RAF / RN Luscombe Trainers in Bermuda

Gentlemen
My book “Wings over Bermuda – 100 years of aviation in the West Atlantic” is now with the printers and will appear Spring 2014 published by the National Museum of Bermuda.
I have carried out extensive research into the light aircraft based in Bermuda and the book tells the full story for the first time.
However, there are still some gaps in the Luscombe information particularly during WW2 when very little was reported or recorded.
Available images of the Bermuda Luscombes in RAF markings show no serials/registrations so that only adds to the confusion which was which.
Both VR-BAK and VR-BAS (neither were Bermuda Flying School) still survive and are under long term restoration into a static museum exhibit.
Regards
Tom Singfield

Wing Commander Ware and Luscombe. [ATTACH=CONFIG]219502[/ATTACH]

Looks like tough wartime duty! 🙂

Not much information about most online, due to the youth of the internet, but here are a few of the BFS graduates:
Allan “Smokey” Wingood, visible in the Darrell’s Island photo with the Duke of Windsor. Click “look inside” : http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs11457-007-9017-3#page-1
Francis “Goose” Gosling: http://bernews.com/bermuda-profiles/francis-%E2%80%9Cgoose%E2%80%9D-gosling/
Geoffrey Welch…not Caribbean, but never mind: http://www.caribbeanaircrew-ww2.com/?p=600
Teddy Nicoll, visible in the Darrell’s Island photo with the Duke of Windsor, is shown here later as the pilot of a Hurricane: http://mhicgherri.geo.do/raf-images24.html

The photo 1943 by Adelard Dubois, of one Luscombe on the tarmac at Darrells, identifies it as NC25349 (on http://jollygreenp.co.uk/jonzpage2/dad/flogaiwf.html). The other is clearly marked NC28476 in the 1940 photo with the Duke of Windsor (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Duke_of_Windsor_visits_the_Bermuda_Flying_School.jpg). The one of W/Cdr Ware with one at King’s Point, Somerset (?) in 1942 is not identified, and the markings differ from those in the other two photos, so not clear which it is.

All of the blue bits were gone a decade later. Or, rather, the blue was gone. This is her about 1984. Memory is a bit foggy…I acquired a Pentax 35mm SLR in 1984, and I took this with a 110 camera, so it could be 1983 or 1982, though I continued to use 110 pocket cameras for a few years, so it might have been after. Certainly before June of 1986, as the next time I was back on the rock she was in a crushed state. Casurina had come down right across the rear fuselage in more or less the spot shown in your photo: [ATTACH=CONFIG]219504[/ATTACH]

I recall seeing VR-BAK in Bermuda in the early 70s (Maybe 73/74? but don’t have exact date as I travelled through there and elsewhere a lot at that time)

Photo attached I took at the time anyway!!

Wing Commander Ware and Luscombe. [ATTACH=CONFIG]219502[/ATTACH]

I actually wrote that Wikipedia page (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royal_Air_Force,_Bermuda,_1939-1945), but you’d do better to look at this one: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bermuda_Flying_School.

The Bermuda Flying School bought two Luscombes (or, more precisely, two benefactors did) in the US, at least one of which appears to have remained on the US civil register for a period. After the BFS was closed in 1942, they continued in use as station hacks, as Adelard Dubois mentions. Following the war, they became the property of the Bermuda Flying Club, and a few more Luscombes were purchased. The club was operated by the numerous ex-wartime aviators who returned home after the war’s end. Only two of the aeroplanes survive in Bermuda, and it is not clear that either was one of the BFS machines. One was the personal property of Wing Commander Mo Ware, head of the RAF in Bermuda, and Director of Civil Aviation for some years after. I took probably the last photographs of it underway, taxying in Castle Harbour, before it was damaged in a landing accident, then severely damaged by a fallen tree while waiting for repair during Hurricane Emily in 1987, I think it was. This was VR-BAK…I recollect letting Adelard have a copy of one of my 1980s photos which should be on his page (he returned the favour, and a wartime Luscombe photo of his graced my defunct site). Mo Ware certainly regularly flew Luscombes about Bermuda during the war. It was, I believe, the aeroplane in which he flew a National Geographic photographer to photograph Bermuda from the air for the magazine’s cover (although he also had a Cessna 150, which he had obtained from a servicemens’ flying club on US Kindley AFB/NAS Bermuda, which is definitely history as I saw the last pieces sent to a landfill). The last time I spoke with Wing Commander Ware, about 2000 or 2001, he mentioned his plans to rebuild the Luscombe, but he has since passed, and I gather it is still sitting in bits. The second Luscombe, the registration of which I forget, belongs…or belonged, to Colin Plant, who had served as a Fleet Air Arm mechanic during the war. I actually remember watching one or the other being tied up to Darrell’s Island after a flight in the 1980s. The last I saw of Plant’s Luscombe, it was sitting on a slip in his garden at Cavello Bay, and may well still be there, though that must be nigh on two decades ago. It is mentioned in his memorial in the Royal Gazette, in fact, which says it is currently in the US: http://www.royalgazette.com/article/20130603/NEWS/706039933

As far as the level of training of the BFS graduates, they would not have been posted straight to squadrons on leaving the school. Assigned to the RAF or the FAA, they received further training in Britain before being ready for posting to squadrons. They served in all manner of roles, flying all manner of aeroplanes. The school was part of the CATP, and a handful of its trainees were Americans, recruited in the USA and sent to Bermuda to train. There is an easily enough obtained out-of-print biography of the commander of the school, Major Cecil Montgomery-Moore, DFC. Google “That’s My Bloody Plane”.

Luscombes

Thanks for your replies. I had never heard of them.

[QUOTE=DaveF68;2011482]There is a little more out there – not least that the Luscombe appears to have carried two colour schemes – or there were two of them.

I now think there may have been two:
VR-BAD Luscombe 8-C (on floats), c/n.1225 (possibly ex NC25349) – built 1940.
VR-BAE Luscombe 8-A (on floats), c/n. 1343 ex NC28476 – built 1940.

Note this corrects my error of transcription in my first posting where I gave the manufacturers serial number of VR-BAE as 1342.

VR-BAF and the subsequent VR-B registered Aeronca and Luscombe seaplanes were all built post-war.

One report states VR-BAE collided in mid-air with Luscombe VR-BAK during a post war flypast in front of Winston Churchill.
Tony

RAF / RN Luscombe Trainers in Bermuda

I googled “Darrell’s Field, Bermuda” and found this on Wikipedia:

In 1940, the Bermuda Flying School was established on Darrell’s Island with the goal of training pilots for the Royal Air Force and the Royal Navy (RN). The school trained volunteers from the local territorial units using Luscombe seaplanes. Those who passed their training were sent to the Air Ministry to be assigned to the RAF or the Royal Navy’s Fleet Air Arm (FAA). The Commanding Officer of the school was Major Cecil Montgomery-Moore, DFC, who was also the commander of the Bermuda Volunteer Engineers (BVE). He had left the Bermuda Volunteer Rifle Corps (BVRC) to become one of at least eighteen Bermudian aviators of the Great War. The school trained eighty pilots before an excess of trained pilots led to its closure in 1942. The body administrating it was adapted to become a recruiting organisation (the Bermuda Flying Committee) for the Royal Canadian Air Force (RCAF), sending sixty aircrew candidates, and twenty-two female candidates for ground-based roles, to that service before the War’s end.[6] With so many Bermudians entering the air services, the Air Training Corps was established in Bermuda during the war to train school-aged cadets (although, today there are only army and naval cadet corps in Bermuda).

Also to read what someone who was there has to say try this link:

http://members.virtualtourist.com/m/11623/55f/

Not withstanding what is said in wikipedia article it does not seem feasible that the graduates could have been prepared for an advanced course at a Harvard, etc., equipped RAF Service Flying Training School after a primary course using only Luscombe seaplane(s).

The story needs further investigation.
Tony

There is a little more out there – not least that the Luscombe appears to have carried two colour schemes – or there were two of them.

http://jollygreenp.co.uk/jonzpage2/dad/flogaiwf.html

http://members.virtualtourist.com/m/11623/55f/

RAF / RN Luscombe Trainers in Bermuda

I think it is more likely to to be a hack/communications aircraft than a trainer as such. RAF No.45 Group had a flying boat staging post at Bermuda.

The following is from “Air Arsenal North America – Aircraft for the Allies 1938-45, Purchases and Lend-Lease” (Butler & Hagedorn):

Luscombe 8A Silvaire
User: United Kingdom
The Luscombe 8 (Model 50) was an all metal high wing light aircraft, first flown in 1937. it was designed by Don Luscombe for his Luscombe Airplane Development Corporation. Large numbers were built for the civilian market, but none were purchased or supplied under Lease-Lend. At least two ‘impressed’ examples flew in RAF markings, a seaplane example in Bermuda; and another with the Kenya Auxiliary Air Unit (KAAU) in East Africa.

The Kenyan aircraft was Luscombe 8-A VP-KCW c/n 946, impressed as K29 for the KAAU. ‘K29’ was used for communication duties in East Africa by the KAAU and RAF units. Restored post-war as VP-KDD, ansd subsequently 5Y-KDD.

The seaplane example in Bermuda has not been postively identified, but it is almost certainly the 8-A example flown post-war in Bermuda as VR-BAE (c/n 1342); while flown by the RAF it wore roundels but no identifying number. As NC28476, c/n 1343 was exported to Bermuda, with Export CofA E-6402 dated 29th August 1940.

Hope this helps, Tony Broadhurst