Faversham Industry Target

Battle of Britain "Wings of Victory"
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stickman
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Joined: 05 Nov 2004, 13:17
Location: Oahu, Hawai'i

Faversham Industry Target

Post by stickman »

Faversham "Industry"

This last year I rebuilt the Portsmouth Naval Base, Purfleet Refinery, Canterbury Industry, and Maidstone Industry targets more realistically.
I also reorganized Balloon Command more realistically, and placed better (repaired) the "potential" airfield craters on all airfields, that got offset during v2.11 airfield changes.

This is what I do with my time off.
Some folks might think I am nuts and wasting my time, but I have had a passion for history all my life, and the need to pursue the Truth.

Faversham Target I saved for last to make, as per the "Support Industry" Targets in Kent, that I long wanted to rebuild to reflect better what they were, 1940.
Saved for last because I was long unable to find a Target that was there in 1940 worth the fuel and ordnance for the LuftWaffe to bomb it.
I asked on this General Forum for some research help, and Shadow Shooter offered a good suggestion. Which I took under advisement. Thank you, SS.

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Faversham's main claim to fame as to industry, was their Gunpowder Mills, and later Explosives Factories.
Faversham gunpowder works history, briefly, with some things I pulled up from the web:

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Centre of the nation's explosive’s industry for 400 years, The first Faversham Mill being built circa 1560.
The British government was buying its supplies from the private sector, but the quality was often poor, and in 1759 it decided it needed its own plant.
Rather than build a new one, it nationalised the Home Works, upgrading all the machinery.
From this phase dates the Chart Gunpowder Mill, the oldest of its kind in the world.

In the 1680s a second factory was started by Huguenot asylum-seekers alongside another stream about two kilometres northwest of the town.
It had its own access to the sea via Oare Creek and so became known as the Oare Works.
It became a leading supplier to the British East India Company and it could be argued that without its product
English would not have become the lingua franca of India, Pakistan and Bangladesh.

The third and last gunpowder factory to open was the Marsh Works, built by the British government one km north and by north west of the town to augment output at its Home Works.
It opened in 1787. It also had access to the sea via Oare Creek.

When the First World War started in 1914, the factories were requisitioned by the Admiralty and armed guards were mounted.
Production facilities were further expanded and many new staff recruited from Faversham and elsewhere in Kent.

In 1916 at Uplees, near Faversham, when a store of 200 tons of Trinitrotoluene (TNT) was detonated following some empty sacks catching fire.
As it was a Sunday, no women were at work. There were 115 deaths of men and boys, including all the Works Fire Brigade, in the explosion and in subsequent sympathetic detonations.
The bodies of seven victims were never found; 108 corpses were buried in a mass grave at Faversham Cemetery on 6 April.

All three gunpowder factories shut down in 1934.
Imperial Chemical Industries (ICI), then the owners, sensed that war might break out with Germany,
and realised that Faversham would then become vulnerable to air attack or possibly invasion.
They transferred production, together with key staff and machinery, to Ardeer in Ayrshire, Scotland.
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Tho I don't know what the 1940 Germans knew about the Explosives Factories here, I had to find out what was going on here.

I found this map. I am already familiar with this area, peeking my spying eyes upon it. Nice to have an old map that pin points & names things.
Pink dot is Faversham town.
Red dot is Oare village.
Blue outline is where the Faversham Shipyard was, construting small coastal vessels.
Green outline is where the Faversham Shipyard will be placed, due to insufficient BoBII bobworld terrain. As with all creatures in the world, I must adapt to the world I am given, or die.

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Companion map to the above map is this one which details The Storage Area for all these milled gun powders and later such better refined Explosives.
CPC1 built 1854
CPC2 built 1905
CPC3 built 1913-1914
CPC4 built 1915
ELC no info given.

Red dots = cordite
Green dot = gun cotton
Pink dot = nitroglycerin
Blue dot = detonators

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In Google Earth today. you can still see the scars where all these explosive storage bunkers were.
Up on the Thames River at All Hallows, there is another explosive storage bunkers site just like this.
Level Bombing these little ammo bunkers is hard to do. Might hit a few of them with a lucky hit, here and there.
There are better and easier Targets to destroy.
A 1940s photo:

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OK... This place was Strategic. But it was no longer a Strategic Target in 1940. Unless they still stored cordite there at Uplees.
So I discounted these Explosive Factories as righteous Targets, unless the Luftwaffe Intelligence, thought they were still ative.
I am assuming that some cordite may have been still stored at Uplees, then.

"HAIR Hitler, I do not think that we need to bomb Fallujah anymore. ISIL abandoned it last year."
"Well, bomb the ---- out of it, anyway, so that they don't come back!" HAIR Hitler sniffs.
"OK, Sir. We will bomb all real threats and targets of Opportunity in the area."

So... I go looking for another Target in said area..

I asked on the General Forum "What the hell is worth bombing in Faversham, except the abandoned Explosive Factories?"

Shadow Shooter, sent me a Private Message suggesting the Faversham Shipyard as Target. Attached a good photo of it. Thank You, sir!

I looked for this on Google Earth to see where it was 1940. North end of Faversham on north bank of Faversham Creek. Obviously at low tide, this time.

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Shadow Shooter's photo. Which looks like during high tide:

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How I built it given the best terrain for it in the area. Based upon the two photos shown here of it.

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Here is an in game pic showing the old Faversham Industry with 6 huge warehouses, and the new Faversham Shipyard where I built it.
Before I replaced the old warehouses with a new GRPBIN file of shipyard objects.
The yellow circle denotes the place where it should be, but the given terrain does not allow me to build it there, so I moved it downstrean on Faversham Creek to a suitable spot.

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In this Target there are 16 target elements. It is not a very big shipyard.
Yellow dots denote the target elements.
Red dot is another one, what I call "target central". This is where the Campaign icon will be placed. Also where the level bombers will try to bomb.

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Camroux II 1934:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1wwJq4gwkiM

Lido 1926:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9RaU28mAXko

Maimunah 1925:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tGqX4S1yLmc

WWII Output from the yard included two coasters, two "VIC" type Clyde puffers, a submarine and many barges for both Admiralty and Thames use.
In addition, two aircraft transport ships and two other coasters (initially beginning life as aircraft carriers).

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ShadowShooter
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Re: Faversham Industry Target

Post by ShadowShooter »

Nice work, stickman. :) Good to see it constructed so soon. I don't think the location move makes too much difference. But it was amazing how they managed at the actual site with side-ways launches of their larger ships in such a very narrow creek. Must have been a bit of a tsunami for the other bank! I knew those lovely white oil tanks would make an attractive target. Like neon signs saying "bomb me!"

PS. There is a 300 yr-old pub close to your new location that you might plonk in there, the "Shipwright's Arms". For centuries offering comforts of alcoholic and other varieties to lonely seamen lost in the Kent marshes. Apparently the food is pretty bad but the beer is very good, if you like English ale.

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I'm no sailor, but I'm guessing this view out front is at low tide:

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stickman
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Joined: 05 Nov 2004, 13:17
Location: Oahu, Hawai'i

Re: Faversham Industry Target

Post by stickman »

Shadow Shooter,
There is a 300 yr-old pub close to your new location that you might plonk in there, the "Shipwright's Arms".
For centuries offering comforts of alcoholic and other varieties to lonely seamen lost in the Kent marshes.
Apparently the food is pretty bad but the beer is very good, if you like English ale.
OK. Your request for said Inn's placement shall be done. I am curious.
Off to find the place and exact location....

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From the establishment's website:

The Shipwright's Arms is well over 300 years old, although it is said that traces of an earlier building date back to the thirteenth century.
Its beginings may be shrouded by the mists of time, but we know that the pub was first licensed in 1738, although it would have functioned as an Inn well before that.

Apart from serving pirates and smugglers, the Inn was a well known place for sailors and fishermen in the Thames estuary to stop and refresh themselves while waiting to go up the Creek to Faversham to unload.
In those days it would also have been quite normal for an Inn serving mariners to provide certain 'feminine comforts' as well!!
At one time the pub was a revenue cutter station, which would not have gone down well with those 'gentlemen of the night' who preferred their illicit activities to go unnoticed.

The pub has always had links to the maritime agencies and the current landlord keeps tradition by acting as a 'reporting member' to the coastguard.

Originally Hollowshore was named 'Holy Shore' by a Viking. (apparently after a real ROUGH crossing of the North Sea? -stickman-)
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The fisherman would be waiting for the high tide to float their boats upstream on Faversham Creek to Faversham town market, which may take 12 hours for the sea to rise.
The old smugglers probably would not wait that long to transfer goods, but then... this place is in the Middle of Nowhere, especially during low tide. Take a break!
Even the the little yellow man of Google Earth has not yet drove down this road.

Google Earth nowadays. Looks like high tide. Quite a busy boat marina here now. Plus what looks like a busy boat repair yard and machine shop and stores buildings. aka Ship Wrights.
A carved out slip that a diesel boat submarine needing emergency repairs could fit into.
Whoever planted that martini glass symbol for a drinking establishment got it wrong.
After looking at many pictures here, I yellow arrow to the Shipwright's Arms location.

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Google Earth 1960. Mid tide?

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Google Earth 1940. Mid tide? The boat repair (ship wright) buildings doing some business.

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You got yer low tide, yer high tide, and yer winter time heavy rain storms which flood the creeks.
Closed on Mondays during winter for general cleanup.
I'm guessing preferred out door foot wear here is rubber boots?

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A cozy intimate looking place.
Behind that snoozing cat, do I see plates and nick-knacks of West Highland White Terrier, aka "Westie' dogs?

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A childhood friend of mine, Kevin Campbell, always had one of them white Westie dogs.
Kind of a symbol of Scotland, I guess, tho I am only a Kennedy-MacKenzie-MacPherson-Grant.

"Mae" Westie. (Mae West?) Last year in the middle of nowhere Montana, USA. Kevin's dog.

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PV
BDG
Posts: 5188
Joined: 13 Nov 2004, 08:21
Location: Lost in the tundra, Canada

Re: Faversham Industry Target

Post by PV »

ShadowShooter wrote: the beer is very good, if you like English ale.
I am cursed with a fondness for good english ale, the
real stuff. Here in the rainforest, the locals all drink
lagers and IPAs, chilled, and horribly bitter. The LCB
has brought in a few good ales in bottles over the
years, but I am just not able to drink enough to
generate the market to motivate them to keep them
importing, and no one else seems to clamour for them.
So, we get the mass market ales in cans, Speckled Hen,
Boddington, and London Pride, the latter being quite good
when bottled, but now cans they all taste like soap.

So I am reduced to HobGoblin, which is OK, but rather
a specialized rich red ale, not a classic, like the Black Sheep
of which I am particularly fond. The local craft brewing
industry continues to try to make ales, but with soft acid
west coast rainwater, and north american hops, they really
don't get it right. And everything is overhopped to conform to
the local trend. I like to imagine if a selection of decent beers
were available here it would educate the locals to prefer
a better product, but somehow it seems that freezing bitter
swill is what they crave, for some reason. I can't fathom it.

I also live in hope of the liquor laws changing so I can just
have stuff imported myself. The local brewing industry has
lobbied for the last century to keep a ban on even shipping
alcohols between provinces, let alone from out of the country.
Small BC wineries that want to sell online are trying to get this
changed, but it's a slow fight.

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