At the end of WWII plans were made to provide a string of GEE Chains from the UK to the Far East to support trooping and re-supply flights. This paper collates information from three sources to examine the plan and the extent of its deployment.

In this paper we model the life-history of LTC-patients using a Markovian multi-state model in order to calculate premiums for a given LTC-plan. Instead of estimating the transition intensities in this model we use the approach suggested by Andersen et al. (2003) for a direct estimation of the transition probabilities. Based on the Aalen-Johansen estimator, an almost unbiased estimator for the transition matrix of a Markovian multi-state model, we calculate so-called pseudo-values, known from Jackknife methods. Further, we assume that the relationship between these pseudo-values and the covariates of our data are given by a GLM with the logit as link-function. Since the GLMs do not allow for correlation between successive observations we use instead the “Generalized Estimating Equations” (GEEs) to estimate the parameters of our regression model. The approach is illustrated using a representative sample from a German LTC portfolio.

In the immediate aftermath of WW2 there sprang up an international argument over the relative merits for aerial navigation of area-coverage radio navaids versus point-source systems. The United States was in favour of point-source whereas the UK proposed area-coverage, systems for which had successfully been demonstrated under very adverse conditions during the war. It rumbled on for many years, not being finally settled until the ICAO Montreal Conference of 1959 decided for point-source. Since then, VOR/DME/ADF/ILS have been the standard aviation radio navaids and there seems little likelihood of any change in the near future, GNSS notwithstanding, if one discounts the phasing-out of ADF. It now seems sufficiently in the past to perhaps allow a dispassionate evaluation of the technical arguments used at the time–the political ones can be left to another place and time.