Sourcing Australia's Lancaster

The wartime diary of J.D. McLauchlan

De: J.D. McLauchlan

Narrado por: Virtual Voice

This is the wartime diary of J.D. McLauchlan, covering July 1943 to September 1944.
In 1943, the Australian government sent a team to England to send back everything needed to build the Avro Lancaster in Australia.
The mission was cloaked in secrecy, most of which still appears to be in place even now.
While Australia never did build a Lancaster, the Lancaster’s replacement, the Avro Lincoln, was built after the war.
Jim McLauchlan was sent to coordinate the flow of information back to Australia, and lived for a while in Manchester, traveling around England, Scotland, and Wales.
This diary is one man’s account of being sent half way around the world to a war zone, where he risked his life just by being there.
His journey included flying the Pacific, America, train to Canada, and then flying the Atlantic.
In England he traveled by train and car, and was in London when the first V1 Doodlebug flying bombs began to appear.
On his return journey, he retraced his steps by air over the Atlantic, trained across Canada and the west coast of America, and flew the Pacific again, stopping in New Guinea.
While containing no actual description of his work due to the secrecy of the mission, his diary describes what he saw and felt everywhere he went, and provides a wonderful insight into 1940’s America, Canada, England, Scotland, and Wales, by an Australian bystander.
While written for family and friends, now, 80 years later, this is a historical document of note, never previously published.

This diary is being published on July 31 2023, Australian time, exactly 80 years to the day that Jim McLauchlan set out from Melbourne on his journey to Manchester, England.