Aircraft Acceptance Park

[mickdavis]

Two names, same place?

True

[Guest BelgianBilly]

Hi ......I'm new to this site and even newer using blogs, forums, whatever to discuss researches, etc.

I came across this forum a few days ago after finding the Alien Registration records for 33 family groups - about 70 people in all - mainly from Belgium who worked at the Gosforth, Newcastle-upon-Tyne AAP in 1915-1917.

In the meantime I have written up my notes on these people and their work on aircraft from the Armstrong Whitworth and Angus Sanderson works on Tyneside.

My main interest is the 7,000 Belgian community which lived at the Elisabethville, Birtley Co Durham (10 kms from Newcastle) and the work they did at the National Projectile Factory after it was opened in the summer of 1916. I haven't yet found any links between the Elisabethville refugees (the largest group of displaced Belgians in WW1) and these people who worked at the AAP. There is a network of around 200 people living in the UK, Belgium and elsewhere who are descendants of these refugees. I am also involved with drama-musician and writer Roland Bergeys of Mortsel, near Antwerp who has a book "Aanvallen!" (Attacks!) and a musical production about the Belgian refugees which has been staged in Belgium since December 2011 and has been adapted and translated from Flemish for staging in north-east England in 2015.

On my next time in Brussels - I have work there and spend about 5 or 6 days every month in Belgium - I will check out these Belgian AAP workers at the documentation centre of the Royal Belgian Army Museum.

Does anyone want to keep this discussion going?

[Guest BelgianBilly]

Hi ......I'm new to this site and even newer using blogs, forums, whatever to discuss researches, etc.

I came across this forum a few days ago after finding the Alien Registration records for 33 family groups - about 70 people in all - mainly from Belgium who worked at the Gosforth, Newcastle-upon-Tyne AAP in 1915-1917.

In the meantime I have written up my notes on these people and their work on aircraft from the Armstrong Whitworth and Angus Sanderson works on Tyneside.

My main interest is the 7,000 Belgian community which lived at the Elisabethville, Birtley Co Durham (10 kms from Newcastle) and the work they did at the National Projectile Factory after it was opened in the summer of 1916. I haven't yet found any links between the Elisabethville refugees (the largest group of displaced Belgians in WW1) and these people who worked at the AAP. There is a network of around 200 people living in the UK, Belgium and elsewhere who are descendants of these refugees. I am also involved with drama-musician and writer Roland Bergeys of Mortsel, near Antwerp who has a book "Aanvallen!" (Attacks!) and a musical production about the Belgian refugees which has been staged in Belgium since December 2011 and has been adapted and translated from Flemish for staging in north-east England in 2015.

On my next time in Brussels - I have work there and spend about 5 or 6 days every month in Belgium - I will check out these Belgian AAP workers at the documentation centre of the Royal Belgian Army Museum.

Does anyone want to keep this discussion going?