RAF Transport Command Information For Passengers

Very nice find, Lazy8….It overlaps a little with some recent reading of mine about 232 Squadron operations from Ceylon in 1945/1946 (Liberator, Skymaster transports.) They used service codes LA (Liberator) for Delhi-Ceylon (daily each way), LY (Liberator) ( Ceylon-Cocos Isl. (weekly each way), LV (Liberator) Ceylon-Cocos Isl.-Guildford, Australia (twice weekly each way), LZ (Skymaster) Ceylon-Cocos Isl. -Guildford-Sydney, Australia (thrice weekly each way). These seem to be service codes rather than route codes like UC and U.I.C, though. Perhaps a route information book was produced for the Ceylon to Australia service…that would be a find!

[ATTACH=CONFIG]260391[/ATTACH]
Indeed there are.
Not the full list of such routes I’d hoped for, but certainly those two. There are no dates, but the document appears to have been produced in 1945.

FAO Lazy8….Any more clues about UC/UIC in the contents?

Don’t forget both Yorks and Lancastrians.

My Dad flew Yorks in the immediate post war on the routss to the Middle and Far East, as far as Singapore. I can try and ask him about the codes, but as he’s 94, deaf, (sitting too close to four roaring merlins), he may not be of much help.

Cabbage

Those route codes intrigued me too. BOAC had a rather idiosyncratic set of their own route codes during the war, and up to 1948. The peculiarity amongst a collection of oddities is the route to Algiers, for which the Dakotas involved had to be ‘militarised’, which had a route code of UAS, unlike any of the others. If you see ‘U’ as meaning Transport Command, then ‘AS’ is obviously (until proven otherwise!) ‘Algiers’.
Although I speculated (logically, I thought) otherwise, it turns out that ‘U’ is probably ‘UK’, ‘UC’ is thus ‘UK-Colombo’ and, less obviously, ‘UIC’ is ‘UK-Calcutta’

This was presumably produced around the end of the war when RAF Transport Command was effectively running an airline (to the detriment of BOAC ), both ways round the world to Australia with Skymasters and Liberators (C-87s and single-fin RY-3s)….would be nice to see it scanned on the net but the cover alone is interesting ( what do the route codes UC to UIC mean?)

It’s on its way Adrian and to James I say this. I have one or two other bits and pieces that I would also be happy to give away so perhaps if you would like to message me I could get them to you? Then you could scan them, you obviously know where to put them and think it worth doing so by all means fill yer boots. I have enough difficulty getting folks interested in what I do (maritime history) and wouldn’t know where to start with something that specialist.

Hi

Why not scan it and put it on the internet for all to access? Seems a shame to uncover it and then have it buried again by passing it onto an individual. Preserve the physical item but distribute the information?

The RAFM might accept it for their collection?

Cheers
James

PM sent.