Aircraft in Algeria after the Revolution...? (Tiger Moth DH82a)

In my ongoing quest to trace aircraft flown by my great uncle during the war (link) , I have had a bit of luck tracing one of the DH82 Tiger Moths that he flew whilst training at Sywell.

In brief it ended up with a French registration (F-BHIT) and was owned by the Aero-club du Guelma in Algeria (then a French colony). This information was gleaned from the DH Moth club and then allowed me to find (on the very next Google click) a photograph of it in 1957. I was very chuffed.

I have since found a few more as it appears it was the only Tiger Moth at that club.

Here the trail goes cold. There was an unpleasant and protracted revolution 1954-62 at which point 900,000 European-Algerians (the Pieds-noir) returned to France.

Current Algerian tailcodes have a 7T prefix and I've tried to see if I can find any correlation between F-BHIT and a (I assume) post-revolution 7T registration. I've found two DH-82 registered in Algeria but neither of them appear to be F-BHIT - though of course there could be a missing serial between registrations.

Does anyone know what happened to aircraft after the revolution?

OK, perhaps someone out there can assist with this development then.

I have found a listing which features this aircraft and the entry ends:

"15/03/1961, REFORME"

Does anyone know what "reforme" means in the context of an aircraft's fate?

Some are listed as "DETRUIT" which Google tells me means "DESTROYED"

Thanks in advance

YellowPinkie;165135 wrote:

Does anyone know what "reforme" means in the context of an aircraft's fate?

"Réforme" could indicate an aircraft being declared unserviceable and/or otherwise disposed of.
"Réformer" would indicate the aircraft was scrapped.

Thanks Paul.

I was hoping it was still around...could still be in a barn somewhere I suppose...

Hi YP:

Thanks to the good offices of Peter Gould, a member of the de Havilland Moth Club based near Paris, I can offer some information as follows:

"The DGAC register says that F-BHIT was registered to theAC de Guelma on 25.02.57. The DGAC list says that F-BHIT cn T7861, was removedfrom the French register 15.03.61 as retired from service, but physically itcould have gone before that or even sold abroad, although in those troubledNorth African times few of them were. It was still registered to the AC Guelmawhen the registration was cancelled.

It is quite possible that F-BHIT's BureauVeritas file still exists – a lot of them do. The F-B registration is probablybecause it wasn't a Government aircraft - perhaps bought straight from Croydon.Other French references give F-BHIT's DH cn as either 84230 or 84320 and theinfo that it was constructed by Morris Motors and was once registered G–ANHJ.

The text by Pierre Jarrige says that in 1957 theclub flew 1122 hours and that ten licenses were obtained on the Tiger Moth ofwhich six were by young persons less than 21 years old. "

Some further explanation that might help:

- "réformé",in the context of aeroplanes, means "withdrawn from service". The term was originally applied to people in a military context – aréformé soldier was a soldier invalided out of active duty. One sees"réformé" translated as "scrapped" quite often in aviationhistory sites and books – it is quite incorrect and a réformé aeroplane mightstill be intact or scrapped, but finding that expression in French records isno proof of destruction. In fact, as far as Tiger Moths go, quite a lot havepassed through being "réformé" to being restored!
- The greatestliving authority on French civil light aviation in Algeria is Pierre Jarrige.He puts quite a lot of his research on line, but not everything, so an enquiryto him would be a must for tracing what is known of F-BHIT.
- The BV historic filesare not freely accessible – you have to know how to get at them. But althoughthey might have interesting historic material in them for while F-BHIT wascurrent, they wont have anything on its fate, as the "réformé"indicates that it didn't disappear while current.
- The Frenchregistration authorities used the former RAF registration as a CN, not the DHn°. I know nothing of the independent Algeria register, but if F-BHIT was leftbehind in Algeria to be registered again there, it is highly likely that theauthority would have used T7861 as the construction number, as that is what itslocal French records would have had.


There are a couple more leads to follow-up, but hopefully this is a start.

Regards

Bill

Thanks Bill,

There's some great corroboration there and a good lead to find more. Thanks also for clarifying the 'reforme' situation.

All the best,

Steve (YP)