Snapshots 9 & 10 were taken on a sunny afternoon at Luton Airport and Snapshot 11 completes the trio of historic aircraft parked outside the Autair hangar.
G-ATBE has a very different history to many British-registered Dakotas as is evidenced by its late appearance (for a C-47) on the register. Two detailed articles have already appeared in Propliner magazine and much of the information here has been paraphrased from the authors hard work:
‘Around the World in 27 years’ written by Karl Hayes and Eamon Power appeared in Propliner #51.
‘Renewing an Old Acquaintance’ by Anthony J.Hickey appeared in Propliner #75, Summer 1998.
42-23951, c/n 9813, was delivered to the USAAF on 5th July 1943 and assigned to the 40th Troop Carrier Squadron, 5th Air Force, at Brisbane, Queensland, Australia. Arriving on August 20th 1943, the C-47 was named ‘Lynda Jeanne’ and had a relatively brief military career. The US Government presented a dozen C-47s to Australia and these were allocated by the Department of Civil Aviation to domestic airlines. Qantas took delivery of a trio of leased C-47s on 28th August 1944 and commenced operations the following month. C/n 9813 moved on to the civil register as VH-AFA on March 24th 1945 and, a few days later, operated Qantas’ first service between Sydney and Papua New Guinea on April 2nd. This long-distance route was initially operated once a week by all-silver DC-3s flying Sydney/ Brisbane/ Rockhampton/ Townsville/ Cairns/ Port Moresby/ Lae. By the end of 1945, the route frequency had increased to thrice weekly.
The Government create the Australian National Airlines Commission in 1946 and the eleven surviving C-47s which had been gifted by the US Government were transferred to the new organisation. With a remit to operate internal air services under the name Trans Australian Airways, the new company received VH_AFA on September 11th 1946 with a total of 6434 flying hours. Based at Melbourne, VH-AFA flew services all over the country between the big cities of the east coast plus cross-country routes to Alice Springs, Canberra and Perth. As more modern airliners were introduced, the DC-3 fleet was moved to shorter, more local routes and, on August 21st 1957, VH-AFA operated its last revenue-earning flight for TAA. Australian Aircraft Sales of Sydney took ownership of the aircraft on 31st October 1957 along with several other ex-TAA C-47s. VH-AFA had flown an impressive total of 32,084 hours.
The broker succeeded in selling four of the ex-TAA C-47s to the West African Airways Corporation and VH-AFA became VR-NCO on November 1st 1957. The ex-TAA aircraft were part of a seven-strong group of C-47s joining WAAC following the departure of the two B170 Freighters sold to Channel Airways in 1957/58. The Dakotas followed routes ranging from Jos and Makurdi in the east to Dakar in the west, a huge area servicing Nigeria, Ghana, Sierra Leone, Liberia, Cote d’Ivoire and Gambia. When WAAC’s constituent countries decided to develop independent national airlines, VR-NCO moved to WAAC (Nigeria) on October 1st 1961. Following independence, the company became Nigeria Airways and VR-NCO was registered 5N-AAO in 1961. However, the new airline had plans to upgrade to turboprop equipment and five Fokker F-27s were ordered in September 1961. Once the F-27s began to arrive in early 1963, the C-47s were offered for sale and 5N-AAO was an early departure, heading north to join Aer Turas in the Emerald Isle.
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