google earth

[ktmjohno]

hi
i have been trying to look on google earth for traces of the war bomb damage etc,but without much luck. i would of thought that damage to the country side in areas of heavy fighting stallingrad/berlin or hurtgen for example would still be visible, given the detail available on google earth.
so has anyone had more luck than myself and where?
thanks johno

[Auseklis]

Not easy...
Take a look here. On this picture are 2 hits of british 250 lb bombs.
You will maybe guess one after some time, but the second... no chance.
Most impact craters are leveld by time or human activity

[ktmjohno]

ok
i think the overgrown circle center picture and perhaps top right near the mast ?
the reason i look is where i live in lincolnshire uk (bomber county) i drive around lloking at the country side and see what i can only explain as bomb craters marking the fields. some are deep 6ft with probably 15 to 20 ft circumference, so much so that the farmers just work around them
see what you think ?

[Woolgar]

Hi

I am a Lincolnshire man too ! Defected to Yorkshire!

I dont think Lincolnshire was bombed very heavily during the war.

There were isolated strafings and bombings of airfields but no heavy bombing.

Well thats what my Grandfather told me, he was an ARP Warden in Lincoln

Nick

[davesap250]

My Grandad was in the obser corps based in Lincoln. Lincolnshire did not see much from attacks. Although a german plane crashed along greenstone steps in the city. Waddinton village was also attacked hence the new church as the old one was destroyed.
Out of interest if you walk over the west common close to the racing stadium the ground is really uneven. This is from troops practicing digging trenches prior to deployment to france during the first world war. You may already know this?

[Auseklis]

OK, I circled the "craters" red.
Flight direction of the Wellington was north to south. It did an emergency drop after been hit by AA about 2 km north and hit the ground about 2,5 km in prolonging the line of the two hits.
The second hit destroyed a privat home killing two people.
There is a new building in this spot.

Bad luck for the british also, since the yellow marked area about 150 yards east of the flightpath was a prime target, the transmission equipment of Reichssender Hannover.

[ktmjohno]

Auseklis
well you are totally correct i would never have got those.

i live near grimsby and i think you are correct we never had too much damage during the war, however hull was heavily bombed, and we did have some good hits here aswell my father a boy at the time has told me about some local hits ,but like every thing the ones that do not damage never get logged they only record the ones that hurt, so i am still not certain!
there are alot of targets the germans would have tried i am sure , as a local i know of probably 10 or 15 airfields in a 30 mile radius this was lancaster land in the war?

[Woolgar]

Here is an interesting link

RAF-lincolnshire.info :: A brief history

[ktmjohno]

thanks for that link nick,
my local airfield is raf grimsby, which as a boy used to walk over and find unspent 303 bullets and empty cartridges it was great , still walk it with the dog from time to time and come accross the odd find or two.
but i was interested to see further afield with the aid of google earth stalingrad /berlin etc . here still visible in the fields at utah beachhead normandy for example
well appologies for my ignorance this is not utah beach at all but a coastal defence system near longues-sur mer sorry for misleading any one , i got mis lead too by a post on google earth
johno

[Soldierblu]

One of the other things to be taken into consideration in East Anglia is human habitation and intervention, over the last couple of thousand years, hunter gatherers, tribal rivalries not to mention the Roman Occupation have left their mark in the soil, I remember a friend of mine used to fly over areas of East Anglia during the 90's before the advent of Google Earth to detect Roman Archaeology, he found 2 previously unknown Roman Villas (one being near Duxford) this way, there was so much pre Roman and Roman development in East Anglia that when the Airfields were being built they were in the same area as strategically advantageous Archaeological sites. there are also some sink holes which from the air look to all intense and purposes a bomb crater and sometimes even in a row. Anyway I thought that this would be of interest from another point of view.