ABSTRACT
JL 1924 to its absorption within the state-owned British Overseas Airways Corporation, this virile airline, begotten of the first generation of a new form of transport, had by the outbreak of war in September 1939 surveyed, opened, and put into regular operation air services between die United Kingdom and the Dominions and Colonies of the British Commonwealth. From a beginning with a heterogeneous fleet of diirteen single and twin-engined serviceable aircraft, and operating only services to the nearby capitals of Western Europe, with the tourist traffic to Paris featuring as its most popular and lucrative service, at the outbreak of war fifteen years later its fourengined fleet of over thirty flying boats and twenty landplanes were then carrying passengers, mail, and cargo to South Africa, India, Burma, Malaya, and the territories between, and also to Australia and New Zealand, in association with Queensland and Northern Territories Air Service (QANTAS) and Tasman Empire Airways (TEA). It had, further, inaugurated a service between the USA and Bermuda, joined Bangkok to Hong Kong, and Khartoum with Kano, and had moreover operated in die summers and early autumns of 1937, 1938, and 1939 a series of experimental transatlantic flights.1
