Dear Spanish,
you wrote...'My Captain said he used to fly for Brit. Eagle. Next time we met, he showed me his logbook from 1965. On 06 January 1965, he was First Officer on a British Eagle trooping flight from Istanbul to Bombay.....'
I may well have worked on the aircraft that took you down, Jan 65 having been about halfway through my term at EG. I was what was called Progress Assistant, and my job consisted of arranging to extract from Stores any part that was demanded by any of the several engineers on duty. A fresh set of wheels was standard and were rolled out one by one to the aircraft, smaller parts were put on a trolley hacked together out of Dexion (think that's the stuff - big boys' Meccano), and a rudder change was something special, and usually had to be robbed from a serviceable aircraft that was off-duty. The Power...! So that you had a clear view out of the window the 'punka louvres' had to be replaced - believe they were silica gel crystals contained in a plastic phial inserted in between the window panes. Toilet pumps were the curse of whomever had to change them....
I recall my supervisor Charlie (Hammond?) always referring to things like BOMAPEG, ISTAPEG etc and it wasn't until I had to use the system in my next life that I knew it was our SITA address in Bombay, Istanbul, etc (SITA - airline comms system).
Happy to have perhaps been of service! Wonder who your Captain was...
brgds
Alan