Lancaster, Lancastrian, York

Mountbatten's personal York MW102 seems to have acquired whitewall tyres whilst in Australia. An Australian newspaper described it as a 'giant white four-engined aeroplane' when it arrived there. (Another source mentions 'a dull pale yellow camouflage' colour, and another source 'ivory' coloured))
An example of Light Ivory RAL1015 from the bewildering choice www.lowvolumepowder.com/RAL-1015-12-Oz-Touch-Up-Paint
 Possibly unconnected but Mountbatten had some theories on colour which were applied to Naval ships for a while en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mountbatten_pink
Avro-York-MW102 by wallycacsabre, on Flickr

Later MW102 was stripped and so highly polished that the fuselage skinning became worn thin (according to rumour) (Here landing at Luqa, Malta, 1948)

BOAC and Qantas resumed the landplane connection between the UK and Australia via Ceylon (and Cocos Island?) with Lancastrians early in 1945. G-AGLF here has red white and blue nationality bands (photographed with orthochromatic film so red is dark, blue lighter),  but G-AGLV (panchromatic film used) has the SEAC light blue/dark blue or white/dark blue (no red) because the war against Japan wasn't over    www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/object/205127027                                    

A curious situation arose on the Indian Ocean route between Ceylon and Australia in late 1945  where the civil airlines were flying cramped converted bombers whilst RAF Transport Command (232 Sqdn) were given state of the art capacious Douglas Skymaster* airliners to fly the same route (* albeit with very spartan stripped troop carrier bucket seats installed)


nla.gov.au/nla.obj-144764657/view   G-AGLV taxying

nla.gov.au/nla.obj-144764303/view    Westbound mail Lancastrian with Transport Command code OKZS

Very pleasing images of the General's York but it was not the first to visit North America. The first was MW100 in which, in October 1943, Clyde Pangborn brought Roy Chadwick, Roy Dobson and others to visit Victory Aircraft and other factories.
Ian