And to post 19: yes KLM did so to avoid rulemaking by the Dutch government. The Dutch government suggested to the other neutral governments to have their airlines do the same.

There’s a fair number of photos in Jan Hagens’s books. G-AGBE in front of the hangar at Whitchurch with technicians working inside on another DC-3. An image of a piece of mail carried by KLM through Lisbon. The raising of the flag at Whitchurch on 31 August 1942 by a small group of people to celebrate the Dutch Queen’s birthday. With a DC-3 lurking in the background. The Duke of Kent awarding a medal to captain Tepas on 6 February 1942. An interior shot of the station master’s office at Whitchurch, Pilots in front of a DC-3 posing. Close-up of the rearview mirrors fitted to all DC-3s after the first dogfight enroute. Damage to the Ibis in November 1942 following another interception. The first landing of an international airline on the new Lisbon airfield (G-AGBD) on 15 October 1942. Engineers loading liferafts on the Buizerd. 1000th flight group pose on 18 April 1944. Group photo of the 1944 ground crew staff at Whitchurch. Engineer working on a DC-3 engine at Whitchurch. DC-3 taxyiing at Whitchurch. Plus several chapter of personal stories and interviews on the KLM in England during the War.

Ad van Ommen’s book has pictures of KLM pilots riding their bikes through Bristol. Groups photos of ground crews. ROute charts. That kind of stuff.

Yes, the KLM DC-2’s and DC-3’s were polished aluminium until September 1939. The lack of paint was an economically motivated choice: less weight equals more payload. The incident with the Mees in September 1939 was the reason Danish, Swedish, Belgian and Dutch authorities adopted the orange neutral-scheme with large black lettering over the windows and under the wings to avoid a repeat of incidents.

The incident of the Mees on September 26th, 1939 involved a regular flight from Copenhagen to Amsterdam. It was attacked over the Northsea 120 km from Helgoland by a Luftwaffe Heinkel (115) seaplane. Three crew and nine passengers. The Mees was piloted by Jan Moll (later captain in the RFS, see the other thread), and he managed to take evasive action and escape the attacker. A 38-year old Swedish civil engineer called O.R. Lamm was fatlly injured in the attack, which left 65 bullet strikes on the aircraft. Photos here: http://www.hdekker.info/Nieuwe%20map/1939.htm In his autobiography Jan Moll also vividly describes the incident, which they were lucky to get away with (fuel tanks holed, propeller blades hit, elevator cables severed save one thread of steel).

The orange colour scheme also meant that quite a lot of KLM aircraft were destroyed in the German bombardments of Schiphol in May 1940 as they stood out quite well against the green grass background. The military aircraft on the field fared a lot better.

Yes, Longshot. To some extent. It details the entire war and post-war ops of KLM’s DC-3’s. Starting with the 5 DC-3’s and 1 DC-2 that met up in the UK. One had escaped from Schiphol on May 13th, 1940 (PH-ALI), another was stranded in the UK on May 10th, 1940 on a regular commercial flight (PH-ARZ). PH-ALR and PH-ARB were inbound and outbound on the East India route and were flown to the UK in mid May 1940. PH-ARW and DC-2 PH-ALE were in Lissabon on May 10th, 1940 and were flown to the UK instead of Schiphol.

The book greatly details the politics behind the start of the Lissabon line from firsthand interviews with all involved. This includes financial arrangements, and the like.

On Sintra, it says that Parmentier (chief of the Lissabon line) was unhappy with the field. He found it short, and the grass strip was very often boggy after rain. He campaigned in vain to fly on Espinho near Porto, a grass strip too but more useable after wet weather. Alverca and Ota were in use as deviation fields in bad weather or low fuel.

Inbound flights to the UK left from Sintra. It was usually done with a limited amount of fuel in bad airfield conditions, for a short hop to Porto where it was fueled for the trip across the Bay of Biscany. Outbound flight sometimes landed in Porto, but only by exception.

Sintra is surrounded by hills, and had a weather system of its own. Tricky apporaches. Weather forecasts in England on Portugal were non-existant in 1940 and early 1941 and one KLM flight limped into Porto in the midst of a full-blown hurricane. The winter of 1940/1941 wreaked havoc with flight schedules, also due to wet and boggy conditions at Whitchurch and Sintra. Chivenor and Porto were used instead in some cases. Radio-ops at Sintra were very unreliable. It did have have a great butcher’s shop near the airfield where the crew bought wholesale to bring back as luggage to the UK! Crews overnighted in the Grand Hotel in Lissabon.

Alverca BTW was short too. Two runways of only 500 and 600 metres. This against the 900 metres the USAAF used as a guide for C-47 ops on landing… KLM was the only operator around in those days that standard did 3-pointer landings that required only 500 metres, this against a 2-pointer requiring 200-300 metres more depending on speed.

On one trip to Moscow the to be UK ambassador to Moscow was delivered more dead than alive after the oxygen supply failed in flight.

No doubt about that being G-AGDR indeed. The date fits capt. Page’s death (Feb 15th, 1942). Spitfires from a Polish RAF Squadron. Moll mentions a P-51 flown by a Pole in his memoirs, probably error through hearsay.

Over to Jan Moll. He was one of KLM’s senior captains, and had escaped to England through France in 1940. Moll later wrote his autobiography “Langs de hoge weg” (Along the high road) detailing his interesting flying career. In it he describes the following on the RFS:

After a brief spell as an instructor with 320 Squadron, he was one of the first five pilots when the RFS was established, being picked by Sir Frederick Bowhill for the job. The others were O.P. Jones of Imperial Airways, a captain Messenger, South African Thomlinson and White, who later crashed near Ayr on take off from Prestwick. They made their way to Canada to set the outfit up. En route he shared a cabin with an Australian Sq/Ldr he knew well: it was the gentlemen who had coordinated the departure of Moll with the Uiver from the improvised field at the Albury racetrack during the London to Melbourne race years earlier!

At St. Hubert they met captain Wilkinson who coordinated training in Canada. He had some experience flying across the Atlantic prewar with the Imperial Airways flying boats. Moll details a particularly bad take off for a December 1942 flight with nine VIPs including the Australian high commissioner, in a hurry to get to England. At Gander the weather was a full snowstorm, the aircraft was refueled and deiced inside the hangar. AIrcraft were unheated, and all passengers wore thermounderwear, silk and woolen clothing and thick flight overalls, bearskin boots and gloves. Whiskey for enroute, and oxygen supply. He started up the engines inside the closed hangar, and only when they were warm were the doors opened and the aircraft taxied outside into the nightly snow storm. Two snowplows drove ahead of the aircraft to clear a path to the freshly plowed runway. Take off was achieved in zero visibility at night, by opening a sliding cockpit window and keeping close to the runway lights on the left!

Moll also flew Liberators from England to Moscow over the African and Scandinavian routes, and pioneered the ballbearing run to neutral Sweden when demand exceeded the capability of the Lockheeds used before. He also flew the Cairo route on occasion. His first Cairo route he drew straws with a capt Page to see who would get a warm break from cold Atlantic weather. Moll lost. Page was shot down on his return flight over the Bay of Biscany or Channel by a P-51 by accident, all hands lost. He also describes the many VIPs carried on board. Royalty, admirals, politicians. And they all were treated the same. And they all were cold as hell.

Getting back to Adriaan Viruly’s late 1943 crash, this turns out to be G-AGEL at Gander on December 27th, 1943. In his book ‘De zee en de overkant’ (The Sea and Across) the author/pilot describes what happened. It was a final trip he agreed to do even though he had already been formally reassigned to KLM for the Lissabon line. The flight from Ontréal to Gander was uneventful. The Atlantic weather was beastly and they stayed over at Gander for 24 hours to wait for improvements. Just before midnight the crew boarded the Lib in pitch dark, in temperatures of -30 degrees Celsius and in heavy snow. There was one passenger too. Unknown to the crew, the runway lighting system had been changed to a new system. The pilot lined up according to the old system rules and took off off-centerline. At rotation speed they hit a massive snowbank in a nose-high position, tearing off parts of the tail. It then hit a second snowbank taking out the undercarriage and went head-on into a third. The aircraft broke up and engine number three caught fire. Viruly escaped through the emergency hatch, the remainder of the crew through a hole in the fuselage. Injuries were mild: a broken foot for the W/Op, and some bruised ribs for the navigator. ANd a few bumps and bruises for all. The passenger, who had been laying on the floor, had fallen out of the aircraft at an estimated 100 km/h when the floor was ripped from underneath him by the second snowbank impact. A good thing too, since the ferry tanks crushed what was left of the cabin he was in on the third impact. Miraculously he survived uninjured! The subsequent enquiry laid the blame at Aerodrome Control for failing to notify the pilots, and giving permission for take off when the aircraft was clearly wrongly lined up in full view of them…

Other things of note in his stories:
– Crews wore full BOAC uniforms, which they had to have made at their own expense and then got reimbursed.
– Crew members had paid leave. Something Viruly only found out after he left BOAC and promptly got paid out his leave days in cash. He never knew he had them in the first place!
– Every pilot had a veto right to scrub a flight if he thought conditions were too appalling (they always were appalling, but sometimes it was particularly bad)
– He also flew on of the Cairo mail runs to the 8th Army there with a Liberator via Gibraltar, in October 1942 with a Polish navigator and copilot.
– In one Atlantic flight eastbound they left with eight B-24s, including seven military examples. Viruly found Prestwick clouded in and made it to Londonderry. Four other made it to Ireland. One hit a hill just short of Prestwick and crashed, another one ditched at sea, a third was abandoned by parachutes. All crew survived. I have no way of checking this story, and Viruly is known to take truth somewhat liberally in his books…
– Then there was a crash of a Liebrator in icing conditions at Charlottetown in which the crew was badly injured when the aircraft skidded of the runway and burnt. Captain Poole. This bears a striking resemblance with the 1946 crash of G-AGEM during which Viruly was not even in the RFS, or even with BOAC!