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Aviation History
1951
1951 - 0156.PDF
On active service : RAF. Sunder/anas at Iwakuni, Japan. From here they patrol the Korean coast for mines and submarines. The 3,316ft volcano h Shima seen in the low afternoon sun. JOURNEY EAST - . . Base is only 10ft above sea level, and as one looks towards the end of the tarmac the great Pacific rollers appear to be a good deal higher than the intervening ground. Although the Americans have held Okinawa since they captured it with such great loss of life in June, 1945, the base is still very temporary in character. Nissen huts, suffering sadly from rust, provide most of the accommoda- tion but there is a very comfortable little canteen where pale-blue-clad young Okinawan girls serve the visitor with a variety of good food. Naha is essentially a military air base—one sees rows of black-painted ultra-long-range Twin Mustangs and F-80s at the dispersals; it is also a transport staging-post. Civil airliners, however, do use it as a refuelling point. B.O.A.C. Argonauts sometimes call in if take-off conditions at Kai Tak have prevented a full load of fuel being taken on board. In the opposite direction, stops are made if a full load of passengers and mail preclude the carrying of sufficient petrol for the through journey from Japan to Hong Kong. An hour and a quarter after landing—men and machine having refuelled—we taxied out for take-off and were soon heading out over an intense blue sea. Behind us lay derelict tanks stuck at crazy angles in the sea shore—remnants of war, and a number of rusty ships' hulks, the legacy of a tornado—Okinawa is known as the home of the big winds. We went to 10,000ft up through 8/8ths cloud again and could see nothing of the many islands which the map told us must be passing beneath us. Two hours out, the snow- clad mountains of Yaku Jima (6,348ft) appeared on the starboard bow and later, as the cloud below dissolved into the cooler air of the late afternoon, we passed over the volcano Io Shima (3,316ft) which has an active crater nearly as big as the island on which it stands. Our day's journey having been largely in a northerly direction, the winter sun was very low as, at 1700 hr, we passed over the Japanese coast at Makurazki on the southern island of Kyushu. The low sun-haze cast a peach- coloured veil over the whole landscape, giving a delicacy to the aerial vista comparable to that of a Japanese print. It is difficult to believe that such exquisite surroundings The transit camp at Iwakuni is a converted Japanese barracks. (Above) Air Headquarters at Iwakuni. (Below) A street in rebuilt Hiroshima. There is still much work to be done.
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