[Nick Balmer]

Hello Les,

Like you I to work in construction, and consequently am particularly interested in plant used during the war.

My particular interest is in airfield plant used not just by the military but also companies like Kier, Fitzpatrick and Laing who built over 300 bases in Britain in a very short period of time.

Do you know of any drawings for CAT8's or D6's, as whilst I have a lot of photos, I have been unable to find even outline CAT drawings from the 1940's, despite looking out for them over many years.

You are quite probably correct in assuming that the tracked machine coming out of the landing craft is the bed of a trencher.

However I wonder if it is a not a Koering or possibly Barber Greene concrete paving machine used to lay airfield pavements (runways for non technically minded.)

I am not sure that I have spelt "Koering" correctly.

The machine has no cleats on the tracks. I think that the "mouth" type frame between the tracks was the guiding plates that used to funnel the sand, and aggregate (and possibly cement) into the hopper where water was added.

The hopper, mixer drum, is probably still in the LCT on a trailer.

The mixed concrete came out the other end of the machine and was spread into the shutters for screeding off.

The reason I think it is a Koering, is because I used to work for Fitzpatrick & Son, who were airfield contractors during World War II. In our offices in the 1980' there were a number of photographs of these machines working on the M1 in the 1960's.

Apparently during World War II a lot of American plant was handed out to British contractors in order to speed up the laying of concrete all weather runways. After the war this remained in the contractors hands, and was often relegated to a remote part of the plant yard where it rusted for many years.

Fitzpatrick won the contract to concrete pave the stretch of the M1 from Scratchwood to Hemel Hempsted, in the 1960's where these machines were used again.

Because concrete has to be laid within about 40 minutes from the point that water is added, in order to be used in runways, and static mixing plant was very slow and inefficient in those days, they arrived at a system whereby concrete mixes were centrally dry batched, and trucked to the laying point, where the water was added, and the concrete was mixed right next to the point of use.

Any of you who have ever screened wet concrete within 10 minutes of its mixing will tell you that it is much easier to place, than concrete that has been in a ready mixed truck to 35 minutes before being screeded.

Sometimes the water was trucked to the mobile batcher, at other times long lengths of pipe was laid on the ground, which was added to as the mixer moved to the next bay.

Do you have a picture of one of these mobile batchers?

Regards

Nick Balmer