XJ Photo-Op Riding Challenge: Military Relics

I like to see some one pose with the "Mighty Mo"

 

Ask the port of Long Beach.

I could have sworn I saw a Modern Marvels episode on that, but I'm not entirely certain. Looking through the episode list, it might have been the one labeled "Super Ships".

I did find this, though:

Shipping Cranes

That would be the Enterprise.

Please do. Your bike is in much better shape than mine. Question is, how are you going to get the bike and the entire ship in frame?

Next thing you need to do is actually go through the Midway. If you want to see everything, including the "island" tour, plan on at least four hours. Go a few blocks down the street to the Maritime Museum for an added bonus -- two submarines, and two boats that have been paid visits by Mike Rowe -- the steamer yacht Medea and the Star of India.

 

Razz,

Yep, packed and moved everything, looks like I'm here to stay. No more Houston Summers but apparently (so the locals say) no more year round riding. I will try my best though, I can handle a pretty cool day as long as there's no ice or snow.

 

a pair from the local airport
https://drive.google.com/folderview?id= ... sp=sharing

 

Pics of the day from San Diego's waterfront:

Star of India



H.M.S. Surprise - from the Russell Crowe movie: Master & Commander - an added bonus in background: A Russian WW II Sub







Your lucky day - the aircraft carrier USS Ronald Reagan (CVN-76) docked at North Island Air Station on Coronado Island across the bay from San Diego



USS Midway (CVN-41)










Last night's sunset on the Pacific: almost makes you want to take a ride on your scooter to the West Coast

 

Watch your head when you go in that Russian sub.

 

I know...I have been in it on a prior visit.....I believe they were all midgets...

 

By the way your bike looks great Five!

 

Hey, Five. The sunsets on Lake Erie are awesome, too. If I wasn't so technologically handicapped (just plain stupid), I'd post pics. Hell, I can't even text.

 

This monster came rolling in to my store today.

 

Now that's a "Grocery Getter" must get at least 4-5 M.P.G. !!

 

Funny you said this,,, he was stranded here for an hour... out of fuel! Road side assistance was kinda out of the question. So his brother showed up in a equally impressive fuel truck.

 

Here are a couple of picks from the american legion post 282.

 

Nice XJrider

 

Hey, is that in La Mesa ???? That is very near my house....

 

Here are a few new ones. I know it's not an XJ but it still works. This was in Keshena, about 60 miles from home.





And since Google Auto Awesomed this for me I thought I'd share.

 

Here's my XJ550 next to a' Pill Box'. At the beginning of WWII invasion seemed a real possibility and thousands of these were built ready for our machine gunners to repel old Adolf and his gang.
This one is on our South East coast.

And without the bike and bollards....

 

I used to live in Guildford, Surrey and rode around the south a lot, care to elaborate where that Pill Box is ? I'm just curious is all

 

That one is at Pegwell Bay. Its on the road between Ramsgate and Sandwich. It had been quite well hidden for many years until the area around it was developed into a wild life sanctuary.

 

This monster was right around the corner from my house.

 

You guys definitely "have the bit" on this one; good stuff! (Is that a British front fender on the Seca? It sure ain't stock and looks a lot like my Norton.) Pic 2 is great! Love the juxtaposition.

Looks like I may actually get some decent weather AND free time this weekend so I can get my own contributions in. I know where there's an F4 Phantom on a pole.

 

I don't know what that fender is from, PO didn't give a whole lot of info when I bought the bike. I've had her for two years now, came with 19,000 miles & I about t0 roll over 38,000.

 

I know it does not really count as there is no motorcycle in the pictures, but I wanted to share some pictures of the events te commemorate that operation Markert Garden took place 70 years ago.
The route taken then goes within 2 km of were I live and within 500 m of where I work.
So I was virtually in the middle of it.
There were several parades of military vehicles along the original route.


And there was a WW2 camp recreated as a base for these vehicles.




BTW Operation Market Garden was an attempt to conquer a bridge across the Rhine and invade Nazi Germany.
If succesfull this may have ended the war in Europe in 1944, but it proved "a bridge to far."

 

It was an ill-fated attempt to take a series of bridges in a lightning advance to cross the Rhine. They got stopped at the last bridge, and the British paratroopers holding it took a real beating.

It's a classic example of "no good plan survives contact with the enemy."

 

The combat Engineer Tractor is not behind the silver car, it has been driven through it. The other one is a Chieftain tank.


Just a few miles from this spot is Sulgrave Manor, the home of the ancestors of a certain Mr. Washington. This spot is about 30 miles from my house.


This memorial stands on the edge of what was the Steeple Morden fighter base. From the airfield flew P-47 Thunderbolts and P-51 Mustangs. Here was based the 355th Fighter Group.


Apparently this is a P51 prop and spinner.


There's some perimeter track and a few buildings, but little else. From the map of the airfield on the plinth (to the left of the memorial, here) it covered the ploughed (brown) field that you can see here. This is about 40 miles East of my place. For more info: http://www.roll-of-honour.com/Cambridgeshire/SteepleMorden355thFighterGroup.html

There are lots of gate guardians on military bases around here, but due to recent events they will be a bit wary of photographers for the time being. Somebody requested that I stopped talking about it and started providing photos. Fair enough! Though when I made my previous post I was without a running bike.

 

GOOD STUFF! And with your XJ no less!

That is most certainly the tippy-nose, spinner and propeller from a P-51.

Were it not for the 355th and the rest of the 8th AF, I wouldn't be here. My dad was a crewman in a Sherman tank, shortly post D-Day. Close air support saved him on more than one occasion.

The 355th is still active; currently based at Davis-Monthan AFB in Tuscon, AZ flying the A-10 Thunderbolt II.

As for the site, you can almost see the ghosts even in your pictures. The field itself holds a greater place in history than any monument can ever portray.

 

I went to just the right airfield, then. Excellent. Here are a couple more, this time very local to me.


This pillbox was built in Wolverton to protect the railway works across the road (right) The loopholes have been glazed and the pillbox is now a shrine; the wall surrounds the garden of a Catholic church.


There's another pillbox in this corner of the garden; this one is now a garden shed. All the loopholes including the ones facing the main road have been filled in. This is about seven miles from my house.


This is at the back of Bletchley Park, and it was this entrance that the dispatch riders used during World War 2.


This was the sentry post. It must have been a cold duty in the winter. This is a mighty three miles from home.

That's all for now.

 

A nice little ride over to Gettysburg PA today..

 

Dammit. Between the airfields, the actual Bletchley Park back gate (!) and a Gettysburg battlefield site with cannon you guys have raised the bar yet again.

I finally dug the pics out of my camera, and have but the following so far, pale by comparison:



VietNam-era M48




Another M48, this one apparently has a prototype turret, being fitted with a missile launcher rather than a conventional gun.

 

Figured I'd get the ball rolling for summer 2015

Took a trip north to mount forest today, wish I took a picture of the town sign, their motto is "High, Happy, Healthy" haha

 

Glad I saw this thread today. Took the bike out and snapped a shot on the way to my in-laws. I'm told this gun is the only one with white wall tires.

 

@ bigfitz52: "Dammit. Between the airfields, the actual Bletchley Park back gate (!) and a Gettysburg battlefield site with cannon you guys have raised the bar yet again."
Yes, but for ourselves too. (Doh!)


All I can come up with today is this unusual pillbox, at Hinton-in-the-hedges airfield in South Northamptonshire. I was led there by Derek, on his Triumph 3TA. Derek is my local aviation expert and knows which airfields are friendly to visitors. Flying, gliding, and skydiving all go on there.



It's a fairly standard pillbox, except for the brick built observation post on the top, which seems contemporary with the pillbox. I'm told (the Internet sez) that in the event of invasion the pillboxes were there to make life difficult for German paratroopers dropping in to secure the airfield; the pillboxes were set so that they could fire into the airfield. I had my back to the airfield when I took this one.



My back was towards the access road, here, and there are no loopholes this side. You can see another WW2 building on the left in the middle distance. This airfield was a Bomber command Operational Training Unit.



We also found this at the airfield, though we were not allowed near it on the bikes. Derek tells me that this is an Antonov An-2, the largest single engined biplane ever made. It is designed for rough service using 'unimproved' airfields. It certainly seems to be very strongly made. Some An-2s have been used in combat, so it just squeezes in here.

 

Ok, here's a new one. And a bump for the thread. This was in Sherwood WI. Sorry about the back lighting. Damn sun!

 

biggs500, often you can shade the lens with your fingers. Bring the fingers just into frame, then move them back up a bit. In this case, you might have been able to stand in the shadow of the tree on the left then recomposed the shot and perhaps zoomed the lens a bit.
What plane is it? My mate Derek (above) would know instantly, but unless it's something obvious like a Harrier or a Chinook, I've no idea.

 

I think it's a P 80 Shooting Star.

 

Yep. Lockheed P-80

 

Can a Canadian play?

 

Here's is another.

 

lostboy, they let us English types play, so you should be alright. I was only just thinking yesterday that it about time I put a few more shots in this thread, so here's a couple of places.


This is Mursley water tower, in Buckinghamshire. It was the scene of one of the many aircraft training accidents that happened in WW2. A plane hit the 1938 tower when returning to Little Horwood airfield, a few miles across the fields. The tower suffered not much more than cosmetic damage.


The out of focus cross wedged into the fence was left over from a previous year's Remembrance Sunday, held each year on the Sunday nearest 11th November. There is a now faded red poppy in the centre of the cross. Remembrance Sunday has been held here since the end of WW1, in memory of the fallen.


An English Electric Thunderbird Missile, at what used to be the Westcott Rocket Propulsion Establishment in Buckinghamshire. I could hear them testing rocket motors as a child, from seven miles away where we lived in Winslow.


This was RAF Westcott during WW2, another Operational Training Unit like Little Horwood, above.

 

They parked that a bit far from the berth.

 

Must have been a very high tide...
Anyhow, here are a few photos from the old RAF Podington airfield, which was used by the USAAF in WW2.


The building on the right was the control tower. It's now a private house. A small public road goes into the airfield site and stops at the front door of the house.


There are a lot of old airfield buildings still in use. This is just one of the Nissen huts I saw.


This monument is to the 92nd Bombardment Group. The road in the background is the one that leads up to the old control tower.


A detail of the above photo.

 

Still at Podington, this is the monument from the other side. You can just see my bike to the left of the flag pole, behind the fence. I didn't have to wait long for an American vehicle to go by, as Santa Pod Raceway is on the old airfield and one of their drag racing events was finishing.

 

That's interesting, and something I didn't know much about.
https://www.google.ie/search?q=Sherman+Firefly

 

Don't quite have my xj750 going yet, but I do have my GS550ES going, so I could not resist... Cobra AH-1?

Just outside Tucson at a VFW

Seems kinda tame as I have Apaches circling my house several times a week, but I would still hate to have one chasing me if I were on my bike

 

Glad to see this tread with life still in it, thanks skiprrdog. Come on guys It is spring here in the northern hemisphere. Lets get the photos rolling in again.

 

It looks like it is a good day for a ride. I think I will try to get to my VFW and get a picture.

 

Stopped by my VFW post, but there really wasn't anything good for a picture, so I went to the local American Legion. Here is the tank outside their building.

 

This is not with any of my XJ's but with my son's 450 Nighthawk from a few years back.

I know I'm cheating, it's part of a museum.