401st Bomb Group (H) Association
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General Posts #328

PostedMessage
Paul Bellamy


1/14/2009 7:37:31 PM
I've been working with the 1944 and 1945 aerial photos and (roughly) transcribing them onto the Air Ministry Site Plan of the airfield.

First off, here's the additions to the Technical Site, new roads and buildings in red:



The three square structures along the runway could be for the landing approach system installed at Deenethorpe, especially as they are within the "cleared of obstructions" area beside the concrete, but I'd have expected those to have been on the main runway. More research needed methinks.
The long building in the 450th Sub-Depot area confused me for a while, until I found this photo:



It is the pitched-roof building on the left side, and there is a photo in the Blue Book of the interior of a workshop built of corrugated iron sheeting on a timber frame.

Down on the southern edge of the airfield itself, the 1944 air photo shows a whole dispersed site at the top of Chow House Road, opposite to where the memorial now stands, that doesn't appear on the official maps:



The majority of the huts appear to be Nissen (Quonset) huts from the shadows in the photo, and there is a hexagonal structure the right shape and size to be a standard pillbox too. There are a number of additional buildings on the southern communal site, which I've added too.
I'm awaiting stereoscopic images from the UK archives to survey them more accurately.

In other news, the Virtual Deenethorpe Project is progressing in it's usual plodding manner.
I'm building the Briefing and Flight Equipment Building in such a way as to show the interior:





I'm also constructing one of the two Institute buildings:



I don't yet have the Air Ministry construction drawing for the two types, as one was slightly smaller than the other. Photo's show some extra window panels in the Institute used as the base PX, so I'm working on the presumption that the smaller one (the design in the model) was that used as the Red Cross Club.
This would place the Red Cross Club beside the Combat Mess, and the PX beside the Consolidated Mess.

TTFN,
Paul

Paul Bellamy