Tragedy at Croydon's Tank Day 1918

On a previous post giving some glimpses of Croydon in 1918 through Herbert Montgomery Martin's photographs, I mentioned that there was a tragic crash during the Tank Day. On 16 March people were invited to subscribe to the Victory Loan - basically contributions to the war effort - and the presence of a tank, a new war machine, encouraged these investments. The day was overshadowed by the death of a young pilot at Croydon.

Some of Henry Montgomery Martin’s 1918 Photographs of Croydon

Aerial view of Croydon, 1918

A series of photographs that HCAT has copies of - not the originals - gives a great visual glimpse of Croydon / Beddington aerodrome during the war and occasionally leisure activities in Croydon itself. As we have progressed through the project, we've found some information that assist with some context for those photographs. the photographs belonged to and were probably taken Herbert Montgomery Martin, who appears to have been one of the ground crew based at Croydon / Beddington during the war.

Aerodrome not Airport!

Strictly speaking this blog will not be about Croydon Airport for the next 10 months or so. We'll be sharing research from our Heritage Lottery Funded project Fighting for Air about the origins of the airport in the aerodromes - Waddon and Wallington or Beddington - in Sutton and Croydon and the impact of the war locally.

In order to start this blog off on that theme, I thought we'd share some photographs of

Wellington or Beddington Aerodrome 1918

Wallington, also known as Beddington, aerodrome that Historic Croydon Airport Trust have copies. These belonged to a Royal Flying Corp (then Royal Air Force) officer Herbert Montgomery Martin. These photographs were scanned in by Cross and Cockade from a descendant of Martin some years ago.

This is just a short post to wet your appetite for the research and information to come from our project. . .

Waddon Camp

Bristol M1C crash landed in field at Beddington gasworks