Mike, the Goddess was sitting in a seat for the Co Pilot that hung on a pivot on the side of the "Cockpit "/ Flight deck wall it could be lowered to allow the Navigator to get to his office in the nose section the flight controls were joined by a control bar from yoke to yoke , rudder peddles were joined under the floor,
If the Lady is any relation to you please forgive me all stewardesses were goddesses to me at my callow youth stage of the teens

gs - I am sure you will enjoy it. Having received lots of TLC from the Duxford Aviation Society she is in great condition.
Visitors can step inside the fuselage on most weekends (and, I think, school holidays) as DAS often has a volunteer on duty to answer visitor's questions.
Ed

(not quite, evidently) last post from me on this - thanks a lot, Mike - the people pics really bring it alive!

The Lancastrian, as with all conveyances whether wheeled, winged or floating, was/is primarily a human thing, giving rise to experiences and meetings that wouldn't have happened without it.

Avionic Type - have you heard what some of the BSAA Stargirls used to get up to?!

BA Museum Visit
 

Hello planemike,
Just wanted to say thank you for the suggestion that I should visit the BA museum and speak to Keith. I have had that pleasure now. He has many fascinating stories and recalls them as if they were yesterday...
Ed

Phoenix 1969 ,as a young lad my contact with Glamorous Stewardesses was virtually nil, as they were private school, Swiss finishing, Debs,photos in THE TATLER in twin set and pearls, they were well above MY station in life AND DEFINATLY Captain /aircrew fodder, only though talking to ex stewardesses of the 60s and beyond I believe Lovely times were the order of the day on a "stop over 5 day Slip on a far eastern island " now alas gone with long range A/C they are lumbered with the flying Wendy House which is 1 step up from the back row 4 seats in economy .
As for BSSA girls as I was BOAC I never saw one Sorry

AirportsEd.... Have PM'd you.

With regards to BSAA's Star Girls, I believe the airline's first had been an ATA pilot who, after doing a few trips, including the inaugural, decided to leave the company and return to some kind of pilot work. Don't know who she went to work for though. The ATA had stood down by then.

Thanks for the message Planemike.

Richard Branson's mum is probably the best known former BSAA Stargirl. Her autobiography front cover has her standing in front of a Lancastrian (which I believe is an actual BSAA publicity photo, not a composite, as I saw it years ago the same.


https://www.google.co.uk/imgres?imgu...act=mrc&uact=8

Mum's the Word
 

Thanks WHBM, I never knew that!
Another book to read!
Ed

I have been trying to find out the date of the very last Avro Lancastrian flight.
Wikipedia says 1960, which sounds rather late to me, but perhaps that was one of the engine test bed airframes.
Does anyone know when the last commercial Lancastrian flight was?

According to my notes the last Lancastrians were withdrawn in 1951. BOAC had a few which just lasted until early that year, while the last user of all seems to be Flight Refuelling, whose fleet of them finished in the autumn. Both doubtless just for freight at the time, the FR ones as aerial tankers.

The time frame given by WHBM seems to fit in with the information I have gleaned. I have checked AJJ's Avro book and also BCA Vol 1. VM733 was still flying at Bitteswell in June 54. This was a test bed for a pair of Armstrong Siddeley Sapphire engines: airframe converted by AST Hamble January 1950. Also shown in the Avro book is a photograph of T-102 of the Argentine Air Force. The photograph was taken on 24 May 1960. The aircraft appears to be airworthy/operational. So Wikipedia may well be correct.

Many thanks WHBM and Planemike.
I hadn't thought about the Argentinian aircraft as I was focused upon airline operations.
Details of the last passenger service are certainly elusive!
Ed

Moot point whether this was a Lancastrian. Another Lancastrian, RAF TX289, new 1946, was sold in 1947 to Argentinian airline of the times FAMA (who also bought Shorts flying boats at the same time), they ran it for a year, then sold it to the Air Force, who used it for a couple of years as their T-65 (T=Transport) until 1950 when it was withdrawn with corrosion. It then seems to have sat around until 1958 when the "Lancastrian mods" were taken off it (presumably they weren't the corroded parts) and applied to Argentinian Air Force Lancaster B-045 (B=Bomber) which was ex-RAF Lanc RA378 sold in 1949. It was renumbered T-102, and crashed on 11 December 1960 with 31 fatalities. Seems a lot of fatalities for a Lancastrian lost en route, unless there were some on the ground.

ASN Aircraft accident Avro Lancaster B.1 T-102 San Andrés de Giles, BA

Yes, supposedly 23 passengers and 8 crew. It must have been very cramped.
Thanks,
Ed

Janitrol Heater - same system as we had on the Shackleton (but was it still called that).

Thank goodness their flying lives were short like the Halifax /Halton they were wildly expensive to fly and let's face were meant to be bombers, hoisted onto the airlines as there were no Dollars to buy commercial aircraft from America our aircraft industry were still suffering from lack of funding , and trying to go over to civilian planes even the Viking was a Wellington shape with a stressed ally body with fabric wings until the mark 1a was developed but a lot of it was Wimpy even that had the spar running through the cabin , the up side was business men used to scramble to certain seats to catch a glimpse of a stocking top plus suspender as the stewardess stepped over them . Sorry about the Drift back to the fatalities, wrong aircraft ,lack of flying aids ,poor autopilot only good for straight and level, increase of pilot fatigue, bad weather.

Shackman were you on 1,2,or 3sI was on 1s at Gibraltar, perhaps we had better start a new thread.

Hello avionic type.
Can you remember if spares were in short supply when you worked on BOAC Lancastrians? I was told it was a significant issue for BSAA.
Ed

I used to tell my young FOs that I had flown the Varsity. "What's a Varsity?"

"It's an aluminium-skinned Wellington with a nosewheel" "What's a Wellington?"

You can't get the wood these days, you know.

Finally back from holiday, and managed to scan and OCR some of 'Star Dust Falling'. Maybe not quite as juicy as my original 'Have you heard what some of the BSAA Stargirls used to get up to?!' suggested though!

'Even the stewardesses were called Stargirls. On this flight (BSAA's inaugural, on 1 Jan 1946) it was a young woman called Mary Guthrie, for whom the job was a bit of a comedown given her expertise. During the war she had been a pilot, ferrying aircraft between workshops and airfields. Now, in peacetime, she had to take what she could get, and upperclass skivvying for BSAA at least promised travel and had a certain cinematic glamour.

It didn't promise comfort. The cabin was just 1.82 metres wide and 1.9 metres high. At the front, behind the flight deck, was a cramped galley from where the girls, sometimes in pairs, usually working alone, were to serve defrosted meals called 'Frood', which had been prepared by the Lyons Tea House company. It was, the Stargirls would all eventually agree, pretty foul stuff. Most of them would avoid eating the hideous versions of chicken a la king or veal blanquette prepared for the passengers. Instead they made do with endless cups of tea sweetened with condensed milk, or the soup and orange juice which they carried in vacuum flasks for the passengers. At first washing up the china - and it always was china - was a chore. There was just a sink with cold water and no detergent, nor anywhere to put the dishes when they were done. Only later would the company start offloading the unwashed crockery at each stopover. As to drink, there was a box bar containing spirits plus a good supply of raw Chilean red wine which, for some reason, the passengers didn't appreciate. As time passed and the flights became routine, some of the more worldly Stargirls took to finishing off the bottles in the galley during the endlessly dull stretches when there was nothing to do, filling their mouths with peppermints afterwards to hide the smell.

And then there were the opportunities for free enterprise. The Stargirls and crew were paid their expenses at the rate of 17 Argentinian pesos to the pound, but in the change shops of Buenos Aires you could get a rate of 10 pesos. Those with Spanish and initiative in equal measure would make for the change shops to cash up the moment they landed. When BSAA routes extended to the West Indies one Stargirl called Jean Fowler, an Anglo-Argentinian who had taken the job to avoid going back to teaching after years in the women's auxiliary air force, discovered there was profit to be made elsewhere. She could pick up bottles of Johnny Walker and Black Label whisky in the grocery shops of Bermuda for five shillings. She then resold them in the nightclubs of Santiago, Chile, for the equivalent of £8. She bought beautifully stitched crocodile handbags, just the one a trip, to be resold in Britain at a massive profit, and even a fur coat, which she claimed to British customs was her own. Half a century later she looks back at her life of petty crime, shifting contraband back and forth across the borders of Latin America, with curiosity. 'Frankly I don't know why every girl didn't do it,' she says. 'It was so simple. But then they didn't all have a lot of gumption.' To work as a Stargirl for BSAA you had to be unmarried and of 'a certain class'. The airline only wanted what they defined as 'nice girls' and while some like Jean had come to adulthood during the curious freedoms of the war, for many others BSAA was their first job after leaving home. They would no sooner have taken to a little bit of smuggling on the side than they would have sworn in church.'

And this further extract from 'Two Feet In The Air':

Most of (the Stargirls) came directly to the airline from the W.A.A.F. or W.R.N.S. and some of them spoke Spanish or Portuguese having originally been volunteers from South America. B.S.A.A. was one of the first British airlines to employ stewardesses and there were considerable numbers of applicants for the few vacancies. Their pay was pitifully low, under three pounds a week. One of them related to me an account of her interview prior to her acceptance by the airline. She was told very bluntly that she would always have her own room when on service and a key to lock it. Accordingly the Company did not wish to hear of any complaints by girls of propositions by amorous pilots. Girls came cheaply and were easily replaced. Good licensed pilots were a rare breed and would not be dispensed with for frivolous reasons. "On my first trip," she said, "I locked the door and wedged a chair against the lock but nothing untoward threatened. So next trip I just locked the door. After my third trip my morale was really shattered. I gave up locking the door and took to looking up and down the passage and wondering what everyone else was doing'.

Can scan and OCR plenty more if anyone is interested - 'Two Feet In The Air' has quite a bit of detail about BSAA. Just check out the pictures of how BSAA's Ops HQ and the passenger handling marquee at LHR looked in 1947! Puts T5 to shame, doesn't it?!

Hello Phoenix,
Who is the author of Two Feet in the Air? (Yet another book I have not heard of).
Ed

Hi AirportsEd

I hadn't heard of it either until reading this thread.

He's called Archie Jackson - see below. Writing style very 'Boys Own Paper' but entertaining all the same.

Ha! You mean 'Both Feet in the Air'!
Typing 'Two Feet in the Air' into a well-known search engine took me to a quite different book!

Hahaha - sorry for that. Must have been some Freudian element going on in my mind!

Airports Ed As I picked up the Lanc at LAP/LHR/Heathrow and was a Hanger Brat I can't comment on the spares situation we seemed to manage . but prior to the Lanc I worked the Halton/Haslifax both in the Hanger and workshop at Bovingdon and a lot of Spares were obtained from brand new Halifaxes which were being scrapped, Retested and recertified by certified inspectors and fitted to the aircraft when needed , if that was carried out on the Lancs I Don't know he only thing which wasn't tested were the Time Delay fuses for the Engine fire system, when you pressed the fire extinguisher button it fired the 1st of 3 bottles into the carburettor also set a BURNING fuse which 5 seconds later blew bottles 2 and3 which Hopefully extinguished any flame around the engine.Don't think they would allowthat these days.

You will also get lots of information on BSAA operations from a very detailed article by Don Brown in Air Pictorial Nov 1974 and Dec 1974.
Most detail about the Lancastrian in the Nov 1974 edition.
Both available at this time on ebay.
Mike

Same chap also wrote at length about BSAA and its various types in Propliner in the late 1980s, I believe he was a senior employee there.

Thanks avionic type, very interesting.
Do you know where those new Halifaxes were being scrapped? I wondered if it was a case of 'you' having the entire aircraft on site and taking what you needed or whether the parts were being delivered to you from a dedicated salvage company or even direct from the manufacturer or RAF.

Thanks Mike6567 - will take a look...
Thanks WHBM - must climb up in the loft and find my old Propliner copies...those articles must have been deleted from my memory over the years!

Airportsed / all - anything you find, pls post it up on here. This has turned out to be one of the best threads I've seen on pprune!

My loft scaled.

It's in Propliner 22 (Spring 85), article "Star Memories". Just four pages but interesting stuff. Brown writes that he had been at Miles Aircraft, seemingly as a company/test pilot (his article on the Aerovan is in issue 23), but after they went bust in 1947 he moved to BSAA in charge of pilot documentation. And from his stories, they needed it.

Airports Ed, Though I wasn't one of the BOAC gang I believe spare parts lists were submitted to the Air Ministry and permission was given I believe to remove them from brand new Halifax's at I think ,White Waltham where they were being scrapped, all I remember was we had a lot of different spares going through the Electrical /Instrument at that time they must have had paper work to be transferred to civilian use and be recertified .
the talk at the time was the planes had to be built as per contract test flown and then sent for scrap why the didn't scrap all the old planes the RAF were flying and given the brand new ones words fail me I met up with the Halifax again with 224 Squadron at Gibraltar and the were a heap of rubbish thank goodness we got the Shackleton 8 months later

Thanks AT,
Many years ago I heard a virtually identical story about brand new Halibags begin test-flown for the first time immediately before scrapping, though I cannot remember where that was supposed to have taken place. The explanation I was told was that the contract to build them (not surprisingly) required them to be delivered in airworthy condition and, upon delivery, if any were found to be unfit to fly, the Air Ministry was able to avoid paying for the airframe and could simply reject it. If the aircraft was deemed airworthy right away, it was considered 'paid for' and then (sadly) sent for scrap. Don't know for sure if that is true, but that is what I was told and it would seem to fit in with what you remember. As you say though, it doesn't explain why old ones were kept and new ones destroyed. Could it have been something to do with whatever mod state was required by the airline? Just a guess...
Ed

WHBM,
Excellent, thanks again!

I think 'Off the Beam' by Donald Chandler (...Memoirs of an Aircraft Radio Operator) also covers the BSAA accident. Chandler tells of a career shift from maritime wireless operator pre-WW2 to aircraft radio maintainer and operator at Croydon etc, to Ferry Command in WW2 then to BSAA after the war...and other tales. 2nd Hand copies on Am***n

Thanks VFR - Yet another book I had not heard of!
The river site must love me at the moment!
Ed

"Off the Beam" is by Robert Chandler - printed in 1969 but obtainable from AbeBooks or Amazon

Also another book not mentioned so far is by Archie Jackson "Can Anyone See Bermuda" with several chapters on BSAA.

Mike

Mike - so Archie J wrote two books, did he? 'Both Feet in the Air' and then 'Can Anyone See Bermuda'?

Rather surprising, esp as 'Both Feet in the Air' appeared to cover his time @ BSAA.

Yes Phoenix, Archie Jackson had a very interesting career with BSAA, BOAC and BA. He wrote "Both Feet in the Air" in 1976 about the time of his retirement and went on to write several other books including "Pathfinder Bennett" (1991).
"Can Anyone see Bermuda" - Memories of an Airline Pilot was published in 1997 and is complimentary to his earlier book.
Mike

Archie Jackson - Pilot / Author
 

He does seem to have been quite a prolific writer.
Does anyone know if he is still alive?
Ed

This maybe of interest......http://i.ebayimg.com/images/g/0y4AAO...P6/s-l1600.jpg