The flight was daylight, departing Lisbon early morning.
I wonder why they did not fly overnight, arriving at UK airspace at sunrise. The Bay of Biscay was well beyond any radar unit in France.
The KLM prewar DC3s had a varied fate. It was the largest fleet of them outside the USA. Some were destroyed in the invasion of the Netherlands, others fell into the hands of both Lufthansa and BOAC, and also the Dutch East Indes carrier KNILM, who later passed them on to Australian National Airlines. The Lufthansa ones got used on schedules in Norway etc for much of the war, surprising they could support them for spares, although several countries the Nazis invaded had DC3 fleets. The survivors with BOAC in 1945 (few) were actually handed back to KLM.
The ones with BOAC were in a sort of ownership limbo, with UK registrations and managed by BOAC, with UK-specified camouflage, but still regarded as Dutch, with Dutch crews, as here. I suppose it was one of the first examples of the current style of franchise operator !
Prominent Dutch captain Parmentier, who led the KLM DC2 aircraft to winning the well-known London to Melbourne air race in 1934 when it was brand new, was among the pilots, and had a close shave himself over the Bay of Biscay. Postwar, he was killed in a KLM Lockheed Constellation accident at Prestwick in 1948.
Last edited by WHBM; 27th May 2017 at 19:34.