Band of Brothers

[Aaron]

Not sure if any of you guys are into the Band Of Brothers series. Not sure if you remember, in the series, they arrive into Devon by train to go to Upottery Airfield.. Well, I found out the other day, the station they arrived at was my town! Quite interesting really!

Anyway, I was passing the old airfield the other day, so I stopped to take some photos. Had to do most of it from the car with the windows up as it was hammering down with rain!

One of the entrances to the airfield now
http://i172.photobucket.com/albums/w19/adunne_2007/P1030499.jpg
http://i172.photobucket.com/albums/w19/adunne_2007/P1030497.jpg

The original WWII control tower
http://i172.photobucket.com/albums/w19/adunne_2007/P1030491.jpg
http://i172.photobucket.com/albums/w19/adunne_2007/Upottery_06.jpg
http://i172.photobucket.com/albums/w19/adunne_2007/Upottery_98a.jpg

Looking down the main runway - 2nd photo shows the control tower off to the right
http://i172.photobucket.com/albums/w19/adunne_2007/P1030489.jpg
http://i172.photobucket.com/albums/w19/adunne_2007/P1030492.jpg

There is a second runway which crosses the main one. I thought it was amazing to see how much of a dip there is in the middle of the main runway!

Aerial shot during WWII - I took the runway shots right next to where it says 27. Quite alot of the original airfield and taxiways left:
http://i172.photobucket.com/albums/w19/adunne_2007/Upottery-22apr44.jpg
And today:
http://i172.photobucket.com/albums/w19/adunne_2007/today.jpg

And a few I didnt take, as I knew there were already some good photos around:

Dining hall and some crew quarters
http://i172.photobucket.com/albums/w19/adunne_2007/Upottery_06e.jpg
http://i172.photobucket.com/albums/w19/adunne_2007/Upottery_06d.jpg

Main Entrance to the airfield during WWII
http://i172.photobucket.com/albums/w19/adunne_2007/USN_B-24.jpg

And the same place today
http://i172.photobucket.com/albums/w19/adunne_2007/entrance1.jpg

I found some more bits in the lanes around the area too..

Another building, now turned into a farm barn - not sure what its use was:
http://i172.photobucket.com/albums/w19/adunne_2007/otherbuilding.jpg

Driving around the airfield perimeter road:
http://i172.photobucket.com/albums/w19/adunne_2007/perimeter.jpg


And then I came across this - the place which was the main entrance to the airfield. Half a mile away from the airfielf itself. And the original sentry box is still there..

http://i172.photobucket.com/albums/w19/adunne_2007/SentryBox.jpg

Turned into a memorial now:
http://i172.photobucket.com/albums/w19/adunne_2007/plaque.jpg
http://i172.photobucket.com/albums/w19/adunne_2007/paper.jpg
http://i172.photobucket.com/albums/w19/adunne_2007/currahee.jpg
http://i172.photobucket.com/albums/w19/adunne_2007/screa*****agles.jpg

[El Wayneo]

Thats pretty cool.

I loved band of brothers, i have it on blu ray, looks awesome.

[Aaron]

Yeah, I have the box set too... One of my all time favorites.. :)

[Funlester]

Good pic's, where is this at then? Wouldn't mind going having a look myself?
Love stuff like this. When i was young my rents took us in a caravan round Europe to look at all the sites like this.
Some of them are really amazing to look at and when you fields and fields of crosses stuck in the ground where people lost there lives you cant help but feel sad no matter who you are.

[coiler]

youve almost done a bit of urban exploring there Aaron! good pics!

There are loads of forums for abandoned sites like airfields, underground bunkers, military sites, industrial sites etc

[Aaron]

Yeah, this sort of stuff fascinates me for some reason..!

That one is known as Upottery Airfield in Band Of Brothers, but its actually right next to a village called Smeatharpe. If you do a search on google maps for Smeatharpe, it'll show up. That was one of them around here. There is another one, a couple of miles NE of Smeatharpe at Culmhead which still has the runways, but is now a fairly boring business park. And then a little to the west, there is another one called Dunkeswell, which is actually still an airfield. They all show up under those names on google maps. (Nigel Mansell has also taken over the top left bit of Dunkeswell for his go karting track!) :lol: :lol:

[Aaron]

youve almost done a bit of urban exploring there Aaron! good pics!

There are loads of forums for abandoned sites like airfields, underground bunkers, military sites, industrial sites etc
It was a bit weird when I took the first set of photos.. I just happened to be driving near it when a whole bunch of WWII US army lorries when past.. And then as I got closer, there were so many 1940s cars driving around, and then I had to pull over because there was a huge convoy of WWII jeeps and troop carriers coming down the road.. It felt a bit like i'd gone back in time :lol:

But it turned out they had a big D-Day event there at the weekend, and everything was leaving (thats what the vehicles are in the 1st photos).. It was pretty interesting, and gave a real flavor of what it might have been like. Especially driving through the lanes and villages around and there being convoys of WWII vehicles parked up.

And then finally, to top it off, a spitfire flew over as I was driving through one of the villages. Didnt get a photo unfortunately though.

Apparently there are loads more WWII sites around here. I might try and see what else I can find :)

[coiler]

I wondered why the lorry was coming out!



You should try and check out some ROC posts.

http://www.subbrit.org.uk/rsg/roc/index2.shtml



find ones in your area here

http://www.subbrit.org.uk/rsg/roc/index3.html


they are all abandoned now and many are wide open!