The Courier & Advertiser (Angus and Dundee)
Russian charts detailed Cold War invasion plan from patchwork of hills to oil hub at harbour
Over the next four decades, there was another adversary to confront and the Cyrillic script in later maps show their provenance.
A map of Aberdeen harbour demonstrates Russian invasion was not just paranoid fantasy.
The Russian Army document included a long list of names familiar to Aberdeen residents, including Torry, Kincorth and Footdee and provided clues as to how they might attempt an invasion of Europe’s oil capital in the event of another war.
Anderson and Fleet state in their book say: “We were surprised by the amount of detail and the precision of the map, but then Russian military maps are striking to behold, they are impressive in their detail, and also quite frightening in equal measure. The wealth of information it contains would surprise anyone.
“Their description of Aberdeen and the surrounding area includes the statement: ‘The coastal region north (of the city) is suitable for amphibious landing. Numerous stone quarries, mainly of granite in Aberdeen suburbs, can be used as shelters.
“The landscape represents partly open coastal flatlands with patchy hills, directed by deep river valleys, which are the major obstacles for a non-road mobile machinery.
“Mud season lasts from April to October and, during this period, transport mobility is often hampered. But Aberdeen seaport is the major maintenance base for oil deposits in the North Sea. There are berthing facilities on both of the Dee’s banks and dockage facilities can provide the complete overhaul of vessels, including destroyers.”
The pages of Defending the Nation cover everything from Killiecrankie to Culloden, the French Revolution and the First World War and thence to the battle against Hitler.
It also includes an “Evacuation Map of Scotland” which was released on September 5 1939, which shows how seriously the British authorities viewed this option.
Mr Fleet said: “The evacuation planned to move 1.8 million people from the major conurbations and cities in Scotland out to rural areas over just two to three days.
“And here was a map of Scotland, which was barely the size of a postcard, with a few brief lines underneath it that calmly told everybody what was going to happen.”
Scotland: Defending The Nation is published by Birlinn.
Fossilised remains of a fish that grew as big as a great white shark have been discovered after a fossil collector mistook them for a giant flying reptile.
The find by scientists from Portsmouth University is a species of the so-called “living fossil” coelacanths which still swim in the seas, surviving the extinction that killed off the dinosaurs.
Coelacanth fish first evolved 400 million years ago – 200 million years before the first dinosaurs. It had long been believed to be extinct, but in 1938 a living coelacanth was found off South Africa.
Professor David Martill had been asked to identify a large bone in a private collection in London after the collector bought the fossil thinking it might have been part of a pterodactyl’s skull.
But the palaeontologist was surprised to find it was not in fact a single bone, but composed of many thin bony plates.
He said: “The thin bony plates were arranged like a barrel, but with the staves going round instead of from top to bottom. Only one animal has such a structure and that is the coelacanth – we’d found a bony lung of this remarkable and bizarre looking fish.
“My colleagues and I were thrilled as no coelacanth has ever been found in the phosphate deposits of Morocco.”
Prof Martill said the fossil had been found next to a pterodactyl which proved it lived in the Cretaceous Period – 66 million years ago.