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I wonder what they did with the Skuas and Rocs. Some might have had low air frame and engine hours. Just chop them up for scrap? My mind wants to send them to the Far East and Australasia, perhaps transferred to land based RAN/RAAF maritime strike. Were they so clapped out as to be useless?
No aircraft type withdrawn from front line service was simply discarded especially in the early war years. A use could generally be found for them.
I wanted to give a dislike for the loss of these wonderful planes, much as I do when when reading a post about a surviving B-17 that was "salvaged". It does deserve an informative. I think you understand the sentiment.No aircraft type withdrawn from front line service was simply discarded especially in the early war years. A use could generally be found for them.
Right from their service introduction, Skuas & Rocs flew with second line FAA squadrons (eventually some 29 compared to just 4 front line units) and a number of RAF units, and often alongside other types and sometimes for relatively short periods of time until something better came along. Both types were in use to about Aug 1944 with the last Skua struck off charge in March 1945. Rocs often had their turret removed and target towing gear fitted instead. By 1944 spare parts for the survivors was becoming an issue.
So they turn up as fighter trainers, deck landing trainers, fleet requirements aircraft (target towing and later radar calibration & height finding as part of training radar operators), Observer & TAG training, with Service Trials Units, as conversion aircraft for pilots transitioning from biplanes TSR/TBR to monoplanes etc etc.
And at bases from the Caribbean, through Britain to Gibraltar, Egypt and as far south as Hastings in Sierra Leone, East Africa, and Wingfield, South Africa. A couple even found their way to Ceylon in 1942.
A big RAF second line Roc user was No2 Anti Aircraft Co-Operation Unit which used a number of types including some Skuas early in the war and which then got 16 Rocs in mid-1940. They even flew some operational sorties over Dunkirk and later some Air Sea Rescue sorties. 4 Rocs too damaged to fly by Luftwaffe bombing were even set up to add their turrets to the airfield defences!
Same kind of thing happened with all those surplus Fairey Battles. Reduced to trainers for pilots, gunners and bomb aimers. And Bothas, Beauforts, Manchesters etc etc.
The Air Ministry controlled a vast repair and salvage organisation to maximise aircraft and parts availability. That included
RAF Maintenance Units to which the RN also provided personnel
Repair and Salvage units formed in operational areas to recover crashed aircraft, either to restore them to flying condition or to salvage useable parts.
Civilian Repair Organisation
Civilian Repair Organisation - Wikipedia
en.m.wikipedia.org
Note the existence of a Metal and Recovery Depot next to No.1 CRU at Cowley.
But all airfields had their aircraft dump for short term storage of crashed vehicles.
The photo you posted dates, I believe, to the mid-1950s and was taken in Hong Kong. Some of the aircraft are Spitfire F.24 and wear the W2 squadron code of 80 squadron over camouflage and the aft fuselage bands used by the squadron after the outbreak of the Korean War. It transitioned from that type to the DH Hornet in Dec 1951/Jan 1952 in Hong Kong. The Royal Hong Kong Auxiliary Air Force then continued to fly the type, with some earlier marks, until 1955 in a silver finish. When finally removed from service most were sold locally for scrapping. There is a survivor in the museum at Duxford.
Postwar large reclamation yards were set up to recover materials for recycling. This is how the Americans did it.
Aircraft Scrapping Post-WWII
www.airplaneboneyards.com
But not everything passed through them. Today many surviving B-24s can be traced back to RAF aircraft abandoned at an MU in India and subsequently repaired and used by the IAF before being sold to museums in the 1970s.
Also much equipment was simply buried. Within the past week a story appeared locally about a beach clean-up. The RN Aircraft Maintenance Yard at Donibristle on the Firth of Forth closed in 1959 and is now the site of the town of Dalgety Bay. Radioactive particles from aircraft instruments buried on the site began to turn up on a local beach in 1990. After much argument the MoD agreed to pay for a cleanup that began in May 2021.
Dalgety Bay: How do you clean all the sand on a radioactive beach?
Experts are using diggers and a purpose-built scanner to remove radioactive particles from the Fife coastline.www.bbc.co.uk
And every once in a while rumours circulate about buried WW2 aircraft just waiting to be found. Remember the crated Spitfires buried at Rangoon airport (formerly RAF Mingaladon)? Thread here about those stories.
Post-War Aircraft Disposal (Dump/Landfill)
The stories of these burried boneyards fascinates to no end. I'm aware of the problems recovering items, due to local heritage/memorial laws (not to mention the chance of setting of munitions), so thats really not the point of this thread. I have read about these dump-sites on various warbird...www.key.aero
And then of course much surplus equipment including aircraft engines and airframes were simply taken out to sea and pushed over the side. Especially true of Lend Lease stuff but it also happened to Barracudas in the Far East. The US didn't want it back. Britain couldn't pay for it, but had to get rid of it. This was the Aircraft Maintenance Ship HMS Pioneer ditching Avengers and Barracudas in 1946.
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