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Douglas DC3 Dakota |
Alan Hartley
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A couple of years ago I was contacted by an American millionaire, Donald Soldini, who purchased a Dakota which was auctioned by the US Government. The aircraft had been impounded after being abandoned in Florida by drug runners who had hijacked it to escape from Cuba. In the aircraft Donald found the log book which showed that the Dakota was ex-RAF and had been issued to South-East Asia Command as FL510 and had ostensibly been used to drop supplies to the Chindits in Burma. Donald Soldini was so interested in this Dakota that he organised a film crew to come to England to do some filming of similar aircraft at North Weald and Coventry. He asked me and anyone I knew who had flown Dakotas to join him at the RAF Club in Piccadilly to recount wartime activities. One of the party was Group Captain Alec Blythe, the ex-CO of 233 Squadron and he also flew with 48 Squadron at Down Ampney. The filming completed, Donald returned to the States and the project seemed to die. However, I recently heard from a film company in Florida which was producing the film and I was asked if I could be contacted for any further information.
By coincidence, I frequently talk with Tom Robinson who flew with 48
Squadron as a Wireless Operator Air Gunner and now lives in Ottawa. Tom
told me that the father of Chris Bryant, an ex-RAF colleague, served as
a pilot with the RAF in Burma and
was a qualified aeronautical engineer. Chris told Tom that his
father salvaged a Dakota, which had been abandoned after crashing in a
swamp, and restored it to flying condition. By the most amazing
coincidence the Dakota’s number was FL510!
When I was researching this Dakota for Donald Soldini I could find no evidence that it had been issued to any of the Burma Dakota squadrons (31, 52, 194 or 267). I then discovered it had been allocated to Lord Louis Mountbatten as his own personal aircraft. (Chris Bryant is currently writing a history of FL510 for The Aeroplane magazine.) Another interesting facet of this exercise is that on the nose of the Dakota is written “Sister Ann”, and we wondered who she could be. I wrote to Countess Lady Patricia Mountbatten, Lord Louis’ daughter, who unfortunately was unable to help, but expressed her interest and requested that she be kept informed of any developments. The film company have promised to send me a DVD of their production. An approach to the Imperial War Museum has produced quite a lot of valuable information, including a very good photograph of FL510 taken on the Arakan Front, depicting Sister Ann quite clearly on the nose. A correspondence page from Flight International magazine in 2004 included a letter from G. Ann Ramsden confirming that she was indeed the Sister Ann on the nose of FL510. She refers to a conversation with a pilot in 1948 from East African Airways in Tanganyika to say that he had flown this particular Dakota but he thought it was no longer in service. Sister Ann's letter was followed by one from a Denis Powell of Nairobi, who had seen a previous reference in Flight of FL510. He had written a full history of the aircraft from entering service at RAF Bassingbourn to being Struck off Charge at No 8 M.U. at Little Rissington, where she was credited to have flown 1,803 hours in 1954. In the same information pack was an obituary printed in The Independent for Gertrude Ann Ramsden which told how she was a nurse on P&O liners before joining the Queen Alexander's Naval Nursing Reserve and how, after being posted to Burma, became a personal nurse to Lord Louis Mountbatten. She died in Preston, Lancs, on 30th November 2004 aged 97. So ended a search which became more interesting the deeper I dug. All of this information has been passed to the American film producers who intend to incorporate her story. Over the 35 years I have been organising our Association, I have received and dealt with many requests to carry out research. However, this has proved to be by far the most challenging and the most interesting.
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