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Aviation History
1934
1934 - 1375.PDF
DECEMBER 27, 1934. FLIGHT. 1379 THE CATEWAY h tie EAST Part IN.—The Airport and City of Baghdad : the Return Flight to England By C. N. COLSON BAGHDAD aerodrome lies west of the city and is acredit to those responsible for its establishment. Itis in an extremely important position—one, in fact, which may be called a key position in our system of Empire air routes. Under the original direction of Mr. Gumbley, it was laid out admirably with very modern equipment, night landing facilities, a " shadow-bar " flood- light, and a well-planned, imposing administrative build- ing. The landing area is now large enough to give 2,000-yd. runways, and, like those of most desert aero- dromes, the approaches are entirely unobstructed. The England-Australia Race has drawn attention to a fact which has long been obvious to everyone connected with the expansion of our air system—namely, that Baghdad lies on the shortest practical course between England and our possessions further east, such as India and Australia. The Iraqi Government is therefore to be congratulated not only on carrying through Mr. Gumbley's plan for the airport but also for the helpful attitude which it adopted during the Race, and the way in which it backed up Mr. Bailey, who, now that Mr. Gumbley has retired, is in charge of civil aviation. Returning to matters which directly affected our flight, pilots arriving in Iraq must be careful to see that they have a Bill of Health showing that there is no serious epidemic in the place they last left. The authorities view the risk of cholera and similar illnesses extremely seri- ously, and failure to produce the necessary Bill of Health will mean considerable delay. As in other eastern countries, it is useless trying to hurry the officials unduly, and diplomacy is the method to employ if you want to get your passports, Customs clearance, and so on put through quickly. Our leaving, on the Monday following the Race, was considerably delayed by our omission to give the authorities twelve hours' notice of our intended departure ; visiting pilots will do well to re- member this. Charges at the aerodrome are fairly reasonable; our bill for landing fees and housing for five nights was a little over £4. One point which struck us was the placing of the main airport building so that all the dust thrown up by aeroplanes land- ing and taking off is blown towards it by the westerly wind, which, we were told, is the prevailing one. Probably questions such as that of possible flooding dictated this placing, although a bund has been built right round the aerodrome so that it should be immune in this respsct. Baghdad itself is fascinating to those who take sufficient interest in the East to look deeper than the inevitable dust and other annoyances, like flies or even more viru- lent insects. The glory of its former days has departed, * but the spirit still remains and is to be found in unexpected corners by thpse who seek it. The almost prim orderliness of the Egyptians in Cairo and Alexandria does not exist. You see, instead, little evidence of wealth, a far greater variety of dress and head coverings, unmade roads, ram- shackle shops with cheap American and Japanese goods, a struggling mass of humanity with widely differing racial characteristics, and only very little attempt at control and This is the concluding instalment of Lieut.- Coni. Colson's description of the journey which he made on behalf of " Flight " to investigate the conditions that the pilot is likely to en- counter ; in his next article he will set out his general conclusions. A busy market street in Tunis. regulation. Those who come into contact with the educated Iraqi find a lot to be admired. They are widely read, with a grasp of world affairs that is surprising, and a very strong pro-British feeling, although this last quality seems to be mainly confined to the younger generation ; among the older men there are many who feel very differ- ently. Our return journey varied from our outward one in several places, and I shall confine this articlf; to dealing with the various differences. We left Baghdad early in the morning, although not as early as had been in- tended, because of the delay caused by our not having informed the authorities before- hand. When we arrived no one told us that this was necessary, so we felt some- what wrathful at the delay, which meant that we should not be able to reach Cairo that night. Between Baghdad and Rutbah Wells and then on to Amman we covered the same route as the outward journey, and were once again rather overcome by the desolation over which we had to fly for hours. We refuelled at Amman as quickly as we could, still in the hope that we might have miscalculated the time of sunset, and that we might, there- fore, be able to reach Cairo, but a head wind over the Jordan Valley finally decided the matter for us, and by the time we reached Gaza it was obvious that we should have to stay there for the night. Gaza is a large, open desert aerodrome operated by Imperial Airways and the Air Ministry, and fees of 12s. 6d. for landing and 12s. 6d. for housing are charged. In addi- tion, Imperial Airways charge another 5s. for handling the machine. The company also runs the rest house for the benefit of their own passengers and for people like ourselves
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