Searching for a WWII POW Camp

Finding Camp Ellis

Nov 6^th, 2010

Always on the lookout for someplace interesting to fly, I came across the website for museum located at Logan County Airport, in Lincoln, IL.  The website stated that the museum is housed in a building from Camp Ellis, which a Google search revealed housed thousands of German and Austrian POWs during the Second World War. However, if you assumed, as I did, that the airport is on the former Camp Ellis, you'd be wrong.   While trying to match up the location of Camp Ellis with Logan County Airport it quickly became apparent that something was amiss.  It turns out Camp Ellis was nowhere near Lincoln, IL; it was situated 60 miles to the North West near Ipava, IL.   When the army closed down Camp Ellis in 1950 the buildings were up for grabs to anyone who could truck them away.  Consequently, buildings from Camp Ellis are scattered around Illinois, while almost nothing remains at the original location.  Fortunately, however, others have researched Camp Ellis, and one individual serendipitously posted the GPS coordinates and a photo of the only surviving building from the original camp.  GPS coordinates you say?  Time for road trip.

 

Logan Country Airport is located just south of Bloomington, IL which is shortly over hour for Clow Airport.   Without at GPS, it would be easy to get there using the Joliet, Pontiac, and Bloomington VORs, but on this trip I was using my Garmin 196 handled GSP and relying on the VORs and sectional chart for backup.  The danger of my GPS failing is all too real, with my batteries often finding their way into Buzz Light-year toys these days.  I also found that the GPS antenna did not like to stick to the Plexiglas in the near-freezing air at altitude, and kept falling off.  In the event, my flight to Logan County was uneventful and relaxing.

Heading to Logan County, a tractor kicking up dust

Logan County airport is a place where you get the feeling that not much has changed since F.D.R. was president.  Airplanes find shelter under Quonset huts, which at night are illuminated by a large, antiquated beacon which Charles Lindbergh would have recognized.  The fact that the museum is in a WWII era building is of little directional value, as just about every structure on the field seems to date from that era.   However, several people were ambling around, and they were able to point me toward the museum building. 

The museum, housed in a former Camp Ellis building.

If it could be said that one man’s museum is another man’s junkyard, it could also be said that the “Heritage in Flight” museum has a pretty nice junkyard.  All of the artifacts are from local donors. The museum building is divided into several rooms, each with a different theme. There are some modern items from operation Iraqi Freedom, but most of the museum space is devoted to the Second World War. There is, however, a room devoted to memorabilia from WWI, the largest of which is a large scimitar shaped aircraft propeller which was found under a local porch.  The museum also has many plastic models donated at various times, often by the widows of those who had built them.   In addition to the museum building, the adjacent hangar also has a large assortment of military items in glass display cases.  

Local papers announcing the End of WWII in Europe

The museum has a surprsingly broad collection of items.

After checking out the exhibits, I topped off the gas tanks and departed runway 21 to go look for the remains of Camp Ellis.  I had entered the GPS coordinates which I had found on the Internet as a waypoint, so getting there was a simple matter of following the GPS.  Right on schedule, the building whose picture I had seen online came into view.  

departing Logan County Airport

The only building remaining from Camp Ellis, which housed 5,000 POWs

I circled the building, took a few pictures, and headed North East back toward Clow Airport. Total flight time for the trip was 2.9 hours.