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You know, I really wish you'd research and give a well thought out explanation instead of these off the cuff top of your head sound bite style responses... sheesh, you and drgondog with these flippant answers...I am assuming you mean what happened to crashed aircraft in Britain during WW2.
All crashed aircraft, both British and enemy were the responsibility of the RAF. A network of Maintenance Units across the country were allocated responsibility for the collection and disposal of aircraft wreckages.
In the case of the RAF, if an aircraft failed to return from an operational or other flight its parent unit would inform the Air Ministry, which in turn informed No. 43 Maintenance Group based at Cowley, near Oxford. If it was known where the aircraft had crashed or made an emergency landing the staff of No 43 Maintenance Group would pass this information to the RAF Maintenance Unit that covered the area in which the aircraft had been lost. The airframe or wreckage would be inspected by that MU's crash inspector (usually an officer of Pilot Officer rank) who would make arrangements for its recovery and/or disposal by the local MU's Crash Party, typically a team of eight to ten men under the command of a senior NCO.
Enemy wrecks were treated in a similar way, though there was self evidently an intelligence interest. Each MU had an RAF Technical Intelligence Officer attached, from the A.I. I(g) department. Once this officer had gleaned any information he could from the airframe or wreck and entered into his 'Form C', he would release it for recovery by the MU. Any ammunition, weapons and other ordnance had to be dealt with, and this might involve the Army.
A second department (A.I. I(k)) was responsible for gathering and interpreting information about the Luftwaffe's organisational structure and personnel. It was officers from this branch that interrogated Luftwaffe airmen (these interrogations could be what we might today call 'hard'), initially in the Tower of London, but later in 1940, as numbers of prisoners increased, at Trent Park, Cockfosters. This branch also had field officers attached to the MUs, who could make an initial interrogation soon after an enemy airman arrived and would also gather intelligence from documents found on the airmen or in the aircraft, like Ausweis (identity cards), pay books, Feldpostnummern (from letters), etc.
Both British and enemy wrecks were broken up and the various material separated at the MU dumps, aluminium alloys, magnesium alloys, steel, copper, brass, plastics, rubber, 'glass; etc. all had to be separated. The Northern Aluminium Company works near Banbury were the main destination for the aluminium, which was cast into ingots for the British aircraft industry. .
Many British aircraft, deemed repairable, went into the Civilian Repair Organisation. A very few German aircraft were salvaged and sent to the RAE at Farnborough for assessment.
During the Battle of Britain the brunt of this work fell on No. 49 MU, located at RAF Faygate near Horsham in Sussex. At its peak this unit could muster 15 Crash Parties, and they were needed. To help ease the burden on the RAF personnel the Air Ministry engaged several local civilian contractors from the road haulage industry. This is why you may have seen pictures of aircraft on civilian vehicles, companies like A.V. Nicholls of Brighton, and Coast Transport Ltd of Portsmouth being typical of the firms employed.
Superb, that answers my question more than fully.
I knew someone on here would know
Huge thanks! I
Do you have anything more on that?I read years ago that the British made a breakthrough in the "battle of the beams" when a crew member said to another "they wont find it" as they were taken away from a German bomber forced down, one of the police spoke German and the aircraft was taken down to the rivets to find "it".
Oh Jeez that is from one of the first factual books I read as a kid, it was my brothers. It was called "The Battle of Britain" as I remember no idea who the author was but the discussion was about the Knickebein system.Do you have anything more on that?
One thing I do remember was that the translation of knickebein wasn't the literal "broken leg" but "Googly" from a type of delivery from a "leg break" bowler in cricket Googly - WikipediaDo you have anything more on that?
I havnt seen any reference to it in any recent documentary or book but I definitely read it and it makes more sense than the literal translation. Or it may have been a way of distracting away from the subject to put off any spy or eavesdropper.I can honestly say that I never knew that.
I was talking about the cricket stuff.I havnt seen any reference to it in any recent documentary or book but I definitely read it and it makes more sense than the literal translation. Or it may have been a way of distracting away from the subject to put off any spy or eavesdropper.
Do you have anything more on that?
Ich werde mein Deutsch nicht finden!You don't have to be massively fluent in German "They wont find it" is "Sie werden es nicht finden".
I seem to recall that this comment was overheard, possibly by an Intelligence officer, and the outcome was that a more thorough examination of the aircraft concerned was called for.
It is also possible that people heard what captured airmen said and remembered it, without understanding what was said, well enough to recount to an Intelligence officer later. My uncle was of that era and he had a head full of quotes, prayers poems and passages from books and the bible "learned wrote".If it was an Intelligence Officer, on the scene of the crash/forced landing, he would almost certainly have spoken good if not fluent German.
"Learned by rote" - learning by multiple repetitions to burn it into your memory.It is also possible that people heard what captured airmen said and remembered it, without understanding what was said, well enough to recount to an Intelligence officer later. My uncle was of that era and he had a head full of quotes, prayers poems and passages from books and the bible "learned wrote".