Allied Base in the Amazon

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Misti
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Allied Base in the Amazon

#1

Post by Misti » 23 Sep 2007, 16:48

Just recently I completed a 6000 km road trip from my hometown in São Paulo to the Amazon region of Brazil with a group of 11 other men in six off-road vehicles. One of the objectives of the trip was to visit an abandoned Air Force Base in the state of Amapa, just south of Brazil's border with French Guiana and 18 km west of the Atlantic Ocean (2.077356 degrees north Lat.; 50.857866 degrees west Long.). The Base was under the control of the Allied forces from 1943 to 1945. We understand that this base was used to help supply the North African theater with men and equipment. The base was decommissioned by the Brazilian military some time in the late 1950s.

We had heard that before the Allies left the base of they buried aircraft and other equipment. The question that arose in our minds was why they would go to the effort of burying airplanes. If the airplane was in flying condition, why didn't they fly the aircraft back to the United States? If on the other hand, the aircraft was not in flying order, and repairs were not feasible, why didn't they just leave the aircraft where it stood? Our objective was to find out if in fact the rumor that the aircraft had been buried was true, and if so, try to find out why this had happened.

We were able to locate what remained of the base by speaking to people in the nearby village. They not only told us where the Air Force Base was located but also confirmed that many years before airplanes jeeps and other equipment, which had been buried were dug up; the aluminum was sold off as scrap, and whatever else was still functional, was taken by the Village people. When we located the base we found large holes dug in the terrain around the airfield and piles of metal scrap dumped around the holes. Most of the material that we found had been parts of vehicles, but we did find pieces that were clearly identifiable as being aircraft components. What really surprised us was that we found a blimp docking tower still standing out in a field.

With the confirmation of the rumors about the buried equipment, and our surprising discovery of the existence of a blimp docking tower, we've decided to dig deeper into history to try to understand why the Allies would have gone to the immense effort of burying airplanes in the Amazon, rather than just letting them deteriorate where they stood. Also, we are curious to understand what the Allies used blimps for in the Amazon.

Can anyone shed light on these questions?

Andreas
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#2

Post by Andreas » 23 Sep 2007, 18:09

The blimps were probably used for anti-submarine patrols.

See e.g. here: http://www.desausa.org/de_photo_library ... judith.htm

All the best

Andreas


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Michael Emrys
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#3

Post by Michael Emrys » 23 Sep 2007, 19:16

Andreas is certainly correct on this point. Blimps were used extensively in the tropics/Carribean area as anti-submarine patrol craft. They were very effective in that role.

As to why air force materiél was buried on-site, I think the reasoning (if that is what it can be called) was that that was the most economical way of disposing of it. Hauling it back to the States would cost money which had not be budgeted for that purpose. Although it could have been sold for surplus or scrap back in the USA, I'm not sure that the Government could have recovered the cost of transporting it that way. Mostly, Americans who were overseas by the end of the war just wanted to wrap it up and go home.

Michael

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Penn44
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#4

Post by Penn44 » 23 Sep 2007, 20:20

Governments will go with the most economical means of disposing unwanted military equipment. After WWII, the US disposed of WWII-era tanks by dumping them in the ocean. When the US closed the horse cavalry school at Fort Riley, Kansas in the 1940s, the US Army buried enormous amounts of army riding gear (saddles, harnesses, etc.). During the US withdrawal from Vietnam, we buried unwanted equipment and weapons there. In the late 1980s, the US dumped outdated M-60 series tanks in the ocean. In the 1990s, the German government reportedly disposed of unwanted East German T-72 tanks instead of scrapping them because the cost of scrapping a tank was $36,000 each.

Penn44

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phylo_roadking
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#5

Post by phylo_roadking » 24 Sep 2007, 19:00

Many wartime aircraft had very short serevice lives in the sense of flying hours, and very short serivce intervals, because they were high-perfromance aircraft built to a minimum budget. A fighter or medium bomber aircraft flown by stages back to the USA from the Amazon would have needed either a COMPLETE rebuild by the time they arrived in US airspace....or scrapping altogether.

During the war, RAF aircraft that were freighted by sea to East Africa and assembled there, then flown via the Tokaridi Air Route to the Canal Zone - needed COMPLETE servicing by the time they arrived, at the end of ONE long staged flight!

Just after the war, the Royal Australian Navy disposed of unwanted aircraft that had been assembled for Tiger Force, many of them brand-new...by simply pushing them off the back of their carriers as they entered Sydney Bay!!! Forgotten about for decades, they are now being eagerly sought by divers....

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Michael Emrys
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#6

Post by Michael Emrys » 24 Sep 2007, 19:27

phylo_roadking wrote:During the war, RAF aircraft that were freighted by sea to East Africa and assembled there, then flown via the Tokaridi Air Route to the Canal Zone...
You do mean West Africa, don't you? Tokaradi is in present day Ghana.

Michael

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phylo_roadking
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#7

Post by phylo_roadking » 25 Sep 2007, 02:00

Yep, compass points never were my strong point LMAO

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Michael Emrys
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#8

Post by Michael Emrys » 25 Sep 2007, 11:26

phylo_roadking wrote:Yep, compass points never were my strong point LMAO
Not to hound you. I notice this seems to be a problem even with professional historians. Time and time again I notice that they get cardinal points confused. It even seems to be obligatory in books about Normandy!

:lol:

Michael

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Andy H
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#9

Post by Andy H » 25 Sep 2007, 13:53

Even when I was on the Falklands back in 86/87, there was military stores being dumped because the cost of sending them back to the UK was so expensive. Some was sold to locals but after that it was buried or destroyed.

Regards

Andy H

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Graham Clayton
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#10

Post by Graham Clayton » 21 Sep 2014, 07:45

Andreas wrote:The blimps were probably used for anti-submarine patrols.
Andreas
Andreas,

Here is an excellent webpage on the Amapa base, with some photos of the blimps:

http://www.sixtant.net/2011/artigos.php ... -naf-amapa
"Air superiority is a condition for all operations, at sea, in land, and in the air." - Air Marshal Arthur Tedder.

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