Having known and worked, on-and-off, with Tom Kelly for about 35 years I knew that he'd been on CI but we only discovered a couple of weeks ago that we had both been there at the same time in early 1960, he on his second stint. It also transpired that he had gone up to Honolulu in a Hastings for a week's R&R during the time that I was doing the runs. As there were only two Hastings and two crews flying alternately it looks pretty certain that we must have flown together at least one way, its only taken 35 years for us to discover this.

I've sent a copy of my log pages for the period in case they're of any interest. You will see that we went out to CI in TG 328 and came back in 620. We travelled the long way round both ways i.e. east about going out because the Mark 1 Hastings couldn't make the crossing from the west coast of the States to Hawaii. The Mark 2 could do it given favourable conditions and many’s the crew who lurked in San Francisco waiting for the wind to change so they could make a mad dash and hope the fuel lasted. This was kept secret from any "brown-jobs" down the back for fear of spooking them.

Also I've sent a pic of "Hastings, Queen of the Skies", (see photo) not one of our CI two, this was a 70 Sqn. bird. For some forgotten reason 70 were allowed to name their aircraft  and they all began with H. One was even called Hesperus and as we were a generation who had heard of the tale of "The Wreck of The Hesperus" it was not the most popular aircraft.