大象传媒

During the Battle of Britain many people were surprised by the length of time that German fighters were able to stay in the air over Britain, as the size of their fuel tanks should have meant that they would not have had enough fuel to do any more than reach our shores and immediately return home. It was not realised, to begin with, that the Germans were using an externally mounted auxiliary fuel tank which could be jettisoned when empty, allowing the aeroplane to return to the continent on its own fuel tank and freed of the weight of the empty auxiliary tank.

One day my grandfather was walking around the local woods (I am not sure why but it is likely he was hunting grey squirrels [which used to form a usefull supliment to the family's meat ration]) and came accross a somewhat battered metal object shaped like an elongated egg with a pipe protruding from it and fittings for a bracket of some sort. On inspecting the object he noticed that the pipe smelled heavily of some sort of fuel and given that even in its battered state it was obviously aerodynamically shaped, he surmised that it was probably a fuel tank jettisoned from an aeroplane. The bracket indicated it had been externally mounted, suggesting it was an additional fuel tank which had been attached to an aircraft to give it a greater range. This seemed to neatly explain the way the Germans were able to spend more time than would normally be expected in our skies before turning homewards again.
Realising that the responsible thing to do would be to report his find, he took it to the local army headquarters and explained his thoughts about it to the officer (who I believe was a major) who interviewed him. Afterwards, the officer passed on the information and recieved the recognition for the discovery of the auxiliary fuel tank. My grandfather, who had made the discovery and done the thinking on the matter, was given no recognition at all!

Paul Geddes

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