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News from the Archives |
A LETTER FROM THE ARCHIVIST Welcome to an update from the archivist. This year has been once again a very busy year. The archives have possibly doubled in size as items have come in and research has been made into various aspects of the Eagle Group. One of the most interesting and rewarding has been our contact with Australian passenger, mainly the £10 immigrants during the sixties. Having now been able to gather passenger manifests we are able to send copies to the passengers with photos of the aircraft in which they flew. The feedback has been a delight to read. It makes all our research time very rewarding. Due to the closure of Manston Airport I now have the last bit of G-ANCG, its tail registration section painted in Eagle red with white lettering, given to us by the now closed Fire Department. I had contacted them some ten years ago about it and ask for first option for it should it ever become available. A big ‘thank you’ to them. Contact with early Eagle Aviation staff has brought to light some interesting items of the early days of Eagle. Sadly the passing of Gerhard Heilig has left a gap for further information in this area. He was exceptionally helpful to us about the early days. We still have a number of other contacts which we are following up. Sadly the memorial page gets longer and if you are aware of anyone not remembered on the page please let me know. Late November we had a mini reunion at Liverpool with ex Eagle Liverpool maintenance people who worked at Speke. It was a very valuable time for research. On this occasion we had donated to us a number of knifes and spoons all stamped with the Eagle logo. These now supplement our already increasing catering section. Another area that we have researched and come up with a lot of information is the Eagle Transport section. Thanks to Nigel Thompson, who held a number of senior posts in the company and is now living in Gibraltar, a good selection of first fight postal covers are now in the archives. They cover several years. Thanks also to all who have helped with information regarding the Woomera contract. It now makes a very interesting section. Our problems with the Forum on the website continue. We have been hoping to retrieve the old Forum contents, which in theory will not be long now. This letter only contains news of some of our research and investigations, many hours are spent in this work in other areas. It has been good to have been able to speak to many Ex Eagle staff in the past year and a big thank you for information given particularly the staff photo section. I would like to put on record my thanks to Karl Tarrant (as assistant archivist) who has helped in many ways particularly with the website. It would of course be right to publically thank my wife for all of her help and understanding. Can I take this opportunity to wish you all a very happy Christmas and New Year. Many Thanks Eric
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