I will Ian, in some days. As a brief summary, Adriaan “Jons” Viruly was a wellknown prewar KLM pilot and author. He made his way fron occupied Holland through Berlin by first class train. Then on a visum to Sweden issued on the autority of a Swedish-German nobleman who vouched for him, in 1941. He worked for ABA for some months towing targets with Tiger Moths, bedore catching a BOAC flight to England. He then worked for KLM/BOAC from Whitchurch a short while before volunteering for the Return Ferry Service. He flew for RFS in second half 1942 into 1943 before returning to fly KLM and BOAC DC-3s on the Lissabon line until 1945.

The book I mentioned describea his training with BOAC on Link and dual, plus navigation. It also describes the flights with up to 22 bodies (pax) in horrendous weather over the Atlantic.

It describes in detail his crash with a Liberator at Gander in late 1943 when it hit snowbanks on take off and broke up. Lucky escape there. And it details a descent in cloud into Reykjavik on 26 august 1943 where they missed a mountain by 100 feet. DME turned out to have a deviation…

Not all ATA staff were BOAC staff by the way. A number of KLM staff also flew the Liberators (and used their experience to pioneer the north Atlantic route immediately postwar), albeit under cover of BOAC who also operated the KLM aircraft on a formal lease, that managed to escape the German invasion of 1940.

Bankstown NSW, in July 2005. This is 9M-ARU I believe hiding behind the scaffolding.

The KC-97 may be the only example preserved outside the U.S.

There’s two more near Barcelona too.

And then there was goettingen where three were killed and four wounded when an uxb went up during dismantling in 2010. And three killed on a fishing vessel from Scheveningen in 2005 when they landed a bomb which went. That’s just off the top of my head. The list is longer than you think…

And there’s the seven killed and 19 injured in Thailand in 2014 when a supposedly defused bomb blew up in a scrapyard.

Not true, when I lived in the near from Frankfurt a farmer discovered a huge crater in on of his fields, he heard the explosion during the night but thought it was thunder.

Same here. Around 15 years ago a case was investigated in Holland where fish died in large amounts. A disease was suspected, but turned out to be internal injuries everywhere. Deep pond was used to dump ammo post war, including lots of mortar shells. Apparently some had gone off.

Which would cost more than the value of the hull?

Those will be extremely expensive engines then…