Mystery WWII airport.

From a source in South Africa:
“It is almost certainly COLLONDALE, East London, in the days of JATS, and some time after 1942. The Ben Schoeman airport, now East London, is on the site.The photograph is published in Dave Becker’s book “Yellow Wings” about the JATS days. Although the images are reversed ie between yours and that in the book and yours shows a portion of that in the book, the building layout is distinctive and matches.
The text records that “41 AS ceased training on 31 March 1945, still having 55 Ansons and 3 Harvards on strength. It became one of 7ADs disposal centres for aicraft after the war and was the scene of a huge fire when a large number of Oxfords burnt out while in storage.”
I trust this may be of use- looks like a reversed print or scan somewhere along the line.

It’s not Thornhill in Rhodesia, is it? Just another idea!

Mystery airfield

Could it be GEORGE in Natal and possibly 1 School of General Reconnaissance (otherwise known as 61 Air School). This unit used Ansons- Bob Willis speaks of it in ” No Hero Just a Survivor”-he did his GR course there along with my late pa’.

Looks like North Africa to me for some reason, reminds me of Khartoum.

1. A lot of the aircraft are probably Ansons.
2. The supplier lives in S.A. If he got the image in S.A., possibly the photo is from the same region.
3. It starts to look then like possibly an empire scheme training base in S.A. or at least the Southern African region?

The two letter code in the signal square immediately below the group of smaller buildings below the four hangers in the centre of the image might give a clue. I can’t make them out well enough however…

I’d concur on Ansons and an overseas base as the configuration of the technical site isn’t standard UK pattern. There appears to be a mix of machines in a bright colour (overall training yellow, or “natural metal”?) and others in camoflage so at a guess this is late wartime.

I’m not convinced it is a UK field, so someplace in the Empire gets my vote.

Moggy

I’ve been trying to ID the aircraft parked outside, Wellingtons, Oxfords or Ansons?

Look like they had quite short nose’s to me. Whirlwinds??

I’ve been trying to ID the aircraft parked outside, Wellingtons, Oxfords or Ansons?

Pete, they look like Ansons, especially the ones parked to the right of the four hangars down the centre of the picture; the wings don’t look quite tapered enought to be Welingtons or Ox-boxes (or is that a trick of the light/altitude?). If it’s WW2 and they are Ansons, could it be an airfield used for the Empire Air Training Scheme? Would that narrow it down? Just chucking ideas around!

I’ve been trying to ID the aircraft parked outside, Wellingtons, Oxfords or Ansons?