WE'RE paddling up the golden stream of memories again as two more canoe kids from the late 'forties and early 'fifties launch personal recollections of their home-made craft, created from fuel tanks discarded by wartime American planes.

The empty tanks, which came via Burtonwood airbase and could be picked up at the local scrapyard for a bob or two, could be found bobbing along local canals, flashes and ponds half a century or so ago, with their urchin crews manfully straining to keep them upright.

Harold F. Pennington of Leach Lane, Sutton Leach, and E. Lea of Moss Avenue, Orrell, add their own recollections to those of previous customers of this column (August 30 and September 13).

Re-living his own scary experiences, E. Lea reveals the acute dangers that existed not only on the watery surface of the local flash, but also on dry land, too! For volatile fuel fumes were trapped inside those tanks.

"A boyhood acquaintance of mine, from somewhere near Allanson Street, Parr, had a nasty experience while he and his pals were cutting out the inner sections of one of the tanks. They'd made the first small hole in it. Unfortunately, one of the lads was smoking a cigarette at the time and there was a tremendous explosion.

Our Orrell correspondent adds: "The boys involved were taken to hospital,but mraculously, they suffered only minor cuts and bruises, plus temporary loss of hair. All made a full recovery".

E. L. also recalls that the mother of one of the lads had been cooking a pan of sausages when the tank exploded. "Her pan was blasted off the cooker and clean through the kitchen window by the force of the explosion. The sausages were never seen again!"

Where those kids had gone wrong was in failing to flood the inside of their fuel tank with water to suppress the lingering, highly volatile fumes which could easily be ignited by a spark as the kids vigorously tackled their canoe conversion work with hammer and chisel.

The writer adds: "I spent many happy hours in one of those canoes, paddling on the Marl Pit behind Chancery Lane and Tickle Street, Parr".

He'd bought his auxiliary fuel tank around 1947 from a Smithy Brow scrapyard, near Fingerpost. It cost three shillings (15 pence) . . . "which might not sound very much now, but was quite a lot at the times".

The heavy tank was transported on a trolley made from a plank of wood and four old pram wheels, to his back garden at 'Foll Doll Row' in Chancery Lane, Parr, where hours were spent in chiselling out a top section, to provide seating accommodation, and in bashing out the inner reinforcement.

It took E. L. and his chums three full days to complete the job, which included filling the bottom of the home-made canoe with old bricks and concrete, to serve as ballast . . . "because these tanks were very prone to capsizing without it".

As a finishing touch, the craft was painted black, with white eyes and shark-teeth at at the front to give it a touch of menace. Then off it went on the pram-wheel trolley, to be launched on the Marl Pit . . . "for many happy hours on the water".

Harold Pennington has equally fond memories of those rough-and-tumble boating days. The 'drop tanks' from which the canoes were fashioned were, he believes, designed to extend the range of wartime aircraft, allowing them to reach distant targets which would otherwise have been out of reach.

Harold bought two of these war-surplus tanks in the 1950s intending to build a sailing catamaran, with the tanks as twin hulls. "This project was abandoned when I purchased a lovely 17ft-long Crusader boat which I sailed at Abersoch in North Wales. Happy days, indeed!"

He adds: "I don't recall what became of those drop-tanks, but I know that they reposed on the roof of my garage in Grange Park Road for quite a time".

And he signs off with a generous compliment: "Thank you, for your interesting page in the Star, long may it continue".