Page 19 - Liwa18-E

The first hotel in the Emirates: the “BOAC Rest House” at Sharjah airfield

16. Comyn, K. ‘From Rome to Karachi by air’, in J R Army Med Corps 72 (1939), p. 132;
Skelton, D.S. ‘E pericoloso sporgersi. Jodhpur to Croydon’, J R Army Med Corps 65
(1935), p. 199. See also Pirie, G. Cultures and caricatures of British imperial aviation.
Passengers, pilots, publicity (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2012), pp. 87,
104 and 121).

17. Crew of four on the Hannibal in 1933 (Fyshe, H.: ‘The log of the “Astraea”. Australia
to England by air with Imperial Airways, Part II’, Flight (November 16, 1933), pp.
1148-1152) and also when it disappeared in mid-flight (Flight 7 March 1940, p.217).

18. Skelton (note 16), p. 197. See also Pirie (note 16), p. 84 and Imperial Outpost, p. 75, for
similar arguments made by Imperial Airways.
19. IOR/R/15/2/510, India Office London to PR Bahrain, 11 November 1943, and PA
Sharjah to PA Bahrain, 18 November 1943.

20. Imperial Outpost, p. 109.

21. The new door is marked on a plan of the airfield dated 1949 in IOR/R/15/2/532, f 3. For
the main entrance to the BOAC fort, see Imperial Outpost, fig. 5.3.

22. Imperial Outpost, p. 85 and fig. 4.9.

23. Imperial Outpost, pp. 76-77.

24. IOR/R/15/2/326, Trucial Coast Report for March 1–21, 1940.
25. O’Shea, R. The sand kings of Oman. The experiences of an R.A.F. Officer in the little-known
regions of Trucial Oman Arabia (London: Methuen, 1947), 58-59.
26. Imperial Outpost p. 136; N. Stanley-Price, ‘Paul Rotha and the making of Strand Films’
Air Outpost (1937)’, Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television 32,1 (2012), 95-111.
The film is available on YouTube.

27. Pirie (note 16), p. 103, who notes also that some government officials received discounts
on their airfares.

28. Imperial Outpost, pp. 77-79.

29. IOR/R/15/2/1650, Loch to B.C.H. Cross, Cairo, 6 February 1937.

30. IOR/R/15/2/180, J.B. Howes to H. Weightman, PA Bahrain, 25 October 1939 and
following correspondence.

31. Nelson, B. ‘They had a private war at Sharjah’, Imperial Airways News Letter, February
1944, p. 8.

32. IOR/R/15/2/502, Weightman to Prior, 27 March 1940 and related correspondence.

19