Hi,
I am looking for any information related to the Fleet Air Arm station on Mauritius, HMS Sambur. Although construction was started by the FAA I have evidence to show construction was either never completed or completed by the RAF after the site was handed to the RAF. The RAF Museum have been kind enough to provide a plan of RAF Plaisance and whilst I can align this with a public road and the compass, none of the remains match this plan, not even the runways. This leads me to believe the RAF either completed the FAA plans or used the site as it was. Although there is not much remaining, using the timeline in Google Earth there are 2 Compass bases, some peri-track, some unidentified buildings whilst the aircraft butts are still standing:
https://www.flickr.com/photos/historicmauritius/albums/72157697031901680https://www.flickr.com/photos/historicmauritius/albums/72157712013191922Eventually, the site was handed over for civilian use and is currently the Sir Seewoosagur Ramgoolam International Airport with a lot of the remains long since bulldozed into history. I have attached two images, one which shows the remains with some conjecture as well as one which shows the overlay of the plans for RAF Plaisance which you will see does not match anything other than the public roads. The original public road was moved in living memory and used to pass close to the eastern end of the main runway until the runway was extended.
If anyone can shed any light on the handover from the FAA to the RAF or has any further information it would be greatly appreciated. I can be contacted at
contact@historicmauritius.comThis is for a non-profit, personal project where I am attempting to record all of the remaining, tangible history of Mauritius, hence the rather large number of photos at
http://historicmauritius.com all of which are freely available for non-commercial use.
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Topic: Mauritius (Read 15772 times)