as the length of shadow cast by the building on the ground outside, so the roof would have to be really low if that was the case. There's also some sort of splat on the 'floor', not apparent on the earlier pics. Guess it's another spot that would need a wander to verify.
I'm on the scrounge for some more info...
The visit notes refer to side, central and end walls, which don't mean a lot to the reader, and only make sense to the visitor - can you identify which walls these correspond to in terms the compas, viz north, east or whatever.
(Don't alter the page itslef - it's offline at the moment, so any changes there will be lost just now).
Side walls are the long walls i.e. the north and south end walls shorter east and west. The central wall is the central partition wall. The thickness of the latter can be estimated from the distance the wall vents are appart externally and their distance from the partition wall internally.
It won't be visible for a while, but I noticed this building was near some of the old airfield's pillboxes, a matter of yards, so I've added these as well.
Should've twigged to this before.
It's one of the downsides of the way that all the plotted points only exist on the page they belong to, rather than in one BIG list where they can all be seen together. Fine if you happen to know that there will or might be something interesting nearby, you can just go and copy the point from one page to another so it can be seen, but you could have two or three interesting points near each other, and maybe even be related, but if you didn't actually know or recognise them, you'd never you they were next to one another.
If the info was in a normal database, I'd be able to program something to deal with it, unfortunately, even though I know the data about the points is accessible inside the wiki structure, I don't know how to pool it. Frustrating, and becoming more so as the number of points grows.
Now that there is a reasonable number of points to see, it would be really nice to have a big map that showed where they all were. I resisted the urge to do this manually from the start, which was probably a good idea, but doesn't make not having the option any less unforgivable.
Yes somekind of composite map would be nice. Maybe it could be done on Local Government area basis.
Yoy have lost me on the shadow from the east interior wall. There is no internal wall on the east - it is the end with the big room in it. I am also not sure what splat you refer to. Any chance of more details?
Ah... you're reading more than I wrote, or I wrote badly.
I said "The length of the shadows in the new Google images as cast by the east wall inside the structure", in other words I'm referring to the shadow cast by the sun shining from the east, and casting a shadow of the eastern wall of the building into what now appears to be the open interior of the building. The lower left line of the shadow that runs southeast to northwest looks as long as the same shadow cast outside the building.
There also appears to be a puddle (the splat) on the floor, which would make reasonable sense if it rained recently as the floor would be sheltered from the wind, and, as it appears, the doors have been blocked.
You simply wouldn't get a "roof" shadow that looks anything like the length of the ground shadow to the northwest unless there was no roof.
Did you follow the link? Just change the view on the current SeSco page to satellite. You can't miss the dark area in the middle of the Google view, which doesn't appear in any of the alternate images, so is not an old existing feature, hence my suggestion that it is water/rain based. All te other have pics: Multimap, VE, and People's Map, plus the Bird's Eye view of course, for comparison.
Actually, if you look at the Bird's Eye view, you can see that the recessed roof is so shallow it cast virtually no perceptible shadow at all, so the Google view is really confirmed by it, and shows the roof must have been swiped
It could be that the roof has fallen in or it could just be a large puddle at that end! It occurred to me that the hollow roof may have been designed to hold water ( there does not appear to be any drainage ) so that in the event of an explosion it had some fire damping properties. Otherwise it seems a convoluted method of roof building.
You almost caught me with the thought about the roof collapsing, but that would assume the internal brick walls, which are far from lightweight, would have been beamed out first, or they, or a big pile of debris, would be visible.
I don't know the detail of the roof build, but had a mental image from seeing past structures that they may simply be precast, reinforced concrete beams similar to door or window lintels. They'd have to be reinforced, or they'd simply break from their own weight across the span of the roof. The precast beams would be very quick to assemble and glue, bond or cement together, and each beam would be relatively easy to manage. A wooden or pitched roof would have been insecure, easy to break into to steal or acquire the contents of the building. Though we've noted earlier we don't know how tough the original doors might have been.
I've shoved the page up without the pics added yet, just so the positions of the adjacent pillboxes can be see relative to this building.
I've pondered this problem for a long time now... spent a lot of time going over all of Fox's pictures this afternoon, but I'm still no nearer a solution. I've never ever heard of a roof being built to accommodate water; who knows, maybe it would work (didn't the swimming pool help extinguish the fire in the movie "Towering Inferno"?), but i don't see it working to diminish an explosion.
i have no proopf at all, just a feeling, that this structure was not an armoury, bomb dump, or ammunition storage building. I just don't think it looks like any of these things. I feel this way because......
I don't know for sure either. We are going with the arms side of things in respect to guidance from those who may have been down this road before, but accept that this is no guarantee.
Now that the pillboxes have been added, I'm beginning to wonder if the building plus the wall is some sort of defensive structure, but I'm struggling to come up with a strategic or tactical use for the them, together with the pillboxes.
The problem, as before is that the usual airfield defences are fairly well documented, the various pillbox types and battle headquarters are well known in their various guises, so I think we're still open to proposals, hence the detailed description on the page, even though we have given it the store name.
I've dug out the missing four Abbotsinch pillboxes to complete the listing of ten, and added these to the map, so the building's position can be seen in context with the perimeter defences.
I don't know if this adds to, or subtracts from, the arms store story, but it seems a bit short-sighted to store any arms in such a position.
In an attack scenario, this would be unannounced, so the airfield personnel would not have time to remove their weapons and ammunition from the store, a slow process given the small doors. Once an attack had begin, they would still not be able to get to the building without coming under fire, and the moment the perimeter was breached, the attacker would have won a handy source of weapons and ammunition with which to carry on the attack towards the control tower.
Oops, I think I just came down on the side of the "Nays" regarding the use of the building as an arms store
A contact at RCAHMS has consulted WWII photographs and confirms that the building and the bridge were both military structures constructed between 1941 and 1945. The area was included within the boundary fence of the airfield at that time. There was also a protected dispersal area nearby.
I wonder if this area could have been the repair yard?
I wondered if the bridge was from the time, good to get the confirmation. It had to be inside the perimeter (due to the pillboxes) but I wonder how far the perimeter extended on an airfield. The few field seen up north cover a lot of area, tens of yards past their pillboxes, but are also larger. The Black Cart makes an obvious line, but the rest is obliterated by later development.
Perhaps the error (if that's not too strong a word to use) has been the assumption that the W-shaped baffle wall is related to purely military - in the sense of weapons - use.
I'm guessing if the wall had been full of bullet or shell marks, you would have noticed, so it seems fair to assume it was not fired at regularly, or as a matter of course. I mention that only because the mention of repair made me think of the engineers working on the machine guns and cannons from the aircraft, which would have to have been test fired at some point. Having seen modern chain guns bench fired without ammo, you don't want to be too near that when it springs into action!
The building is clearly non-productive, in the sense that there is no natural lighting from windows. The doors are man-sized, so are not designed to allow anything large/wide to be moved through them, and there's a step on the twin doors at the wall, and both these, and the single door to the west are approached over soft ground, so nothing heavy.
Indeedy, the Bird's Eye pics are also (usually) newer than the plain aerial view too, but I suppose that this will be a ongoing variable, as imagery is updated and revised by the providers.
There's a good side and a bad side to the fact that this is now a competing market for the imagery providers. Good is that they are forced to keep themselves competitive, and attract buyers for their pics, which means they need to keep getting out there and taking new ones - which we eventually get the (free) benefit of.
The downside is that the old ones are lost, so unless you taken downloads of every site you think you might be interested in, or that shows something old and useful, then when the images are updated by the provider... you're stuffed, because the old images are gone, and they're not coming back.
These are actually called tiles, simply because the big view you normally see is made by tiling lots of smaller images together seamlessly. I used to be able to get hands on the old tile sets from Google as it's possible (if you are programming the maps manually as SeSco does on its own pages) then you can also tell the code which tile set to use, but this information seems to have disappeared from the resource list, or there's now just so much programming info in the discussion group I just can't find it any longer.
I've programmed Virtual Earth too, and it basically works the same way, so I suspect the same trick could be done there too, but as I haven't needed the VE code (cos we use Google) I'm not 100% sure if that's correct, but it would be handy if it was.
I mention that only because the mention of repair made me think of the engineers working on the machine guns and cannons from the aircraft, which would have to have been test fired at some point.
Apollo, in my experience aircraft guns were test-fired on the ground only when the aircraft was being accepted by the airforce. When the aircraft-mounted weapons were fired they were fired into regular butts and these butts were always located outdoors with lots of space for air circulation. The gun manufacturer of course would have tested some of the guns produced, but not all of them, and while this may have been done at an indoor butts, they would not have been fired in a bank as they would be when fired on an aircraft. This mysterious building remains a mystery.
A reassessment of the area by RCAHMS now suggests that earthworks at NS 46965 67258 were more likely to have been a bomb store. The road proceeded from the known entrance over the bridge and then forked and entered the earthworks from both ends.
I have observed that slight traces of a rectalinear shape are to be seen on Multimap particularly the Birds Eye view from the north. The area has been scraped, probably after a recent flood as banks of debris have a lot of plastic debris embedded and then ploughed so the outline is not clear. The area of rough unploughed land just over the bridge suggests to me that it might be related to remains also.
I wondered about the triangle of land that was avoided by the tractor. Why wouldn't the farmer just plough over it if it was sound? I had mentally assigned it a classification of "bog", fed by the channel the metal bridge crosses.
I don't know that the bomb store story works too well, for me at least, although I'm with the Fox in that the fact that the bridge is there suggest some relation of the land to the airfield
Bombs aren't exactly lightweight, even small ones, and the engineers didn't carry them one at a time, they would be on trolleys, sometimes even towed by small tractor units. Even during the war, placing a bomb store such that the route to it involved traversing a little narrow bridge seems needlessly hazardous. The simple span looks as if it would sink under any sustained use/weight.
Given that the site is so close to the runway, they'd have been as well siting a bomb store (if there was one there) on the nearer side of the channel - the difference of 10-20 yards if it blew up would be minimal.
I'm afraid I'd have to say that a bomb store would want to have been much further away, this spot is almost a real stone's throw from the runway, and a look at some of the other airfields shows this, some are so far away they're not even with the airfield perimeter, and look like unrelated building were it not for the records that identify them.
Mentioning records, it's funny that Abbotsinch, and airfield near Glasgow, doesn't have more detail documentation easily to hand.
With you on the mounted guns Duguld, calibration of sights would have to be done "in flight". My ramblings (and they were mere ramblings) on the W-baffle were more of safety thought based on working one the weapons when not mounted. Even though empty, one stray round from a machine-gun or cannon, not spotted by the engineers, could cause terrible damage if it were loosed locally, or somewhere far away if it were accidentally fired in the open and landed "miles away" as it were.
It's a pity there's no other supporting evidence, the vents are to small, there are no cable ducts, there is no engine room nearby (the base to the south is too lightweight), as the earthing straps still beg a realistic reason for their presences. If only there were other corroborating evidence on the site, we might be going back to some sort of radio installation. It does not correspond any of the radar of the time, and is just too small and insubstantial for any of the types known, either early or late.
I have read elsewhere of mystery buildings found on an airfield, and later classed as VHF transmitting stations used for direction finding, but they looked nothing like this.
Maybe it's time to wonder what other building lay around these airfields, and see if any of them tie in better?
1) Sorry! But if you're going to attract enquiries from Google and possible replies, you need 1) Ammunition 2) Abbotsinch. I know just how easy it is to type the wrong thing in and not to notice it, until you've sent off whatever it is, in the incorrect form. And then it's just too late.
2) Why would aircraft flying from Abbotsinch be carrying bombs?
3) Going back to my earlier suggestion, where is the bomb disposal hut at Abbotsinch located? This is not inconsistent with my second question in wartime conditions.
2) above. Were planes not equipped with bombs to drop on U boats? Mind you for bombs you could read torpedoes.
Re gun calibration, it is my understanding that in the case of fighters the guns had to be set so that the stream of shells/bullets met at a point a certain distance in front of the plane. This was done on the ground by chocking the main undercarriage wheels and lifting the tail wheel off the ground until the plane was horizantal. Rounds were test fired into butts which were high thick brick walls with a considerable bank of sand in front. After each test firing the gun alignment was tweaked until the desired result was acheived. I suspect that guns in turrets were done similarly on the ground.
Guns were testfired in the air at the start of missions but only to check that the firing mechanism was operational.
Abbottsinch was both RAF and latterly RNAS, HMS Sanderling, which did fly torpedo operations.
Question 3 - There wasn't necessarily a bomb disposal hut at Abbotsinch - we just raised the description earlier as a possible use for this building, but it doesn't make much sense to try and do this in an enclosed building with no light, so it was, I think. dispensed with.
The Fox's gun calibration is along the lines of what I know about, and for non firearms-types I would add that the guns and sight ONLY agree at that calibrated point. At greater or lesser ranges the shells will strike high or low relative to that setting - this is where the pilot's skill and practice come into play. I forget the mix (I think it was about 1 in 4), but the tracer shells were important to let the pilot flying in the real world see where his shots were being laid, and he would adjust his aircraft's attitude accordingly.
I don't agree with the bomb store theory either. If you look at East Fortune, the bomb stores are at the extreme SE corner of the field, at least 1/4 of a mile from the rest of the buildings.
Were planes not equipped with bombs to drop on U boats? Mind you for bombs you could read torpedoes.
Yes Fox, this is true, but if the planes were on a "hunt U-Boat " mission they would have carried depth charges rather than bombs.
Re gun calibration: There were a variety of patterns available for which the guns and sight could be harmonised. The pattern for attacking bombers for example, was much different from that for fighters which were going to be involved against other fighters. A fighter squadron often had aircraft with different harmonised patterns, so that there were aircraft available for a variety of anticipated actions.
To the best of my knowledge, actual firing was never a part of the harmonising procedure, it was all done with what the armourers called the, "shuftiscope"... a tube with a vertical 'periscope' was stuffed into each barrel in the bank of guns and harmonised according to the pattern shown on a 'pattern board' located at the desired distance from the actual aircraft. Harmonising could be a time-consuming job and was generally only done when the aircraft was first accepted by the squadron and/or during R&I inspections. Gun-firing, turret and fighter plane, was done in the air.
Tracer rounds were included in ammo belts. I don't recall what it was but i'd guess about every 8th round was a tracer. I think there was an international law regarding the number of tracers that could be used at a time.
Have a shufty round 28dayslater as there are pics of butts as I described them. I also remember reading a book on the early days of Hurricanes when a RCAF pilot changed the distance of convergence and got better results. His settings were then adopted by the RAF.
A furhter thought is that if this building was adjacent to an ammo store could it have been the Fuse Store?
This set of buildings was on the opposite side of the airfield from the main accomodation and admin buildings and probably as far away as you could get given the proximity to the town of Paisley on one side and the banks of the River Cart on the other. The ground is no longer within the airport boundary and may not have been prior to WWII.
I know this is taking is further off track, but it's the first proper explanation of the gun sights fitted to fighters, and is interesting because it refers to Ferranti. Their Crewe Toll factory near Edinburgh was demolished in 1999, and was important because:
Ferranti, based in Manchester, built their Crewe Toll factory during World War II, to manufacture Gyro Gun Sights for the RAF.
The factory was opened in 1943, and its wartime output of more than 9,500 sights was mainly used to equip the guns of Lancaster, Spitfire and Hurricane aircraft. In a secret memo issued after the war, the gyro gun sight was described as "the single most important equipment" introduced during the war.
I haven't previously come across such a detailed description of the sights as given here, and it's a bit of a revelation. I didn't realise they were quite as sophisticated as this paper reveals:
I found this while trying to track down some better online references to harmonisation, but there only seems to be one article, endlessly copied by everyone else, but not detailng the operation, although it does give the ranges concerned - and rubbishes the video gamers! Something I can confirm as valid having played proper WII fighter flight sims, which is nothing like a video shoot-em-up, and a fairly sobering experience as even the sim, if played properly, gives an insight into the problems faced by a fighter pilot with only 16 seconds of ammo, and not the infinite ammo usually provided in video games. And it's definitely not fair when the enemy is both allowed to fly evasively and attack you.
I had a good read at the gun-sight article you mentioned Apollo, and I found it very interesting regarding a number of the items mentioned. I never thought so much could be written about gun-sights! It's interesting that in the early days of 'fast' fighter aircraft, the sights were part of the armourer's job-description. The introduction of radar and its use in firing the guns, led to radar technicians becoming part of the gunsight/radar complex. Quite a change from the early days.
Another very interesting aspect of what I read is the fact that even after the Austrian Anchluss between Nazi Germany and Austria in 1939, the Air ministry continued to buy gun-sights from the Goerz Company in Austria. The article informs us that even during the war:
" These gun-sights made by the 'enemy' were invaluable, as production at Glasgow could not satisfy the needs of Fighter Command. In early 1940 the situation was eased when the Salford Electrical Co. [in England] began production under licence.".
Interesting, eh? Wonder if the license earnings were made good to Goerz after the war.
The main page is still entitled " Smalll........" with 3 ls!
I cannot agree with your descriptions of the wall thicknesses. Bricks are generally layed lengthwise unless stretchers are added for further strength. Hence a wall of one brick horizantal layers is 1 brick thick and not half a brick thick. This applies scaled up so that the baffle walls here are 4 bricks thick and not 2 bricks thick.
I always forget this title until after I've saved the changes - it'll get fixed one day
I'm afraid, as with piers and jetties, our use of brick thickness values is technically correct - a wall laid as you describe, with the full brick laid lengthwise, has a thickness of only one half brick. Bricks only become stretchers when they stretch across two lengthwise layers, so the odd reinforcement is just that, and not a stretcher
I gave up searching norwichpaul for something along those lines - it's great having so many pics, but the eyes start to go after a few hundred Photobucket thumbnails - but I felt sure there should be some sort of guidance in there.
He actually describes it as an Ammunition Store - I couldn't pin down the AIE ref quick enough, so the poster may have... ahem... elaborated on the original
Just in case, Drem is not East Fortune, where the Museum of Flight is now bases. These are, or were, two separate facilities.
And a sampler, which is clearly a larger building, but does share the same pattern of protective blast wall...
I haven't checked, but from my past hours spent around the airfield, I think I'm safe in saying that there's little point in looking for these building now, as much was demolished in the area. It once had a museum web site, but that's gone too.
RAF Drem started life in 1916 as a home defence landing ground and was then called West Fenton. In 1939 the airfield became home to no. 13 Flying Training School. Then in October 1939 Drem received its first fighters in the form of Spitfires with 609 squadron from Acklington, an the airfield was transferred to Fighter Command. Drem was home to 72 sqd from October 1939.
Many of buildings around the airfield survive including the Battle Command Building.
The Drem Lighting System was invented here by a Spitfire pilot who was experimenting with lights on the runway.
Wander around this area if you want to try an aerial view search.
Thank goodness - I thought every old link I had for Drem was Dead!
Although none of the buildings, including the buildings referred actually has the W pattern blast wall. They all appear to be straight.
I still like the W shape as a protection for an ammunition store, even more so now that there has been time for thoughts to settle.
Small arms rounds and the like would be deflected by the W shape if accidentally discharged. Unlike larger munitions they would be unlikely to penetrate the wall, but would escape the door, hence the wall.
This would also account for the less robust construction compared to a full munitions or explosives store, which would be buried, part-buried, and be provided with a banked blast wall to deflect the force of its explosing upwards in the event of an accidental detonation.
The more we learn, even if piece by piece, the more sense it makes.
What a bewildering array of buildings! I gave up after looking at scores of buildings and reaching the conclusion that most of them have been built according to the wishes of the bosses on the stations and not according to RAF Circular # what have you!
Although this has lost most, if not all, buildings such as the stores, it has retained in original condition many of the accommodation, workshop, and service buildings that occupied this small corners of the site, together with the original hangars - which now how the exhibits, and also serve as huge stores and workshops for the full size aircraft under restoration. You'll also see the shelters and small stores that were part buried into the ground, and protected by earth banking around their walls, and these have been restored or tidied too. According to the staff, the small ones were fuel stores - not for the aircraft, but the huts. The original huts - of the standard thin grey rendered brick wall and corrugated asbestos roof - are the buildings with the dirty roofs as seen in the view. These have all been restored too, and serve as the workshops for all the smaller restoration projects.
I've been lucky enough in the past to join some of the backstage trips laid on where you get taken on a tour of these places, and get to see the bits the public aren't usually admitted to, and it's fascinating to see that much of this has been retained in original condition, and not left to rot - or been modernised. I don't know which building it was, but we were taken into one that turned out to be virtual rabbit's warren, and we'd no idea where we were when we came out - it seemed to be much bigger inside than out. And no, on this visit at least, we didn't learn of any underground tunnels connecting the buildings and hangars, so put such thoughts away.
You know, I'm afraid I really just posted this because you get a superb view of the museum's Vulcan
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), thinking back to the suggestion that the roof appears to be of lighter construction than the wall (I'm inferring that difference from what I can see in the pics) as this would mean it would 'pop' before the walls, blowing and sending blast upwards rather than sideways, with the external V wall doing its bit for anything that was blown out of the doors.
out the missing four Abbotsinch pillboxes to complete the listing of ten, and added these to the map, so the building's position can be seen in context with the perimeter defences.
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