Operated by 46 Sqn, a former fighter squadron that became a transport squadron at the start of 1945 using Stirlings. Photo from: Imperial War Museums

BF382 after it was withdrawn from operational service. Photo from:Imperial War Museums

Transport version of the Stirling. Seen here operating a troop repatriation flight from India. Photo from: Imperial War Museums

Section from Short Stirling LK488, which flew into high ground during a night flight in poor visibility, near Mickle Fell, Yorkshire on 19 October 1944. At that time it was coded QQ-E and was serving with 1651 Heavy Conversion Unit from RAF Wratting Common, Cambridgeshire.

Photo from: Air Force Museum of New Zealand

An early Stirling Mk.V, presumably pictured on 27 June 1944. An unarmed transport variant of the outdated Stirling bomber, the Mk.V had an upward-hinging glass nose and a cargo door on the starboard side of the fuselage. 162 examples were built, most of them after the end of the war in Europe.

The seventh production Stirling at Short's Rochester airfield in the summer of 1940. The field was heavily hit by a Luftwaffe raid on 15 August and Stirling production was badly affected. N3641 was allocated to the first Stirling unit, No 7 Sqn, coded MG-D.

The obsolete Stirling bomber remained in production until November 1945 as the Mk.5 transport. In 1947 Trans-Air of Belgium bought ten Stirling Mk.5s and actually commenced cargo and even passenger flights, a load of 28 Belgian missionaries surviving the crash of the first one, OO-XAC, in China. At least six of these were sold to Egypt in 1948 and saw action against Israel as makeshift bombers. This airframe, OO-XAS, ex PK153, was flown from Blackbushe to Madrid via Brussels in October 1949. It is not clear if it went to Egypt too.

Sqn Ldr John Overton's Stirling at an American base. No 218 (Gold Coast) Sqn converted to Lancasters that month. EF133 completed 30 raids with the unit before transfer to the last Stirling bomber squadron, No 149, on 11 August. No 149 flew Bomber Command's last operational Stirling sortie on 8 September 1944. Photo from: No 218 (Gold Coast) Squadron Association

Delivered between May and July 1944 to the RAF as LK142. Crashed 24-Sep-1944 at Réchicourt near Spincourt in Meuse, France when it flew into ground on a supply dropping mission. The incomplete fuselage went in Mar-2000 to the Musée du Terrain d'Aviation de Condé-Vraux 1939-1945 in Vraux, France.