Lockheed Twin Tails (was: Lodestar lands at flight museum)

[Hanno Spoelstra]

Originally Posted by Lang

The story of the one which flew to Ceylon (I mentioned this trip earlier) was very dramatic. I had a copy of a very large article - about 40 pages over 3 issues - from a flying magazine in the 70's written by one of the pilots but can't find it at present.

Lang,

All I could find about this flight was that the pilot was an NCO by the name of F. Pelder. He was joined by two Australians, a New-Zealander and one Canadian. On 9 March 1942 they flew a Lockheed L2-12 with registration L-201 from Pameumpeuk, Java, to Sumatra. Via Medan and the airfield Lho-Nga near Kotaradja he left on 11 March for Colombo, a 10 hour flight. The 1,500 mile flight could only be carried out by rigging fuel barrels behind the cockpit, and transferring the fuel to the wing tanks by using a hand pump. After landing in Colombo, the aircraft was transferred to the RAF where it was registered as LV762.

The two pictures below were googled from the internet somewhere, they obviously originate from Dutch book(s).

H.