No. 47 Squadron RAF Army support role. The Squadron moved to RAF Disforth in September 1948, where it became the first RAF Squadron to receive the Handley Page Hastings four-engined transport. The conversion process was rushed as the aircraft were needed to support the Berlin Airlift, with the Squadron moving to Schleswigland, near Kiel in West Germany on 1 November 1948. The aircraft was mainly used to carry coal, carrying out 3,000 trips to Berlin and carrying 22,000 tons of supplies. When the blockade ended the Squadron returned to the United Kingdom, moving to RAF Topcliffe on 22 August 1949, operating in support of
Sixteen Tons Another line came from their father, a coal miner, who would say: "I can't afford to die. I owe my soul to the company store." A 1955 version recorded by Tennessee Ernie Ford reached number one in the "Billboard" charts, while another version by Frankie Laine 1956 was released only in Western Europe, where it gave Ford's version competition. On March 25, 2015, Ford's version of the song was inducted into the Library of Congress's National Recording Registry. The sole authorship of "Sixteen Tons" is attributed to Merle Travis on all recordings beginning with Travis's own 1946 record and is