Hidden gems.

[titan performance]

I have always loved WWII aircraft......particularly as a kid. In my teenage years I spent many a long hour making models of all the best known planes from Britain and the US. I had absolutely dozens of airfix models, correctly painted, and scattered around my room. Probably my favourite was the Short Sunderland, a huge flying boat built by the Short Bros. at their factories in Belfast, and Rochester on the Medway, just 50 miles from where I live. My dad was born in 1936, and he can remember seeing the awesome beasts taking off from the Medway as a young boy. The Sunderland served as an anti-submarine aircraft, and long range rescue plane, enjoying a long and successful service through the war.
About 6 months ago, a documentary came on tv, devoted to flying boats, which spent a lot of time detailing the history of the Sunderland. There was footage of the only one still flying, which resides in a collection in central Florida....annoyingly, very close to somewhere I have been a number of times, and I had no idea it was there. Much more annoyingly, it turns out, that, that plane was built in Rochester, and after a long career in active service, it returned to the Medway in 1982, where it sat in a dry dock just 50 miles away, for 11 years before ultimately heading over the pond. Had I known it was there, I would have been there like a shot, on a regular basis....how did I not hear that it was there?

That area of the Medway, has a great naval heritage, and at the end of the first world war, a large number of surrendered German submarines passed through the dock yards, to be stripped and scrapped there. In the local news this week, there was an article about one of the WW1 subs which escaped the scrappers.....apparently it broke free from it's tethers and drifted onto mud banks in the river estuary where it has rested since 1920. It would appear to be possible to cross the mud flats to reach the sub, something I shall be doing pretty soon, before the mud swallows it up. I'm not letting another gem escape. Below are pictures of the Sunderland and the sub,

Any of you guys got anything interesting like these lurking near where you live?

[tz375]

That takes me back to my childhood making Airfix aircraft.

Why do I have a mental picture of a front turret on rails that slid back towards the cockpit for some reason?

[Craig380]

I made the Sunderland Airfix model when I was a kid, too I'm pretty sure the military model had a nose turret with twin .303 guns.

Last year, I visited this with my son: the U-534 submarine exhibition in Liverpool (http://www.u-boatstory.co.uk/history/Pages/default.aspx" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;). It's a German sub which was bombed and sunk AFTER the German navy had surrendered ... the sub's captain refused to surrender.

The vessel has been cut into three sections so you can see how it's made, the engine room, kitchen, living quarters etc. Utterly fascinating story and incredibly poignant to see it.

The thing that really got me was, after decades of being on the seabed, then another 5 years in the open air, it still STANK of marine diesel. God only knows what it must have been like for the crew.

[jabcb]

We have a US sub exhibit in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Visitors get to walk through the sub.
Definitely very different that what you would expect based on the old Hollywood WWII movies.

Museum: http://www.carnegiesciencecenter.org/ex ... submarine/
Info about sub: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Requin_(SS-481)

[Alan H]

That takes me back to my childhood making Airfix aircraft.

Why do I have a mental picture of a front turret on rails that slid back towards the cockpit for some reason?

Because the turret slid back so that a man could drop an anchor out or tie up at the front of the aircraft.

If I remember right the Sunderland model I had only had one gun in the front turret. Might have been an Airfix cost saver!!

I just had to look it up to confirm, but there's a Sunderland at Hendon museum Clicky linky
I saw it some years ago IIRC, and also one at IWM Duxford in the Airspace display and is open for access.
Is the one in the earlier pic really a Sunderland (no turrets) or a civilianised model which would have been something like a Hythe or Sandringham?
Lovely aircraft, but I went to Hendon to see the Beaufighter.

[titan performance]

Seems Airfix made a few bob out of us on their Sunderland kit then.....I think the real Sunderland was very well armed, with turrets back front and middle. I'm sure I read somewhere it was nicknamed the flying porcupine.

Fantastic picture Alan that could well be the river Medway ,....well remembered about the sliding gun TZ, I had forgotten that.

The white plane above, was pictured in Chatham docks, shortly before it left the Medway around 1993. I have seen pictures of it before it was white, and it was in camouflage colours as per WWII. I guess the guns were removed and the plane became "civilised".

I'm planning a trip to the museum at Duxford this year, so I shall get a look at their Sunderland...although it's not airworthy.

Jab...we had a similar sub docked at Folkestone harbour for a while, and I went on that. As you say, not at all Hollywood.......I think it was a Russian Tiger, which is also now docked in Medway, only yards from where the Sunderland lived.

[titan performance]

Here's another gem we found out about last summer, purely by accident. A photographer friend of my girlfriend, happened to post on facebook that he was going to a battle re-enactment. Having never been to anything like that, we decided to go, and were delighted we did. It all took place at The Drop Redoubt, which is a Napoleonic fort on a hill top on the other side of town from the famous Dover Castle.
The battle scenes were great, and the fort was spectacular...all the more so that I didn't know it existed, and it's just 20 minutes from home. But the most intriguing feature for me, was the 120 foot, double staircase, designed to enable troops to get from the cliff top fort, down to sea level, to repel the pesky Frenchies from Dover harbour. This is a lot of steps, and I'm a tad heavier, and not so young as I was.
Incredible to think this was built 200 years ago......

[titan performance]

I spotted this intriguing place in a tv program, and googled up this page. I had never seen or heard of it before, but it's from the same era as our own Brooklands banked circuit in Surrey, and shares some interesting similarities, not only physically, but in it's speedy budget
construction. The whole circuit is still here, whereas Brooklands has largely now disappeared. Pictures don't really do these banked circuits justice. I have been to Brooklands myself, and the banked sections are awesome...it's near impossible to get to the top of the bank as the slope is just so steep.
Just imagine seeing cars and bikes at full bore on these banks.

http://www.circuitsofthepast.nl/index.p ... /lapsitges" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;