Egypt - airfields from WWII
 

hello all

I found an old airfield from WWII in the Western Desert. It is built the same way as "8 Bells" in the south of Gilf Kebir. with a lot of Shell jerrycans.

The name is either 0 HILL oder C HILL or Q HILL or ......

Does anybody know more about this landing ground?

byebye
Ursula

a view is on my page on Flickr

Airfield in the Western Desert | Flickr - Photo Sharing!

Brilliant
 

hello Ursula
congratulations for the new find !
I honestly think you are a daring desert explorer,
will contact Tarek soon but im curious about the western borders will be important to know:
Any encounters or spotting smugglers or illegal migrations?
Best regards from Egypt
Mahmoud

smugglers in the western desert
 

hi Mahmoud

nice to hear from you!
So you did not know this airport too? there were no car tracks at all - untill we came :cool4:

Yes, we had one of these encounters...
at the east end of Wadi Assib we met 2 "libyans" hidden in the small barchanes and Tarek was speeding off like in a rallye...

all the best
Ursula

maybe hunters
 

no I did not know about it, you know 8b is quite famous and I guess the new one was not known despite all the efforts to trace back this area history
Also for the Libyans, one possibility that this is the season for falconry, birds of Europe they escape the cold weather and immigrate to Africa around September, they are hunted by poor Bedouins then sold to rich Bedouins to play with! The hunters area used to be in the great sand sea close to clayton camp , maybe they are on the hunt for birds ! or that’s what I hope
Best regards
Mahmoud

Hello Ursula,

Well done! On my 1943 US Army Map Service Libyan Desert sheet there are two airfields marked, Cleft-Hill and Garth-Hill, your find must be one of the two. Send me an email, from the position I will be able to tell which one.

From your photos I see that the Tourist Police have excelled themselves...

Edit: No need to email, have found it on Google Earth, stands out quite clearly if you know where to look :)
It is indeed Garth-Hill aerodrome, one of the many emergency landing grounds on the air route leading to Kufra (8 Bells was one of them). Seems to be quite a bit off the regular route to the Gilf...

Garth Hill
 

thanks - in the meantime I found it on the 1942 US Army Map too but no infos in the net at all.


yes, Tourist Police was really very exceptionnel this time :thumbdown:
have you seen the accident and their machine guns?
just what one is looking for in the desert...

http://www.flickr.com/photos/7266438...in/photostream

Out of curiosity, how much time was wasted getting their car upright... ?

Regarding Garth Hill landing ground, I would be surprised if this name and the fact that the residence of Hubert Penderel (RAF officer, travel companion of Almasy and Bagnold) was in Garth, Pontardawe, Wales was pure coincidence...

wasted time....
 

no problem - our crew was very experienced!

- we lost much more time waiting for the officer and the Tourist Police Escort in
Bahariya and Dakhla,

- for a spare part for TP car no1 with new drivers/mecanos to
bring it to us into the Great Sandsea!

- and waiting for car no2 after the accident, car no1 was driven back to Bahariya

on the 6th day we arrived finally in the north of Gilf Kebir...

bye
Ursula

Garth Hill Western Desert Egypt
 

hi
in April I made another picture of the name of this landing ground
in the Western Desert

it is clearly readable " G HILL "
http://up.picr.de/10850407uu.jpg

Ursula

Andrasz,
Could I ask whether the US Army maps quote the Landing Ground No. (for example, LG.248) or a map reference for Garth Hill. I am trying to establish it's location with regard to some pre war RAF records.
Thank you, Tony

Ursula
Question- sorry to jump in here
This is the oldest representation of a Figure-four dead fall rap I have seen.
Have you any indication of the age of the markings?

Tony,

All the Landing Grounds are marked with blue crosses, and in SW Egypt all are named - e.g. Garth Hill, which clearly refers to the landing ground itself, not any topographical feature. The arrangement of the landing grounds clearly indicate that they were marked out in late 1932, when Penderel flew a number of reconnaissance missions across the Glf and down to Uweinat/Kissu (to support the Bagnold expedition).

In S.E. Libya some of the landing grounds are marked LG.nn, corresponding to the old Italian "Campo di Fortuna" numberings, going from 1-10 along the Gialo-Kufra-Uweinat route, while some others (e.g. "Kendall's", "Lazarus") clearly correspond to LRDG activities.

Sorry, but that is a giraffe, even if a rather crude and partially eroded one. Can be anything from mid-Holocene to early historic, but the engravings in the Dakhla vicinity (as this one) are generally considered to be from late prehistory (4000-2000B.C.)

engraving of a Giraffe
 

hi Bertrand - hi Andras
this Giraffe "lives" in the northern part of Gilf Kebir not near Dakhla.
I wonder if you can see also some kind of saddle on its back?
Ursula

PS what is a "Figure-four dead fall rap" ???

oops lost a 't'
It's a figure of 4 Trap- sorry can't type!
Dead fall- a stone is held up by one or more sticks- animal dislodges stick/s and gets whacked on the head etc by the stone usually meeting its maker!
Also known as the Paiute Trap
No artifacts? darn!

Hi Ursula,

I mixed it up with a very similar one near DWM.

I think what you see on the back is some other unrelated animal figure, either over or under, but it is not very clear.

What a fascinating thread. Thank you for posting.

Andy

Sadly this is like most of the threads we used to have here, before the spring :stormy:...

Egypt - Cleft Hill Airstrip Western Desert
 

Tarek showed us another landing ground in the Western Desert not far from Garth Hill

Cleft Hill on Google
http://up.picr.de/19719641tz.jpg

I was very surprised about the number of large single tracks, asking myself from
what kind of vehicle they could be.
Any idea?


Ursula

Airport Cleft Hill Western Desert
 

to compare our small Toyota tracks from left to right
http://up.picr.de/19710240qp.jpg

single large tracks
http://up.picr.de/19710241gt.jpg

Ursula, just guess. Maybe caravan tracks?

Thomas

Cleft Hill Garth Hill airport Western Desert
 

Hi Thomas –
thats exactly what I was thinking too before I saw the straight dynamic
semicircular tracks on Google http://up.picr.de/19719641tz.jpg

usually camel tracks look more zigzaged – snaked - meandrered like
http://up.picr.de/19745494gp.jpg
http://up.picr.de/19745495jm.jpg
http://up.picr.de/19745496ss.jpg

or maybe from some speedy drunken camels full of aviation benzine beer ???

Really bizarre, no idea.

We already had a lengthy discussion with Tarek on another forum re camel tracks, petrol and supplies for these emergency fields were flown in, there is zero evidence to suggest that camels would have been used for any logistics support.

Could the single tracks be the nose or tail wheel of an aircraft? In a tight turn that single wheel might dig in more than the others.

Definitely not tailwheel (all aircraft in use at the time were tail-draggers), track much too wide. The only thing I can possibly think of is perhaps a shallow ditch excavated by prop-wash once the aircraft were taxiing, but the edges appear too abrupt for that, and there are stones on the ground which are much too heavy to de dislodged by prop-wash.

A complication with identifying old tracks is that their form will change over decades. Once a track is introduced it changes the near-surface friction velocity by altering the roughness and that, in turn, changes the turbulence profile and deflation capability near the tracks. As a result the same background wind can become more erosive in the vicinity of the newly introduced track compared with the surronds and, as a result, fine sediment is more easily transported from the track and track edges. Track form therefore changes - possibly widening, possibly also creating deposition downwind of the tracks in the same way that nebkha dunes form near small vegetation features. Simply put, I doubt the tracks originally looked like they do now.

Agreed, but on the photos larger stones are clearly pushed aside forming a low rim along the track edges (2nd photo, track at upper right). Cannot see any way wind can do that.

Also for aircraft of the times, most weight was on main wheels not on tail wheel, so plane tracks should be double or triple (tail wheel would have been just a few inches wide). The stones piled to the side argue against the prop-wash theory too.

:confused:

Cleft Hill LRDG airstrip Egypt Western Desert
 

Looking at my old pics…

https://up.picr.de/36369138ja.jpg

Did anyone come up with a logical explanation of the origin of the elliptical tracks?

Cleft Hill LRDG airstrip Egypt Western Desert
 

could this picture help ?

https://up.picr.de/36419196hc.jpg

or the sat map ?

https://up.picr.de/36419238hk.jpg

the tracks are really mysterious !

https://up.picr.de/36420129xk.jpg

https://up.picr.de/36456788ud.jpg

Egypt - airfields from WWII
 

Maybe you like my album "Airfields, Wrecks and Jerrycans"

https://www.flickr.com/photos/182588...57710065267072

Has anyone ever crossposted this thread to an aviation forum or the like? I mean no disrespect, but I think guesswork in this forum won't lead anywhere.

@Herr_Bünzli
I know there are many WWII aviation historians lurking on this forum, they are as baffled as anyone else. The tracks are unlike anything one would expect to have been made by aircraft of the day, see discussion above.

I have seen high flotation,wide wheelbase,geophysical survey vehicles operating in Abu dhabi and Oman.Could it be this or,similar.They usually travel in a series of parallel straight lines so these should also be able to be seen.The circles may be corraling at the end of the day!

The source of the mystery is that the tracks are quite clearly single, unlike anything one would expect from multi-wheeled craft.

Interesting thread guys.
Any updates?
Or will it all be lost to history?

There are two images among the Arkwright photographs that might give a clue. They show a Thornycroft lorry dragging something on a long rope in the sand. There is no caption to provide any explanation for the purpose of the exercise, but that would leave a track very similar to the ones being contemplated:


https://fjexpeditions.com/desert/his...ht/FGBA_45.jpg


https://fjexpeditions.com/desert/his...ht/FGBA_44.jpg

Flying over Zerzura
 

A plug for mate of mine. I hope no one minds.

Flying over Zerzura

https://www.amazon.it/Flying-Zerzura.../dp/8888180257

Mystery solved !
 

Watching the original footage of the Bagnold expeditions on youtube it became clear that these marks were left by the old tail-dragger Vickers Victorias of RAF 216 sqn. Unlike later aircraft with a tail wheel, they only had a tail skid which made a deep trough in the soft terrain, but the wheels with the rubber tires did not sink in. This explains the single tracks. The still from the video illustrates it nicely:


https://www.fjexpeditions.com/expedi...s_victoria.jpg

Close but no cigar....

Certainly worth an honourable mention... :)

Now that we know what made them, it is actually possible to see the tracks made by the main wheels on either side of the deeper tail skid mark on this photo of Ursula:

I keep having to remind myself how long those single tracks have been there. Seven decades or so and counting - with plenty of wind energy to move sediment around multiple times a month. Think of all the tracks we've driven out in the Sahara and Libyan desert over the years.

These are the tracks of Prince Kemal el Din's Citroens from 1926 at Uweinat (taken in 2015):


https://fjexpeditions.com/expedition...ov17/P2970.jpg