Museum's bid to save unique US Navy base

This is Exeter - 

AN appeal has been launched by historians at an East Devon museum to raise £110,000 in three months to buy Europe's only Second World War American Navy land base.

Dunkeswell Memorial Museum, currently located in a unit at Dunkeswell Airfield, is hoping to buy the administration buildings used exclusively by the US Navy Fleet Air Wing 7 Group. It would be used as a permanent memorial for the 183 men based there who lost their lives in combat.

Museum historians say that if they are unable to obtain the rare Grade II listed buildings they may be sold off to a private developer. The complex will also become a permanent base for the museum.

Museum historian, Shirley Sharland, 65, said: "The complex is the only US Navy land base in the whole of Europe so it's unique.

"These buildings are very rare. They were used only by the US Navy Fleet Air Wing 7 Group to help to defend the supply convoys to England from attacks by U-boats and surface vessels which were out in the Atlantic and the Bay of Biscay.

"And there are no memorials in Europe for the work the US Navy Anti Submarine Squadrons did in the war.

"The complex which will be a permanent memorial building for the museum, for all who served at Dunkeswell during the war, including the 183 officers and men who lost there lives in combat and for the 49 killed in non combat.

"Back in 1988 we contacted the MoD who owned it and they said they'd hand it over to us when they'd cleared the ground from contamination.

"They said they would only charge us the cost of contract which was £10 back in those days. But then they said they had to give it back to the farming family who owned it before the MoD took it over during the war so now it will cost us £110,000."

Shirley's son David, 45, started collecting artefacts for the museum in 1976 aged 11.

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