Lanc in the sands, Pegwell Bay, Kent

[kevmusic]

A few years ago I was wandering through the Bleak House Dickens Museum in Broadstairs and came across a display with a photo of a Wessex SAR and crewman atop a Lancaster wing in Pegwell Bay, circa 1963. (Stands by for appropriate banter.......) I tried to get more info on the Lanc but to no avail, other than she is still there. I spoke to a chap at the RAF Manston museum who seems to know a bit more about it but was rather guarded. He said that some seasons the Lanc is visible and some it isn't. Sometimes it is covered with sand and not at others. I don't think restoration to airworthiness will be an option!

Does anybody know anything more about what could be a seriously important bit of aviation archaeology? Bleak House has now been sold on, so that little avenue has dried up. I do know that the photo featured at the time in one of the local papers but phone calls to their offices yielded doodley squat.

[opsjockey]

I've heard this one described as a B17 a Stirling or a Lancaster.
Found this after a brief Google search (theres even some old pics before she crashed on the 303BG website)

Quote 1:
1Lt Alan Eckhart (CP) - Flew on 24 credited combat missions: With Capt Cote - All Capt Cote missions except for missions #43, 60, 75 & 83. Was Upgraded from CoPilot to Pilot and flew 4 missions as First Pilot (80, 81, 83, 85). On mission 85, 1 Dec 1943, ditched a new B-17G 42-31243 (No name) (427BS) GN-Z, on its first mission, in the English Channel at Pegwell Bay, England when the B-17 ran out of gas. The entire 10 man crew was picked by the British Air Sea Rescue and taken to Manston, England. A British recovery team discovered the ditched B-17 in the 1990s in the marshland at Sandwich Flats near Pegwell Bay and were able to collect wreckage that was turned over to the British Brenzett Aeronautical Museum. The 25 mission combat tour of 1Lt Eckhart was completed on 1 Dec 1943 (Mission #85).

Quote 2:
In actual fact it was a B-17G-10-BO, 42-31243. 303BG flown by Lt Eckhart. Remaining engines and some parts recovered a few years ago.

The Lifeboat record of service was:
"Walmer, Kent.
At two o'clock in the afternoon of the 1st of December 1943, the coastguard reported an American Flying Fortress aeroplane down in the sea a mile north of the Guildford Hotel in Pegwell Bay. A moderate north-west wind was blowing. The sea was smooth. The lifeboat was not needed, and four of her crew put out in the motor boat 'Terrier'. She was overtaken by two air sea rescue launches and the coastguard signalled the 'Terrier' to return.
Rewards £1 to two men. The other two men had been rewarded by the Bevan Trustees."
(Source: Supplement to Annual Reports of the Royal National Lifeboat Institution 1939-46)

Try a GOOGLE search of 'Pegwell Bay B17' and see what you can troll up! Theres severel wreckS off of Manston ( inc a Stirling) and there is rumoured to be a Lancaster off of Pegwell bay but i can find no references, dates, info, so maybe it's just a rumour:

Happy Hunting

[wildweeble]

There is indeed a Lancaster in the mud at Pegwell Bay. My dad took my brother and I to see it in about 1970 or 1971, when it was visible during a very, very low tide.
How did he know it was there? During the war he had been a flying controller at Manston at the time that it came down, knew that it had not been recovered and certainly knew the difference between a Lancaster and a Flying Fortress. He said that there were several aircraft in the bay.
Sadly he's not around to ask for more detail and I was fairly young at the time. I do recall it looked pretty battered, but complete. My brother wanted to haul it out and have it in the garden!
As I recall, my father's memory was jogged - and our expedition decided - when my brother found a picture of it in his Eagle annual (1967?). I bet all you boys have kept your annuals, so go and look it up.

WW

[kevmusic]

Thanks for the replies, guys. Yes it was definitely a Lanc in the old newspaper cutting. As for her condition now.....well, the imagination runs riot with decades of tons of shifting sand and highly oxygenated salt water! :{

I haven't got any of my old annuals :(

[kevmusic]

I've found this photo which I took in the old Bleak House Museum, Broadstairs. It features an image and copy from who-knows-what local paper, but I am going to put out a call in 'Where are They Now' for Master Navigator Colin Walsh!

http://i126.photobucket.com/albums/p88/kevmusic9/scan0007-1.jpg

[Icare9]

No doubt about it in that pic - must be a Lancaster!!! :O
Isn't that Glenn Miller waving in the background??

[kevmusic]

Nah, he went down in a Norseman.

[Havana]

This link gives some more info.

Lost Bombers - World War II Lost Bombers (http://www.lostbombers.co.uk/bomber.php?id=2894)

[kevmusic]

Excellent link - thank you, Havana. :ok:

[Pegwell Bay]

I Googled my father's name and this thread came up. He is the airman touching the Lancaster's wingtip. He was Master Navigator Colin Walsh, and he served in the RAF from his late teens (joining during the Second World War) through to his late forties, when he left and joined the Probation Service. He died in 1996.

The photograph is well-known in my family and a copy of it sits on my shelf here at home in London. The wreck was visible only when there was an extraordinarily low tide, and the photographer in the water with my father subsequently won the Daily Mirror Photograph of the Year.


Jonathan Walsh

[Captain Windsock]

In the 60's I did about 50hrs flying with No 1 AEF based at Manston. There were a couple of VR pilots who seemed to know more about this Lancaster than others and when ever it was exposed a low level flight was always taken for just another look. I saw it many times. However you did require a very low tide and one of the many sand shifts to be in your favour.

[simonfromlenham]

I spoke to the chap at the Museum at Manston about this having seen the tip of the chopped off prop and it described as off Pegwell Bay. So, here's my memory being dredged up.


I grew up in Sandwich, born late 1950s and remember trudging out what we regarded as a bomber, Certainly 4 engines and at very low tide you could see the cowls of the engines and walk on the wings and the fuselage. If I was to try to guess at what plane, I would have said a B17, possibly on its back, I just can't place a tail-plane, certainly not the twin tail of a Lanc. Also, the engine cowls (I'm stretching my memory back, but I was a boy who made many Airfix kits so knew one plane from another) didn't give the appearance of Lanc, more a B17. I remember walking out more than once and would place it (my father agrees) about 5 to 600 yards out and the same distance towards the mouth of the Stour from what was the old Guildford Hotel. I suppose pretty well straight out from the edge of the Bird Sanctuary. When I walked out to it back in the 60s, the props were still sticking up! I Think it was particularly well exposed after a very bad storm in about 1970?.

[simonfromlenham]

Hi

I went sorting through my parent's negatives and very quickly came up with some full frame negatives of this wreck taken ... must be 1974ish This is based on the picture of my father with a Bolex film camera (so he must have cine of this wreck) my mother will have taken the pictures (or maybe me? I forget)

http://www.lenham.net/bombersandwichbay/Scan-141012-0002.pdf
http://www.lenham.net/bombersandwichbay/Scan-141012-0004.pdf
http://www.lenham.net/bombersandwichbay/Scan-141012-0005.pdf
http://www.lenham.net/bombersandwichbay/Scan-141012-0006.pdf
http://www.lenham.net/bombersandwichbay/Scan-141012-0008.pdf

You will see the old Richborough Power station in the background which should give an indication of where this was taken.

[cockney steve]

Thank you for sharing your piccies, Mr. Simon. very atmospheric...the dogs, family, power-station all add to the bleak loneliness of the site.

[kevmusic]

Wow, just revisited this thread for the first time in a long time. Many thanks Simon, for those pictures.

[India Four Two]

Kev,

Thanks for bringing this to the top again. I spent my early years in Ramsgate and Broadstairs, so things to do with Manston are always of interest.

A small point. The helicopter is a Whirlwind 10, not a Wessex. I vividly remember them flying along the beaches during the summer, with the winchman sitting in the doorway, waving to the holiday makers.

They were a colourful replacement for the recently departed USAF S-55s.

The "local newspaper" would almost certainly have been The East Kent Times.

[Shackman]

During an SAR tour at Manston, I overflew this (?) wreckage when it was exposed at low tide on countless occasions, but my own opinion was of an upside down B-24. It never really looked 'Lanc-like' and all four engines had the distinctive underside of the P & W ones - a long tube (exhaust?) with a circular fitting just aft of pistons - and nothing like Merlins.
However, there were other wrecks around, so may be I was looking at the wrong one, but it was first pointed out to me as 'a Lancaster'.

[DaveReidUK]

The Lanc is generally accepted to be JB278, PM-L of 103 Squadron which ditched on approach to Manston on 25th April 1944.