FlightGlobal.com
Home
Premium
Archive
Video
Images
Forum
Atlas
Blogs
Jobs
Shop
RSS
Email Newsletters
You are in:
Home
Aviation History
1952
1952 - 1124.PDF
494 FLIGHT, 25 April 1952 HISTORICAL PARALLEL Looking Back Thirty Years to the Ancestors of the D.H. Comet and of B.O.A.C. The fust D.H.34, seen at Stag Lane in March 1922. Daimler Airway's D.H.34s were doped red on all surfaces. The engine was a 450 h.p. M-cyl. "broad arrow" Napier Lion. "Flight" photograph FOR the older hands in aviation the inauguration of the B.O.A.C. Comet service to Africa—from London Airport at 1400 hr on Friday, May 2nd will recall an earlier occasion of considerable significance in British airline history. Thirty years and one month earlier—on Sunday, April 2nd, 1922, at 1007 hr—another de Havilland transport aeroplane made its maiden service tiight when the first D.H.34 took ofF from the green hills and valleys of the old London terminal airport at Wad- don, bound for Paris. That D.H.34, painted red on all surfaces and registered G-EBBQ, was flown by the late G. R. Hinchcliffe; it was carrying newspapers and was operating the first service to be flown by the Daimler Airway. The Comet can claim direct descent from the D.H.34, while in 1924 the Daimler Airway became part of Imperial Airways, which with British Airways in turn formed B.O.A.C. The D.H.34—fully described in Flight on March 30th, 1922— was both a logical and direct development of the D.H.18 which had been used by Aircraft Transport and Travel, Ltd., and the Instone Air Line on some of the first cross-channel services, Designed to carry eight passengers, two crew and a cabin boy, the D.H.34 was powered by a single 450 h.p. Napier Lion water- cooled engine and had a cruising speed of about 105 m.p.h. The original D.H.34, G-EBBQ, made its first flight at Stag Lane on March 26th, 1922, in the hands of Mr. (now Sir Alan") Cobham; on March 31st it was delivered to Croydon, where the Daimler pilots learnt to fly it before the first service flight only two days later. The second D.H.34, G-EBBR, made its first flight at Stag Lane at 0830 hr on April 2nd—after which it was flown to Croydon in readiness for its first service flight to Paris with the Instone Air Line later the same day. The late Capt. F. L. Barnard took off at 1104, carrying eight journalists, and arrived at Le Bourget at 1330 hr. Ten passengers were to have been carried, but the D.H.34 would not take off with that load, so two were off-loaded and flown to Paris in the company's D.H.4A. Eleven D.H.34s were built, of which six were delivered to the Daimler Airway and four to the Instone Air Line. Three of the Daimler and the four Instone aircraft were taken over by Imperial Airways on the formation of the company in 1924. The type was finally withdrawn from service during 1925. The D.H.34s gave good service to British air transport and one of them, G-EBBS, became famous for flying over 100,000 miles in eight months during 1922 without a single mechanical defect. On one day—June 2nd, 1922—this same D.H.34 set up another record by making two return and one single flight over the London-Paris route; afterwards it regularly made two return flights a day over this route. In May, 1922, the D.H.34S began to operate a new Instone route between London and Brussels. During October that year the Daimler Airway progressively opened a Manchester-London- Rorterdam-Amsterdam service, flown with D.F.34S, and a survey flight was made to Berlin, although a service was not opened until 1923. The D.H.34s made a number of fast flights to Paris and, without the help of tail winds, frequently made the journey in a few minutes over two hours; on August 30th, 1923, 6. B. Powell flew G-EBBR from Croydon to Cologne in 2 hr 6 min. On another occasion G. K. Hinchcliffe took G-EBBS from London to Berlin via Amsterdam, Bremen and Hamburg in six hours. In conclusion, a note on the identity of the Daimler Airway miy be added. In 1916 the late Mr. George Holt Thomas founded Aircraft Transport and Travel, Ltd., and that company, a subsidiary of the Aircraft Manufacturing Co. (Airco), planned the operation of the first British commercial air services. On Q DE HAVILLAND D.H.34 (450 h.p. Napier Lion) i 3 Span Length 51ft 39ft August 25th, 1919, the company realized its ambition when it operated the first scheduled London-Paris service. The company continued operation on this route with high regularity, but it was eventually forced to suspend operation in December, 1920, when British air transport almost ceased through financial difficulties. During the latter part of A.T. and T.'s existence its services had been run by Daimler Hire, Ltd., a member of the B.S.A. group with which A.T. and T. had become merged. In 1922 Daimler Hire, Ltd., came back into the airline business when it began air operations under the title of the Daimler Airway. Colonel Frank Searle was managing director and Mr. G. E. Woods Humphery was general manager. The Daimler Airway operated successfully for two years until it became part of Imperial Airways, Ltd., which was formed on April 1st, 1924, as the British "chosen instrument". J. S. This view of G-EBBQ shows the clean head-on aspect of this 48ft-span biplane, which had- a loaded weight of 6,200/b. Fuel-load was 5751b, carried entirely in the two visible wing-tanks. The G.A. drawing above shows the eight-seat cabin arrange ment. Lavatory accommodation was included.
Sign up to
Flight Digital Magazine
Flight Print Magazine
Airline Business Magazine
E-newsletters
RSS
Events
