North Coates buried treasure

[Sir George Cayley]

Idling away a wet Thursday morning I came across this post from way back in a thread about visiting the aerodrome.

A friend of mine told me North Coates was his first posting in the RAF. They went to re-open it as a Bloodhound missile base in the late '50s I believe; the 'chiefy' in charge found a Robin type hangar had a large padlock on it; on cutting it off and opening the doors, they found the hangar crammed full of Beaufighter spares. Now this was embarassing to the chiefy 'cos they weren't on his inventory and he would have to account for them, so he ordered the airmen to dig a hole in the airfield and bury them! As far as I know they're still there.


With the current interest in Burmese Spitfires a pile of Beaufighter bits on our back door has to be worth following up.

And first dibs at any engines OK?:ok:

SGC

[ZH875]

Definitely a non truth. It is never a problem getting things you "don't have" onto your inventory, it is only a problem for things that you "should have" on your inventory, but don't have.

[chevvron]

Well that was the tale told to me by my Adj when I took over an ATC Squadron. He was on his first posting in the RAF, and I met him in 1980 when he'd retired.
I've since learned there were no Robins at North Coates but there were some Bellman's so if the story is true (and I have no reason to doubt my colleague) it's an even bigger hoard.

[airfield1234]

Perhaps your friend may remember where this was all buried on the airfield, was it buried by mechanical means or spade? Currently all the airfield south of the concrete runway and the Rocket site has returned to agriculture and anything over 3 feet deep will probably still be there although, when 10 years ago a company who specialise in removing underground objects did do a complete search of the airfield and removed anything that could be removed which was mostly electric cable, although they did say they had discovered a deep mass of metal in the south eastern corner but this was believe to be either aircraft wreckage or the fabled Bomb Disposal School collection which was was supposedly buried there when they left in the 1950s.
If your friend can remember where it was buried we might be able to solve this mystery

[chevvron]

Unfortunately I lost contact with him over 10 years ago.

[Fareastdriver]

The used to be an engines school at Farborough before the war and apparantly when they closed it they buried all the obsolete First World War equipment. The predessessor to the RAF museum was run on the old-boy basis at Halton and they got wind of it. Somewhere they found an ancient Flt Sgt who remembered where they had been interred and the dug them up.
IIRC there was a Zeppillin power module and more interesting a BMW in line six. This one took only three days to get started and I believe is in their Fokker D7.

[ericferret]

Another North Coates nugget is that in the church cemetary wartime casualties commonwealth and german are buried alongside each other. Sadly another form of buried treasure.
I always nod my respects to all when I pass by.

[airfield1234]

Does anybody know what happened to the remains of the four bladed wooden propeller that was used as a headstone in the churchyard? It was replaced many years ago bu a conventional one

[Nopax,thanx]

"It is never a problem getting things you "don't have" onto your inventory, it is only a problem for things that you "should have" on your inventory, but don't have."

A mate of mine, who's an ex-fishhead, told me of a time when he was on HMS Eagle, they were getting close to the UK and one of the embarked Sea Kings had a mishap and ended up in the briny whilst transporting gear back to the mainland.

For the next few days the ships stores were inundated with manifests detailing stuff that had gone walkies and couldn't be accounted for, which had now mysteriously become part of the unfortunate helicopter's cargo - no wonder the bloody thing crashed :p

[JW411]

You are quite right; an aircraft crash was a brialliant way of sorting out any disprecances on an inventory (not that I would ever have considered using such underhand methods).

[Flypro]

Well, the event I remember sounds remarkably similar but occurred in the mid seventies during a disembarkation of 824 NAS SeaKings from HMS Ark Royal to RNAS Culdrose in Cornwall.
We lifted underslung wooden chacons packed with both personal and squadron gear.
One chacon spun violently en route to Looe Bar with the result that the double doors broke open and the entire contents were deposited into the sea just off the coast. We were returning from a visit to the USA and this particular chacon contained mainly personal kit.
For the next few days the shoreline was covered in bits of clothing and teddy bears bought as presents!
Needless to say, a lot of people lost their best uniforms and the squadron lost about 10X as much gear as could possibly fit in a chacon:O