Coupla Ju-52/3m points.

The South Africans had Ju52/3ms pre-war as airliners (and used them as military transports in North Africa, IIRC).

So, there never seemed to be any issues with mistaken identity? My thoughts are that the Ju-52 from a distance even is a distinctive shape that most pilots would associate immediately with being Luftwaffe. I just wonder if there were any blue on blue incidents because of this.

Accounts of wartime ‘sabotage’ are widely publicised; while there probably was some sabotage, and it is often difficult to detect, the lack of accidents attributed to poor maintenance and the variety of human error in these circumstances , despite the factors making this inevitable, means sabotage claims should always be regarded sceptically. Much better to believe it was sabotage than poor servicing / pilot error that brought you mate down.

That is very true, and proving someone removed a split-pin deliberately rather than someone omitted to fit it, or someone drained fuel rather than someone didn’t top it up properly would be hard to prove indeed. Perhaps a pitot packed with grass is easier to put down to sabotage if the aeroplane gets down in one piece. There certainly were Vichy French factions all over Africa it seems, just as there were in the Pacific, trying to undermine the Allied effort. Did you realise that Vichy French members in Thailand were assisting the Japanese in their attacks on Singapore? Crazy but true, apparently. They allowed Japs to operate from their airfields.

The Lockheed Hudson had large area extending Fowler flaps, and needed to be landed in a manner that most Commonwealth aircrew of the time found different to their training – including a wheeler landing rather than three-point. There were numerous accidents, some very significant such as the loss of some of Australia’s high command at Canberra – but most were down to pilot unfamiliarity with the type’s operating requirement – tough, but pilot error. Engine problems with the flaps extended were also very difficult to survive.

Yes, and in these cases with all the usual problems, the particular heat of these two days diminished the lift, so they sank like stones once the aircraft were banked into the approach.

Aeroplane ran a multi-part feature on the Takadori(sp) Run a few years ago.

I wouldn’t mind having a read of them. I have spoken with two pilots in the past, now both deceased, who flew the route. One of them did it just once as part of his tranist from the UK to Cairo. He flew the first route as a passenger in a C-47 and was so terified by the antics of the junior pilot aboard he got off and asked if he could fly his own plane the rest of the way. So they gave him a Hurricane that had broken down at a remote Takoradi-route strip and they drove up there and fixed it and he flew it the rest of the way. From what he said and from what Trevor Howells says in his book, it must have been a real boy’s own adventure to come from little old new Zealand to suddenly be flying fighters across darkest Africa. What an experience.

The other pilot I talked with also flew as a ferry pilot on the route and said he mostly flew Hudsons so must have been a leadship navigation plane pilot. I never knew till reading this book that they usually had one bomber and five fighters per convoy, and the fighters had large temporary numbers of 1 through to 5 painted on them so they knew their place.

Trevor wrote that a new Spitfire just out of the factory would be worth 5000 Pounds Sterling, and by the time it was transported by ship to Takoradi, assembled, test flown and ferried across the route to Cairo, it was worth 25,000 Pounds Sterling, that is how much the Government had paid to get it there, 20 grand! He notes the fuel prices at most fuel stops and they are none less than a pound per gallon, some more, because to get the fuel to those remote places it had to be transported by camel train in four gallon tins. I think we forget the logistics behind supplying a war sometimes and reading this book has been a bit of an eye-opener to this. Those ferry pilots were certainly unsung heroes.

The routes would have been fairly far away from the combat zone but logic tells you that at some of the RAF stations and airfields along the way there may well have been a new, green young pilot or gunner who saw one and mistook it for a German paratroop aircraft I guess.

Howells mentions in the book that certain African cities were run by the Vichy French, and they had to avoid them because they’d shoot at the aircraft they were ferrying. It lead me to also wonder about places that had Vichy and Nazi sympathisers or were perhaps neutral, did the Germans or Italians also have supply lines across Africa in the same way as the RAF had the Takoradi to Cairo route? Or did German pilots and soldiers use some of the airlines operating freely in the continent too? If the airlines only carried Allies (being British, US and Belgian airlines mentioned) were they open to attack from the Axis for being part of the Allied supply route?

The unit that Trevor Howells was flying with and refers to was No. 1 Aircraft Delivery Unit, based at Takoradi. Feel free to look up their records and see if it’s true. I cannot see any reason why he’d make it up.

Fair enough, it’s just you made a rather sweeping statement about Spitfire accidents in NZ and I thought I would fill in the facts for those who don’t know them in case they thought they happened twice a year.

NZ based Spits seem to have a propensity for effecting alternative landing styles. Combine that with the TR9’s (look Mum no wheels) landing techique and you could almost say it was only s matter of time.

NZ has had four Spitfire accidents in 20 years of the type operating in this country, but all have thankfully been non-fatal which must be a better record than the UK has for the past 20 years?