Annie, might have been at one of the many stopovers ...
this might help you find other photos of airports to see if they match
http://www.timetableimages.com/ttimages/iaw39f-1.htm
<ed> and that plane G-AAUD https://aviation-safety.net/database/record.php?id=19400319-1

Based on what you posted as well as Imperial's timetable that Gary posted, I would say one of 3 - Southampton, Athens or Alexandria (depends on whether he is returning to the UK or heading to his posting - the British Mediterranean Fleet, including submarines were based in Alexandria).

It could also be another of their stopovers at Marseilles but only up to the 1st week of May 1940.

Well the only thing I noticed is the vehicle at the left of the picture.



My best guess is that it is a Citroen P17 halftrack. Going by the era.





10,000 were produced between 1921 and 1940

This would make it less likely to be the UK as I have never seen anything like that in any pictures of Croydon Airport

A shot of an Imperial Airways biplane airliner ready to take off from Croydon airport with a Citroen-Kegresse in front.

From a documentary "Air post" in 1935.
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0398665/

Well it seems you can learn something new.

Croydon Airport did have 3 Citroen-Kegresse that were used as aircraft tugs.

Given that info I think there is a good chance that it is indeed Croydon Airport.


PS

This is a still from a video called "Croydon Airport in the 1930's" a Citroen-Kegresse close up.



You can see it is left had drive as they all were.

This is such a treasure trove of leads, clues, possibilities and potential blind alleys - it's BRILLIANT! Thank you so much everyone for pointing me in the directions you have. I shall traipse them all and be back later with my findings.

Perhaps they had Citroen-Kegresse as well instead of camels to tug aeroplanes in the Middle East like in Britain.
Who knows? It could be so.

Anyway:) The designation of Hanno is G-AAUD.

You may well be right, because HMS Dolphin (submariners training base) was at Gosport which is only 66 miles from London. Unlike the Army & Air Force, the Royal Navy was in action practically from the outset of the war & needed qualified personnel asap.

I've had so many interruptions since my last post - and before this one - that I suspect I've made far less progress on my behalf, than everyone else has. My apologies, people :) I shall now ... attempt to fix that... whilst admitting that without the help so far - I probably wouldn't be making such a grand claim.

The Citroen-Kegresse input was very useful! I wouldn't have got anywhere near identifying that. When Bernie first brought them up, I got really quite happy seeing "citroen" because I immediately thought: well I can rule out everywhere in Britain then (which would have meant quite a few of these could have been ignored: Airfields in the second world war), but no. No. Those things got just about everywhere by the looks of it. Including Croydon Airport. Still, very useful in the sense the horizon line does have an "English" look to it - but then some of the pictures I saw of Belgian and French airfield horizons didn't look that different either - which got me waddling off on a tangent, which I'll come to in a bit.

The wiki info on Hanno, mentions it being evacuated from Croydon to Whitchurch (by 1 September 1939) making Croydon Airport, by 1940, an en-route stop... and from there I staggered merrily off down another tangent (which I'll also get to in a bit)... but it occurred to me that there seemed to have been a lot more in the way of buildings at Croydon than are visible in the picture. It doesn't mean they're not there obviously, but rather that they're not in shot, but it did get me wondering exactly what it is I think I'm looking at in that regard. I'd best add here that buildings and skylines have been driving me quite, quite insane people - and that I've got quite far in the direction of nowhere, and hardly anywhere at all everywhere else.

Take this for instance:

Is the round shaped structure in the deep background an air traffic control tower (marked A on the picture below)? Or fuel storage tower? If it is a control tower it looks very different from what I've seen of the one at Croydon, and everything else really is quite... sparse. That sent me gallivanting off on a detour that, combined with what Sirius said about Gosport - got me briefly very excited - until the headache set in, which I'll get to straight away.



Trying to get an accurate grip on perspective I'm finding quite difficult. I'm assuming - of the other definite building structures, that the lowest building has one story (E) the large one on the right (C) is a hangar? But what are the B's, and how high does that make A? And did the sparseness indicate an RAF airfield rather than a commercial transport hub (albeit mothballed for that for the duration of the war)?

So I went here: http://www.hampshireairfields.co.uk/airfields/gos.html but the picture that most interested me (the second one from the top on that link) I couldn't really decipher what I was looking at again.

And that's about as far as I've got. I did warn you...

As for the off-road wanders:

I got curious about the routes that the plane might have travelled (to get military personnel from say England to North Africa/Alexandria etc) and assumed they might have been loosely based along similar lines to the passenger routes, and found this:



I also found this (International air travel in the 1930's) which made for an enjoyable glimpse into what we'd complain bitterly about having to do nowadays if we were trying to get to the same places :) And there's a rather nice night time photo in front of the ATC building at Croydon too

I also came across this along the way:
11 Amazing Facts About Croydon Airport

There was other stuff as well, but I've lost track of all of it for the moment.

erm... edit: scrap the "what are the B's" cos I think they're the tail now...

Well, based on that map, I live around stop 14. New Zealand. Some place off the Right lower corner. :D

If you want to go ANY other place from here, you basically fly.

I don't fly that often these days, but over the years I've been in various flying machines, from 2 seat Ag planes to A380s. The Ag plane is probably the most memorable, buzzing through the NZ hill county pointing out boundary fences for the pilot. Ever been in a 90 deg bank , with cows up on a ridge looking down at you flying past?

Helicopters out to the offshore oil platforms and FPSO was interesting as well and I did that for a couple of years.

Favourite place to fly too?
Rarotonga.
It's a small Sth Pacific tropical Island about 4 hours from NZ. Popular destination from here, but kinda off the main tourist maps. Airport can handle wide body jets (B-777 etc) but only has 2 gates, and more often it's A320 or B737 flying in there. Congestion is when they have 3 planes on the ground!!! Also weird doing the old school walk out onto the tarmac and up the mobile stairs, to a B-777. None of this air bridge stuff.


Other memorable ones?
Scenic flight around Rarotonga in a Cessna 172. Downwind side of the Island was a bit "bumpy" Think we went zero G for a second or so.

And Whale Watching out of Kaikoura just after the earthquake. We had booked to stay there a couple of nights, but then it got slammed by a big quake. and cut off for weeks. One of the 3 in roads were open when we got there, and we figured a "tourist" town that had been shut off for a month needed tourists to come back, so we carried on. Campground was pleased to see us the place was ~75% empty in what should have been peak season. Planned to go on the boat trip to see the whales, but the quake had physically raised the sea bed so much their main boats couldn't use the wharf any more. But the airplane guys were OK, so we went that way. Classic tourist flight, but yes we got to see some whales. MIss 10 thought it was great as she got to sit up front with the pilot.

Well, based on that map, I live around stop 14. New Zealand. Some place off the Right lower corner. :D

It really is quite rude how it got dropped off the map like that, isn't it? ;) The prior image was a count in days-of-travel I think, so in some places, stop numbers would probably have been higher.

The good news is, you appear on this one (big picture warning) routes in 1937 (but not so much on the link to the inset map here - http://timetablist.blogspot.com/2017/01/imperial-airways-network-1937-all.html)

I got it in my head from somewhere I can't remember, that the passenger planes then travelled at around 100mph. I don't how many hours of flying time they had before needing to refuel though. I might try and find that out, at some point - after I've got over my whale-watching jealousy.

Boris "Red Squatter 1" flies a Cessna to find out how to survive on a budget in expensive country.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BS8gg4Be9w0

According to Swiss Italian TV a Ju-52 trimotor has crashed on Piz Segnas in the Grisun Canton with 20 people aboard, three crew members and 17 passengers. The flight was a holiday pleasure flight.
Tullio

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