RCAF Station Carberry, Manitoba

[David Dunlop]

Correct assumption, Ewan.

RCAF Station Rivers started out in 1942 as a Navigation School, so the Gun Butt was not a required construction component.


David

[Darrell Zinck]

Originally Posted by David Dunlop

Correct assumption, Ewan.

RCAF Station Rivers started out in 1942 as a Navigation School, so the Gun Butt was not a required construction component.


David

Hi David

RCAF Pennfield Ridge also was built as an Air Nav School (No.2) in 1940 but it has butts:

http://carlykb.com/blog/?tag=pennfield-ridge

As it later became No.34 OTU maybe the butts were built later. More likely, every BACTP airfield included rifle calibre buttstops as part of a common building plan.

Couple of possibilities there. I'm also not sure what the longer lower concrete wall was for.

regards
Darrell

[Marc Montgomery]

I can remember as a kid there was such a wall at St Catharines...my dad said it was to calibrate plane guns.

I remember someone- angrily- saying that they took down the wall later because they wanted to remove the -poisonous- lead from the dirt underneath....but they only found about a small handful of lead and fragments in total

[David Dunlop]

Darrell: Interesting photos from Pennfield. I have never seen that long concrete wall feature before, and have no idea what it's purpose. Be interesting to see what other wartime airfields in Canada had that feature and what training took place at them. Maybe that would show a 'common denominator' and explain it all. RCAF Station Virden, here in Manitoba was a BCATP site for primary flight training and was built as a grass field facility. The only concrete was the ramp area and around the hanger line and it never had a gun butt. I would lean towards them being built on an 'as needed' basis. I will check my Manitoba airfield air photo collection and see what shows up.

Marc: One of the mysteries with these gun butts is how little damage they all show on the face of the concrete. One would expect that with dozens of aircraft having their guns sited in over the years, you would find some form of wear pattern. Wartime .303 ball ammunition has a very heavy jacket on it, compared with the modern military ammunition of today. It would take it's toll on the concrete over time. One would also think the shrapnel created would be a hazard sooner or later. More than one weapons tech probably had bits of jacket whizzing past their heads!


David

[rob love]

Targets were set up in line with the sand which was piled against the butt. You did not shoot at the walls...that would be bad. The cement was only to catch strays.

Records were kept of how many rounds are expended into the sand, and when it reaches a certain point the sand is changed, otherwise you would eventually have ricochets from the bullets in the sand.

[David Dunlop]

Thanks for that, Rob. Makes a lot of sense, and on reflection, I recall seeing a video of a Hurricane somewhere having it's guns sited in. There was a jack stand set up under the rear fuselage to level the plane and I think sand bags up against the wall about six feet or so. And there was some sort of 'paper target' setup. Reminded me a bit at the time of the targets that used to be used in service stations many years ago to aim headlights on vehicles.

The storage sheds in back of the butts probably held all the equipment needed for the siting process.

Have you ever run across those long concrete walls at any of the old bases here on the prairies? The old Gunnery Range at Langruth had a long curved earth berm running from the old admin site by the original gate at the highway, up to the SE Range Control Tower, and that was likely to protect people/vehicles in transit to the tower while the range was active.

David

[rob love]

The berms I am talking about were for small arms and pistols. They usually had a wooden hut that you shot out of. No place for an aircraft. Nowadays you still see the cement berm, but the huts are usually long gone.

You mentioned Virden.....I thought I saw the Berm there. I pass by that old base once and a while to some of the local shooting matches. They just recently tore down the hanger. I'll have a look for the berm next time I am by.

Edited to add: Just had a look on google satellite and sure enough, there is/was the pistol range berm at the Virden site. It shows on the aerial view, but is a pile of rubble on the street view.