BOAC Mosquitos on the "Stockholm Run" & etc
For some time now, I have been researching the history of one particular aircraft that was used on the “Stockholm Run” (RAF Leuchars –Bromma Airport ) in World War II. This is Lockheed Lodestar G-AGDD, owned bythe Norwegian government-in-exile, flown mainly by Norwegian crews but operated in the name of BOAC. Lodestar G-AGDD was used on the “Stockholm Run” from August 1941 to July 1945 and was almost certainly the longest -serving aircraft on this route in the war.
I therefore found this thread very interesting and thought I might contribute a little:
1. The WWII logs for Bromma Airport, which are said to be very detailed, are held in the Swedish state archives (Stadsarkiv) but,unfortunately, I have not been able to get there to examine them.
2. There are documents at the National Archives on“BOAC and Transport Command” that cover the WWII period but, again, I have not seen them.
3. The staff at the British Airways Heritage Collection have been very helpful. The detailed information on the “Stockholm run” is in the form of entries on large maps/charts and I was told that they are not easy to handle.
4. The Curtis CW 20 made only 5 return trips on the“Stockholm run”. They took place during the May - September period in 1942.
5. The Whitleys undertook the “Stockholm run” for a relatively short period (9 August - 24 October 1942)
6. Professor Nils Bohr flew in Mosquito G-AGGG,leaving Bromma at approx. 6.30 pm on 6 October 1943 (19 days later, on 25 October 1943,
G-AGGG crashed on landing at Leuchars inbound from Bromma)
7. FLIGHT magazine (4 November 1943) reported that Captain Gilbert Rae and Radio Officer James S. Payne had been awarded the OBE and MBE respectively for “their high courage over an extended period in flying unarmed aircraft on the civil wartime air service between the United Kingdom and Stockholm”.
8. “Gibby” Rae joined the “Stockholm run” in June 1942 and flew seven different aircraft types on the route. He was close friends with Radio Operator James Payne. Just before midnight on 18 August 1944, he took off from Stockholm for Scotland in Mosquito G-AGKP, with Radio Operator Trevor Roberts and passenger Captain Bill Orton, whose own Mosquito had suffered a mishap at Bromma a few days before. On the long approach to Leuchars, in the early hours of 19 August, G-AGKP hit the North Sea waters and sank. The bodies of Roberts and Orton were recovered; that of “Gibby” Rae was not. He was 26 years old. One source says that he and James Payne had flown 150 “Mossie”trips.
9. Mosquito G-AGFV did indeed crash at Bromma on 4July 1944 but was not a write-off. It swung off the runway and its undercarriage collapsed, though perhaps its undercarriage collapsed causing it to swing off the runway. Anyway, it was temporarily repaired, flown back to Leuchars on 23 October1944 and returned to the RAF in 1945. (It was not its first incident on the “Stockholm run”. More than a year earlier, it had arrived at Bromma “riddled” with bullets and, unable to lower its flaps or undercarriage, had crashed).
10. I have one specific reference to Avro Yorks being used on the “Stockholm run” (namely that “The York G-AGJC made at least one special flight to Stockholm in 1944”) but there is no mention of Yorks in the Wilson report, to which someone referred earlier. The information in the Wilson report, while wide-ranging, is not, however, always congruent with that in other sources, which can be confusing.