VH-TAQ   Convair 240-5                                                     (c/n  64)

                                                                                          .

                                     VH-TAQ, although third in registration sequence, was actually the first Convair delivered
                                     to Australia, being officially handed over on 25 Aug 1948, and use to crew-train until
                                     early 1949.  The Consolidated Vultee photograph above was taken at San Diego in
                                     1948 and show -TAQ before delivery in its original non-white top . In TAA service it
                                     carried the name 'John Forrest'.  After eight years service, mainly on the Melbourne-
                                     Sydney-Brisbane run, it was sold to Trans Arabian Airways as 'Kuwait Emirate
                                     Special' in Aug 1956 and registered in the U.K. as G-AOFC.  When that enterprise
                                     failed to make it off the ground it passed to aircraft broker William C. Wold and Assoc-
                                     iates and was 'foreign' registered on the US civil register as N9853F.     It probably
                                     resided somewhere in the Arabian Peninsula or possibly Japan at that time, since in
                                    1958 it was registered to the Arabian Oil Company with the registration JA5048.
                                     Its history is even more convoluted after that and, after a multitude of owners (with bank
                                     repossessions from several of them) it is still on the active US register as N295M regis-
                                     tered to Bahama Air Ferries and leased to Trans Florida Airlines.     The photograph
                                     immediately below is by Richard Maclean shows VH-TAQ at Essendon just before it
                                     set out on its delivery flight to Trans Arabian Airways (the name is on the forward
                                     fuselage).  The small color photo on the bottom of the page of c/n 64 as N295M came
                                     from the www.prop-liners.com site, although there is no credit line on it.   Finally, at the
                                     bottom of the entry is a superb Bob Garrard shot of this Convair taken at Port Columbus
                                     International Airport (Ohio) in 1972 whilst the aircraft was operated by Diversified Marketing,
                                     Inc.   By his time it had been converted to CV-300 standard.