FlightGlobal.com
Home
Premium
Archive
Video
Images
Forum
Atlas
Blogs
Jobs
Shop
RSS
Email Newsletters
You are in:
Home
Aviation History
1937
1937 - 0967.PDF
APRIL 15, 1937- FLIGHT. 363 reasons, the place is 6,000 ft. high and only 1,300 yards long, and we considered a take-off in cold air safer. How ever, that night, after flying over 300 miles south, we were back in Nairobi again. We had hoped to refuel at Dodoma, a. railway station town in Tanganyika, about lunch-time, but electrical storms to the north of that place caused us to retrace our steps towards Nairobi. There is an aerodrome at the foot of 19,000 ft. Kilimanjaro, but this giant was completely hidden in cloud which came right down to ground level, so we had to give up the idea of landing there. Kilimanjaro, the highest mountain in Africa, is joined by a ridge to Meru, her little sister, a mere 8,000 ft ir. height. Being unable to find a landing place in the neighbourhood, we had, perforce, to fly blind in the direc tion of Nairobi, passing between the two mountains, and praying to find a gap in the cloud before reaching our destination. After about twenty minutes we found it, and, diving hurriedly through the hole, discovered the ceiling to be very low indeed, and looking worse still towards the uplands in the direction of Nairobi. At this point a low petrol supply began to add to our troubles To land on the plains during the rainy season would have been to court disaster, so we cast about for a gentle slope on the side of a hill, preferably near a house that looked European. More by good luck than by good judgment we parked on an old cornfield on a farm belonging to an Englishman. We did so without damaging the machine, which quickly bogged before finishing its normal landing run. We spent six hours freeing the aircraft and filling in large holes made in the cornfield by wild pig, and took off successfully downhill across a fair wind on the 40-mile flight (Top, right) The author in the machine which made the trip—the Ethyl Export Corporation's Rapide. (Centre) After the land ing in a field at King William's Town. The machine took off from the road in the fore ground. Right) The passenger (Mr. F M. S. Tegner) and mechanic (Mr. G. J. Frisby) during a two- hour wait at Khartoum for "Customs." to Nairobi. I arrived there at noon, having covered 600 fruitless but by no means unexciting miles since dawn. Passengers and luggage turned up at Nairobi that evening. I had had to lighten the machine for the rather tricky take-off. Next time we set out we reached Dodoma all right, Hut found, farther on, that M'beya was surrounded by yet more violent electrical storms. This aerodrome is situated in a natural saucer whose sides are mountains, the highest being over 9,000 ft. in height. We didn't like the idea of flying in such dangerous surroundings in the heavy rain, so once more we had to turn back. This time I determined not to gc all the way back, so we made for an aerodrome between M'beya and Dodoma, and in spite of its rather unsatis factory dimensions, landed. It was Iringa, a delightful little place on the uplands of Tanganyika. The population is as varied for its size as any 1 have ever seen, consisting, among the whites, of British, Germans and Danes. The others are natives, Indians and Chinese, and their complexions range from black through yellow to a sort of dirty white. The town turned out to meet us, being quite certain that we must be trying to break the usual Cape flight record. But when we explained
Sign up to
Flight Digital Magazine
Flight Print Magazine
Airline Business Magazine
E-newsletters
RSS
Events
