Forums Forums Wirral History : Chasing the Past History Information Request THE DIPS BURIED ARMY STORES

About 35 years ago someone told me that when he was a small boy at the end of WW2 he witnessed troops with diggers excavating a huge hole in the first of the 'dips' at New Brighton. Thats the one that lies at the bottom of Atherton Street. He said that munitIons and other stores, some of which came from the Palace (which was a war time munitions factory), were dumped here and the hole was filled in. Anyone else know about this?

It was at the far end near to the golf course.

I can't say i have heard of this, something that has always puzzled me about these after war munitions burials, is why would we. It took us long enough to gather them. even when WW2 finished the world was still very unstable, possible conflict with the USSR, unrest in the Empire , Korea and so on. Also, even weaponry that was becoming obsolete to us, would probably been sold on to a friendly country.

Considering we were extremely short of metal it is highly unlikely. Also there were a lot of entrepreneurs getting their hands on anything they could, if anything of value was buried it would almost be guaranteed to have been dug up within a few hours.

Bert Ault started his surplus business up from silk parachutes after the war.

I f you look at th charts showing the shipping routs accross and up and down the Irish Sea, you will find large area's outlined in red and marked Danger zones. these areas are where there are trenches into which munitions where and are still dumped.

Those are more likely to be enemy munitions and chemical warfare munitions, not allowed now under treaty. Also the oceans of the world are full of sunk ships which are also full of the nasty.

The Beaufort Dyke off Stranraer is a classic dump. They dumped all sort of chemical nasties and HE stuff there after the war. They loaded clapped out freighters to the gunwhales with phosgene, mustard, tabun & sarin nerve agents and scuttled them. Thousands of rounds of HE were also lobbed into the oggin for years.

Near where I live, a load of White Phosphorous bombs were washed up on the beaches a few years back. Reeeeel nasty that stuff! The excrement hit the cooling apparatus big time. The casing on some chemical and nerve agent shells/bombs must be as thin as paper by now. Fisherman report random explosions in the area to this day.

Both America and Britain scrapped and dumped equipment in both theatres of war,Hooton and Stretton scrapped hundreds of aircraft,American aircraft returned from the RAF/Fleet Air arm,were returned to USAF Burtonwood and Wharton from lend lease,it's said that most the area's around the landing strips are filled with buried aircraft,most aircraft were cut up and the scrap dumped at sea,when the Americans left Burtonwood and the RAF returned they had all the cycles that were buried dug up and repaired by Italian POWs,it appears after WWI there was that much military equipment like ex military lorries sold as scrap but returned to use by civilians that UK and US manufacturing went into recession,I read somewhere all the American MTB boats were collected off an island and set on fire,all the stores that Americans held for island hopping on different islands were just bulldozed into the sea after Japan surrendered.

2nd para. of my post was badly phrased. Should have read "the contents of a load of White Phosphorous bombs..."

The thin walled cases of the bombs had rotted away and the sticks of WP were washed up. It is alleged that digging a seabed trench for a gas pipeline went right through the dumping area and worried a load of goodies. Good one !

The bloke who witnessed it spent the day watching it. I don't doubt his testimony for one minute.He was there witnessing it at the time not just speculating wildly 65 year later!

I remember being told about the dips in New Brighton. Always believed it to be true. Could be one reason they never built on it.

I don't mean people shouldn't speculate or put their own views over, just that this was person a reliable witness.

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Wow! Fantasic video! I lived in 23 Virginia Road from 1965 to 1975. That was the Creep Inn Club then and as he says it was near impossible to be a new member.

Project Sandcastle was a post-WW2 task, we took possession of the German poison gas munitions, and stored them at RAF Llandwrog, on the runway in small hangers (after transporting them by road from the SE). They corroded badly, so we decided to dump at sea. They were loaded onto landing craft at Fort Belan dock (an old Napoleonic fort ( http://www.fortbelan.co.uk/ ) , nr Caernavon, and taken to Scotland, where they were taken to sea and dumped - a good old British way of doing it. We also found we could get more "bombs" on the landing craft if we cut the tails off. Makes us proud.