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The Air Ferry Routes of WWII, including North Atlantic Route, South Atlantic Route and South Pacific Route. Although many air route surveys of the North Atlantic had been made in the 1930s, by the outbreak of World War II in Europe, civilian trans-Atlantic air service was just becoming a reality. It was soon suspended in favor of military ...
RAF Ferry Command was the secretive Royal Air Force command formed on 20 July 1941 to ferry urgently needed aircraft from their place of manufacture in the United States and Canada, to the front line operational units in Britain, Europe, North Africa and the Middle East during the Second World War.
Personnel at work in the Operations Room of the Atlantic Ferry Service at RAF Prestwick. During the Second World War, Prestwick was used an eastern terminus for the North Atlantic air ferry route, one of a series of routes over which military aircraft were ferried from the United States and Canada to Great Britain, to support the war in Europe.
Name Location Coordinates Notes Presque Isle Army Airfield: ME Chief port of embarkation for U.S. aircraft flying the North Atlantic. Headquarters, 23d AAF Ferrying Wing, Ferrying Command 12 June 1942; re-designated North Atlantic Wing, Air Transport Command, 11 February 1944; Redesignated North Atlantic Division, ATC, 27 June 1944.
Operating as it did under wartime conditions, Transport Command had a relatively high accident rate. Prominent accidents included a July 1943 crash at Gibraltar, killing the Polish leader General Sikorski and several other senior figures in the exile government; a February 1945 crash in the Mediterranean, killing eleven members of the British delegation to the Yalta Conference; and a March ...
During World War II the United States had to move large numbers of aircraft to the European and Mediterranean Theaters via the North Atlantic ferry route, a series of short flights between Newfoundland, Labrador, Greenland, Iceland and the UK. Weather conditions in winter closed the route and made crossing perilous at any time.
The first aircraft landed there in January 1942, as a link in the North Atlantic air ferry route in World War II. The base had a peak population of about 4,000 American servicemen, and it is estimated that some 10,000 aircraft landed there en route to the war in Europe and North Africa.
Losses in the North Atlantic had been just under 50,000 tons from September 1939 to June 1940. [49] This was about to get worse, when France and the Low Countries fell in May to June 1940. U-boats could operate from French Atlantic ports, reducing their need to make the dangerous journey from ports in Norway or Germany around Scotland , and ...