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Aviation History
1953
1953 - 0660.PDF
Middle East and Far East Arabian route stations of Rijan, Salalah and Masirah. They also maintain passenger and freight schedules to Eastleigh, Khartoum and Fayid; supply the Somaliland Scouts (for Somaliland comes under Aden's command); and—should strips suitable for Valettas be available—they back up the Aden Protectorate Levies when these are operating up-country. Odd jobs, such as the flying of servicing parties to Kamaran Island for the assistance of Vam pires staging through, or the air-lifting of troops on Mau Mau operations, turn up from time to time. On the day we called, two Valettas were plying along the South Arabian coast, one was up at Fayid on passenger schedule, one over in Nairobi, one at Khartoum, two with the Aircraft Servicing Flight, and one—the A.O.C.'s aircraft—was being prepared to leave for Somaliland. We were not surprised to hear that during 1952 the Valettas had carried 4,873 passengers and about 2| million pounds of payload. Anyone who supposes that an R.A.F. flight equipped with Ansons and Austers must be a bread-and-butter affair should visit the Aden Protectorate's Support Flight, responsible for flying political officers up-country, for communication with the Aden Protectorate Levies when they are in the field, and occasionally for obliging (and thus propitiating) the Arab rulers. The Flight is commanded by F/L. Chambers, D.F.C., and one of the pilots, F/O. Mudry, gave us the most memorable afternoon of our tour when he flew us in an Anson up to the Beihan strip on the Yemen border. Beihan is a sort of little Shangri-la, with all the colour, romance, adventure and warmth of the East poured into it—or so it seemed to us. We had something to say about it in the issue of May 1st. W/C. A. W. J. Robertson, Officer Commanding R.A.F. Regi ment, reminded us not to confuse the Regiment with the Levies, for whereas the Levies are responsible for maintaining law and order through the Protectorate, the Regiment's r61e is the internal security of Aden Colony. There has been no army in Aden since the R.A.F. took over in 1947. In command of the Aden Protectorate Levies is G/C. D. H. Wenham, M.C., and in his absence we were received by W/C. C. H. Williams. The A.P.L.s have R.A.F. Regiment and Arab officers and N.C.O.s, and are highly mobile. One flight at a time (Upper left) Our arrival at Salalah, with the two guards of honour wielding "pieces of ordnance ranging from sporting Lee-Enfields to •4S0 Martinis." (Left) Personnel of R.A.F. Salalah, with F/0. Roy Hollingworth, the officer commanding, "on the board." (Above) The business quarter. undertakes a 1,500-mile reconnaissance to gain experience of driving and living under what can be truly described as field conditions. Wear and tear on the vehicles up-country was described to us as fantastic; tyre life was somewhere between 4,000 and 6,000 miles. A three-tonner, four-wheel-drive Bedford might average 3 m.p.g. with luck. Cars are of little use and half-tracks worse. Beihan—1 to i£ hr distant by air—is five days off by "road." But if surface transport is tough on the vehicles and crews, it may bring indirect benefits to the Arabs, for a convoy of vehicles might be deemed by them to have "made a road," thereby help ing to open up the country and stimulate trade. Levy operations of one kind or another have been continuous for 18-20 months, and two—one against a tribe which refused to co-operate with the administration and one peace-making mission —were in progress when we were in Aden. Twice a year a recruit ing column, with a Levy band, visits the sultans and sheiks. Each candidate passes through his tribal tent and the sultan is called upon to recognize him. Thus are deserters and murderers screened. The officer ranks are of Turkish origin; the senior Arab officer of a squadron is a Yuzbashi and, of a wing, a Bimbashi. From S/L. W. A. Plowman, Officer Commanding Aden Sup plies Depot, we took a lesson in housekeeping in the grand manner. The A.S.D.—a wholly R.A.F. unit—feeds the military personnel of the colony, any visiting R.A.F. and Naval elements, the Levies, and the Governor's Guards; it supplies the Levies' camels and their fodder, runs a dairy farm with 200 head (and one thoroughbred Friesian bull), bakes 2,000 loaves a day, and restocks Rijan, Salalah and Masirah with Valetta-loads of meat, vegetables, bread and eggs three times a fortnight. Twice a year, in a ship chartered by the R.A.F., it despatches to the staging posts bulk supplies of flour, atta (for native baking), and sheep and goats "on the hoof" for ritual slaughtering by the Levies. The head baker, Mohamed Sussein Hassan, has served British forces in Aden since 1901—and he will show his paybook to prove it. On the same premises is the Medical Equipment Depot, which supplies everything its name implies to H.Q. British Forces, visiting troops and Naval vessels, and the Somaliland scouts. It has a special cold store for drugs—reminding us that "ice harvester" is a semi-skilled trade at the Depot. At No. 114 M.U. (next door to a Hindu temple) they have problems of their own. One of these is implicit in a prominent notice advising employees that bribery will bring dismissal. F/L. House, the chief equipment officer, told me of others—white ants, for example, and woolly bugs, which so weaken the seams of garments that there is a danger of the wearer revealing his fine brown frame too thoroughly even for Aden. From Khormaksar the Valetta hugged the South Arabian coast and before putting down at Salalah we gazed on the forbidding terrain of the Hadramaut (The Death), and, at the water's edge, the amazing mudbrick "skyscrapers" of Mukalla. The Officer Commanding R.A.F. Salalah, F/O. Roy Holling worth (straight off Meteors and half-way through his six months' (Left) G\C. G. R. Brice, C.B.E., Senior R.A.F. Officer in the Persian Gulf. (Right) The navi gator of our M.E.A.F. Valetta, FjO. L G. Clarke had just stepped down from the astro dome when a Persian Gulf hail storm modified its contour as shown. Assessing damage are FjO. Clarke, FjO. S. A. Evans and Sgt. G. W. Heasman.
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