The column headings for the MOVEMENTS BOARD – IN FLIGHT appear to be as follows:

AIRCRAFT
SERIAL NO. [I think, as the ‘#’ symbol was not much used in Britain back then]
CALL SIGN
PILOT
?????? [unreadable because it’s a longish word but possibly DEPARTED as it’s a list of times]
FROM
E.T.A.
TO
LANDED
??????? [also unreadable nut more difficult to guess as there are no entries in the column]

I assume the photo was taken at Prestwick and would suggest that, as Prestwick was a staging post between the place indicated in the “FROM” column and the place in the “TO” column, the final column would show the time that the incoming aircraft left Prestwick for the ultimate destination. Just a thought.

I am still of a mind that the information on this MOVEMENTS BOARD is a fabrication but there is one element that might suggest otherwise. If you look at the first entry for a Hudson (the aircraft that is headed for “BASE X“), there is some additional information written above the word “HUDSON” in the first column. If one were writing fictitious information on the board for the purposes of the photograph, why bother to add this additional and unnecessary information?

The book from which this image is taken has no publication date (nor even a year of publication) that I can find. It is possible that, while the text covers the period stated in the title, some of the “400 illustrations” cited on the title page post-date the period in question. I’ve looked at one of the second-hand book websites and the two UK-based sellers either give no date or state “date unknown” while a bookseller in Germany says “(ca.1944 – 1946) 1944”.

Incidentally, one of the UK booksellers is Bookcase in Carlisle, a shop I knew well. It is spread over several floors with thousands and thousands of books. Why mention it here? Well, it uses the former head office of the state brewery company, set up in Carlisle in the First World War under the State Management Scheme to control the sale of alcohol in the area and reduce the drunkeness of workers in the nearby explosives and armaments factories. As well as the brewery, it ran the pubs in the area and one of the rules forbade the buying of rounds of beer for others. They demolished sub-standard pubs, renovated others and built some new ones. The design of the new pubs influenced pub design across the country. The State Management Scheme only ended in the early 1970s, long after the exigencies of war!

Thank you for that article, wieesso. I am otherwise engaged for the next day or two but I’ve printed it and will snatch a chance to read as and when I can. My quick scan has already shown it to be an interesting article, as you say.

My own interest in this subject stems from my reading “Merchant Airmen” several decades ago (a booklet I still have) and this interest has been reactivated somewhat in recent times. So much research has been carried out in the intervening period.

I think I’ve got it now. Thanks, Mark.

The Spit that was hit by flak over Albania was not LZ929 but LZ928 of 318 Squadron. This makes more sense geographically, as 318 Squadron seems to have been working its way up the east coast of Italy that summer, not the west coast like 93 Squadron. On 24 June 1944, 318 Squadron was based at San Vito in Italy. I haven’t been able to locate it precisely (there are several places with the same name in Italy but none fits) but 318’s bases before and after San Vito are both on the east coast, so it is likely that San Vito is somewhere between the two.

The photo that I posted at the start was of LZ929 (HN-O) which was SOC on 8 March 1944, so was probably ‘lost’ just around or just before that date. At that time, in fact between January and June 1944, 93 Squadron was based at Lago, north of Naples.

Thanks, Matt, for the photo of the Liberator approaching Ailsa Craig. For at least a decade of my life, the latter was a regular if distant site for me. Sometimes, I would change my route home after work in order to drive down the hill from Dundonald to Loans just for the view across the Firth of Clyde to Ailsa Craig and Arran.

The photo leads me to wonder again if the authorities sent up a Liberator to fly around the Firth of Clyde for air-to-air photography in order to gain some official photographs of the Return Ferry Service in operation. In other words, are all these photographs of the same Liberator ‘simulating’ first an outward ‘westbound’ journey and then a return ‘eastbound’ one?

Thanks, Longshot, for the photo of the TCA Lancaster. The caption says it was taken at Ringway and that it came from the Avro Company, whose factory was nearby. I have three BOAC photographs of G-AGSU, the Tudor Mk.II. Two of these have captions attached. One shows “B.O.A.C.’s newest passenger air liner … during a test flight at Manchester“. The other shows it “flying very low on a test flight at A.V.Roes aerodrome, Manchester“. Both are dated 3 April 1946. Did Avro use both Woodley and Ringway at the time?

I should add that an old (1963) Air-Britain publication with an outline history of TCA says that they began their own Atlantic service on 22 July 1943 using a government-owned Lancaster, the first transport modification of the Lancaster. This was CF-CMS. It doesn’t actually say that this modification was carried out by Avro itself but the photo you posted suggests this was so. The A-B publication goes on to say that it was followed “by more highly modified versions“. It lists eight, offers almost no information on the first two but says the last six were converted “by Victory Aircraft Ltd., being the first Lancastrian conversions“.

I shall post an RFS-related photograph separately

Since we’ve got to the question of what is really secret and what is not, I’ve dug out the Ralph Gleason article with his views on “TOP SECRET EQUALS BRITISH MOST SECRET”. You’ll notice a odd bit of jazz terminology here and there.

The part about the BOAC flying boat service from Lisbon is at the bottom of the first column. I hope it’s legible.

I usually have several books ‘on the go’ at any one time, so I had put Don McVicar’s “Ferry Command” in the small pile but, last night, I decided to read the opening chapter as a taster.

It was amused to read that, as he took the taxi from the railway station in Montreal to Dorval, the taxi driver knew all about the supposedly ‘secret’ flights across the North Atlantic. It reminded me of something once written by Ralph Gleason, who was a well-known jazz writer (etc) based in San Francisco. In WWII, he had worked in the Office of War Information and, at one time, had to fly from Lisbon to Britain in one of BOAC’s flying boat. Once again, everything about the flight was supposed to be secret’ -except that, when the flying boat took off from the Tagus, everybody in Lisbon could hear it, including the German legation.

So there are! Thanks. Any ideas as to what they are or where they’re going to or coming from?

There is one other photograph of a Liberator in HMSO’s “Merchant Airmen” booklet. For those who haven’t seen this booklet, I have posted the photograph below

The aircraft is flying at a higher altitude, there is no land mass in sight, the photograph is taken from a very different angle and has no caption but it does precede Section VI, “ATLANTIC STORY”, of the booklet.

It is possibly the same Liberator as the one flying near Arran in the photos posted earlier.