VH-ANB   Douglas DC-4-1009     "Lackrana"                                (c/n  42948)

                                                                                 

                                              This aircraft was delivered in March of 1946.  It was leased to British Commonwealth
                                              Pacific Airlines from September of 1946 until January 1949.  Not generally remembered
                                              is the fact that ANA themselves operated BCPA's routes in early 1946, until that newly
                                              formed line was able to wean away a couple of DC-4s each from both ANA and TAA.
                                              Seen below is a rare reproduction from the Alan Betteridge collection (via Phil Vabre) of
                                              an ANA bagaage tag from those pre-BCPA days.  Anyway, in the mid 1950s it became
                                              popular to paint aircraft cabin tops white to supposedly lesson the heat inside whilst
                                              on the ground.  -ANB has had such treatment my shot above, taken at Essendon in 1955.
                                           .  In October of 1957 it was transferred to the asset register of the, by then, merged Ansett-
                                              ANA concern.   In 1958 it was sold to the US 'non-sked' Twentieth Century Airlines
                                              (of Burbank, California) as N5517V.  1959 saw it in service with Trans Mediterranean
                                              Airlines (TMA) as OD-ADK.    In 1971 it was sold again, this time to Air Gabon who
                                              registered it TR-LPU.  A mere five months later it was disposed of to Sofimatex in the
                                              adjacent Congo where it was registered as TN-ACF.   By this time it was getting a bit
                                              long in the tooth and decrepit after roaming around in the African Third World and it
                                              finally wound up registered 9Q-COK in "the other" Congo, i.e. the Democratic Republic
                                             of Congo (the former Zaire) where it finally was withdrawn from use.  I am sure that, by
                                             then, its plush interior had been reduced to rags!