RNZAF Hudson in India?

[Dave Homewood]

Whilst looking at the RNZAF accident reports listed as held by the National Archives in Wellington I noted one that sticks out:

RNZAF [Royal New Zealand Air Force] Accident Reports -
Hudson - R/217 - Minneriya India - Crashed from stall,
5 dead - 29 January 1943
AIR 1 587 25/2/917

Did the RNZAF have one or possibly several Hudsons assigned to their Attache in India? The code R/217 appears to be the serial number of the aircraft (or at least compared with other crash reports, this is where the serial would be in the description.)

Does anyone know about this aircraft, the crash and its connection with the RNZAF. There must be some sort of connection for the RNZAF to make the accident report. Do any of our Wellingtonians want to pop into the archives for a read of the report?

[angelsonefive]

Hi Dave,

I did a quick Google search for Lockheed Hudson production.

It seems that of all the RAF Hudsons only one had an R serial.

That was a Mark 1, R4059.

[angelsonefive]

It occurred to me that R/217 might refer to aircraft R-Roger of 217 Squadron.

Some research into the wartime history of 217 came up with the following :

In 1942, 217 Squadron was operating Bristol Beauforts in the anti-shipping role as part of 19 Group, Coastal Command, from bases in Cornwall and briefly, in Scotland.

In May'42 the squadron was transferred to Ceylon (now Sri Lanka) , the ground personnel leaving on the 7th of that month and the aircraft on the 7th of June.
The aircrew flew their Beauforts to Gibraltar and then to Malta where they were retained for operations in the Mediterranean.
Some of the Beauforts and crews were lost on ops, the surviving crews reaching RAF Station Minneriya, Ceylon in August '42.
As the Beauforts had been left in Malta the squadron re-equipped with Hudson M III's and VI's in October 1942.
They operated their Hudsons on anti-submarine patrols until April '43 when new Beauforts began to arrive. By June the Hudsons had all left and the unit was back to the anti-shipping strike role.

So, what do we have from all this ?

In January 1943 217 Sqdn, RAF was operating Lockheed Hudsons from RAF Minneriya, Ceylon.

In my opinion, therefore, the accident aircraft in the report was an RAF machine and not RNZAF.

How come there is an accident report relating to an RAF aircraft in Ceylon in the NZ Archives ?
My guess is that as a significant Hudson operator the RNZAF was given these reports for their information.

[Dave Homewood]

Thanks very much, I'm sure that must clear that up - obviously the accident involved something that the RAF thought worth sharing with the RNZAf to prevent future accidents. Cheers for that.