These photocopied images of RAF Supermarine Southampton flying boats at Kai Tak in 1934 appear to be unavailable as photographic prints or scans.
About 30 years ago, these photocopies were passed to me by the aviation museum at Southampton, UK while I was searching for such photographic print images. Southampton town was where the aircraft were designed and built.
The museum claimed to have no record of where their photocopies came from, or the meaning or origin of the code written on them.
Subsequent searches revealed that the Royal Air Force Museum in London could provide a photographic print of No 1419 on land at Kai Tak, but not the others.
Images of those aircraft shown on the water still elude me.
Does anyone have such photographic prints and be prepared to share good quality scans of them?
The 1930s RAF ‘Cruises’ from their base in Singapore were, apart from “Showing the Flag” in areas of strategic interest along their routes, were also attempting to determine a viable route for future civilian airliners to link Singapore with Hong Kong.
However, Britain’s Imperial Airways had other ideas and preferred shorter land-based route options via Indo China.