Maplin Sands
Notes: This map shows only my estimation of where this flying site was. Could anybody be kind enough to either confirm this or provide a more exact location?
MAPLIN SANDS: Early experimental flight test site
Location: On the eastern edge of Foulness Island where the coast runs NE to SW
NOTES: This site serves well to demonstrate just how remarkably determined the early aviators were to get airborne, if even for a few metres - and the financial cost involved let alone the danger! Mr Robert McFee, (an American incidentally), had become dissatisafied with FAMBRIDGE and decided that MAPLIN SANDS were a far better place to conduct his flying experiments. He’d just about got his aeroplane, (which he designed and built), airborne at FAMBRIDGE after four crashes, and at MAPLIN SANDS fared little better.
ORDERED OFF
After a fortnight of what must have been utter frustration and a further two crashes he was ordered of the sands by the War Office. Foulness Island was then and for a very long time after predominantly a military area for various purposes but generally for making bloody big bangs much beloved by military type people.
On the night of 28th-29th September 1909 in driving rain his aeroplane was taken to Southend. From here it was transported to a London dock for transport to Pau in France where he quite rightly believed a very good flying field or aerodrome existed.
We must remember that in those days an aerodrome had to be pretty large as this was the area in which flying took place! It was not generally expected, and certainly considered as unwise, to fly outside the aerodrome boundary.
It appears that despite all these massive efforts, he considered that a suitable location couldn’t be found in France, so transported his aeroplane back to England. When in Paris it was wrecked by floods, and it seems, was a total write-off on arrival at Blackfriars in London on the 2nd February 1910.
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