ianwoodward9Henry J Taylor again.
He flew by Clipper to Lisbon, from where he went on a BOAC/KLM flight to Bristol (not stopping at Oporto en route, incidentally). Travel within the UK was by train. He flew from Leuchars to Stockholm and from there to Helsinki in a “Swedish plane” described as “small, brilliant orange”, with its country’s name in large letters along the fuselage. He returned to Stockholm and got into Germany. From Berlin, he took a Lufthansa flight in a Ju.90 for Lisbon via Stuttgart and Lyon. He left it at Lyon, taking “a little French plane” to Vichy. I haven’t quite absorbed the next stage of his trip but I can confirm, somewhat to my surprise, that he crossed into and out of Gibraltar by the land border. He got back to Lisbon from Malaga via Madrid but then returned to Bristol on the BOAC/KLM service (they did stop in Oporto this time). After this, he returned to Lisbon the same way for the Clipper home. The return transatlantic journey, though, was changed to the southern route
ianwoodward9Thank you once again, lazy8, for your help.
I had thought it likely that the camouflage came first (most of the Lodestars used on the Stockholm run were painted that way at the factory – G-AGDD was the exception, camouflaged at Dorval during delivery) but I wasn’t absolutely sure about those used in the Middle East and Africa.
I found this colour image of the ‘Orange Globe’ logo on-line. It’s not a photograph but there seem to be precious few colour photos of BOAC aircraft in WWII.
ianwoodward9Thanks, longshot. I have seen photographs of Lodestar G-AGIL (the aircraft in the last of the links in your post) in other guises.
One photo shows G-AGIL camouflaged, with a Speedbird on the nose, which seems to have been pretty much the standard for BOAC’s camouflaged aircraft (though I’ve yet to see a photograph of BOAC Lodestar G-AGDD displaying a Speedbird).
Another shows G-AGIL in bare metal finish with what appears to be yet another BOAC logo. The photo is not absolutely clear but it looks a bit different to me.
The two photos to which I refer are below but I don’t know the chronological sequence of the three images of G-AGIL (the two below and the one posted by longshot).
ianwoodward9A slight swerve here. I came across this image on-line.
ianwoodward9Thank you, lazy8, for the information. I thought it must be something like that.
A border crossing from Spain seemed improbable and, given Mr Taylor’s comments about the landing strip and about the flying boats in the harbour, the latter seemed the more likely means of getting there. It was good to have you confirm that BOAC had a ‘service’ operating to Gibraltar at that time.
ianwoodward9In November 1941, Henry J. Taylor (see Post # 310) spent two days in Gibraltar being shown around its defences. His report is mostly about that subject. He mentions that there are no airfields, “only one small landing place, only 250 yards long, with a narrow gravel runway, for the Spitfires and Hurricanes based there“. He also refers to ” an army of workmen finishing the great new seaplane base, bristling with America’s famous Catalina flying boats and the Sunderlands“.
This was, of course, before Pearl Harbor, so he was not a ‘belligerent’ but he does not say by what means or by which route he got to Gibraltar. I wonder when he flew to Europe. If it were on a Clipper into Lisbon, how would he have got from Lisbon to Gibraltar in late 1941?
EDIT WITH ADDITIONAL INFORMATION:
Mr Taylor was apparently in Europe from 4 October 1941 to 15 December 1941. The places that he is known to have visited are Helsinki, Berlin, London, Vichy France and Madrid, as well as Gibraltar (and Lisbon, of course, for the flight home). Although I cannot be certain of his route to Europe, he said that, when he left Scotland, he was going out ‘on a very thin limb’, apparently referring to the difficulties of travel within Europe.
This paragraph is mere supposition on my part but Mr Taylor’s Helsinki report was published in early November 1941. Bearing in mind his comment cited in the previous paragraph, it is possible that he got there via Stockholm on a flight from Leuchars. At that time (say, the second half of October 1941), there were just four aircraft operating the route – two ex-RAF BOAC Hudsons (G-AGDC and G-AGDF) and two Norwegian-owned BOAC Lodestars (G-AGDD and G-AGDE). Hudson ‘GDF made its first trip to Stockholm on 18 October 1941. There was, I believe, a daily service from Stockholm to Helsinki.
There still remains the question of how Mr Taylor got into Gibraltar and out again after his 2-day visit. Any thoughts or insights, anybody?
ianwoodward9This is abit off-the-wall, Mr Kenny.
I was looking something up on-line and found a report on those who attended the 20 April 1942 funeral service for Mrs Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney. It listed some of the ‘notables’ who attended and in this list were “Mr. and Mrs. John Henry Hammond”. I think several generation of the males in the Hammond family bore the same name, so it could be the father. However, it may perhaps be the John Hammond who was the record producer credited with discovering Billie Holiday, Count Basie, Teddy Wilson, Bob Dylan, Aretha Franklin and Bruce Springsteen among others.
This happens to coincide with another of my interests and this John Hammond certainly came from Vanderbilt money, in which case you may wish to know that his papers ended up at Yale University – to be precise the Irving S Gilmore Music Library. Most of the papers are to do with his career in the music business but there may be some family papers there, too. You never know.
ianwoodward9The website of the flying boat museum in Ireland includes a brief sample of movements in and out of Foynes in WWII. It gives the details for September 1943 taken from the Habourmaster’s records:
ianwoodward9ianwoodward9Love the photo, Tim Hart. Is there anything worth passing on, written or printed on the reverse side?
ianwoodward9This is just to confirm that I did manage to locate some Clipper services details for 1941, as per the 1940 newspaper reports (see Post #301 above).
ianwoodward9The following newspaper clipping is from an article about the first Clipper flight from Europe following the USA’s entry into WWII. I have missed out the comments of Henry J. Taylor about his two months in Europe and some things about some other passengers, preferring to concentrate on the aviation aspects, which are more relevant to this forum.
As you can read, it just so happened that this was the 500th transatlantic Clipper flight, so there are some interesting stats in the final paragraph (on the right). Unsurprisingly, the majority of those flights were to and from Lisbon.
It is perhaps noteworthy that the newspaper believed that mail had been taken off the flight to allow more passengers to travel. I’m sure that I have read somewhere that hostilities in Europe increased the demand for transatlantic flights back to the USA, thereby providing Pam Am with a financial cushion it had not experienced in the previous time period.
The date of the flight was 15 December 1941 and the stats therefore cover the period prior to John Wilson’s excellent research to whiich longshot directed us in a previous post [#304].
ianwoodward9Reading some of the aero-philately material prompted me to scan this cover I picked up in a local shop a while back It’s not exactly neat or smart but it was only a couple of quid and seemed worth it for something that looks as though it was carried on one of the Clippers.
The stamps are from Chile, the postmark is Valparaiso and the date of posting is “18 JUL 42”. Whoever typed the address added the top line: “VIA PANAGRA NORTH ATLANTIC SERVICE” by the looks of it, though an expert might suggest that a different typewriter was used. I presume the airline or the postal authorities added the “VIA PANAGRA” handstamp. Unfortunately, there are no other postal markings, front or back, to show transit points, where it was checked by the censor or when it might have arrived in the UK.
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ianwoodward9Thanks for letting me know. There are presumably photographs of it ‘on tour’ around the United States.
These days, they’d do it like a British band on the road over there, complete with T-shirts saying “109 On Tour” on the front and a list of dates and cities on the back.
ianwoodward9The use of the adverb “theoretically” did cause a bit of confusion in my mind, too, and, to a lesser extent, the later use of the word ‘by’ in the same paragraph.
I don’t think Cowles was commenting on who ran the Lisbon service so much as its availability to non-official passengers. His article was about Americans ‘stuck’ in Britain, anxious to get back to the States but constricted by the terms of American Neutrality Act and by the limited number of available options. I took it that he used ‘theoretically’ in the sense that, in ‘theory’, anyone could book a seat on the Lisbon Run but, in ‘practice’, it was difficult – impossible even – without specific prior approval by the British Government.
And, of course, KLM could not have run the Lisbon service without the agreement of Britain and, to that extent, it was a service ‘by’ the British government. I would have preferred him to have used “for” in place of “by” but, in itself, it was no big deal. A wise person once advised me that, when writing factual pieces, ‘avoid adverbs’ and, if John Cowles had followed that maxim and omitted ‘theoretically’, I doubt the “by’/’for’ discrepancy would have struck me.
I don’t know the ins and outs of these things but I presume that the use of British registration, camouflage and markings was to give the outward appearance (pretence?) of ‘Britishness’ presumably to fulfill some internationally-recognised requirement in time of war. On the Stockholm Run, the Norwegian crews were required to wear BOAC uniforms and to carry British passports. I’m not sure of the situation on the Lisbon Run. Did the KLM crews continue to wear KLM uniforms and did they carry Dutch passports?
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