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Aviation History
1949
1949 - 0028.PDF
FLIGHT JANUARY 6TH, 1949 Rush Job to Singapore Our flight plan gave us a time of nine hours fifty-eight minutes at 10,500ft, whilst a Cjantas Constellation due off just before us was giving a flight time of six hours thirty minutes at 16,500ft. We watched his take-off and envied him his pressure cabin. An hour and a half after landing at Tengah we were off again—and because we were on our way home, with our job completed, we were in good spirits. Take-off weight was only 56,000 lb, so that we could afford to settle down at a low value on the cruise-control curve, with a corre- spondingly low fuel consumption. Our actual consumption after fivo hours' flying was only no Imperial gallons per hour at a cruising speed of 170 knots. Dodging Water Spouts As we had expected, the weather deteriorated as we flew north, and before long the cumulo nimbus was stretching in what seemed to be an unbroken chain ahead. To make matters more difficult, visibility was bad, with a persistent haze, and eventually there came a time over the Gulf of Tavoy when we were forced to descend with a view to seeking a passage under the clouds, or fly on virtually blind, with the very real risk of flying into a cu-nimb. Underneath was not a lot better, and at 800ft there were water spouts to dodge as Ferries weaved through the lighter patches in the torrential rain. At one time we debated a diversion to Bangkok, as Rangoon was '' shut down '' by rain and low cloud, and our landing forecast for Calcutta, which we had received in flight, gave IO/IO cloud at 600-1,oooft, with con- tinuous thunderstorms. But Akyab was better, as was Chittagong, and so we carried on, eventually finding an improvement as the cumuloform clouds gave way to a ragged stratiform type, and the turbulence subsided. Although I write glibly of this sector, I must confess I was asleep for a fair proportion of .the time and only woke up with the worst bumps. Ferries was muttering some- thing about takirjg up some nice quiet job like school- teaching when he got home, but otherwise did not seem perturbed at the general situation. After about nine hours there was a great improvement in the weather, and except for occasional massive thunderstorms over the hills of Northern Burma, the sky was a vivid blue. At the same time, the forecasters at Calcutta become somewhat more optimistic, and before long the flat, muddy delta of the Hooghly lay before us, with its dirty tributaries poking up through the green swamps. We landed after eleven hours five minutes' flying time, with 333 gallons still in our tanks, almost enough for three hours more, and with the memory of the waterspouts to shoot a line about the next time someone '' opened the hangar doors." At 12.30Z on August 21st we took off from Dum Dum Airport, bound for Karachi. It had then been three days since we left London, and we had flown fifty-five hours five minutes out of the seventy-one hours' elapsed time. Not that we were particularly concerned about this, because with that peculiar psychological twist which protects us humans from boredom and strain, we all felt that as soon as we reached Karachi, with the worst of the weather behind us and the end in sight though still some five thousand miles away, we were virtually home. The sun was setting as we wheeled over the Willingdon Bridge and set course to the North-West. On all sides we were confronted with towering cu-nimb, seemingly impene- trable, but I felt sure that as we flew nearer there would be a gap somewhere. By now the light was failing quickly, as it does in those latitudes, and with the dusk came the lightning with all its tropical ferocity. Then it was dark, except for a thin red pencil of light over the western horizon, and our boundaries became the cockpit windows. Nevertheless, the thin red pencil served our purpose well, and always when the white bulging clouds seemed to fill the sky there would be that '' pencil'' beckon- ing us through the last gap. We had taken the northern route via Allahabad and Jodpur because it lay over flatter country, and, moreover, was farther away from the influence of the monsoon winds. At 12,500ft we flew on to the west, gradually leaving the storms behind, and presently a half-moon came up over our port quarter. Allahabad went by under a rain storm, and then there were only the numerous forest fires to help us estimate our drift. Karachi was giving its weather at 10/10 1,000ft, similar to what we had experienced on our outward journey, but all the radio aids were serviceable. At 19.48Z we were over- head, and I began a let-down on the radio range, using the radio compass as a monitoring device for a double check. We broke cloud at i,iOQft on our procedure turn back to the airfield, and in a few minutes we could see the runway lights ahead, whilst the revolving beacon on the airship shed cut through the haze at frequent intervals. A minute later we landed off our '' straight in '' approach and taxied up to the apron to join the company of K.L.M., Qantas, B.O.A.C. and Philippine Airways aircraft already parked there. Inside the terminal building I ran across Moll again. Much amused at our progress, he had only got as far as Karachi since we had left him at Calcutta. At Karachi we were one hour ahead of schedule on arrival, but owing to the congestion of scheduled services we had to wait our turn for transport and other handling facilities, with the result that we were half an hour late getting away. We were a bit impatient about all this, but we were soon doing our run-up at the end of the runway and then Ferries was calling for '' 50 inches '' from the flight engineer, and the cabin Hghts grew sud- denly brighter as the throttles went forward. Our technique for take-off was to have the captain and 4rst officer occupying normal positions, but with a flight engineer sitting in the jump seat between them. He was then in a convenient position for handling all controls on the throttle box, and did, in fact, take complete charge of this during all phases of take-off and landing. This idea probably originated from the necessity for the captain to have one hand on the nose steering wheel and one on the control wheel, leaving only his feet for the throttles 1 We found that it works very well under all conditions, and on the final approach the captain merely calls out the power settings until the "cut-off" just before landing. This gives the captain that much less to do. Direct to Damascus Four hours after take-off it was light, and we reflected, with some amusement, "Only one more sunrise and then we're home. The first four are always the worst." Sharjah went by, then Abadan, and at Basra we had plenty of < petrol left, so we carried on to Damascus. We had a chat (on the VHF) with another Skyways' Skymaster just landing at Kuwait, and then flew on over the desert. Eleven and a half hours after leaving Karachi we were on the VHF to the Arab Controller at Damascus, who warned 1 us, as always, "Please not to fly over Damascus city." We were now two hours ahead of schedule, and the aircraft was running like the proverbial sewing machine. At 10.55Z we were airborne for Malta, and soon climbing over the mountains towards the Mediterranean. We had lunch as Cyprus passed slowly by our starboard windows, its blue mountains clouding an otherwise clear sky. And then tea and cream cakes from the coffee shops of Damascus, and just before the sun set with a splitting splendour of deep red rays, Kalafrana Bay hove in sight, with Valetta beyond just lighting up its street lamps. We did our shopping in the Mess; a bottle of sherry, Lux soap flakes, chocolate biscuits and tinned meat, and then, with the aircraft refuelled and checked, hurried off on our way home. The night went quickly because I slept, and at 03.07Z on August 23rd we landed at London Airport. We were 58 minutes ahead of schedule. The next day G-AJPL left for Singapore again, and in the month of August flew 292 hours 38 minutes. But we went home to a hot bath, the first in four days, and a. quiet bed. c 18
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