Fobbing WW2 Oil QF Decoy

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Malenis

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Canvey Island
It was a very long muddy walk and from the moaning I could hear behind me, I think the fella also agreed it was muddy! I couldn't help but grin to myself in amusement at every 'arrrrgggghhhhhhh ****ing mud.'

The history

The decoy was designed to protect Shell Haven oil refinery, with many burning pools of oil and simulated ring fires from burning oil storage tanks.

Night shelter: Consisted of operations room, engine room (housed the generator) and an escape hatch. The sides of the building would have been partially covered with earth. The oil would have been ignited electrically from the shelter.

Oil storage bay: A short distance from the night shelter are four parallel walls (7m long by 1.3m high) on heavy concrete foundations. It is thought to have functioned as storage bays for the drums of oil necessary for the operation of the site but I have found no solid evidence for this.

The earliest reference to its operation is 1 August 1941 and the last reference was in March 1942.

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The four walls (in eight sections) could have had two functions from contemporary B&W photographs that were available in reports from the early '50's. In a photograph of a large emergency standby generator site; a large, oblong fuel tank was seen sitting on top of foundation walls very similar to these. In another early image, small four wheeled fuel bowsers are parked between similar walls. If 45 gallon steel barrels were used to service the site, they would not have been stored on the grass, but on four wheeled trailers parked between the walls. Sadly I cannot find the source of the photographs in the report, which seems to have disappeared into the paranoia of the early 'Cold War' years.
 
The four walls instantly reminded me of a similar set-up in the Leicestershire ironstone area that was a tank support, so this seems a reasonable conclusion
 

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