BOAC (and BSAA) eventually had plenty of Yorks as well, although they came about a year after the Lancastrians, but the Lancastrian must have had some advantage. Was the York rather slow/shorter range ? It certainly looked a bit lumbering rather than sleek in comparison.
I understand that the RAF Transport Command Skymasters were not based in Britain, but in India (did many ever make it to the UK ?), and may well have been on loan rather than owned, so would have to be purchased, and with hard currency. Of course, everyone also thought the immediate postwar types like the Tudor were going to be an instant hit. It was hard enough to get foreign exchange for the handful of Lockheed Constellations, and those only because they were much more sophisticated, with pressurisation etc, and thus competitive with what the US carriers were going to use. This didn't apply to the Skymasters.
BOAC did however get a very large quantity of DC3s, a number later passed on to BEA but they retained a significant number themselves, which were used for a few years on routes like London to Cairo, and also based at points like Cairo itself, operating regional routes around the Middle East and down into Africa. These were generally ex-RAF as well, and I presume had already been purchased, as the RAF also kept a lot on, and a good number were just scrapped where they stood after WW2, so presumably of little value.
Roy Chadwick must have been absolutely downcast that, after the Lancaster huge success, and the workmanlike Lancastrian and York, the Tudor (still essentially a Lanc-plus) was such a fiasco. By the time one of the prototypes with him on board crashed in 1947, taking his life in the process, it must have been apparent what a poor bit of design it was.
Last edited by WHBM; 25th Oct 2016 at 21:38.