RAF Routes?

[WHBM]

Were these Britannia flights by RAF aircraft or civilian charters ? Recall that British Eagle, up to them going under shortly before Christmas 1968, still had a large Britannia fleet, which spent a lot of their time on military work.

[brakedwell]

I was on Britannias from 1966 to 1974 and I cannot remember seeing any Civil Brits operating trooping flights out of Lyneham and Brize Norton.

[Peter47]

I seem to remember around 1966 (but as a young child can't remember the exat date) that returning back from Aden we stopped off at Luqa, Malta in a Brittania on our way to Lyneham. I suspect that a Britannia wouldn't have had the range to fly non stop.

[deltahotel]

In Jul 57 my Dad set off to join his Canberra squadron in Edinburgh as part of OpGrapple. Comet Lyneham - El Adem - Bahrain - Katunayake - Changi and then Hastings Changi - Labuan - Darwin - Edinburgh. 5 days, 30 hrs flying. On the way back he was in his Canberra so that doesn’t count!

[dduxbury310]

Just a small point, but in the 4th and last post of 14th September 2018, the RNZAF DC-6 pictured was just that, and definitely not an example of the stretched DC-6B. It is sometimes possible to confirm the true identity of the much earlier DC-6 models with the original short fuselages by counting the passenger windows in the forward fuselage, plus other small clues. The original series of DC-6s, introduced into passenger service as the first mass-produced pressurised airliner in 1946, were fitted out with P&W R-2800 CA-15 series engines (with reversing propellers) although the original Curtiss electric props had been replaced by HS Hydromatics by the time this photograph was taken. The early DC-6s such as this one, suffered from quite a few technical issues from 1946 onwards (specifically electrical and fuel systems), which resulted in some spectacular accidents, but were corrected in later models, particularly after the famous (and longer) DC-6B came into service about 1952. There was also the specialised DC-6A freight model which pioneered the same longer fuselage as used by the later DC-6B. Amazingly, the surviving three RNZAF aircraft survived, under civil registrations for many years after they were sold "out of service", and retained their original mark of engine, unlike most of their brethren which received later versions of the P&W engines, and with flashier cowlings to boot. The trio of DC-6s which were taken over from the RNZAF by TEAL in 1961 (the fourth was destroyed in a fatal accident in California in 1953) were originally built for SAS in 1948/49, but were not required so were passed on to the fairly short-lived BCPA (British Commonwealth Pacific Airlines), and served with that airline until it was disestablished and split up between the three partners (British, Australian, and NZ governments), the latter taking over the three aircraft as their part of the settlement, employing them on cross-Tasman as well as other services in the South Pacific.

Painfully aware of and therefore keen to head off any questions regarding my statements about "first mass-produced pressurised airliner" above, I have to admit there were earlier contenders, prototypes and projects, with the Boeing Stratoliner being probably the first such, but only 12 were built, and their cruising altitude was nothing spectacular. The Curtiss CW-20 prototype of 1940/41 was intended to be pressurised for passenger services, but instead went into production for the military in 1942 as the C-46 Commando, and no pressurisation. Likewise, the prototype DC-4 (put into production as C-54 Skymaster for the US Army in 1942) had also been intended for pressurisation. I think there were other such projects underway in the UK, Germany, etc. along these lines, also thwarted by outbreak of the war.