Aircraft Pics Egypt 1945-6 2/6

[fourthbranch]

Hi, Thanks to everyone who supplied extra info. for the aircraft in my previous post. As promised here is the next part.


Martin B-26 Marauder



Martin Baltimore ( & my Father)



Martin Baltimore IIIA FA166
Jo Joe Baugher's Website (http://www.joebaugher.com/usaf_serials/usafserials.html) says DBR when belly landed at Kasfareet, Egypt after undercarriage jammed Aug 30, 1944 - which is interesting as this photo was taken in 1945 at the earliest.




Martin Baltimore V? FW841?


Fairey Barracuda III DT854 with Vultee Vengeance FD262 in background


Bristol Beaufighter


Beechcraft Traveller


Bristol Blenheim V? “Linda”


Curtiss C-46 Commando


Douglas Dakota

[Blenheim]

Regarding the photograph of a Blenheim V, it is interesting to note that it has had the Observer's footwell beneath the nose removed. Do you know where the photograph was taken or to which unit the Blenheim belonged?

[Alex Smart]

Hello,
Regarding Baltimore IIIA, FA166, while with the Air Bombing & Gunnery School Middle East it had a belly landing at Kasfareet due to its undercarrage jamming on 30th August 1944. It must have been repaired and returned to service if the photo was taken in 1945.
FA167 was marked in similar colours with 21 Sqdn SAAF.

Alex

[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

[kaki3152]

Wow, great pictures. Keep em coming.

These pictures remind of the old Photo Page section of the British modeling magazine Airfix.
Every issue back in the 60-70s had a section of photgraphs sent in by readers. There were lots of WWII veterans with snapshots and every issue would have from 5-20 pictures sent in by readers.

Typically, they ranged of all types of RAF/FAA aircraft with some USAAF,Luftwaffe and foreign Air Forces. Some times they were accompanied by the odd letter and the comments " The quality of the print rather poor after being carried in my wallet these past twenty years.."

[Larry]

It's also a joy to see photos that don't have red X's or lines all over them, as it the case with so many you see from eBay!