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Aviation History
1951
1951 - 2236.PDF
November 1951 591 art track before the days of mechanisation. Most roads in Baghdad ,iself are simply appalling, and few car springs can stand up for Jong. Even the main roads, such as that to Babylon and Basro, or to Mosul, have sudden corrugations and potholes which make high speeds dangerous. I was told that the senior officers of the R.A.F. station at Habbaniya, 40 miles from Baghdad, prefer to fly to Baghdad West and get a car to the city rather than make the car journey over the bad roads. Great irrigation schemes are in hand for leading the water from the Tigris and Euphrates to render fertile vast tracts of desert which could become great new sources of food; and vast oil developments are certain. Iraq is at present a very poor country financially, and aid from the United Nations will be necessary to carry out such vast projects. But they should bring great wealth to the country, and will necessitate great extensions of the airways. A considerable fillip has already been given to the extension of the Iraq oil fields by the behaviour of Iran. It is believed that the loss of Iranian oil could very soon be made good if the potential but yet undeveloped oilfields of Iraq could be quickly equipped with modern plant. After a tour of Aden Airways I was taken over by Iraqi Airways at Farouk Airport, Cairo, at mid-day on August 30th, and em- barked in Viking YI-ABR Al Mahroussa, with Capt. Ralph Watts (B.O.A.C.), ist/Off. Fouad Azar Elbanna, R/Off. Sammy Yassawi, and Steward Amin Toma. We climbed at once to 7,000ft, where the air was smooth, and flew north, parallel with the Nile Delta on the east bank. I am always amazed how the fertile delta area ends sharply in sheer, stark desert, with no gradual merging. In the Delta are dozens of towns and villages in the midst of intensive very green cultivation. Nearing the Mediterranean, the coast merges into sea much less suddenly, the presence of the sea being heralded by sandbanks, islands, and creeks. The air was smooth and the A "iking was kept pleasantly cool. Steward Amin Toma served us with lunch-boxes containing cold pressed beef and salad, grapes and bananas, and with most welcome iced grape-fruit juice. We flew parallel with the coast of Israel, keeping outside the three-mile limit, as Israel is still at war with Egypt. We could just see the Israel port of Haifa which is close to the border of Lebanon. After passing Haifa we drew in close to the coast and passed the Lebanese port of Tyre, which stands on an anvil-shaped promontory with sheltered bays to north and south; and then we-flew over Sidon. Between these two ports is the termination of the oil pipeline from the Persian Gulf. Four tankers were moored about a quarter of a mile offshore, taking in oil from floating lines. The tanker areas are marked by semi-circles of white buoys. Around one buoyed area was a patch of floating oil where a tanker had recently been loading. Famed Mountain Inland was the 9,000ft summit of Mount Hermon, famed in the Bible for the quality of its dew. The rounded summit was protrud- ing through the cloud which covered the mountains on the sea side. We turned inland here and, as soon as we had crossed the first of four mountain ranges which separate Syria from the sea, the cloud cleared. Between the mountain ranges are three green and fertile valleys, and beyond the fourth range the desert began, with Damacsus lying in a green oasis of considerable size. We covered the 369 miles from Cairo to Damascus in 2 hrs 5 min, landing on a good two-runway airport south of the city. At Damascus I was met by Pat Gillibrand of B.O.A.C, who was then also commercial adviser to Iraqi Airways; he had come to Damascus to settle certain points of policy in relation to carrying through-passengers, from Baghdad to Beirut only, in Argonauts. I was wearing my Hong Kong coolie suit which I had bought when I stayed with Pat in Hong Kong the previous year and he greeted me in Chinese, which left me dumber than usual! We stayed for the night in the flat of Les Brown, who was then B.O.A.C. representative there, and who was expecting to be re- lieved soon by "Lulu" Bennett from Dakar. As we sat on the verandah of his house overlooking the Lebanese mountains enjoy- ing cool drinks, the sun went down, and so did the temperature. The next morning Pat and I rubbernecked in Damascus and saw the house on the wall from which St. Paul was let down by the disciples by a rope when fleeing from the Jews, and also the Street Called Straight—in which we got into a good traffic jam with our car, a lorry, two donkeys carrying panniers of mealies, and a brace of camels. Owing to lack of town-planning down the ages the Street is now only fairly Straight! By the tomb of Saladin we saw the graves of three Turkish air- men who were the first to be shot down in the 1914-18 war. We also visited the Mosque of Omaryades, in which lies the head of John the Baptist. We then set out by car for Beirut, 50 miles distant, across the 9 oooft mountains, going by way of Baalbek to see the ancient ruins o'f the Temples of Jupiter, Venus, and Bacchus which are some- yhat "part-worn" as the result of Phoenician, Arab, and Roman1: vasions, and a great earthquake in 1791. All-Iraqi crew of Viking YI-ABR outside Basro airport building. Left to right: Capt. Saw Fattah, 1st Off. Mufti, R/Off. Hakim, Steward Selam. We found Beirut very hot and humid but enjoyed delightful bathing in the Mediterranean from the St. George's Hotel. Both Lebanon and Syria were until recently French mandated terri- tories, but are now self-governing. The locals, one noted, pre- ferred to speak to Europeans in English. We dined under the stars at the St. George's Club nearby, with Eric Gaston, the B.O.A.C. agent in Beirut, and with the local Air France manager. At 11 a.m. the next day we left the hotel for the airport 5J miles distant along a road with much traffic and many sharp turns. The aircraft was due to leave at 11.30, so we had not much time, especially as there were customs and emigration formalities with which to cope. We did the drive in 20 minutes; by far the most frightening I have ever had, it once again emphasized that the most shaking part of any air trip is the journey between airport and city. Much to my surprise we survived and I looked forward to sinking back into a comfortable seat in the aircraft and recovering my nerve in the tranquility of flight. But it was not to be as easy as that. There was first a delay of 30 minutes as a Turk and an American, who had flown in from Baghdad that morning had not got their entry visas for Lebanon strictly in order. So they were told to return to Baghdad and we embarked in the Viking; but there was further delay and argument. As the Viking was excessively hot with the midday sun beating down, we all got out again and had iced squashes alongside. After a further 25 minutes we re-embarked and took off for Damascus in Viking YI-ABR, with Capt Arthur Trebble (B.O.A.C.), ist/Off. Jaweed U. Draz, R/Off. Selim P. Atallah, and Steward Hadi Hoomi. After take-off we had to make a wide circuit to sea to gain sufficient height to cross the 9,000ft Lebanese mountains with I,oooft to spare. The flight was very bumpy, but we reached Damascus in 25 minutes. There the American and Turk were given exit visas and advised that they could hire a car to take them back 50 miles to Beirut and could get entry visas into Lebanon at the frontier, just as Pat and I had done the previous day. The Lebanese immigration officials are by far the most difficult and unnecessarily officious of any that I encountered in the Middle East or anywhere else. We then started out on the 470-mile crossing of the desert to Baghdad, climbing to 13,000ft to avoid the turbulence from the great heat. That is somewhat high to fly unpressurized, but no one was adversely affected; and as lunch was being'served it was much better to fly in stable air. It is usual under such conditions not to let passengers know the height, for ignorance on such matters is bliss, and many people, especially women, imagine they are being adversely affected by great height, yet are quite unaffected if they do not know! After about four hours of desert (on which the only feature was a patch of what must once have been a volcanic area—a number of dark, conical basalt hills with round craters at the summits), I saw what looked like a long green snake coming from the north- west. It proved to be the River Euphrates, which we followed till we reached Lake Habbaniya, an amazing expanse of blue water in the desert. This was the flying-boat base for Baghdad in the days of the Imperial Airways "C" class Short Empire boats. Just to the north of it is the great R.A.F, base which houses the Air Head- quarters based there by the treaty with Iraq when it became self- governing. The lake is now controlled, and acts as a balancing reservoir to keep both Euphrates and Tigris at the most suitable levels for irrigation. We soon saw the Tigris to the north and noted the fertility of the land between the rivers, once known as Mesopotamia. West of Baghdad is a tower which from the air looked rather like a pear- drop. It marks an ancient temple, the Ziggurat of Aqqar Kuf, made of sun-baked mud bricks—which are the Biblical bricks that could not be made without straw. From the air, Baghdad looks a big city. Its many mosques,
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