The problem may be the post war attitude to all things military that reminded people of the conflict. My second cousin ran a company in the fifties and sixties that started out as a scrap merchant and moved into road haulage later on. In about 1955 they purchased some whouse space that happened to be hangers on an old airfield. In the hangers they discovered five, yes FIVE mint condition Lancaster bombers. They rubbed their hands gleefully as the scrap value of the aluminium alone repaid the cost of the hangers. He sent his boys in with cutting torches and ripped them apart.
One of the Lanc's had completed two full tours and had some stained glass panes to commemorate it. He took some photo's before smashing them out to get to the valuable metal.....
This was ten years after the close of the war. To these men the bombers represented nothing more than six years of pain, loss, uncertainty and grief.
Today when we see a Lancaster, or hear those great Merlins roar into life we get a cold chill down our spine and wish that one day we will get to sit in the left hand seat on the flight deck. In 1955 they felt somewhat different about the whole thing.
My point (Yes, there is one
) is that if these stores were "found" during the fifties or sixties they would have been simply destroyed without fuss or notice. And no-one would have cared.
Will
