History of BOAC

[A30yoyo]

Albums of mostly 1950s BOAC photos

By Brian Doherty who worked in the Kremlin and the Sales office in Regent St
Air-Britain : brian doherty boac

and by Frank Hudson, a Cargo Manager at LHR
Air-Britain : frank hudson boac

[tornadoken]

A30yy: I doubt it. Masefield's Flight Path has a Chapter on Economics, where he presents his efforts with a slide rule, demonstrating impossibility of Tudor I/Hermes I breakeven, as the only such exercise on WW2 UK transports. (Some UK POL was £-sourced from Trinidad, Abadan).

[Brit312]

A question.....Britain back in the 40s had no oil...very little anyway....did it have to be paid for in dollars?...If so was the higher fuel cost per ton-mile of converted bombers taken into account in purchasing decisions

A30 ,, I do not have the answer to your question but although the UK in the 40s and 50s had not found oil in the North Sea it did control large areas where oil had been found [ Persian Gulf ] and these areas were in the Sterling Area which meant that transactions were done in British Pounds.

[WHBM]

In post-war Briain there was a huge merchant navy fleet, almost all oil-fuelled by this time, which picked up bunkers all around the world sometimes thousands of tons at a time. There was also the RAF whose aircraft fleet dwarfed the penny numbers of civilian airliners, and of course the Navy, who needed their own ocean-going tankers to keep them fuelled between ports. I doubt the consumption of foreign exchange for commercial Avgas came very far up the financial radar at all.

[A30yoyo]

BOAC at War

The book 'Croydon Airport and the Battle for Britain' (Cluett, Bogle.Learmonth) has an account of the infant BOAC's transfer from Croydon and Heston to Bristol Whitchurch and some very rare photos of Airways aircraft in camouflage back at Croydon in November 1939 to ferry crew and equipment to France for 607 and 615 squadrons

1000 aircraft photos has acquired a set of photos of BOAC aircraft in Egypt in 1944
Lockheed 18 Lodestar
Avro 685 York C.Mk.I
Consolidated 32 LB-30 Liberator Mk.III
Lockheed 18-07 Lodestar
Douglas DC-3

and the (BOAC) fleet's in at Lisbon Portela about October 1943


Aeroporto de Lisboa, Portugal by Biblioteca de Arte-Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian, on Flickr
larger on
All sizes | Aeroporto de Lisboa, Portugal | Flickr - Photo Sharing!

[renfrew]

Thank you for these BOAC photos.It is a shame that so few seem to have been taken at that time.
It is always the same ones that turn up and it is a treat to see something new.
I have seen a similar Lisbon one in a book and have always presumed that the aircraft were stuck perhaps due bad weather in UK.

[A30yoyo]

BOAC photos

Hallo renfrew.....hope you don't mind me chucking BOAC topics onto your thread like this....sometimes it works in clarifying an idea or bringing up previously unpublished photos. Yes, there is a photo of that Lisbon line-up from another angle in the Ian Allan Pictorial History of BOAC dated October 1943 I think and yet another closer view as header pic in an old Aeroplane Monthly article on BOAC at war. My hunch was it was connected with a big conference in the Middle East but it could just be weather, as you say. The DC-3 on the far left is one of the pre-war KLM fleet operating the Bristol-Lisbon service for BOAC, looks like G-AGBD 'Buizerd', the rest are lend-lease Dakotas and Liberators

[A30yoyo]

Snow in Lisbon Jan 1945

A thread tangent....might be a BOAC Dak in there!...what you find lower down on Google Images
Aeroporto da Portela - Galeria

[A30yoyo]

BOAC and Flying Boats

It could be argued that the biggest error Imperial Airways made was to order flying boats as a response to the Douglas DC-2/DC-3 and it took BOAC till about 1948 to finally abandon them
LIFE: La Guardia Airport - Hosted by Google

[renfrew]

Wonderful,and I see that there are more views attached.
This would have been the summer of 1940.

I can only remember one other colour pic which was of a Boeing 314.

[A30yoyo]

BOAC flying-boats in colour

This one?
Boeing 314 A Flying Boat by Etiennedup, on Flickr

It's probably scanned from a book or magazine....there were a couple of colour photos in Aeroplane Monthly of BOAC Empire boats on the Nile ca. 1945....in Geoff Reichelt's webpage
Short S23 C Class Empire Flying Boats

also see
http://www.seawings.co.uk/

[A30yoyo]

BOAC vs. British Airways (WWII)

There's been some discussion in Aeroplane Monthly and on other learned forums about the wartime use of the title 'British Airways' on aircraft and equipment (e.g. boats, see above) rather than the official company name British Overseas Airways Corporation.... the issue was sometimes dodged by the use of the Speedbird symbol only.

[A30yoyo]

Skymasters and Lancastrians

Nice shot of an RAF Skymaster on
Wings Over New Zealand - Classic NZ Airliners (photo thread)

and shots of the Lancastrians BOAC got instead on
Wings Over New Zealand - Classic NZ Airliners (photo thread)

the whole splendid archive from New Zealand worth a look

[A30yoyo]

The expatriate BOAC in WWII

Reviving 'renfrew's' thread , perhaps....there's a nice set of photos on flickr relating to Captain Roger (RP) Mollard, BOAC Durban and G-AFCI Golden Hind
Flickr: picnic50's Photostream

I wonder if the rare Winston Bray book has much to say on the wartime BOAC for instance the persistence of the British Airways name

[boaccomet4]

The BOAC Comet 4

BOAC operated Comet 4 aircraft from 1958 and then withdrew them from service in 1965. By then they were operating B707's and eventually the VC10. I had the please of flying First Class from Sydney (Australia) to Auckland (New Zealand) as a 12yo boy. In those days the Comet was the only jet able to used Auckland airport and they were still constructing the larger one capable of handling B707's,DC8's etc. Being a veteran Viscount traveller I was amased at the way I as pushed back in my seat during the takeoff run. The sound of those Rolls Royce Avons was exciting aswell. I still have the First Class Menu, in flight magazine and the signed Junior Jet Club logbook. I wonder what they would be worth today. There was a definite grace and pride amongst the cabin crew and the cockpit crew were friendly aswell. BOAC was well respected then I think. The air hostesses looked great in their smart navy uniforms with white gloves and airforce type hats.

[avionic type]

The merger of B.E.A.and B.O.A.C. went down like a lead balloon amongst those of us in the lower orders our working practices were so different ,in the central area, we in BEA had merged trades and when we were trained Electrical/ Instrument personell carried out Pre Departure checks, refuelling,an pushbacks which BOAC never did to my knowledge and never changed their working practices and got the same rates of pay. As our Chief Engineer the late John (Polly)Perkins said untill the last old BEA/BOAC engineer dies the old arguments will still rage on.

[renfrew]

Re the use of British Airways rather than BOAC.
According to Winston Bray's book Sir John Reith claimed to have originated the full name.
In 1941 the Director-General Leslie Runciman instructed that the Corporation was to be known simply as British Airways.
In 1944 a new management restored the Speedbird and the full name.

I was BOAC and although BEA was a sister corporation the two companies often seemed to be barely on speaking terms.
As a small example when I started staff travel was available on just about any airline in the world-except BEA.

[The SSK]

Where I was, there was a fair bit of interaction and cross-fertilisation. Both airlines had a very similar 3-year General Apprenticeship scheme, with the BEA and BOAC groups (each 30-50 strong) being merged for the academic parts of the course at Ealing or Slough Techs, so a lot of close friendships were forged at that stage. I shared a flat with three BEA guys. Then there was the Salford Uni Transport Admin course which was jointly supported by the two airlines. In my year there were three BOAC and two BEA people.

Then in the seventies, round about merger time, there were quite a few of my ex BEA pals around Speedbird House or down the longhaul routes.

[tomba]

Neville Thomson

Looking for any information on Neville James B Thomson was born on 05 Jun 1931 in Kingston, Surrey, Kent died in Aug 1988, Lewisham, London, England Neville was a senior flight engineer with BOAC, and worked on the Comet project. He was on the inaugural flight from London to Paris, and was appointed the Flight engineer to the Queen’s Flight (in the crew whenever the Royal family flew). there was also a photo of him being decorated by the Queen: however I think that's been lost somewhere can anyone help out with any info or direct me in the right direction

thanks

[Mike6567]

The History of BOAC 1939-1974.
BRAY, Winston.
Just for information there is a copy of this book available via abebooks - rather pricey though.
Mike