Temporary steel planking or reinforcement on airfields

During my working life I had to lift about a 1000 square meters from a former aircraft movements area. It had been laid during the '50s on ground which had been only roughly prepared. Consequently aircraft weight had bent sections into slight hollows. Lifting it was hard dirty work especially in Middle East heat and almost every plank required hand dressing with club hammers because we had to use it to floor a supply storage area. Laying it was a chore.

Three years later when clearing an old warehouse, one of my Supply colleagues discovered over eight thousand new PSP planks hidden behind a high wall of boxes along with over 100 new (but now deteriorated and unusable) aircraft tyres. During the period that these tyres would have been usable we had had multiple aircraft NORS-G (Not Operationally Ready - Grounded). A pointless investigation found that the items had been delivered very early in the main contract and stored but not brought on charge.

Off topic but of interest.

Further to my post (below) about PSP and tyres being found in a storage shed, in the same shed hidden behind truss-high boxes was an Austin 1 ton truck, new, covered in a thick layer of sandy dust and resting on flat and perished tyres. Delivered March 1970, found on site June 1978

PETERTHEEATER wrote:

Off topic but of interest.

Further to my post (below) about PSP and tyres being found in a storage shed, in the same shed hidden behind truss-high boxes was an Austin 1 ton truck, new, covered in a thick layer of sandy dust and resting on flat and perished tyres. Delivered March 1970, found on site June 1978

Hiding. That's an old trick. Find something, hide it away and if no-one asks about it for a while and it doesn't show up on record cards, one night the "fairies" just take it to a better place. Normally material things can be converted by the " fairies ", using magic, into other things like beer and fags.

My uncle is dead now, but when in Greece in WW2 they took over a Petrol dump. He noticed from the marks in the sand that the Germans had been lifting the barbed wire and rolling drums of fuel out of the compound, and as he found out, selling it to the local "fairies". As you might expect me to tell you, his troop did exactly the same.

PSP and Bar-and-Rod were both American designs. The former was very successful, the latter not so being difficult to manufacture and problematic to install. It was used at Brackla, Elgin, and Stormy Down (among possible others). A lighter version was also produced. PSP weighed 5.25 lbs / sq ft, B&R was 3.9 or 1.9 lbs / sq ft; In comparison the much-used Sommerfeld was 1.2 lbs / sq ft

Source: Maj RRW Grigson, BSc AMICE in The Engineer in War

seen at the Palm Springs Air Museum a few years ago, I am assuming PSP?

Yes, that's PSP but from what I can see those strips have been laid for show, edge to edge. Easy Peasy. To cover an large area properly the 'planks' had to be laid like bricks in a 'bond' pattern which required a team working together with various tools and gloved hands onto a graded and rolled surface. Very satisfying once completed and the broken and crushed fingers treated. New planks were relatively easy but recovered 'used' planks a real challenge.

Just looked on GE and it is no longer visible so as you say was likely for show. From memory the stone surface it was on was well consolidated and was home to a phantom which did not seem to be sinking into the gravel!