WWII antiquities

  The recent finding of the remnants of a V2 in Harwich harbour set me off again.

  Okay, okay, the Nazis were dreadful, absolutely dreadful, but stuff like the V weapons were decades ahead of their time.

  I dabbled with the pulsejet like those designed by Paul Schmidt and fitted to the V1 ‘Doodlebug’ and it all felt like great fun.  But one day when shutting one of my DIY engines down it made THAT sound.  It made exactly the same sound as the Argus engine on the V1 shutting down over the target.  Blimey, it made my hair stand on end.

 

  Here’s a recording of a V1…..

  And here’s a vid of me starting and shutting down one of my engines.  That bit at the end when it shuts down…  whoa….

  Here's a V1 taking off.  I love the sinister Nazi music in the background....

  Something you notice when you do a lot of flying are markings on the ground – bits of fields stained just a slightly different colour.  I remember up in North Norfolk there are a perfect line of ‘stains’ in the soil near North Creake where a line of Luftwaffe bombs landed 70 years ago.  Even though the craters get filled in, the plants give away the soil disturbance in the way they grow.
  V1s & V2s landed in Norfolk, they were actually aimed at Norwich but it was right on the limit of their range and it was all a bit random.  (The batteries had been forced north by the allied invasion and were no longer able to target London.)

  The closest to where I live was just outside Acle.  Again, although the 50ft crater was quickly filled in, you can still see evidence of it from the air.  (It’s actually on your left about ¼ of a mile out of Acle as you head along the A47 to Yarmouth.)

  No-one was hurt in this attack but the postmistress at Surlingham wasn’t quite so lucky when another one landed in a field by the road and knocked her off her bicycle, blowing most of her clothes off (at least that’s what she told her husband….)

  The V2’s designer Werner Von Braun was an enthusiastic Nazi but that was all conveniently forgotten about when he put Americans on the moon….

  Incidentally, this is what just half a V2 warhead does when lit.

  Check out Blitz Street for the full story.

  Another mysterious indentation in the ground used to bug me at Burgh Castle.  I first noticed it flying and then explored it further years later when walking the doggies.

  Turns out it was the site of a Heavy Anti-Aircraft battery in WWII, part of the Yarmouth Gun Defence Area set up to protect the fleets of MTB’s in Yarmouth.

  The HAA battery at BC had 4 of these bad boys

  The accompanying searchlight battery was stationed on Belton Common but more amazingly another HAA battery position at Lound is remarkably intact – spooky walking round it.

  I met an old fella at a diamond wedding anniversary party recently and mentioned all this to him.

  “I was 6 years old,” he recounted, “the Nazis bombed the hell out of Yarmouth and killed 200 of the MTB crew in one night.  The only thing I remember about it was stumbling across the rubble of the sweetshop the next morning and stuffing my pockets full…..”

  My wife’s auntie also got strafed by a German pilot on Hemsby beach one day when she was a kid.  She even saw an evil Nazi grin on his face apparently….