Finds and UXBs!

The Wakefields lamp was found close to a dispersed site, it took alot of cleaning up, the other 2 came via a chap I met at Polebrook, after explaining my interest he kindly gave them to me, the pair at unused and one of them still has the original paper wrapping around the 3 filters.

My best 'uxb' find wasn't on an airfield, but at the industrial part of the River Wensum in Norwich back in the mid sixties. I was walking my dog when I came across a large crane bucket and being a nosey fifteen yearold, looked inside. It was about half full of rusty 20mm cannon shells - ! Not knowing any better, I shoved as many as I could - being a Sunday, no one was about - into any available pocket that I had and made my way back home. Avoiding my father, a former Royal Engineer, who would have doubtless had something to say about it had he known, I spent many an amusing hour cleaning them with file and sandpaper. Hindsight of age later told me that I'd had armour piercing, semi armour piercing, incendary and explosive in my posession. Just as well I didn't know that when I was attacking them with the file - !

over about a 5 year period i gathered a large cardboard boxful of oddments on Parham Airfield when walking my dog at lunchbreak. Since joining this forum i now realize some were End caps off bombs and i had quite an array of bent plane fuelpiping, rubber tyre shreds,hair comb collection ,6"circular alloy plateswere looked like were used for target practice? and .50 cal ammo ,bits of fusealage etc. When i came to end my time working on the airfield it seemed wrong to take that stuff with me ,so i drove over to the museum (which was shut) and left the box by the entrance .

in more recent times on Felixstowe beach and at Bawdsey ive found bits of plane alloy washed up after high spring tides. these are painted black and near the beach prom at Felixstowe TOWN HALL is a plaque to a downed Lancaster so maybe the bits are from it.

Jerry

I'll take my BR lamp apart & take some pictures so that you can compare types, my railway lamp also has 3 interchangeable colour filters it's a design going back to the very early days of railways, I got mine to use while volunteering on the local preserved railway.

Chris

Recently found in the undergrowth at a dispersed communial site:

Very nice.
One of mine says hello...

I do like to have signs in the garden, i've got a few cast iron London Brick Company ones too, they don't quite fit in the thread though.

I was supposed to have got a REME sign from Oakington, but because of the trouble ages back between security and the contractors it never came off and maybe its gone forever.

When working at Westonzoyland in 1966 I found a gutted ex Post Office van hidden from view in the undergrowth. Rivetted to the inside door cap on the driver's side was an enamelled metal plate with white lettering on red background stating 'This vehicle is fitted with an alarm' Quite something in those days to have a car alarm! I still have it and it immediately evokes memories of a pleasant summer on (and under!) the airfield. So your 'finds' don't have to be aviation related to give pleasure.

I have noticed different visits to the Somme, some years you find quite a bit and others very little (the iron harvest). I have never been lucky enough to find anything at an airfield and I walked the length of Omaha and Utah beaches and found nothing. It must be my eyes. I do have a German gas filter from a mask and a few 303, German rifle rounds and Label (French) ammunition all found in bunkers in Normandy.

When we went to the Somme area I did pick up a couple of bits, (nothing worth photographing), however we were'nt really looking for stuff.

There was a member of the party though that did want to bring some shells home from a field gateway, pleased he did'nt because the car car got throughly searched on the way back into the UK.