Beagle – You almost nicked my act!. .. .Tony Draper – Thanks 1M for the super links. Ideal – I will order the CD. I believe that in 39/40 Caledonia was better known than Canopus and was regarded as the class flagship. I remember seeing the class referred to as the “Caledonias”.. .. .Gainsey. UAS (Tiger Moth/Chipmunk), FTS (Harvard), AFS (Meteor) ,CFS (Prentice/Harvard), AFS (Meteor QFI), 208 Sqn MEAF (Meteor F8/FR9), CFS staff (Provost T1, Hunter, Canberra), USA (T33 et al), UAS (Chipmunk QFI), V-Force (Vulcan B2), USAF (T-39 Sabreliner – a real “gents conveyance!). .. .I think I better do this saga in instalments to avoid giving the system (and the readership) indigestion. I will try cutting and pasting from Word. I find working off-line straight into Pprune a bit unreliable when you reconnect and press Submit. Sometimes it all disappears woof into cyberspace somewhere and presumably becomes “deathless prose”.. .. .Wed 1 May 40. .. .First, a little background. In May 40 the war was still what was later called “phoney”. The BEF was in France and the French army was dug in behind the infamous Maginot Line. The Germans invaded the Low Countries and France about a month after our journey. Imperial Airways had become BOAC on 1 Apr, but the culture and logos were still Imperial. The raison d’être of the Empire boats was the Empire Air Mail; for the same price as a UK internal letter, a letter could be sent anywhere on the map coloured red. The boats normally carried 3 tons of mail, and passengers were an expensive supercargo. There were only 15 (fully-reclining) seats, so the space was unbelievable by current standards. Imperial used to charge pretty well “what the traffic would bear” so fares were high, and the culture accordingly “élitist”. To retain the Royal Mail contract, Imperial had to beat the P&O boat, so the schedules were very relaxed (compared with the KLM DC2s). To maximise payloads, the sectors were short (17 from Poole to Rangoon, including 6 night stops), so the passengers and crew got to know each other well. Caledonia took us all the way to Rangoon, without any technical delay that I can remember. There was one crew change, at Alex. The war inevitably meant formidable immigration controls at many of these stops, so my mother had to traipse around embassies and consulates picking up visas for weeks before departure.. .. .Check-in was not just two hours before departure. We had to present ourselves at the Haven Hotel on the eve of departure for document inspection (a nerve-wracking ordeal for my mother in view of the massive wartime burden of exit visas, travel permits, currency restrictions etc etc) and for the weigh-in. I believe 100 kgs was the limit for a passenger and his baggage – you had to climb on the scales with your kit. My mother and sister had inevitably nicked most of my allowance, so my kit was mainly Kennedy’s Shortbread Eating Primer and other school books that Dad had insisted we take with us. Imperial then did us proud with drinkies and a good (for wartime UK) dinner, when we met our fellow passengers and some of the crew. The Haven was a pretty posh hotel (way above our normal pay-grade) so Mum made me wear my school Sunday suit (for the last time) and I then found out that I was to be the only male passenger! Without the benefit of the “hands-on” education that BEagle enjoyed at his clearly superior prep school, I confess I regarded the prospect as more of a bore than an opportunity. <img border="0" title="" alt="[Wink]" src="wink.gif" /> <img border="0" title="" alt="[Wink]" src="wink.gif" />. . . . <small>[ 19 March 2002, 14:08: Message edited by: Flatus Veteranus ]</small>