X-Ray Specs

Likely manufactured in the late-1960s but updated in the mid-1980s - the Freed transformer inside is dated August 1969, but the Soderberg anti-collision beacon October 1985 - this Halsey industrial X-ray warning device was used by the United States military. The item bears an affixed metal plate, plus a sticker from the time of its disposal, that together provide valuable information on its origins.

The Disposal Turn-In Document (DTID) number acts as a unique disposal serial number. The first six places provide the Address Activity Code. FB5587 is RAF Lakenheath. The light was, thus, used by the USAAF. The next four places indicate the date the item was catalogued for disposal. Per the US military's adaptation of the Julian dating system, 9196 is 6 April 1991.

The National Stock Number (NSN) system was standardised by NATO in 1974 to track military assets, although versions of it existed prior. The first four places indicate the Federal Supply Classification Group. FSCG 9905 is for signs, advertising displays and identification plates: even military ID plates have their own ID codes! 00 in the fifth and sixth places indicates the United States.

Demilitarisation Codes indicate the degree of physical destruction required. DEMIL: A denotes a non-munitions/non-strategic item that does not demand any such. $2,245.63 is understood to be the asking price at disposal in 1991, over £3,000 at 2017 prices. The Federal Condition Code is given as A1 - serviceable without qualification, new/unused.

Halsey was a trademark of Post Glover Medical Products, of Erlanger, Kentucky. Established in 1938, the company supplied medical items, including X-ray illumination boxes. It still trades, as PG LifeLink. The light would have been supplied via the Warner Robins Air Logistics Center, Georgia, part of the USAAF's Materiel Command.

Shaped like a truncated pyramid, the device stands 29 inches tall. When switched on the Lucite panels are illuminated from within, and the twin bulbs in the beacon rotate within the red glass housing. Built to operate on US 115v mains, the light has been converted to run on UK 240v, with a new transformer inserted to provide steeped-down voltage for the 28v DC beacon. The original transformer and Hubbell connectors have been left in place, to enable any future reinstatement to the original set-up.

(Many thanks to Steve and Karen Myciunka, of Mullard Magic, for assistance with the item's history; and to various members of the UK Vintage Radio Repair and Restoration Forum for advice and parts.)

Sofia - Monument to the Soviet Army

Built in 1954, on the tenth anniversary of the 'liberation' of Bulgaria by the Soviet Army, the monument to that army features a central pedestal, 121 feet high, topped by a statue featuring a soldier and a Bulgarian family. 

This is surrounded by a large enclosed area, now somewhat ruinous, on the leading edge of which are two secondary but still monumental sculptures. The figures are secretly painted from time-to-time to indicate solidarity with various peoples and countries subjected to present-day Russian totalitarianism.

UK Weapons of Mass Destruction

One of the normally inaccessible features of the Rhydymwyn Valley Works, developed by ICI in 1939 to manufacture and store mustard gas, is the tunnel system. Three tunnels (central one in bottom photo) were driven about 600 feet into the side of the valley, through limestone, and connected by four cross-tunnels, the stores (below). The system was designed to enable the storage of 3,120 tons of mustard gas, both Runcol and Pyro.

The site's production facilities were closed at the end of the war, when most of the UK's chemical weapons stocks were simply dumped at sea. But the country's then 'strategic reserve' of mustard gas remained stored in the Rhydymwyn tunnel facility until its destruction in 1958-60.

The store was ventilated by means of two huge extractor fans, at the top of the chimneys at the ends of each of the north and south tunnels. Air was drawn into the tunnels, deflected into a void above a mild steel ceiling throughout the storage areas, down through vents in this, and drawn out through grille-covered floor ducts, and up the chimneys. The steel ceiling was carried on concrete corbels.

Scarlett Chain Home, Isle of Man

The first network of early warning radar stations built around the coast of Britain before and during WWII was code-named Chain Home (CH). Two stations were built on the Isle of Man, at Bride in the north and Scarlett in the south, near Castletown, and were online by September 1940.

Operated by the RAF, as all CH stations were, the IoM facilities were designated as Advance Chain Home stations, brought online with temporary short timber masts supporting the transmitter arrays, in advance of the availability of 325-foot guyed steel masts. CH Bride closed in 1942, as it duplicated an area already covered by stations in Scotland and Ireland. CH Scarlett closed the same year, as it was too close to Ronaldsway airport and the fleet air arm training unit, HMS Urley, based there. 

Scarlett was replaced by a new CH station at Dalby, on the western side of the island, which operated for the remainder of the war. Scarlett CH had two Type B operations blocks, without protected roofs, each with two sets of equipment; and two Type C blocks, covered with earth, each with one set of equipment. All four blocks remain, in farm use.

Stockport Air Raid Shelters

Stockport's civilian air raid shelters, although far from being the largest in the land as claimed by the city's museum, did open in good time, in October 1939, the month after war was declared. Construction had commenced in September 1938, a rare instance of local authority foresight.

Cut into the soft red sandstone that underlies the city, the shelters provided accommodation for up to 6,500 people. Seven feet high and with a total length of just under a mile, the shelters were fitted out with benches, bunk beds, warden posts, first aid posts, small canteens, tool stores, male and female toilets, and electric lighting.

This was 'plush' by WWII air raid shelter standards, and led to the section of the shelters that can be visited by the public being nick-named the Chestergate Hotel. The nearby Brinksway and Dodge Hill shelters are not accessible to the uninitiated. The shelter complex was essentially closed by 1943.

Berkhampsted Castle

Berkhampsted is arguably the most important of the early Norman castles: it was here that William the Conqueror received the submission of the English, after the Battle of Hastings. Controlling the northern approach to London, thirty miles away, William's half-brother Robert of Mortain built, circa 1070, a wooden castle, atop a 43 foot motte, surrounded by a huge bailey. The castle is unusual in that it had two surrounding moats.

Thomas à Becket, Lord Chancellor to Henry II, was granted the castle in 1155, when the first stone buildings were erected. The curtain walls too were built under Becket. The castle was though besieged in 1216 by Prince Louis of France. The possibly first use of trebuchets on British soil overcame the defences. The Earls of Cornwall held the castle for much of the 13th century, and the first Duke of Cornwall, the Black Prince, honeymooned there in 1361.

The castle fell into disuse late in the fifteenth century, and declined thereafter. The railway from Euston, built in 1838, cut across the outer earthworks, but the twin trenches remain in good order. The brick cottage that sits inside the castle, still owned by the Duchy of Cornwall, was built in 1865.

Edgbaston Bunker

Below the garden of what was originally an Edwardian family residence in sedate Meadow Road, Edgbaston, Birmingham, lies a Cold War bunker. Constructed in 1954 to be used by up to 80 civil defence bureaucrats in the event of nuclear war, the extensive facility is a single-storey structure in concrete, with steps down from one entrance (top) and up to two fire exits (below).

The bunker could produce its own power, using diesel engines and generating sets, and had its own store of water. Never used for its intended purpose, in 1956 the space provided temporary shelter to refugees who had fled the Hungarian Uprising.

The mansion and surrounding land, including the bunker, was sold by Sandwell Metropolitan Council, for the West Midlands Fire and Civil Defence Authority, in 1990. The council made it a rather insane condition of the sale that, if nuclear war had not broken out by 2003, the bunker was to be demolished. It's still there.

At points during the 1990s the bunker was reportedly used for raves. It was at some juncture converted by the owners into a social club, complete with bar (above), pool table, band practice room, and skittles alley, originally the main corridor (below).

The naivety of those 'preparing' for nuclear war is illustrated by the fact that the bunker lies downhill from a large reservoir, damage to which would have flooded the secure site. Ironically, it was fire, in the form of arson, that ultimately did for something that would supposedly survive a nuclear attack.

Nottingham's Rive Gauche

The Wilford Suspension Bridge crosses the River Trent to link West Bridgford and the Meadows area of Nottingham. Although the bridge can be used by pedestrians, this is at the discretion of its private owners, Severn Trent Water. It was built by the Nottingham Corporation Water Department, to a design by architect Arthur Brown, principally to carry a water main to the nearby Wilford Hill reservoir, and opened in 1906.

Adjoining the 1¼ mile long Victoria Embankment, constructed between 1898 and 1901, stands Nottingham's principal war memorial. This, and the associated memorial gardens, was laid out on land donated in 1920 by Nottingham's most famous son, Sir Jesse Boot, he of Boots the Chemist.

Work on the gardens and memorial commenced in 1923. Both opened on 11 November 1927, nine years after Armistice Day. The memorial, designed by the City Engineer of the day, T Wallis Gordon, is truly monumental, a trio of archways flanked by colonnades, all in Portland stone, with a terrace behind that overlooks the gardens.

The Orthodox cross-like ornamental pond has recently been renovated at the expense of a private benefactor. Unfortunately, the statue of Queen Empress Victoria, relocated from the bottom of the city centre's Market Street, is surrounded by an ugly anti-vandal fence.

Nearby stands a beautiful little Moderne bandstand of 1937, which was threatened with demolition by the City Council as part of its flood defence scheme, but is now protected by a Grade II listing.

Shrewsbury Battlefield, 1403

On 21 July 1403, the armies of King Henry IV and Henry Percy engaged each other about three miles north of the centre of Shrewsbury. The Battle of Shrewsbury was an exceedingly bloody one, the first occasion on which English longbow archers had fought each other, and resulted in an estimated 5,000 deaths.

The Percy family had backed Henry in his war with Richard II and had helped him to the throne in 1399. Henry, however, reneged on his promise of reward lands, and failed to provide funds to help the Percys protect the north of the kingdom. The Earl of Northumberland, with others, set out a list of grievances and demands, and his son, Henry Percy, known as Hotspur, headed south. In Cheshire he recruited experienced archers, but his army likely consisted of no more than 14,000. Hotspur's expected reinforcements, under Owain Glyndŵr, never arrived.

Henry IV was already on his way north, ironically to assist the Percys against the Scots. The king was apprised at Burton-on-Trent of the revolt of the Percys, and headed west to address the new threat, with a force estimated at anything up to 60,000. Battle was joined about a mile south of where now stands Battlefield Church.

The Cheshire bowmen inflicted much damage, and Henry's right wing broke down. Hotspur led a charge directly upon the king in an effort to capitalise upon a temporary advantage against superior force. The battle ended when it became known that he had been killed in the attempt: "...time, that takes survey of all the world, / Must have a stop" (Henry IV, Part 1, Act V, Sc. 4).

A chantry chapel, reputed to lie above a mass grave associated with the battle, was completed in 1409. A year later this became a college of chaplains. There are remains of the fishponds that sustained the chaplains. The chapel was integrated into a larger church, completed about 1460, which itself became a parish church in 1548. Heavily restored in 1860-62, the church was declared redundant in 1982.

Vélo Moto Auto

The National Weapons Factory at Châtellerault, in the department of the Vienne, Poitou-Charentes, was established in 1819 to manufacture swords. It later made rifles, such as the Lebel type. The factory closed in 1968.

Housed in one of the former factory's buildings is Châtellerault Motor Museum, built around the personal collection of Bernard de Lassée. The collection includes a representative selection of early vélos, including hobby horses, penny-farthings, and safety bikes.

It moves through the history of the moto and the auto, and includes gorgeous examples of Panhards, Delahayes, Darracks, and, of course, Peugeots. There's a smattering of American cars, but it's the French weird and wonderful that catches the eye. Hautement recommandé.

ROC Post - Inside View

As previously documented, over 1,500 underground posts were built across the UK during the 1950s, from which the Royal Observer Corps would, it was naïvely supposed, report on the number, location and strength of nuclear explosions.

The post at Nesscliffe, Shropshire, has no padlocks on the hasps of the access hatch, and the Torlift lock is easily opened with the aid of the right tools. Although the paint is peeling, the shaft is in good condition.

The sump pump at the foot of the shaft is still in place and serviceable (above). To the right of this, the toilet cubicle retains its Eltex chemical toilet.

The chamber of the post has been largely stripped, but there are small remains of the Bomb Power Indicator (above). As was common, the post was built at the same site as the aircraft spotting and identification installation associated with the ROC's earlier function.

At Nesscliffe there remains a hut associated with the earlier spotter facility. Inside there is an old stove at one end, and the ubiquitous chemical toilet at the other.

Timber Movers & Shakers

Based at what was once RAF Rednal is North Shropshire Timber, the yard of which is stacked with sawn timber and virtually whole oak trees, and home to a variety of workhorses. Atop a container is a long wheelbase Land Rover, in need of some recommissioning.

In common use though is an AEC Matador artillery tractor. The Associated Equipment Company's Matador, with an ash-framed cab, was built from 1932 as a two-wheel drive civilian truck, and gained four wheel drive during WWII - known as the Mat.

AEC produced a six wheel drive version that was also known as the Matador, but officially designated the Marshall. This was developed into the Militant (above), available in both 6x4 and 6x6 variants, a vehicle still in use by the military in the 1990s.

A set of wheels has a suggestion of traction engine about it. Only slightly more complete is a Douglas truck, possibly one of their AEC Matador-based load-movers. Douglas, now part of Dennis, still makes specialised tugs, very many of which are seen at airports and docks.