An airfield was constructed on Norfolk Island, somewhere in the south
Pacific as they used to say, with these interlinked plates, taking up
a vast percentage of available land. Since the airfield was upgraded
the plates have become a valuable item for fencing, animal enclosures,
crossing drainage channels and all manner of uses.
A sort of Legolandesque capital.
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Denis Gojak
PO Box 457Newtown NSW 2042Australia
e [log in to unmask] 0400 474 405
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----- Original Message -----
From: [log in to unmask]
To:
Cc:
Sent:Tue, 26 Apr 2016 12:04:53 +0200
Subject:Re: Artifact Identification
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marston_Mat
"Large quantities of matting were produced; approximately 2 million
tons
costing more than US$200 million (in the 1940s).[4] At the end of the
war a large amount of the material remained as war surplus and was
pressed into use in various civil engineering applications such as
road
and bridge construction."
Am 26.04.2016 um 03:14 schrieb David Babson:
> I've seen this in a lot of World War II photos, especially of
Pacific
> Theater airfield runways. I've also seen smaller amounts of it, in
person,
> on U.S. Army installations, such as Fort Riley, Kansas, where
(early 1990s)
> there were a few low spots in less-used tank trails that had this
material
> laid down across the direction of traffic, roughly like logs across
a
> corduroy road. In dry weather, driving across a section of this
pavement
> makes an ungodly clatter. I never new what it was called, and
always
> thought of it as that "World War II Airfield Stuff." I'll take the
> education, and now know it as "Marston Mat." I figure the U.S.
produced
> trainload lots of it for World War II, then stored some and
surplus-ed the
> rest, when they were left with said trainloads in 1945. It was
probably
> the go-to item for a quick road improvement at any DoD facility,
through
> the 1970s.
>
> D. Babson.
>
>
> On Mon, Apr 25, 2016 at 8:28 PM, David Parkhill wrote:
>
>> We used these steel plates in Korea to build airfield landing
strips.
>> Reason. Simple to put together, low cost, repaired broken strips
in a very
>> quick time.
>>
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: HISTORICAL ARCHAEOLOGY [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf
Of Mike
>> Polk
>> Sent: Monday, April 25, 2016 5:12 PM
>> To: [log in to unmask]
>> Subject: Re: Artifact Identification
>>
>> A suggestion is that this represents portable vehicular pads.
During the
>> Vietnam war steel mesh squares which could be snapped together
were used to
>> make portable helicopter pads and roads through areas which could
not
>> otherwise be landed on or driven across.
>>
>> When I was running the field portion of the Tombigbee waterway
Historic
>> Townsites Project in 1980, I got permission to purchase enough of
this to
>> build a road over very muddy soils. We ended up using gravel, but
if that
>> had not worked, purchase of a portable road from a surplus guy in
Oklahoma
>> was our next move.
>>
>> Mike Polk
>> Commonwealth Heritage Group
>> Ogden, Utah
>>
>> Sent from my iPhone
>>
>>> On Apr 25, 2016, at 9:04 PM, Hannah Russell
>> wrote:
>>>
>>> Hi All,
>>> I found this material at a 1960's military complex in southeast
Utah
>>> and am looking for some ideas of what it might be. Funny story,
>>> within a week of recording this site, I was at a bar in Salt Lake
City
>>> and there was a room divider made out of the same material. The
>>> pictures of the material in situ and at the bar can be found at
the link
>> below to a google photo album.
>>>
>>> Thanks in advance for your help.
>>>
>>> https://goo.gl/photos/3HfR3xJiqtUBiqDQ7
>>>
>>>
>>> Thanks in advance for you help!
>>>
>>>
>>> --
>>> Hannah Russell, RPA
>>> Cottonwood Archaeology, LLC
>>> [log in to unmask]
>>> (435) 210-0414
>>
>
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