Chindit 2 General maps, including Strongholds and Landing Grounds.

Here are maps showing the Mu Valley railway line between Mogaung and Namma.

 

Here are various "mouth agape" sections of the Namyin (Mohnyin) Chaung. The position of the Blackpool block is marked with a blue star.

 

Nice research... my thoughts were that the large white patches were clouds and the "lower" section was the original paddy fields, with the changes in approximate positions of the "left" river being from water movements from 70 years ago to the "present"...

 

Been off playing... so if you take it that the B&W image from Tony Redding's published work was correctly identified in his research records, we can use that with one of my present day images and try and approximate maximum movements and the way the rivers have cut into the surrounding areas over the last 70 years... the shapes are reasonably close... then if you look at my "sine wave" for the area of paddy and forest... that is also fairly close... the ridges beyond this line in both images are roughly present... then discount the red-x'd clouds, as I think they are... I have no way of knowing for sure... I also have about a dozen differing hand-drawn maps of the area... I'll post my next playing images next...

 

And if the "Smiley" highlighting that "M" shaped fold in the river doesn't satisfy everyone that this IS an image of Clydeside or Blackpool I'm not sure what will...

 

Hebridean Chindit, I STAND CORRECTED! Humble apologies...I'd been rushing to post something in the wee hours this morning, cuz I needed sleep, and this afternoon I saw the folly of my ways. I do now see that the 1944 image was of the Blackpool area, as you informed us, but the limits of the photo recon shot were different from your modern satellite image. Some of the drainage has changed considerably since the war, too (as is typical...some man-made, some natural).

Thanks for identifying the specific 681 Sqn photo recon op, High Wood.

I also understand, HC, that the wartime image needed to be rotated 180 degrees from its original displayed position (text at the bottom) to a better position for comparing to satellite imagery (text at the top).

Good job of analysis, lads. [EDIT: And, yes, those must be clouds in the '44 image, not clearings.]

 

Well done H.C., I clearly cannot tell the difference between clouds and clearings.

 

Joni Mitchell, that well-known photo interpreter on guitar, once sang (about her analytical work with imagery), "I've looked at clouds from both sides now. From up and down, and still somehow it's cloud's illusion I recall. I really don't know clouds at all."

 

52 year old song for a 75 year old conundrum...
One of those quirky issues where the song (Both Sides Now) was a bigger hit for others (1st released in '67 by Judy Collins, iirc; lots of covers) and her 2nd LP was named "Clouds" in '69 by her record company to cash in on it, I guess...Joni's been unwell for some years, sadly, and will prob never fully recover... my fave version of her song Blue is by Sarah McLachlan... thrown away as an extra on some copies of Fumbling Towards Ectasy... hidden on the end, after a "hidden" reprise...
Anyway... it's more to do with Rivers here, by the same Lady...


Also thought about using a notable Rolling Stones song in reply, but letting my Prog flag fly...


Musical interlude over and heading back into my niche corner... on with the good work, Gents...

 

Could you three get your heads out of the clouds and keep adding to this excellent thread please.

 

They were clouds in my coffee, clouds in my coffee. And, Steve, you're so vain. You probably think this thread is about you, don't you? Don't you? [By the way, trivia lovers, that's Mick Jagger background singing on the "Don't you? Don't you?" bits of the Carly Simon song. I'd thought this was the case, and then I read it on the Internet...so it must be true. Go to the 6:18 mark for PROOF: .]

 

This is relevant to this thread I guess. Matt Poole

https://www.ww2talk.com/index.php?attachments/fullscreen-capture-112025-75108-pm-jpg.399915/

 

Not a map, but some particularly fine descriptive writing about life at Aberdeen from Wing Commander W. W. Russell, an RAF Public Relations man, who flew in to spend a day there. Extracts (starting page 102) from a much longer piece in his book Forgotten Skies, which can be downloaded in full from the Internet Archive:

[John Jefferies] told us that, although naturally only a very few people knew about it, we had in the previous few days opened up another strip inside Burma called Aberdeen, and would we like to go there as Broadway was getting a bit vieux jeu these days. Besides, the Japs knew all about Broadway and were paying it regular visits, whereas, with their odd obtuseness in matters of this kind, they had not yet tumbled to Aberdeen, and it might be quieter as well as more interesting. This was a great stroke of luck for Steve and me, so it was agreed that we should leave at four the next morning with an American crew for Aberdeen, spend the day there, or longer if we wished, and come back with the R.A.F. at dusk after twelve hours on the strip.

We spent an uncomfortable night on the floor of a basha hut. At 3.30 we were on the strip in the quiet confusion of this ghostly take-off, among the mules and Ghurkas and West Africans and the gum-chewing, calm American crews. I was assigned to a Dakota and spoke to the radio operator who was sitting on some boxes in the back. It was the ration aircraft.

“Be careful where you’re sitting, buddy,” he said, acidly, as he closed the double doors. “Them’s mortar bombs youse sittin’ on.” Then he went forward and left me in the dark cavern of the curtained aircraft, lying uncomfortably on top of boxes of K rations and mortar bombs

...

After we had landed and a group of Chindits were unloading the ammunition and stores from our Dakota I talked to the American crew. They came from all parts of the States— New Jersey, California, and the south. They had been coming in to this new strip for the last few days and knew the way by heart.

“We always drop mortar bombs on the way back if we see anything that looks like a Jap,” said the captain. This practice had been developed by their squadron, and while it was not, strictly speaking, their job—they had some fun and I suppose did some damage every now and again.

In a few minutes we had to stop gossiping. The Dakotas were empty and they had to start out on the hazardous journey back into India in broad daylight. This was the most dangerous part of the flight. In five minutes the group of troop-carriers had flown behind the big hill which guarded the western entrance to the valley. We were quite alone. Our line of retreat had been withdrawn and there were two hundred miles of hostile jungle country between us and the friendly territory of India

...

I looked up and down that little valley to get my bearings. It was quite a broad valley, flanked by hills covered with tall like gums, rising to a thousand feet on each side. To the south-west, at the entrance to this hidden retreat, was a tall massif about three thousand five hundred feet high, a magnificent landmark for the incoming pilots. Through the middle of the valley wound a cosy stream, clear and shallow with sandy banks and a pebble bed and very green patches of tobacco and paddy by its edge. There were two villages, one at each end of that valley, where life seemed to be proceeding peacefully. There was a regular and repeated noise coming from them both—the pounding of the rice by the womenfolk. There was something sinister, I thought, in this noise. The valley was unnervingly quiet and there was this noise, peaceful, but sinister just the same. Through the valley every now and then columns of men with mules wound slowly across the strip and disappeared into the jungle. All round the strip there were gun emplacements, Bofors, and light machine-guns. The men were sitting out on the parapets scanning the skies...

All the time our ears were attuning themselves to the loud, fussy noise of the squadron of light American aircraft which were buzzing in and out of the small neighbouring valley underneath the big mountain. Often they would hop over the intervening hill and land on our big strip bringing wounded Chindits from the columns. These men were laid gently under the wings of a wrecked glider by the side of the strip, where they waited for the evening troop-carrier. The Dakotas would take them to India

...​

As it happened just then there was little doing. The stream flowed calmly, and the villagers looked on curiously at the baby bulldozer which was angrily tearing up a bund and levelling part of the runway. Some of the orange-robed Buddhist priests, shaven and with ugly-looking swords, were walking leisurely through the strip. They had probably seen Jap airfields the day before. They are great walkers. It was all sunny and peaceful but the air was charged with suspense.

I got up and walked off to the stream where I had a date with an English gunner corporal, an excellent man who was in charge of the Bofors guns and was siting some new posts in anticipation of his officer’s arrival. He took a patrol of five men with him and we did a tour of the defences. In one village the corporal showed me a deep, well-built air-raid shelter which the villagers had put up since we had arrived. It was a fine-looking place. At the far end of the village he found an old woman with whom he was friendly. He talked to her in Cockney and the old Burmese crone produced a hatful of eggs. In payment he gave her a handkerchief...​

 

That's brilliant PR. Thanks for posting.

 

The whole book is worth a read but his visit to Aberdeen is fascinating. Was especially struck by his mention of American Dakota crews pitching mortar bombs out of the cargo door on the off-chance of inflicting damage on the ground - as if their job wasn't dangerous enough!

 

I've had a bit of an Aberdeen stronghold rennaissance recently, mostly due to the Indian Archive files that have come to light. It was definitely the lesser-mentioned of the Chindit 2 bases in books etc (other than Fergusson's Wild Green Earth), so building up more of a picture is quite handy. Thanks again.