as the flagships of Imperial Airways and were accordingly provided with prodigious onboard service and an elaborately decorated interior. The type acquired a favourable reputation with the flying public, particularly for their dependability. It would accumulate a combined fleetwide mileage in excess of 10 million miles during a nine year service life with Imperial Airways. A key demand of Imperial Airways was for its airliners to be able to land safely at low speed, on grass or unpaved airfields, as opposed to the normal runway surface present at almost all airports: this requirement had necessitated the adoption of a large wing area (almost as much as a 767 that weighs more than 10 times as much). During 1951, Peter Masefield wrote, "The trouble about a slow aeroplane with a really low wing loading is the way it insists on wallowing about in turbulent air ... One of the reasons why seven times as many people fly to Paris to-day, compared with 1931, is that the incidence of airsickness in modern aircraft is only one-hundredth of that in the pre-War types." Another writer remembered "I had quite often been landed in a '42' at Lympne to take on sufficient fuel to complete the flight (from Paris) to London against a headwind – 90 mph was its normal cruising speed." However, 90 mph was still three times faster than the previous fastest way of making the journey, which via a combination of steamships and trains. When the H.P.42s were finally withdrawn from civil service on 1 September 1939, they had recorded almost a decade without any major accidents or fatalities. In 1933, faced with rising demand in conjunction with reduction in capacity owing to accidents, Imperial attempted to purchase two more H.P.42s, to be powered by Armstrong Siddeley Tiger engines, but could not agree a price (Handley Page quoted a price of £42000 each, compared with the average price of £21000 in 1931), so, instead, they ordered two Short Scyllas, landplane versions of the Short Kent flying boat that could be brought into service quickly. Individual histories In total, four H.P.42 and four H.P.45 aircraft were delivered. Two of the HP45s were later converted into HP42s. H.P.42 The H.P.42 was intended for the Africa and India services. They were based in Cairo. In June 1939, RAF pilot Eugene Vielle was dispatched to Cairo to fly an H.P.42 back to England. He had