) to see if I could come upwith enough information to create a little afcad for three of the four Hawker flight department aircraft. (Auster had mentioned seeing them ALL (The Hurricane, Tomtit, Anson, and a fourth Miles product) in the hangars at Langley in the very early 50s) , First pass through Google revealed very little only that it had been a wartime production site for Hurricanes and
that the airfield had become first HS Nuclear then Ford Transit....but the consensus was that airfield disappeared post war.....well yes and no......Ralph (Auster) obviously saw aircraft there in 1951...so it was still operating then even in close
proximity to Heathrow. So I happened upon a forum thread about BSAA , who apparently used it as a maintenance facility until the early 50s - which in turn lead to this link http://www.flywiththestars.co.uk/index.htm which gave some very interesting
photos and information about BSAA (If this is old hat to everyone Im sorry it was new and very interesting to me) which lead
in turn to this map - http://www.flywiththestars.co.uk/Pictur ... 20Plan.gif
Amazing how much information you turn up - I was never aware that BSAA was such a large airline and that even then BOAC was playing the same game of Monopoly that BA plays today.
So there you have it - from a simple statement about a Miles product (actually Hawker flew two Miles aircraft over the years
a Hawk and a Whitney Straight) started me on a trip down British Aviation memory lane - what does amaze me is that
reading through the BSAA fleet there were at least 3 Yorks show RFS/WO at Luton in the early 60s - they must have been
long gone by 1964 - as I cannot remember seeing any trace of them.
Leif
comes with a BSAA paint job - G-AGWH "Star Dust" - which was the one lost in the Andes and source of conspiracy theories.
