An Interesting Entry in a War Assets Auction, Dec 1945

[Dave Homewood]

In this advert in the Bay of Plenty Times dated, 8th of December 1945, I noted something interesting - tis is the first part of the advert:

Link to full add HERE

R. CLARKE THOMPSON & CO.
(Late R. Cobbe Ltd.) Auctioneers, Land and Commission Agents.
Wharf Street, Tauranga. Unreserved

Auction at The Mount Aerodrome
THURSDAY. DECEMBER Hi, At 10.30 a.m.

Instructed by the War Assets Realisation Board

We will sell without reserve, starting this great sale with the following War Equipment:
3 Large Hudson Dummy Planes,
2 Smaller Hurricane Planes.
Large quantity of material for caravan manufacturing in these planes.

1 Immense camouflage Aerodrome, containing thousands of feet of builder’s wire netting and dry timber (sold as one lot for removal). The dry timber from two large dismantled dummy aerodromes.

So I am thinking this is material there for creating two or three camouflaged aerodromes, as in dummy airfields that look like the real thing from the air? Did RNZAF Station Tauranga have some dummy satellite airfields? And if yes, were the dummy Hudsons and Hurricanes on the fake airfields?

[Dave Homewood]

On a similar note, the Press newspaper had an advert in it from the War Assets Realisation Board on the 21st of April 1945 offering dummy aircraft, type not mentioned, for tender, with the following locations and numbers:

DUMMY AIRCRAFT: Held by Air Dept., as follows;

Whenuapai ........10
Kumeu ............12
Mangere ..........2
Hobsonville .. .. 6
New Plymouth .....4
--
Total ...........34

[30sqnatc]

34 - Embarrassing almost as big as our current real aircraft numbers

[oj]

Interesting.
The Airmens boxes are what we called and were issued as "barrack boxes" in 1962. Are they still issued? If not when did they cease?
I'm not sure what you would do with the Qty 70 x 3ft matresses? Suitable for nursery?

[Dave Homewood]

We never had barrack boxes during my time in 1989-93. We had black vinyl roll bags as our kitbags.

[camtech]

1965 we were issued with 2 canvas kit bags. Barrack boxes were still to be seen standing in for sets of drawers when I arrived at Whenuapai 1966, and could still be seen around various places as storage boxes - in fact I purloined one and used it at home to store my photographic stuff in.

[Dave Homewood]

Back to the camouflaging of airfields, I know that Wigram's hangars and bigger buildings were camouflaged during the war, and they even painted a fake road over top of No. 6 Hangar so it looked like it was not a hangar.

I also recall seeing a photo years ago of Hobsonville with fake roads and fences painted on the grass airfield to make it look like farm land from the air. I wish I could find that photo again, I have no idea where it was that I saw it.

I'd love to know more about who was behind the camouflaging of real stations and the use of netting and timber to create fake ones in New Zealand. Was there a specialist RNZAF or PWD unit, I wonder.

[30sqnatc]

Dec 27, 2022 22:50:24 GMT 12 Dave Homewood said:

Back to the camouflaging of airfields, I know that Wigram's hangars and bigger buildings were camouflaged during the war, and they even painted a fake road over top of No. 6 Hangar so it looked like it was not a hangar.

I also recall seeing a photo years ago of Hobsonville with fake roads and fences painted on the grass airfield to make it look like farm land from the air. I wish I could find that photo again, I have no idea where it was that I saw it.

I'd love to know more about who was behind the camouflaging of real stations and the use of netting and timber to create fake ones in New Zealand. Was there a specialist RNZAF or PWD unit, I wonder.

I suspect PWD as I seem to recall the unpublished PWD war history that was in the Defence Library had a chapter on their camouflage activities. The book was typed with actually photos stuck into the book.

[Dave Homewood]

That sounds fascinating.

[tbf2504]

At Wigram in the 1960s we used Barrack boxes to store our comms pack up for easy deployment.