ianwoodward9Thank you, longshot. I’ve never seen a photo of SX-DAA before, let alone in colour. I remember reading that Scottish Aviation had modified their Liberators to have a luggage compartment in the nose and, there, you can see it open and a set of steps for the baggage handler.
The symbol in the middle of the fin looks rather like Sottish Airlines own symbol and in a similar position. Did Hellenic just copy the idea, I wonder? Or even simply incorporate it in their own colour scheme?
Another thing: what looks like a ‘picture window’ in the rear fuselage, was that a Scottish Aviation innovation?
I know I keep banging on about photos I picked up in Prestwick in the early 1960s but, somewhere, I have half-a-dozen or so photos of Scottish Airlines aircraft – Daks, Tigers, Rapides and, I seem to recall, a Liberator. I’ll dig out the latter and post it here in due course.
Meanwhile, I located a photo on-line of the luxuriously-appointed Liberator of the Emperor of Vietnam, F-VNNP. Don’t you just love those white-walled tyres? This was the former G-AHYB / AM920:
ianwoodward9The image below comes from a book on the Liberator by Ian White; it is No. 96 in the WARPAINT series. This is from one of several sample pages on-line. The image is relevant to this thread for two reasons:
The upper image shows what Brits would probably call a Lib I, with an American serial number and as used by the USAAC Ferry Command.
The lower image shows (what we would call) a Lib II, with an RAF serial number (AL576), a US ’roundel’ and allocated to a U.S. Bomber Group in the Far East. This mix of RAF and USAAC markings was mentioned in posts #102 to #105 (above)
ianwoodward9Not about the Lisbon route but a follow-on to the discussion, above, about DDL’s Fw-200 Condor OY-DAM. The image below should show the ‘neutrality’ colour scheme before the later adoption of the all-over orange paint scheme.
From at least one report, the British authorities thought that the white crosses on the Danish flags might be mistaken for German crosses and insisted on the overall orange finish for DDL’s flights to Shoreham, the designated airport for the London service in the late-1939/early-1940 period.
ianwoodward9Below are a few things I’ve recently found on-line. They relate to a ferry pilot by the name of Tobin (Gilbert Sheppard Tobin), an American who was employed by the ATA and, later, by Ferry Command, as can be seen from the cover of his log book.
The other images are extracts from that log book, specifically a flight across the South Atlantic in Liberator III FL909, delivering ammunition to North Africa during the first Battle of El Alamein and then, after a few days in Cairo) returning over part of the same route and then to Bathurst, from where it flew to Prestwick by way of Gibraltar and Lyneham.
I hope that the images are clear enough (if not, I’ll summarise the itinerary in a later post)
ianwoodward9Thanks again, longshot, for a useful link (though the cyrillic text was a bit baffling). The photograph of AM259 therein has prompted me to post these three images of AM259 (the first Liberator in the UK, I believe, and the first for BOAC). The information below is based on the ‘captions’ or file ‘tags’ attached to the images:
(1) The first is a colour shot of AM259, its serial number identified but not the location (perhaps before delivery to the UK)
(2) The second shows AM259 at Squires Gate on arrival in the UK (14 March 1941) – the first 4-engined aircraft across the Atlantic.
(3) The third is from the website that longshot posted and shows AM259 in May 1941 as G-AGCD (not the best of shots in some ways but the background may hold something of interest to someone eagle-eyed who posted earlier)
ianwoodward9I’ll try again:
Thank you, longshot, for the link to the Air-Britain webpage, the existence of which I was not aware. There are some fascinating lists there.
For those who have not perused the contents of the list of BOAC aircraft, it covers the post-war period rather than its WWII operations and that includes its ‘stock’ of Liberators, as at the end of 1945. Here is that list:
ianwoodward9Thank you, longshot, for the link to the Air-Britain webpage, the existence of which I was not aware. There are some fascinating lists there.
For those who have not perused the contents of the list of BOAC aircraft, it covers the post-war period rather than its WWII operations and that includes its ‘stock’ of Liberators, as at the end of 1945. Here is that list:
EDIT: Don’t know what happened there, so I shall try again (hopefully, see next post)
ianwoodward9Though it doesn’t really help with interpreting the MOVEMENTS BOARD in post #42, I have now seen some details of other location ‘codes’:-
BASE A = Whitchurch
BASE B = Bramcote
BASE C = Colerne
As already mentioned in an earlier post, BASE X was Moscow and we all seemed to agree that BASE M must be Montreal.
Does anyone know of any similar base ‘codes’ used by BOAC and/or the RFS?
ianwoodward9I don’t know all the services that OY-DEM flew and it would take too much time and space to got through all the chopping and changing of its work. Here are a few jottings.
It was based for quite a while at Munich for flights to Berlin, linking with a DDL service from Malmo and Copenhagen. Later, it operated a Copenhagen-Berlin-Munich-Berlin-Copenhagen service – seven hours flying a day, six days a week – difficult with one aircraft. Later, DDL was told by the German authorities that it could not operate the domestic Munich/Berlin/Munich sectors but was offered the Berlin-Vienna service instead. This started on 1 December 1941 (depart Berlin at 0900 and depart Vienna at 14.00), roughly two hours each way, six days a week. Two weeks later, it made a wheels-up landing at Vienna. And that takes us to the end of 1941!
The following war years saw repairs, maintenance and overhauls, technical problems, fuel shortages, service cancellations because of war activities and so on. Mainly, it operated the Vienna service, at times only from Berlin and at other times from Copenhagen through Berlin. DDL’s Ju-52 OY-DAL had, in general, provided the Malmo-Copenhagen link, some periods the Copenhagen-Berlin leg, too) but it crashed in December 1941, leaving DDL with only one aircraft – OY-DEM, which was in for overhaul at the time. DDL soldiered on with OY-DEM, mainly on the Copenhagen-Berlin-Vienna but adding the Malmo leg at times. That’s the short version anyway.
You mention OY-DEM’s post-war crash at Northolt. Ironically, it not only happened in England, geographically quite close to OY-DAM/G-AGAY’s crash at White Waltham but also in a similar way. Both crashes involved landing in the rain on surfaces sufficiently wet that the brakes wouldn’t stop either in time – at least that’s the way it all reads to me.
That photograph is terrific but quite common, in fact. I took it from a book on DDL’s Condors (from which I’ve quoted extensively here) but the photo is also on that Schiphol photo website cited in an earlier post. I think it was also in an Air-Britain publication many years back but my mind might be playing tricks.
Incidentally, there is apparently colour film footage of OY-DAM in its orange ‘neutrality’ scheme but I’ve never seen the film. Here’s a still as published in the aforementioned book
ianwoodward9A bit more regarding the Danish use of the neutrality paint schemes:
DDL did not immediately adopt the orange ‘neutrality’ paint scheme. Instead, they slightly widened and lengthened their red flash along the fuselage, painted “DANMARK” in large black print along both sides of the fuselage above the red flash and added a large Danish flag (red with a white cross) on either side of the tailplane and above and below the outer reaches of both wings. It is believed that the Focke-Wulf Fw 200 Condor OY-DAM, having stood unused at Kastrup since 29 August 1939, first flew in this scheme on 12 November 1939. The scheme lasted less than a few months because it was overhauled from 3 January 1940 to 7 February 1940.
OY-DAM is thought to have reappeared in the orange paint scheme after the overhaul. It is reported to have been at Schiphol wearing the orange ‘neutrality’ scheme in February 1940 (maybe when the well-known photograph of it, shown BELOW, was taken).
On 8 April 1940, OY-DAM left Kastrup for the regular service to Schiphol and the onward flight to Shoreham Airport in southern England. As usual, it stayed at Shoreham overnight but, as German forces had invaded Denmark on 9 April 1940, it was refused permission to leave for what then had become enemy-occupied territory. Captain Hansen was required to hand over the keys and aircraft papers and a military guard was placed on the aircraft. The Secretary of State for Air impounded the aircraft and arranged for BOAC to take charge of it. Its fuel was drained and replaced by a lower grade fuel to discourage any attempt to fly it away. Two days later, the Air Ministry in Britain impressed it. The next day, camouflage was hastily applied by hand to make it less visible from the air.
Its sister ship, OY-DEM, continued to fly in ‘neutrality’ colours from early 1940 until the summer of 1945.
ianwoodward9Thanks for the additional information, ericmunk, and for the link.
My memory is that KLM took a unilateral decision regarding the ‘neutrality’ paint scheme – its design and application – and suggested that the other neutral airlines do the same. ABA and SABENA followed the suggestion but, at first, DDL did not. A little later, however, the British authorities made it a condition of agreeing to DDL flights into the UK (to Shoreham, I think) and DDL then complied. DDL continued to use the same ‘neutrality’ paint scheme throughout the rest of the war.
There is a well-known photograph of aircraft from three of those four airlines wearing their neutrality colours at Schiphol. I’m sure you’ll all have seen it but, in case not, I’ll try to find, scan and post it here later
ianwoodward9As noted earlier and shown in the image above, the passenger door on KLM’s DC-3s was on the starboard side.
ianwoodward9I believe that this image of DC-3 PH-ALI, taken at Croydon before WWII, shows KLM’s colours (or lack thereof) prior to the adoption of the neutrality markings shown above:
ianwoodward9Thanks for those images, longshot.
Are you able to scan any interesting images from those Dutch books, ericmunk?
Meanwhile, this colour drawing comes from the modellers’ page of an old copy of FLYING REVIEW (around early-mid 1960s). It was probably the first time that I was aware of neutrality colours. The author was trying to encourage modellers to look beyond using just WWII camouflage for their models and presented a page of colourful DC-3 drawings but, sadly, without any more commentary than you see below. The registration of the printed colours is not that exact but I thought it worthy of inclusion here.
ianwoodward9Yes, Matt, just about spot-on. I did it very hurriedly indeed because I wanted to post it here but, at the same time, I didn’t want to mislead any eagle-eyed readers such as you.
FOR THOSE INTERESTED IN SUCH MATTERS: a rectangle around the Lib’s port fin (from the ‘patchy’ photo) was superimposed on the ‘underexposed’ fin of the other photo. The edges of the rectangle were ‘cloned’ and ‘smudged’ a bit but the ‘step’ in the lower fuselage was left in to make the fabrication ‘obvious’ – the same goes for the removal of the wire running forward from the port fin. [Incidentally, I have avoided the term ‘photo-shop’ because I used another, free on-line, program]
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