The Hermes 4 entered BOAC service in 1950 and proving flights on the West Africa route to Kano, Lagos and Accra began in June. The type was already replaced two years later by the Canadair C-4 Argonaut, although it made a brief comeback with BOAC in 1954 after the grounding of the DH Comet. We made a different crop of the same original photo for the West African Airways Corporation Dove, VR-NIB. Photo by: Edward Duckworth / Northwestern University Libraries, Illinois

A well-known photo of Hanno but it completes the eight-aircraft HP.42/HP.45 fleet in the AirHistory database. The lumbering giants could use austere airports such as the old Ottoman airfield at Samakh, although Imperial Airways later moved to Gaza and then to Lydda. Photo from: Library of Congress