Bombs over Glasgow in WW2

[Pgcc93]

Blantyre AA site.
This is one of the poorest condition AA sites I've visited.
Which is surprising as it's location is quite remote compared to the likes of other examples on the doorstep of Castlemilk and Greenock.

Perhaps the landowner tried to demolish them at some stage to reclaim the land but gave up due to the robustness of thier construction?





Central Pivot for Gun mounting

[HollowHorn]

Wonderful stuff, Pg.

[Pgcc93]

Cheers HH

What I want is for all you folks reading this thread is to add to the list of locations and pics of all things WW2 no matter how insignificant you may think it is.

And go visit these places, they all have there own individual characteristics.

[gap74]

Aye, cheers for the pics G, I live fairly near the Blantyre one and have visited it fairly regularly for the last 20 years. I'm afraid it's been pretty badly vandalised in that time by the local youth of the nearby scheme in Blantyre (Coatshill, I think it's called).

I think it's condition might also be explained by the proximity to Redlees Quarry to the northwest of the site - although long abandoned and flooded (and now in use as a trout fishery!), the spoil from the quarry works was dumped on the site of the AA guns. Indeed, a large spoil heap on the west of the site partially covers at least one structure, the entrance to which is just about passable in the side of the hill.

A friend's grandfather was based there during the war, he says the camp was next to the road, although that appears to have been obscured by a long embankment built to landscape the area in the 80s.

It's also very much more overgrown than it was when I first knew the site, difficult to get pics of the place in summer, and the overall view of the site from the spoil heap is now blocked by trees.

Incidentally, are there any websites that explain what the general layout and function of the buildings in these places were? I'm particularly curious about the two buildings in Blantyre which are arranged into sort of numbered stalls.

Cheers,
Gary

[Pgcc93]

Incidentally, are there any websites that explain what the general layout and function of the buildings in these places were? I'm particularly curious about the two buildings in Blantyre which are arranged into sort of numbered stalls.

Cheers,
Gary

I'm also curious as to the actual workings of these buildings.

[Pgcc93]

Seen that posted in another thread a while ago doonunda but thanks for adding it to this one.

The geo-technical Department of Glasgow City Council excavated a series of test pits and discovered that highly toxic waste had been dumped within the excavated space.

Now that doesn't surprise me one bit! you just have to laugh

[suprastar]

Don't know whether this has been covered yet. Up until recently I worked for Albion Automotive in South Street. In the roof certainly there are patched up holes in the roof where bombs hit it during the war and I believe that underneath the factory was used as a shelter too. Talking to people that had worked there for a while there was problems when they brought a couple of machines in the factory. where they were to be situated caused probelems because it was ontop of where the shelters were. I can't remember exactly what happened but i think they had to bring some sort of experts in.

I could find out, I am still in contact with people there.

[doonunda]

ft

[Fossil]

good wee selection D

[Socceroo]

Superb link doonunda.

You can actually see the disturbed ground where the AA Guns and the various buildings stood on quite a lot of the sites when you zoom in.

The King's Park / Toryglen site for me is particularly interesting. You can see the footprints of the various structures and the rabbit run paths between them.

The King's Park / Toryglen site was also a Z Rocket site.

I thought Hampden was mainly used for raising recruits for the Home Guard and the many AA Battery Battalions. I was unaware of it's POW connection.

[crannog]

Seen the site before. The POW plan is completely wrong. The plan is that of a WW2 anti aircraft battery. The POW camp, which Cultibraggan by Comrie is the best surviving example (although that is or at least was, its up for sale!) comprised two compounds, one or the guards with access to the POW compound, a recreation area was also provided. Camps varied in size, some where only small labour camps, others converted stately homes, and others were large purpose built camps!

[Fossil]

I posted a pic somewhere on HG with German POW working in Pollok

Fossil

[allyharp]

I don't think I'd ever heard of operation starfish until I saw the google earth locations. After some googling I came up with a few interesting things.

Decoy site near East Kilbride



Photograph Copyright © 1999 - 2005 Russell W. Barnes

http://www.users.globalnet.co.uk/~rwbarnes/defence/decoys.htm


Any ideas about the guns used at Kingspark/Toryglen Socceroo?

Interesting, I know of a small building that looks exactly the same as that except it is buried into a hill. It's up past Baldernock, near Milngavie, could it be the same sort of thing? I'll get some pics next time I'm there.

[gap74]

Cheers, that partly answers some questions, although seems to have ignored a section of the site to the west, where what I presume is another magazine building (with internal bays) is almost totally buried.

I'm also still curious to know exactly where the camp for this site was, only reference is that it was next to the road, which could be anywhere as the road wraps around two sides of it!

The anti-tank blocks - more of these recently turned up next to the main road when some landscaping work was being done.

As an archaeologist (well, not that I've done any since leaving uni!) I think it would be a fascinating site to excavate.

Gary

[crannog]

The camp site was a large site which extends south from the Y-shaped junction, a sharp right angle bend, alongside the road as far south (c. 250m) to the next bend. The approx width of the camp site is about 80m. The camp site in 1945 contained about 18 buildings and 13 nissan huts. The site is unusual as it was a 6 gun emplacement.