Template:Featured article/October 2014

Gandhi's Ashes

In 2014 John Swire & Sons’ archives department acquired the log book of Captain Stanley Victor Leslie, an Australian pilot who joined Cathay Pacific Airways in 1946, after war service in New Guinea and the Pacific. An interesting entry for 15th March 1948 records that on that day, Vic Leslie took off from Mingladon Airport in Rangoon in one of the airline’s seven DC-3s – VR-HDA, also known as “Niki”. His route took him to Bangkok and then on to Singapore, where he made a night landing at Kallang Airport. Amongst his passengers were two representatives from the Government of India, en route from New Delhi and escorting an urn containing ashes from the funeral pyre of the recently assassinated leader of the Indian independence movement, Mahatma Gandhi. Click here for more...