03/31/2012. Remarks by Johan Visschedijk: "In 1936 British Airways Ltd., then extending its routes to Scandinavia, found the de Havilland D.H.86A passenger aircraft too slow to make the trip to Stockholm in daylight. The British aircraft industry, fully occupied with the production of military aircraft under the RAF expansion scheme, had no replacement type to offer. There was no alternative therefore but to import a suitable foreign aircraft, choice eventually falling on the fast, American designed, Lockheed 10-A Electra.

This ten passenger aircraft had earned a high reputation for speed and economy on the USA domestic airlines and in Latin America, Canada and Poland. It was a low-wing monoplane of all-metal construction, Alclad covered throughout, powered by two 450 hp Pratt & Whitney Wasp Junior radials driving two bladed, variable-pitch airscrews. Electrically operated trailing edge flaps and retractable landing gear were also fitted. Two pilots were accommodated in the nose, which also housed a luggage locker, with a similar one and a lavatory aft.

Four Electras (c/n 1080 to 1083, registered G-AEPN, G-AEPO, G-AEPP, G-AEPR) were shipped to British Airways and went into service in March 1937 followed by a fifth (c/n 1102, G-AESY), which arrived in the following June. In natural metal finish, with lettering and company titles in black, and piloted by Captains E.B. Fielden, V.E. Flowerday, C.N. Pelly, S.W.A. Scott and others, they inaugurated the Viking Mail Service.

Leaving Croydon at 9 a.m., calls were made at Hamburg (Germany), Copenhagen (Denmark) and Malmo (Sweden), Stockholm being reached at 6 p.m. A high-frequency, 90 minute service was also inaugurated between Croydon and Le Bourget. With six return trips scheduled per aircraft per day during the summer season, they revolutionized inter-capital travel.

Thus, the Electra G-AEPP made a suitable and interesting exhibit at the garden party of the Royal Aeronautical Society at Heathrow on May 9, 1937. This particular aircraft was wrecked later in the year when making a night landing at Croydon in a blizzard. Its replacement G-AFCS, acquired second-hand from Northwest Airlines in the USA, appeared in February 1938 but was nearly lost soon afterwards when returning from Paris with full load. One motor cut out over the Channel, but the pilot made a masterly forced landing on the beach at Pevensey.

G-AFEB, seventh and last of the British Airways Electras, went into service in March 1938. In the following June the company moved its London terminal from Croydon to Heston, the Electras continuing to operate on the Stockholm and Paris services with commendable regularity until G-AESY crashed into the sea in the Straits of Storstrøms, near Copenhagen. Although salvaged, it was corroded beyond repair and scrapped.

At the outbreak of war the five surviving Electras were hurriedly camouflaged and decorated with fin flashes and lettering underlined in red, white and blue. In this guise they were used extensively on the National Air Communications emergency airlift between Heston, Shoreham and Le Bourget, but after CofA overhaul at Whitchurch at the end of 1939, G-AEPN, G-AEPO and G-AFEB were impressed for RAF communications duties in April 1940 and were serialed W9105, W9106 and W9104 respectively. Based at RAF Hendon, all took part in the evacuation from Dunkirk, W9105 perished at Hendon in an air raid on November 6, 1940, W9104 was damaged beyond repair at Clifton on October 12, 1941, while W9106 was scrapped in June 1946.

In April 1940 the two remaining Electras G-AEPR and G-AFCS were taken over by the newly created British Overseas Airways Corporation and transferred to Almaza, Cairo. There they received the names 'Leith' and 'Lea' respectively and were used for two years on routes to West Africa, Kenya and locally in the Near East. G-AFCS crashed on November 19, 1943, at Almaza, Egypt, where G-AEPR also crashed April 14, 1944."