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The Great War (1914-1918) Forum

Remembered Today:

Messines Mines


Guest Simon Bull

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Guest Simon Bull

The "Author's Note", written by Ted Smith, at the start of "Cameos of the Western Front: Saileint Points Three" by Tony Spagnoly and Ted Smith refers to a "Royal Engineers' map at the Public Record Office showing exact positions of the abandoned mines at Messines". Does anyone know the PRO document reference for this map?

Simon Bull

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Guest Simon Bull

Thanks Langley Baston. I had not thought of that, which is strange as I have written to authors via publishers on previous occasions.

Simon Bull

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Simon,

I had to email Ted Smith about something else this morning so I asked him about this for you. He asaked me to let you know:

......... that PRO reference WO153 909 not only contains the

exact positions of the abandoned mines at Messines, it shows the

positions of all the mines prepared for the Messines Offensive together

with their trenches and tunnels. As this information is shown on trench

maps of the period the amount of detail available is incredible!

Tom

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I have a question - Given all this was the programme presented by Tiff Needell so amazingly new?

http://www.1914-1918.org/forum/index.php?showtopic=8286&hl=

Did they know where the mines were all along and forgot to ask the right person or chose to forget?

Are these one and the same mines?

Ryan

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  • 2 weeks later...
Guest Simon Bull

Last weekend at the National Archives I had an opportunity to look at these maps and plans. They are worth looking at as works of art -- some of them are extremely carefully and beautifully drawn. There are views both in plan and in cross-section of the tunnels and the mines. To my untutored eye they looked to be extremely accurate and I would be surprised if it is not possible to place the mines (assuming the maps are accurate) to within feet. Certainly I cannot see why that was ever a mystery about the location of the mines in the light of these maps and plans.

There is also an interesting tabulated analysis of the damage caused by the mines and why some were more effective than others.

In one respect the maps and plans are a little difficult to understand -- they use symbols which I am not familiar with. One can often make an educated guess as to what the symbols men, and it may be that someone who has more experience of Great War maps and plans than I do would have understood them better.

Nevertheless, well worth a look -- I have no particular interest in the mines but I was fascinated by these maps and plans.

Simon Bull

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