Was it on this forum recently that I saw pics of G-AFCZ ‘Australia’ badly damaged on an Iraqi river bank?….Anybody got a link?
….After rebuilding,camouflaging, and renaming ‘Clare’ it resumed the BOAC Atlantic flying boat crossings briefly during the Battle of Britain and was photographed by LIFE magazine at La Guardia, see this set from the recent Google online initiative
http://images.google.com/images?q=la+guardia+kessel&q=source%3Alife
here is a small colour corrected version of one shot
By: Newforest - 5th January 2009 at 08:21
Thanks for the update, compensates for the time looking for the original information!:D
Bit careless letting it sink after the pilot saved the plane.;)
By: longshot - 4th January 2009 at 23:04
Empire Flying Boat G-AFCZ (Australia/Clare)
Apologies all round….the photos I was thinking of weren’t on this forum but in Aeroplane Monthly Apr87….
Australia’s nose was badly smashed when its skipper ran it onto the river bank to stop it sinking, but it sank anyway during recovery…rebuilt, renamed CLARE and camouflaged it visited New York later in 1940 see http://www.flightglobal.com/pdfarchive/view/1940/1940%20-%202308.html
More background on the Empire boats in Air enthusiast #11, 15, 60 and 65 (the latter containing lots of corrections by Hugh Yea)
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January 3, 2009 at 10:26 pm