The Horseshoe Route

[DanKH]

Hi

Lately I've found myself wanting to know more and more about the Horseshoe Route flown by Imperial Airways during WWII.

If any of you have some material or links I would certainly be more than happy.

Of interest could be mentioned: Time schedules. Aircraft types used, routing's, Description of Docking stations/harbours etc. etc...

Thank you

[AllanL]

Come off it - you can't be serious, they never used the VC10.

For starters, I'm sure I can dig out a route map over the weekend.
The aircraft used were the Shorts C class boats - Jens K has modelled them and several of their predecessors. They are slow and it is probably one of the longest routes ever flown, maybe some of the old round-the-pacific routes were longer. So, I hope you have plenty of time to spare. There again, it would be a lot quicker if flown by VC10!

As for timetables, I'm fairly sure that I have an Imperial timetable for the routes that were stitched together to make up the Horseshoe route. More delving in boxes for that, although I think I scanned it for someone so Imay find it quicker in some obscure folder. :roll:

There's scenery for some of the stops on the African leg on the Bluegrass.com site, but we never got round to publishing the Australian flying boat schedule - I may have a draft of it somewhere though. Hope it's not tucked in the Albatross info that I hope to retrieve from down south in a couple of weeks.

Pretty much OT, I have a world air route map that shows a planned service from New Zealand to Canada that would have allowed Imperial to provide the first round the world service but for the international dust up of some 70 years ago.

[DanKH]

:-) no not the VC10 this time, actually I was more into some kind of AFD-juggling to provide the harbours needed, and a useful flight plan.

Yes I know that Jens has the hardware covered. And I pretty much got the route (from 7 skies, and "Wings across the World")

Time schedules would be nice, and some stories. I would certainly like to read stories! I got the bug when I read "7 skies" ;-)

[AllanL]

Hi Dan,

Well of the airline history books that I have on BOAC/Imperial, the description of the Horseshoe Route in 7 skies is about the longest! However there are two books that concentrate on the C Boats themselves. One is "Adventurous Empires" - which is more of the human interest side and the other is "Flying Empires" which covers more of the technical side.

Adventurous Empires can be got through amazon from one dealer in the UK and a total lunatic in the States. (Check the prices.) I've yet to dig out my copy to see how much info on the Horseshoe Route is in it.

Flying Empires is now out of print, but can be downloaded as a 199 page pdf file from

http://www.users.waitrose.com/~mbcass/

There is about 15 pages on the Horseshoe Route in that, apart from many passing references. I'll get round to the timetables later today.

[DanKH]

Thanks Allan, most appreciated!