I’ve received an e-mail from Carey Chapman (q.v. her posts of 19 January 2011) today. She wanted to post here again but had forgotten her password! Thus she’s asked me to relate here the gist of her message to me. It is as follows:

‘About 25 years ago a historian called at my door ( I live in Mrs B old house) unannounced and told me that when he was writing a history of the Spanish Civil War in the 1970s he visited Mrs B during his research. He had uncovered reports that she had been involved in breaching the restriction on exporting planes to Spain. Mrs B got very angry and sent him packing with threats of legal action if he ever made such a suggestion again. However some time after that I received a long letter from an old man, Ken, who had worked for Air Dispatch in the 1930’s in Croydon. The Air Dispatch hangers were close to the RAF disposal centre where decommissioned RAF planes were sold. Well Mrs B certainly did buy planes and had them flown out to Spain, sometimes painting them white with a red cross to try and fool the authorities that they were air ambulances. Later planes were flown along the Chanel and out over the Atlantic to avoid being detected. To fly the planes so far they would have extra drums of fuel in the hold which had to be manually pumped into the planes fuel tanks, a job which Ken did on a number of occasions. The pilot was paid £400 and the “pump boy” £100 and they had to find there own way back from Spain.’

Whilst not relating to her Bluebird, I concede, I think that the anecdote is interesting, nonetheless, and worthy of being related here.