Stirling/Halifax vist to Kunming, China

Doc Stirling – thanks, guess Wg Cdr Morrison was ‘Rtd.’ and working as a charter pilot but keeping the rank as was the norm then.
Do you know if they were registered in Belgium as a ‘flag of convenience’?
seem to recall seeing photos of Ss with G reg.
Cheers

From what I can tell, it was a genuine Belgian Company, operating as a charter airline.

They had originally wanted to use Halifax’s, but G Alington told them the Stirling would be better, from the point fo view of passengers carried and freight/luggage capability.

DS

If there were any rumour about buried Stirlings, the extinction of the type would surely derserve a serious attempt to locate them. Even large subassemblies can be useful. Didn’t the RAF Museum order an aerial survey to hopefully find some wrecks Stirling sometime ago in Egypt?

Cees

It was a close friend of Jack Bruce then at the RAF Museum ,who had witnessed the burial first hand – it was a big operation incidentally with other material being dumped. Jack certainly didn’t need any convincing. The problem at the time of discussion ( late ’70’s IIRC) was one of politics, versus available resources from the RAFM, versus the possibility of reasonable success. As I remember both the RAFM and the FAA museum had had some recent issues on the Halifax and Skua recoveries which tended to mitigate against such an adventure. I was present at a meeting with Jack and Bill Sayer when the recovery concept was discussed and mulled over due to the perceived risks mentioned above. The survey you are referring to above I was unaware of but it might have been a resurrection of this issue. My gut feeling is that it is likely that the material would have been excavated and sold off post the RAF departure , probably during the expansion of the base by the Egyptian Air Force.

Doc Stirling – thanks, guess Wg Cdr Morrison was ‘Rtd.’ and working as a charter pilot but keeping the rank as was the norm then.
Do you know if they were registered in Belgium as a ‘flag of convenience’?
seem to recall seeing photos of Ss with G reg.
Cheers

You are thinking out of context of the particular times and circumstances. It was the same reason that shiploads of aircraft were dumped into the seas, brand new flying boats taxied out offshore and sunk into deep water and similar. The war was over, strike it off charge and get rid of it. You will find many instances of similar activity if you look.

If there were any rumour about buried Stirlings, the extinction of the type would surely derserve a serious attempt to locate them. Even large subassemblies can be useful. Didn’t the RAF Museum order an aerial survey to hopefully find some wrecks Stirling sometime ago in Egypt?

Cees

[QUOTE=DocStirling

Buried Stirlings? Hmm, not sure. Why go to the effort when they would have scrap value?

DS[/QUOTE]
You are thinking out of context of the particular times and circumstances. It was the same reason that shiploads of aircraft were dumped into the seas, brand new flying boats taxied out offshore and sunk into deep water and similar. The war was over, strike it off charge and get rid of it. You will find many instances of similar activity if you look.

DocStirling – many thanks – didn’t realise that it was postwar.
Remember seeing it when I was going through some old Hong kong newspaper files but this one was in one piece [at that stage anyway]
Wonder what Wg Cdr Morrison was doing in Kunming at that time?
Would have been an ‘interesting’ place at that time as most of the 14th AAF would have left by then with the Nationalists still in ‘control’…

The impression I got from reading the article was that he was flying the charter flight of nuns and priests. There was another piece in the article about a similar flight that had to rest overnight in Hanoi, with fighting 3 miles from the aerodrome.

Alex: please try to find those Eygyptian photos. I find this period of the Stirlings service quite fascinating.

DS

DocStirling – many thanks – didn’t realise that it was postwar.
Remember seeing it when I was going through some old Hong kong newspaper files but this one was in one piece [at that stage anyway]
Wonder what Wg Cdr Morrison was doing in Kunming at that time?
Would have been an ‘interesting’ place at that time as most of the 14th AAF would have left by then with the Nationalists still in ‘control’…

Hi,

I have a photo somewhere of three Stirlings in Egyptian markings during a flyby and under the wings of one of them can be seen traces of the Trans Air reg ‘OO-XA?’

Alex

Hi,

I have a photo somewhere of a Stirling in Egyptian markings during a flyby and under the wings can be seen traces of the Trans Air reg ‘OO-XA?’

Alex

I hope Alex won’t mind me pointing out he posted a photo of OO-XAC in this thread: http://forum.keypublishing.co.uk/showthread.php?t=37194&highlight=stirling.

Buried Stirlings? Hmm, not sure. Why go to the effort when they would have scrap value?

DS

Ref Stirlings in Egypt.
A number of RAF Stirlings were buried at RAF Kasfereet after the war c.1946.The undercarrages were pulled up, the wings cut off , then they were bulldozed into one or more large trenches by the airfield.
I looked at photography of the base some time ago, it was in use by the Egyptian Air force and it is quite big. I really don’t know if it is worth following up after all these years, unfortunately the reliable person who supplied the info is no longer with us so the search would have to be from scratch. Also Egypt………….? 🙂

And see this, by our own Alex Crawford:

Stirlings in Egypt

Hi,

Stirling OO-XAC was ex-RAF Mark V PK172, which never saw active service. It came on charge at Pocklington 3.11.45, went to 273 MU 8.4.46 and was SOC 11.4.47 (Ref 1), when it was bought as a lot of 10 Mark V’s by Geoffrey Alington, along with spares, for £2000.00!!

It was test flown (Ref 2) at RAF Polebrook 12.4.47, delivered to Brussels June 18 and registered to Trans-Air on 25.6.47. It was registered to Air Transport on 27 October.

Geoffrey Alington kept OO-XAC as his personal aircraft, but lent it out once to Wg Cdr Morrison for the fatal flight to K’un-ming in China. With a full load of passengers, it crashed into a cemetery just after take-off. The cemetery was a mass of 4′-high mounds, which ‘tore the poor Stirling to pieces’. The cockpit was destroyed and the second pilot was killed. The engineer was one ‘Caggy’ Morgan, who was Geoffrey Alington’s war-time flight engineer, and he suffered hip and arm fractures. The passengers were all priests or nuns, and they all survived.

I’ve attached a scan of the pictures of the crash as it appeared in Aeroplane Monthly, but no other copyright is given.

I do recall this mentioned once before on the forum, when a link to more pictures of the crash were given – ?someones collection, or even ebay.

I will post an update if I find it.

Cheers,

DocStirling

(1) Michael Bowyer ‘The Stirling Story’.

(2) Stirling Civil Servant – G. Alington, Aeroplane Monthly Nov 1982 p578-82

Edit: Other sites seem to imply that 25/30 passengers died. More photos of OO-XAC:

http://www.skystef.be/airlines/trans-air.htm

http://www.baha.be/Webpages/Navigator/Photos/CivilPics/civil_pics_ootaa_oozzz/shorts_stirling_ooxac.htm

http://www.asa-be.com/photogallery_BCR_X.htm