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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 ...
Ferry Command originally did this over only one northern area of the world, rather than the more general routes that Transport Command later developed, including routes over the jungles of South America and Africa and the deserts of North Africa and the Middle East. Ferry Command's operational area was initially the North Atlantic, and its ...
This represented a change in policy and was a key turning point in the Battle of the Atlantic allowing the Allies to provide aerial coverage in the middle of the Atlantic. This helped allies to hunt U-boats, protect vital convoys and support mid-Atlantic Air Transport Command ferry efforts. [2]
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.
The South Pacific air ferry route in World War II connected the US via Hawaii with Australia and islands of the Western Pacific. [ 7 ] The South Atlantic air ferry route linked the US with West Africa via Natal, Brazil , the Middle East , India and China .
There is a detailed account of a visit to BW-1 in the early days of World War II by Ernest K. Gann, in the book Fate Is the Hunter. [citation needed] The advent of aerial refueling, and the opening of the larger Thule Air Base in northern Greenland, made the base redundant, and it was turned over to the Danish government of Greenland in 1958.
The initial ferry flight of seven Lockheed Hudson bombers from Gander Airport in Newfoundland took place on November 10, 1940. [3] In 1941, the Atlantic Ferry Organization was set up, with civilian pilots flying the aircraft to the UK. [4] The organization was handed over to the Air Ministry, becoming the RAF Ferry Command. [5]
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.