THE HALTON’S APPRENTICESHIP

Even for a stopgap, the Handley Page Halton proved a disappointment in BOAC service, but the converted civil Halifax had looked like a good proposition when it conducted a route-proving trip to Cairo and Khartoum in 1946

BOAC HALTON PROVING FLIGHT

Halton G-AHDU pictured by Charles Sims over the Pyramid of Djoser, part of the Saqqara necropolis south of Cairo.
ALL PHOTOS AEROPLANE
Typical colonial-era dress is the order of the day for BOAC’s traffic staff at Almaza airport in Cairo.

At a time when American carriers had the Douglas DC-4 and Lockheed Constellation, a converted former RAF bomber with a tailwheel undercarriage hardly seems to cut the mustard. But the British Overseas Airways Corporation had little option. The immediate post-war period found BOAC in limbo, unable to afford the latest equipment from overseas barring a handful of ‘Connies’ — and, in any case, expected to buy British — yet still awaiting the new home-grown types that were meant to define its future.

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