[Stig Jarlevik]

FB

Nice batch of photos. Joe Baugher most probably uses Air Britains RAF serialnumber books when compiling his data for RAF aircraft

With regard to the Baltimore FA166 I therefor asked Phil Butler about the surviving records from ME and here is his reply

"The problem is that the full records of aircraft in the Middle East and Far East were held locally, in Cairo and New Delhi, and were not sent back to London at the end of WW.II. So the Air Ministry only received notification that an aircraft had been safely received at its destination, and monthly returns of aircraft written off or damaged. The records in the A-B AA100-XZ999 registers have the added data from unit Operational Record Books, but not all of these survived, and their completeness as 'records' is very variable, so there are lots of gaps. I will do some searching, but I doubt that I can add anything."

All this then boggles down to that there are no official records available for a whole range of aircraft which stayed their entire career in the ME or FE. Unfortunately, as Phil says, there were no set up rules what the ORB should contain and how they should be written. Some, I am led to believe, even contains more details about the Squadron parties then operational sorties..., perhaps not surprising considering these parties most probably were a lot more fun than going out killing people....

So as Alex says FA166 survived its belly landing and most probably ended up its days on an unknown scrapheap of an unknown MU or scrap dealer.

Cheers
Stig