PLANT GRAVEYARD

Wairarapa Times-Age, 27 November 1940, Page 6

PLANT GRAVEYARD

DUMPING GROUND FOR NAZI AIRCRAFT. USE AS SCRAP METAL. Twenty acres of grassland, somewhere in England, have been turned into a "graveyard"—one of several—for German ’planes brought down by the R.A.F. and by anti-aircraft guns. It is a dumping place to which from all over the country R.A.F. lorries bring the broken, bullet-ridden remains of Heinkets. Dorniers. Messerschmitts and Junkers. They represent thousands of pounds' worth of scrap metal They will lie here until technicians have analysed the material, and they will be broken up still further and .melted down for use as weapons against the country which produced them.

It takes an hour and a half to make a tour of this burial ground. Like cattle pens at a market, the ground is divided into separate lots, each one railed off by the wings of crashed aircraft; each one a dump of debris 12 feet high’ and covering an acre to an acre and ahalf of ground. The metal and produce recovering depot employs 157 men, who do nothing else but unload and pile up the lorryloads of aeroplanes. The men wear thick leather gauntlets as protection against the jagged edges of the metal. And they cheer each time a lorry rumbles in' from the Roman road which runs up to the gates A man leaning over a tangled heap ol burnt-out engines swore quietlv to hnnsclf: "It's the reek of them 'that makes one swear." he explained "The bad. sulphurous smell which comes