Originally Posted by
OUAQUKGF Ops
Thanks for some interesting research,
OUAQUKGF Ops, and I'm hoping that the Mods and the OP will bear with us if we take this matter of Rechka, Scorgie and SV's last flight with BIA a bit further. After all, SV had been with the BUA group, at least one of its predecessors (Transair) and a successor (BIA) for a very long time, as had Joe Rechka and (probably) Dudley Scorgie. My impression was that Scorgie was younger than Rechka, who would have been 63. (Some claimed he was born before 1910, but I never heard any evidence for that.) Scorgie was probably below Rechka in BIA seniority.
The newspaper article seems to back up your quoted witness-statement that SV's last trip with BIA was Gatwick/Guernsey/Hurn, so my guess is that Joe would have shared the two take-offs and landings with Dudley. If Joe decided to handle the last sector, it's possible that Dudley was handling the take-off out of Gatwick. Sadly, I doubt we'll ever know...
As a Second Officer, Scorgie had been the sole survivor of that DH 86A accident at Gatwick in 1936, in which he had not been occupying a pilot's seat. (The DH 86 was a 4-engine development of the DH 84 Dragon biplane, the latter being the predecessor of the better-known DH 89 Dragon-Rapide. Its early "A" versions were notorious for poor directional stability, and that seems to have been a factor in the accident.)
There's a full obituary of Joe Rechka on the Free Czechoslovak Air Force website here:
https://fcafa.com/2010/10/07/josef-rechka/
Understandably, it makes no mention of SV's last trip with BIA, but one of the posted responses is from John Grzegorzek, who was in BIA Ops in the 1970s. He writes:
"I worked for BIA in Operations when that company’s last DC3 flight from LGW (empty positioning to BOH) took place. Joe was rostered for it, together with another skipper, whose name now escapes me. They told us that they had asked permission from LGW ATC for a low run after take off and that this had been approved ‘subject to traffic’. What they didn’t do was get permission from BAA. They took off from holding point Bravo and, as soon as they were airborne, took a sharp left and across the maintenance area, where at that time, the old Morton's hangar still stood. BIA Ops was at the root of the centre pier adjacent to Stand 10 and their intention was to give us a close look before showing their wheels to the tower. They flew across the front of the departure lounge and across the centre pier before heading west again towards the tower. Unfortunately, the Airport Manager’s office was on the sixth floor of the terminal building and he looked down in amazement at the top of this unauthorised DC3 as it passed below his office window. The phone rang moments later and the call was transferred to appropriate senior management. A promise was made to the irate Airport Manager that the pilots would be dealt with as soon as they arrived at BOH. As this was already their last flight for the company, the matter was easily resolved. A call was made to the Airport Manager later in the day to say that neither of the pilots would be flying for the company again!"
John says the flight was an empty positioning to Bournemouth-Hurn, but the newspaper article disproves that with its photo of the aeroplane and crew at Guernsey. "Bravo" was the second entry point for a westerly take-off on Rwy 27 (since re-designated Rwy 26L), but it's not clear if the empty a/c was already airborne at that point or if it started its run from there (probably the latter). The old wooden Morton's hangar was, like several other much larger ones in those days, on the south side of the runway. The single terminal building (nowadays referred to as the "South" terminal) is, of course, north-east of the runway threshold, and in those days had two or three "fingers" projecting from it to the west, in between which were the main parking stands. The main control tower was north of the runway, about a mile west of the terminal building.
So it appears that, after G-AMSV took-off to the west, it performed a tight and then widening 360-degree turn to the left, perhaps in stages, to pass first over the maintenance area, then northwards across the runway approach lights and the fingers and continued turning left towards the control tower. As it passed over the fingers it would have been very close to the six-floor terminal building.