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Aviation History
1937
1937 - 0968.PDF
364 FLIGHT. APRIL 15, 1937. Victoria Falls seen over one o' the Gipsy Sixes of the Rapide. that our trip had so far occupied five weeks, they were inclined to lose in terest. Subsequently, on our arrival at Cape Town, I found a cable ad dressed to me from Iringa, congratu lating me on my "Slow Flight Record." Finding the next day that it was impossible to take off with full load from this aerodrome, we split up, passengers and luggage going by car to Matanana, an aerodrome 70 miles away on the road to M'beya. This aerodrome, which was not marked on my map, is about 1,200 yards long and is at a lower altitude than Iringa. It was here that David Llewellyn is alleged to have filed the piston rings of his engine with a nail file while sur rounded by ferocious lions. We met the fully qualified engineer who had helped Llewellyn, and were assured that it was at least two years since lion had been seen in the vicinity of the aerodrome. I'm sure Llewellyn could not have started the story, but it caused a lot of amusement in the neighbourhood. We had no trouble in finding M'beya next day, but, on leaving, had to fly m and above cloud for over an hour and a half. We came down through the first gap and set Ttbout finding ourselves, which was not too easv. It might be explained here that the available maps were of a scale cf 32 miles to the inch, and not very accurate. We were no less than 40 miles off our track, due to a change of wind direction above the clouds, but luckily the. visibility was marvellous and we were able to pick up M'pika after flying for another forty-five minutes. From here to Broken Hill is an easy stretch, as there is a very convenient railway to follow for the last 50 miles. The golf course at this mining town has greens made of cinders, and one carries a sort of rake in one's bag with which to smooth out the surface before putting. Some of the tees are perched upon large cnthills. Over the Qoldfields Between Broken Hill and Johannesburg the country is very varied. One crosses the rivers Zambesi and Limpopo, both alleged to be full of crocodiles and hippo, and over large tracts of forest, mining camps, enormous farms on the plains, and some quite considerable mountains. Jo'burg itself can be seen miles away on a clear day, as the dumps from the gold mines are mountains in minia ture, and, being of a light colour, show up from a tremen dous distance. The terminal buildings at the municipal air port are the finest on the route, and are among the show places on the Rand. Unfortunately, from the pilot's point of view, the effect is marred by the amount of red tape, which in Kenya and Tanganyika is refreshingly lacking. From Jo'burg we flew Fast to Durban over some beauti fully kept farms, high mountains, and the Valley of a Thousand Hills, passing on the way the mountain into which Glen Kidston unfortunately crashed. Again the maps were 32 miles to the inch, and pin-pointing was difficult; it was reassuring to know that our objective lay on a coastline. The country here drops 6,coo feet in 300 miles. Flying down the coast to the Cape, we found a sea fog obscuring the aerodrome at East London. It was mad dening to circle our fuelling point at two or three hundred feet and yet be unable to land. We were forced to fly inland and land in a field near King William's Town. This is an up-to-date little market town about 30 miles from the coast. It has an aerodrome, which was, not marked on my map, but the field in which we landed was, perhaps, more interesting, as there we found some Zulu mud huts close at hand for our inspection. They were very cleverly built of mud and a kind of wattle, perfectly round, and with conical roofs made of reeds. Inside they seemed clean and beautifully kept, but distinctly smelly. A lorry brought us some fuel, which enabled us to con tinue down the coast to Port Elizabeth. From here on wards the coastline is beautiful—6,000 ft. mountains, farms, and luxuriant forests, with, on the other side, blue sea—the Indian Ocean. One flies inland just before reaching Cape Town over Sir Lowerie's Pass, a 4,000 ft. escarpment which produces the worst bumps in Cape Colony. Not so long ago a monoplane lost its wings here for that reason. Homeward bound from the Cape, we decided to have a look at Victoria Falls, which did not lie much off our track to Elizabethville in the Belgian Congo. We flew over the Hex River Mountains, 11,000 ft. high, on our way to Beaufort West, and from there over the veldt—hundreds of miles of very dusty, flat country to Kimberley. The only aids to navigation are one or two rivers, including the Orange, which was not as big as we expected. There was brilliant sunshine all the way, and it was very hot. We tried photographing the diamond mines, but the air was too dusty. Back again to Jo'burg, then, branching off westward to Bulawayo, we followed the almost straight railway line to Livingstone. A hundred miles before we got there we could see the column of spray shot up by the Falls. From Livingstone the railway turns north to Elizabethville, and we followed it all the way, thinking navigation very easy. The Old Dilemma Leaving the railway junction at Elizabethville we climbed ebove three-tenths cloud at 200 ft. on a westerly course for Kamina, 300 miles down the line, which here is very twisting. Unable to fill the extra tanks at Elizabethville because of the short take-off, we had a range of only 400 miles. After flying for an hour over dense forest, occa sionally seen through gaps in the cloud, and not knowing whether we were north or south of the railway, we ran into a solid wall of cloud down to within 100 ft. of thp tree-tops. Here we had to make a quick decision. Should we turn back to Elizabethville, where we might find the clouds had closed in behind us, and in which neighbourhood we might become confused by the four railway lines, cr should we continue to our objective, only forty-five min utes away? We continued westward into the cloud in the direction of Kamina. Climbing as high as 15,000 ft., we
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