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|pi=^ The Journal of the AVIATION HISTORICAL SOCIETY mB of AUSTRALIA Inc. A00336533P, ARRN 092-671-773 Volume 34 ■ Number 1 - March 2003

EDITOR, DESIGN & PRODUCTION EDITORIAL Bill Baker With 2003 being the Centenary year of the Wright Bothers Address all correspondence to; first flight,your Society will help celebrate this momentous The Editor, AHSA, occasion by organising a centenary dinner in Melbourne at P.O. Box 2007, the RAAFA rooms in Cromwell Street, South Yarra. We South Melbourne 3205 Victoria, Australia have extended a welcome to the Royal Aero Society and the 03 9583 4072 Phone & Fax Civil Aviation Historical Society to join with us. This will be a E.mail: [email protected] non profit event to help keep costs down. At this stage www.ctie.monash.edu.au/hargrave/ahsa.html please contact President Keith Meggs (phone number Subscription Rates; below) to advise him of your intentions. Australia A$45. This issue of AH has wide variety of interesting articles Rest of World A$68. which I hope you will enjoy. As always I welcome any new Overseas payment to be in Australian material from members, particularily regarding the centenary currency by International Money Order or of flight. Bank Draft. Overseas personal cheques The June issue has the first part of a two parter on the cannot be accepted. amazing Ray Parer, a vastly underrated Australian Aviator, by Greg Banfield. Articles for Publication; Editors wish list; Are to be on an Australian theme. Priority 1: First to Fly in Australia^ Still waiting, waiting.) The Editor reserves the right to edit any Any facet of Australia’s aviation history, Malaya, GAF article accepted for publication. Nomad, Korea, Vietnam, anything that interests you and can Payment is not made for articles. be printed. How about the history of Airbus in Australia? Or Please Include sufficient postage for the some photos out of your collection for the Members Photo return of originals if that is required. Page? Papua New Guinea and the Pacific Islands come A - H and the Computer; Contributions for under our banner also. Anything!! the Journal are most welcome in any form, Cover: To accompany a double photo page of Hawker but if you have a computer, exported on a Demons this beaut picture of a Demon flying in pe-war WA. 3V2" disc in ASSCII format (plain text), or All pictures from the Aviation Heritage Museum, Bullcreek, WIN 6, would be just great! (Include hard WA. copy also). However Macintosh discs can be translated. All photographs submitted will be Next Issue; Volume 34 Number 2 will be in your letter-box copied and the originals returned within 5 in the first week of June 2003. days of receipt. Contents; Disclaimer; 3 The Pot Belly Stove John Laming 1. Whilst every effort is made to check the 11 Prelude to Airways Dr. Leigh Edmonds authenticity of the material and advertising 20 Hawker Demons in the West printed, the Publishers, Editors, and the 22 Billy Stutt Neville Hayes Aviation Historical Society of Australia and its 23 John Watkins The right man Mac Job Office Bearers cannot accept responsibility 26 Full Military Honous Mike Flanagan for any non-performance. 30 "Sutty" Sutcliffe Chas Schaedel 2. The views expressed in 'Aviation 33 ....One Aeroplane Mac Job Heritage' are not necessarily those of the AHSA or its Editors. Meetings of the AHSA; Melbourne Branch: The fourth Wednesday in every AVIATION HERITAGE month, 7:30 at the Airforce Association, 4 Cromwell Street, ISSN 0815 -4392 South Yarra. Further information - Keith Meggs 9580 0140. Print Post Approved PP 320418/00017 NSW Branch: The first Wednesday in every month 7:45 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED Studio 1 at the Powerhouse Museum, enter from the ©2001 by the Publishers; Macarthur Street end. Further information Warwick THE AVIATION HISTORICAL Bigsworth 02 9872 2323 SOCIETY OF Queensland Branch: The last Friday in every month 7:30 AUSTRALIA INC., A0033653P ARBN 092-671-773 at the RQAC Archerfield. Meals available. Contact Richard P.O. BOX 2007, Hitchins, 07 3388 3900 SOUTH MELBOURNE, VICTORIA, AUSTRALIA Index to Civil Identities Ryan ST-A & ST-M2

Compiled by John Hopton Suplimenl to Aviation Heritage Vol.34 Number 1

VH-AGD # 6020 ST-M2 standard ain 459 Photographed at Mildura, Vic on 30-9-64 , owned by Laurie Smith. Photo; Hopton Collection

Reg’n ain Date on Previous Date off Fate Register Identities Register Event Date Remarks Later I.D. AED 469 19 Aug 02 VH-AHD, A50-34 S-33 current AGB 493 07 Sep 45 A50-6, S-57 28 Aug 46 CR & DEST 25 Aug 46 Queen's Park, Geelong, Vic. AGD 459 02 May 45 A50-ll,S-23 XX Oct 67 CR&DBR 15 Oct 67 Mildura, Vic. - to VH- AWG AGQ 473 21 Nov 45 A50-l,S-37 16 Mar 49 CR 31 Jan 49 Mullumbimby, N.S.W. note I AGRl 483 21 Nov 45 A50-5, S-47 06 Aug 51 CR 13 Feb 51 Bankstown, N.S.W. - to VH- AGR2 AGR2 475 06 Feb 55 A50-9, S-39 ? ? ?? VH- AGR3 AGR3 466 xxxxx58 A50-18, S-30 24 May 81 SA XX XXX 81 toU.S. ofA. N2617W AGS 489 27 Feb 46 A50-13, S-53 25 May 54 SA XX XXX 54 to New Zealand ZK-BEM AGU 454 26 Apr 46 A50-27, S-18 06 Aug 51 WFS 26 May 49 certificate lapsed - to VH-WEB AGV 458 26 Apr 46 A50-17, S-22 30 Jun 69 SA by Dec 69 toU.S. ofA. N17343 AGW 465 02 Apr 47 A50-22, S-29 current AGX 490 A50-26, S-54 SA XX Jan 47 to Hong Kong VR-HDM AGY 452 ASO-spare, S-16 SA XX Jan 47 to Hong Kong VR-HDL AGZ 476 22 Nov 45 A50-31,S-40 20 Jan 69 SA XX Jan 69 toU.S. ofA. N288Y AHA 481 13 Mar 46 A50-32, S-45 06 Aug 51 WFS certificate lapsed note I AHC 492 26 Apr 46 A50-29, S-56 ? = current AHD 469 30 Oct 46 A50-34, S-33 21 Dec 81 WFS certificate lapsed - to VH-AED AHE 474 27 Aug 47 A50-^pare, S-38 27 Jan 56 WFS 04 Nov 53 ? AHF 450 06 Aug 47 A50-7, S-14 13 Jul 55 WFS XX Jul 55 as "damaged" note I

I 1 Reg’n ain Date on Previous Date off Fate 1 Register Identities Register Event Date Remarks Later I.D. : AHG 494 A50-3, S-58 SA XX Jan 47 to Hong Kong VR-HDK ARR 464 12 Jul 46 A50-4, S-28 26 Nov 48 RC 26 Nov 48 conflict with Q-code - to VH-BNG ARS 467 16 Oct 46 A50-2, S-31 06 Aug 51 WFS XX XXX 51 certificate lapsed - to VH-RAE AWG 459 17 May 00 VH-AGD, A50-11, S-23 current BBJ 457 04 Jul 47 A50-30, S-21 31 Oct 47 WFS 29 Sep 47 airworthiness invalid - to VH-BXN BNG 464 26 Nov 48 VH-ARR, A50-4, S-28 08Jun51 RC 08 Jun 51 became VH-RAF BWQ 132 190ct51 VH-UZQ, NC16043 21 Jul 61 CR 11 May 60 nr. Barham, N.S.W. - to VH-UVQ BXN 457 06 Sep 57 VH-BBJ, A50-30, S-21 24 Mar 65 SA 31 Mar 65 to U.S. of A. N8146 CXR 482 29 Dec 61 A50-j/jare, S-46 18 Mar 86 CR & DEST 20 Jul 85 Wyndham, W.A. DBD 471 10 May 74 A50-23, S-35 current RAE 467 04 May 53 VH-ARS, A50-2, S-31 23 Jun 70 CR & DAM 13 Feb 70 Clifton, Qld. note / RAF 464 08 Jun 51 VH-BNG, VH-ARR, A50-4, S-28 09 Jul 52 CR&DEST 08 Jun 52 nr. Broken Hill, N.S.W. RSY 474 17 Aug 99 VH-AFE, A50-5/?are, S-38 current UVQ 132 llJan99 VH-BWQ, VH-UZQ, NCI 6043 current UYN 147 21 May 37 ? 09 Jan 48 CR&DBR 14 Jul 46 Belmont Common a/d, Vic. UZQ 132 18 Jun 37 NC16043 19 Oct 51 RC 19 Oct 51 became VH- BWQ WEB 454 27 Jun 57 VH-AGU, A50-27, S-51 XX Jul61 CR&DBR 06 Apr61 Taree, N.S.W.

Note I : aircraft so annoted are believed to be in varying stages of rebuild, and all may eventually return to the register.

VH-AHD #12827 ST-M2 standard ain 469. Photographed near Jerilderie, NSW .owned by Val Chapman.

Photo; Hopton Collection 2 AHSA Aviation Heritage

THE POT BELLY STOVE Text and photos by John Laming

No 14 Flying Instructors Course, East Sale 1955. The town of Sale in south-east Victoria can be about job prospects as a first officer with Qantas. damnably cold in winter. It was probably for this reason Fortunately he remembered the scruffy youngster who he the nearby RAAF base at East Sale in 1955 seemed to had sent solo a couple of years earlier, and kindly have more pot-belly stoves per square mile than most arranged an interview with himself and Captain Lowse - a other places In Australia. It was around the stove In “A” senior Qantas captain. I recall little about that interview Flight hut at Central Flying School, that the characters in and as I was still In the RAAF 15 years later, I guess I this story would gather to talk about the days flying and of didn’t make the grade. Of course, it could have been adventures survived. Outside, cold sou’westerlies from something to do with not being available for another two over Bass Strait might howl between the hangars but years, which is what I had left to serve. inside the flight hut the pot-belly stove would give forth a Thursday 21 July 1955 and from Sydney Loretto and I radiant glow and the coffee smelt just fine. boarded a TAA Convair for Melbourne just in time to catch After graduation from No 8 Post War Pilots Course in the last train to Sale. We froze on the train and after December 1952 I had spent over two years in Townsville arriving at midnight, booked in at the run down Terminus flying Lincolns, Wirraways, a Dakota and a Mustang. From Hotel. Motels did not exist in those days. The next day was there I was posted to CFS to undergo a five month flying gloomy, wet, and cold. We couldn’t afford more than one instructors course. In those days one had to serve a night in the pub - not on a sergeant’s pay packet anyway. minimum of four years from graduation before being There were no houses for rent in Sale and we weren’t eligible to leave the service. So after selling my old Morris entitled to a RAAF married quarter because my posting 8/40 Coupe to an air gunner for fifty quid, I went by train was not permanent. So we hired a car and drove to from Townsville to Brisbane then boarded a TAA DC4 to Bairnsdale, a small town 45 miles to the east of Sale. Sydney where my wife Loretto and I stayed a few days Bairnsdale was a RAAF training base during the war with her parents. operating Beauforts, Hudsons and Ansons on anti­ I first learned to fly at the Kingsford Smith Flying submarine patrols over Bass Strait. There we pored over School at Bankstown. My instructor for the first few trips the local newspaper for rooms to rent and found a kindly was a Hungarian who had migrated to Australia after the old lady who had a spare room. It meant sharing the war. He spoke with a heavy accent and as a result I lounge but at least it was company for my wife. Meanwhile learned very little. Another instructor was bored witless the only way we could get to East Sale from Bairnsdale with his job and my flying suffered. The next instructor was was to hitch-hike. Loretto, an attractive young woman of Bill Burns an ex wartime Hudson pilot who happened to be 22, could show a mean leg - her charm guaranteeing us a the flight safety manager for Qantas and who kept current lift within minutes of hitting the open road. Each day for the by instructing on Tiger Moths and Wackett trainers. Bill first two weeks before the instructors course began, I was wonderful and he sent me solo after eight hours. would leave her at the main township of Sale where she would window shop and look for accommodation. I then I had lived alone since I was 17 years old and now the walked or hitch-hiked the two miles from the town to the RAAF was my home. There was always this nagging RAAF base at East Sale aerodrome and pick up study insecurity that one day the RAAF might not renew my term books and arrange my own accommodation at the of service and I would be out of a job. And so while Sergeants Mess. In the late afternoon we would hitch-hike passing through Sydney I rang Bill Burns, who by now had back to Bairnsdale. climbed up the corporate ladder in Qantas, and asked him

3 AHSA Aviation Heritage

On the 29‘^ July I wandered into the School of Air the 45 miles back to Bairnsdale. Navigation which was 50 yards away from the CFS flight While Loretto tramped the streets of Sale looking for huts. It was another bitterly cold day and as always the rooms to rent and put up with the food at various greasy resident pot-belly stove glowed warm and cheerful. On the spoon cafes, I enjoyed roast beef and yorkshire puddings flight line were several Lincoln bombers used by the at the Sergeants Mess, as well as flying each day in a school for long range navigation - plus an assortment of Wirraway, Tiger Moths or Dakota. Being a keen young Wirraways, Mustangs, Vampires and half a dozen chap in those days I was also ever on the lookout to fly a Dakotas. Tucked away safely away from the howling wind Vampire or a Mustang in between instructor course were a dozen Tiger Moths behind closed hangar doors. sorties. There was no doubt about it, East Sale was a The flight commander at SAN was Squadron Leader pilot’s paradise! Rex Davie DFC & Bar - a former Lancaster pilot. Rex was a cheerful friendly man and I liked him immediately. When The base was also the home to the RAAF Schools of he heard that I had flown Lincolns, he asked me if I could Air Traffic Control, and Air Armament, where future tower help him out with a crewing problem that had just controllers learned their trade and across the road Lincoln surfaced. A 10 hour night navigation exercise to air gunners were taught how to shoot down fighters and Oodnadatta was about to be cancelled because SAN were strafe ground targets. Although Lincolns carried two 20mm cannons in the mid­ upper turret and 0.5 inch calibre machine guns in the nose and tail turrets, everyone knew that in real life the aircraft stood little chance against a determined fighter attack, simply because it was too slow and cumbersome. Fighter affiliation exercises were used to train air gunners to fire at a fast moving fighter. Gunners were born optimists and they needed strong stomachs to counter the extremes of attitude needed to out-turn fighters. During the war, rear gunners especially, suffered high casualties as enemy fighters would invariably aim to kill them Mk. 30 'Short Nose' Lincoln before they could defend their one pilot short to fly the Lincoln. Would I do the trip? You aircraft from rear attacks betcha life I would. Sir, was my reply. I told him that I had never flown in command of a short nose Lincoln Mk 30 - During training at Air Armament School a Mustang only the long nose Mk 31 version. That didn’t worry Rex would attack the Lincoln by launching an attack from Davie, as he knew that the long nose Lincoln was a behind the bomber. In turn, the Lincoln pilot would counter difficult aircraft to handle at night - making the short nose with a violent evasive action known as the Corkscrew. This version a doddle. Involved a series of steep climbing and descending turns designed to make it difficult for the fighter to bring its guns The rest of the crew consisted of a navigation to bear on the bomber. I always had doubts upon the instructor, two trainee navigators, two signallers and a co- value of the corkscrew because there was a short period pilot called Flight Sergeant Smyth. Despite being rugged up in a woolly bull flying suit, it was bitterly cold at 16,000 ft and we wore oxygen masks all the way. The weather had closed in at East Sale while we were gone and on our return GCA gave us a radar controlled final approach in low clouds and gusty winds. At least I could see over the nose of the Mk 30 once we broke out of cloud at 500 feet, which is more than can be said of the Long Nose Lincoln where lack of forward vision made cross-wind landings at night rather hairy. Arriving back at 0300, I snatched a few hours sleep before breakfast, then hitch-hiked F/0 Reg Jones, F/Sgt John Laming, Fit Lt Randy Green, Fit Lt Grif Board.

4 AHSA Aviation Heritage

during the turn reversal where the bomber made an easy The day would start with staff instructors and students target for the fighter Over Europe American bombers flew assembled at A Flight hut, where the CFI or his deputy daylight mass formations which allowed hundreds of would brief on instructor duties and aircrew notices. machine guns in a formation to fire at each fighter. Only Following this the civilian meteorological officer would give single bombers could afford the room to corkscrew. the daily weather briefing while the Senior Air Traffic Control (SATCO) gave the run down on navigation aid Many years later in 1999, I was privileged to listen to serviceability and aerodrome status both at East Sale and Squadron Leader Tony Gaze DEC who had been invited to give a talk on his war experiences to the Melbourne at the satellite field of West Sale situated 10 miles away. Branch of the Aviation Historical Society of Australia. Tony West Sale was used primarily for the Tiger Moth phase of was a former Spitfire pilot in the RAF who had flown on the course in order to avoid the problem of faster traffic in operations over Europe alongside the famous RAF aces the circuit area at East Sale. A Tiger would be on its back Douglas Bader and “Johnny” Johnson. We discussed the in a flash if too close behind a landing Lincoln. effectiveness of the corkscrew technique against fighter A CFS staff instructor would give the first mass briefing attack. Tony decried the manoeuvre, stating that many of the day. This could include such things as Climbing and Allied bombers had been shot down while corkscrewing. Descending, Forced Landings, Low level Navigation and He said that during the reversal turn by the bomber it so on. Afterwards, students and instructors would gather offered a no deflection shot to its attacker and that in his about the stove for coffee and then disappear into point of view, the only defence for a single bomber was to individual instructor briefing rooms for pre-flight haul into a continuous steep turn in an attempt to force an discussions. Outside on a tarmac swept by freezing winds attacker Into inaccurate high deflection shooting. It was my or drizzling rain the ground staff in dark blue overalls were Impression back in 1955 that very little had changed in pre-flighting aircraft. Refuelling trucks supplied 100 bomber versus fighter tactics and that the bitter lessons of octane fuel into Mustangs and Lincolns of the Air the last war had never reached the gunnery instructors at Armament School and the Dakotas of the School of Air East Sale. Navigation. While CFS instructors and students gathered When No 14 Flying Instructors course started on 17^^ for the day’s work, similar briefings took place in the August, my instructor was Flight Lieutenant Randal Green warmth of the flight huts of AAS and SAN just down the - inevitably known as Randy Green. He was an road. Scheduled for fighter affiliation exercises, crews enthusiastic chap and a fine instructor. There was never a lugged their navigation bags and parachutes up the front harsh word, despite the many times I made a hash of ladder of the Lincolns while a Mustang pilot was helped learning the art of “pattering” a sequence. I have always settle into his cockpit by waiting ground crew. spoken too fast and he would gently rubbish my rate of On the 8*^ of September I flew twice in Tiger Moths and speech as soon as I got up to speed during a patter then acted as second pilot to Squadron Leader Ken session. I never minded this as it was done with gentle Andrews on his first night command trip in a Lincoln. Ken humour and I soon learnt to slow down. His patient was a smooth pilot with a relaxed friendly manner. Forty manner made the course most enjoyable. Unlike years years later he was still in the game - this time as a civilian later when one occasionally suffered the arrogance of instructor at Bankstown. I underwent a routine flight airline check captains who were legends in their own progress test in a Tiger Moth with Squadon Leader Herb minds. Thwaites, a CFS flight commander. Years previously. Randy was responsible for training three students. Herb had a miraculous escape from death when a These were Flight Lieutenants Reg Jones and Griffith Wiiraway that he was flying near Coolangatta had an Boord, and myself. Reg was a fighter pilot who had engine failure and Herb was forced to land wheels up on recently returned from a posting flying Vampires with the the beach. He suffered severe leg injuries, and now RAAF 78 Wing based in Malta. A quiet unassuming man, walked with a noticeable limp. he lost his life a few years later during the four-ship After I had pattered a forced landing from 3000 ft Herb accident to the RAAF aerobatic team known as the Red asked me to demonstrate my aerobatic skills. I dreaded Sales. Griff Boord was also a fighter pilot who had flown this because being rather short in the legs I have always Meteors operationally in Korea. Griff was to die of a heart had difficulty in getting full rudder on while carrying out attack In later years. Fortunately both Randy and I are still slow rolls. This was the case today when I tried to talk alive and kicking in 2002. myself through a slow roll. The poor old Moth fell out of the sky upside down leaving me still talking ten to the dozen The others on No 14 FIC were a cross-section of pilots after the aircraft had given up the ghost. I think Herb’s from transport, bomber, fighter and maritime crook leg was paining him because he did not attempt any reconnaissance squadrons. The CFS instructors were a more demonstrations. After landing and a debrief he sent varied lot - as was their talent at teaching others. Many me up for more aerobatic solo practice. Later when I did had flown on operations during the war. All had previously my final handling test with the CFI, I had the same instructed at Point Cook and were now here to teach problem. I simply could not reach full rudder and did not others how to instruct. We were lucky to have such depth enjoy aerobatics in the open cockpit Tiger Moth. I even of experience among them and I cannot help but contrast tried slackening my safety harness so that I could stretch these people with today’s crop of young civilian instructors one leg further. That seemed to work for a while, but as who have chosen not to venture beyond the comforts of soon as we were inverted I floated clear of my seat and their local aero club. was restrained from falling overboard only by my harness. CFS names In my log book of 1955 include Ken I nearly choked on the Gosport Tube as my patter went McAtee, Ken Andrews, Snow Joske, Jack Carter, Ron out the window and I felt a right twit. The CFI was nothing Graham, Jim Graney, Herb Thwaites, Denis Smallbone if not pragmatic. After he had demonstrated a perfectly Peter Badgery, and Gus Goy. The CFI was Squadron executed slow roll he handed back control to me saying Leader Jim Graney AFC with Wing Commander John that if possible I should avoid teaching slow rolls to Dennett as Commanding Officer. students in the Tiger as I would surely bugger them up. I was grateful for his advice even though it was delivered with a touch of biting sarcasm.

5 AHSA Aviation Heritage

restricted by the instrument panel. This made things tricky when the tail was on the ground during the early part of the take off run and when the tail was lowered during the landing run. Night flying from the back seat of the Wirraway was a health hazard. The CFS instructor set the scene by announcing that for the purposes of this progress test I was call him by his invented student’s name of Hogglebottom. That was a mouthful and we hadn’t even got airborne yet. The first patter sequence was taxying. The game plan 'U brute to taxy." called for the instructor to demonstrate how to taxy a A few days later I got my hands on Mustang (A68-118) Wirraway, then stop the aircraft and hand over control of and merrily rolled my way around the sky. Being solo, the aircraft for the student to have a go. I pattered away there was no one around to see me dishing out of slow merrily and then stopped the Wirraway on the long taxiway rolls. Someone suggested a big fat cushion behind my leading to the threshold of runway 27. So far, so good back allowing me to apply full rudder extension. That except that I had not noticed the presence of a bloody seemed a good idea so I got an airman fabric worker from great Lincoln bomber following close behind us to the Safety Equipment section to manufacture one for me. He runway. Unlike the Mustang there was no rear vision even stenciled my name on it. The trouble with big fat mirror. Denis Smallbone, (aka Hogglebottom), had seen cushions in a Tiger Moth was that if dislodged, they could the Lincoln but chose not to tell me. Within seconds of my fall overboard from the open cockpit and with my luck handing over control to Trainee Pilot Hogglebottom, he would be bound to land on the head of a passing member suddenly applied hard brake causing the Wirraway to of the constabulary. What with my name stenciled all over swing through 180 degrees facing the way we came. Too the cushion in large letters, it would not take much effort late to stop the swing, I stared in dismay at the sight of for a budding Sherlock Holmes to trace its owner. It’s the Lincoln bearing down upon us fifty yards away. The called Murphy’s Law. Lincoln pilot hit his own brakes and stopped with a jerk My short stature also caused me grief when flying from with four propellers rapidly being brought back to idle. the back seat of the Wirraway. This aircraft was a real Smallbone laughed his head off while stammering an beast if allowed to swing on take off and landing and it acted apology for his lead footed taxying skills. The took immediate full rudder to stop an impending ground Lincoln pilot meanwhile showed little sympathy for my loop. Certainly the rear cockpit rudder pedals were plight and shoving his head out of the cockpit window 18 designed with six footers in mind. At CFS, ground staff feet above the ground gave us the classic two finger designed wooden blocks that screwed on to the rudder salute indicating that we should get out of his way. I pedals giving an extra couple of inches to the short pilots. thought stuff him - I have got my own problems with While that helped, the flip side was that “feel” was missing, Hogglebottom and this son-of-a-bitch of a Wirraway! making it easy to inadvertently apply too much brake - and so the inevitable swing would re-occur. At East Sale I nearly dislocated my knee bone trying to coordinate on 20^ October, while taxying for take off, a Wirraway rudder and brake with full back stick and much roaring of ground-looped causing the undercarriage to collapse. The the Wasp engine in order to head back towards the pilots were Roy Hibben and Ron Bastin. Both were of runway. That done I waited for the next trick from my short stature like myself and I wondered later if one of friendly CFS instructor. We got airborne and climbed to them had run out of rudder control. The accident didn’t height for aerobatics practice. I pattered and harm their careers, however. Hibben went on to become a demonstrated with great aplomb with little action from the Wing Commander winning a DSC in Vietnam, while Ron front cockpit. I was being lulled into a false sense of Bastin flew Sabres before leaving the service to become security as it turned out. civilian pilot. I had just pattered a stall recovery when Smallbone On the 26^^ of October I was scheduled for a 25 hour took over control to act as a student carrying out his first progress test on the Wirraway. Now that was one trip I stall. With flaps down, if the stall recovery is not precise shall never forget. My instructor for the test was Flight and prompt, the Wirraway will flick Inverted and spin. Lieutenant Denis Smallbone, a Royal Air Force exchange Today we were at 8000 feet above West Sale aerodrome officer from CFS at Little RIssington in England. Denis was with Tiger Moths pottering around the circuit pattern far a delightful chap with an impish sense of humour. below at 80 knots. Before carrying out stall recovery The progress test covered the whole gambit of practice it was usual to carry out a steep turn to ensure aerobatics, stalling, spinning and general instructor patter. that there was no aircraft immediately below us. I occupied the instructor seat in the rear cockpit while the Hogglebottom heaved into the steep turn with a CFS instructor acted the part of a student pilot sitting in viciousness that caused me to temporarily grey-out for a the front seat. The view from the back was severely couple of seconds. I was about to tell him to ease up on the G forces when without warning the Wirraway flicked

6 AHSA Aviation Heritage

inverted and began to spin. After a couple of turns I told the student to recover from the spin. This normally required full opposite rudder to the direction of spin, followed by an easing forward of the stick to un-stall the wings. Hoggelbottom did not reply, and the aircraft continued to spin. Again I told him to take the necessary recovery action but still he held on to the controls and said nothing. I then raised my voice and told him sharply to recover. He said that he was scared and did not know what to do. West Sale railway station was spinning crazily over the front of the engine cowl and I attempted to take over control - only to find This is how you do it! Randy Green explains to Reg Jones ( L) and John Laming (R) that Hogglebottom had frozen on the controls. By now we concrete for her garden when I rang and explained that had lost several thousand feet and I thought the CFS her husband had been my instructor at CFS nearly 46 instructor was taking the joke too far. years ago. She was delighted to hear from me but she had some sad news, too. Denis Smallbone had died at the age After failing to overpower his grip on the controls I of 74 nearly five years ago. Nice bloke was Denis - but finally spat the dummy, swore at him, and told him in no I’m not sure about the redoubtable Hogglebottom, who uncertain terms to release the bloody controls forthwith. caused me much angst yet so much hilarity at CFS. The instructor laughed and let me take over control. He then made the point that if a student panics and freezes In November 1955 I flew 32 trips - often four In one on the controls, a string of oaths from the instructor may day. For example on 3'^'^ November the first trip was in snap the student out of his frozen state. So far I have yet Mustang A68-119 on formation flying with Flight Sergeant to meet any panic-stricken students so I have never had Brian Holding who was in another Mustang. Brian and I the opportunity to try out his theory. had been on the same pilots course in 1952. After graduation he had flown Mustangs and Vampires at the When we returned to the circuit, Smallbone told me he would fly a short field landing and that I was to take over Operational Training Unit at Williamstown before being control if he made any serious mistakes. As explained posted to Korea where he flew Meteors on United Nations earlier, the Wirraway was renowned for its vicious wing operations against communist North Korea. Many years drop at the point of stall. I was worried that if his spin later he became a senior captain with Trans Australia Airlines. recovery was an example of testing me to the limit, then a short field landing cock-up was bound to be his last throw Following the formation practice, I attended a briefing of the dice on my test. He approached the runway just at CFS on air to ground gunnery techniques - followed by above the stall, while I crouched uneasily over the controls a dual period with Randy Green in Wirraway A20-732. For in the back seat waiting for the inevitable wing drop that I this sortie, two 0.303 machine guns were installed under was sure Smallbone would try to induce. To my relief his the wings. I’m not quite sure if we used a simple ring and touch-down was smooth and right on the end of the bead or a reflector gunsight. Either way, I was a lousy runway. shot and got very few bullets on the target. Then it was There was no doubt that Denis Smallbone was a very lunch time at the Officers Mess for Randy and the other skilful pilot. The landing is not over until the aircraft is officers, while I wandered to the Snakes Pit (Sergeants stopped - or so goes the old adage - and I waited for his Mess) for a three course meal with the NCO members of next move. Perhaps he would allow the aircraft to swing our Instructors course. badly at the next taxyway turn-off. It didn’t happen, but I At 1300 the course was back down to the CFS flight didn’t relax until the chocks were under the wheels. huts where Randy and I climbed into Wirraway 732 again Coffee around the pot belly stove never tasted as good as - this time swopping seats. He became the student in the that day. Smallbone seemed happy with the trip and I front seat while I flew from the back seat. My job was to was relieved to pass the hurdle of the 25 hour progress patter a ground attack then give my student a go at firing test. In later years Denis migrated to Australia and the guns. Now the view from the back of a Wirraway is became the Reverend Smallbone of an Anglican church in none too good and becomes positively frightening in a 45 Gippsland, Victoria. When writing this story I wondered if degree dive. It is well nigh impossible to sight the ground Denis Smallbone was still around and if so, would he target which consisted of canvas strips laid flat in the recall his alter ego Trainee Pilot Hogglebottom. sand. Observers watch the diving aircraft while crouching A quick check in the telephone directory revealed an in concrete bunkers safe from stray rounds. Their job is to M. Smallbone living at the tiny village of Port Albert on the observe and record the number of bullets that hit or miss coast of Bass Strait which separates mainland Australia the target. from Tasmania. My phone call was answered by a lovely Over the target I did a classic wing-over just like the voice belonging to the 80 year old Mrs Denis Smallbone. Stuka dive-bombers you see in old war movies. You She was fit and healthy and was engaged in laying some needed to have the rear canopy open in order to stick

7 4HS4 Aviation Heritage

one’s goggled head into the slipstream to sight the target. Like gunnery, dive bombing from the back seat of the From the back seat that is about the last time you can actually see the target - the rest being a case of pointing Wirraway was always a blind hit or miss affair. There was down and shooting in the general direction of Australia. however one real danger that we were briefed to avoid. It The observers in their bunkers knew well the dangers of concerned the “g” limits of the aircraft. The Wirraway, if I sticking their necks out whenever instructors course recall, was a strong aircraft with an ultimate breaking load gunnery was on. My scores from the back seat revealed of around 8g. This was providing that the pull was equal nil bullets located on the target although spurts of dust on both wings. We were warned to avoid high rolling “g” were seen a football field length away. Whether or not the where the twisting moment of unequal force could dust was due to bullets hitting the ground, or rabbits drastically lower the normal limit. This danger was running at warp speed for cover, will never be known. tragically confirmed when a Wirraway lost a wing during Maybe both. The main thing was that particular box in the practice dive-bombing near Point Cook a few months later. flying syllabus was ticked off in our training records. The pilot was Flight Sergeant Ted Dillon, a flying instructor at No1 Advanced Flying Training School. Ted was a dare- We returned to base with empty guns and the debrief devil type who had flown Meteors and loved low flying, by Randy Green was mainly chortles of laughter. I Earlier he had a lucky escape from disaster when his remained tight lipped and glum as our scores were posted Wirraway hit a tree while on a low flying exercise, on the crew notice board. Not that I lacked a sense of the ridiculous, but after all a man has some pride. I found Ted knew that greater bomb aiming accuracy could be myself airborne again half an hour later in Wirraway A20- attained by increasing the angle of dive beyond the briefed 661 with Pilot Officer Alan Mann In the back seat 45 degrees angle. During instructor practice he would practicing mutual patter on aerobatics. Alan was a close the throttle in order to keep the dive speed back and graduate of No 7 Pilots Course. He had flown Dakotas and invariably commenced his pull out lower than most other pilots. both he and I were to be posted to No 1 Basic Flying Training School after graduation as flying instructors. I On one of his dive-bombing runs at the Werribee liked Alan Mann. He was quite unflappable and easy going bombing range near Point Cook, his aircraft was seen to with a dry sense of humour. In years to come he became pull out sharply after bomb release and at the same time a captain with Qantas. instead of a wings level recovery, a hard rolling pull-up At Uranquinty he had a student who on one particular was started. Witnesses saw one wing separate from the dual flight became quite upset with himself after some aircraft which Immediately crashed. Ted was killed problems with his flying. After the flight Alan Mann wrote instantly. Many years later I still use the example of Ted’s up his students hate-sheet (progress report), adding that crash to illustrate the dangers of rolling “g” to pilots “student cried like a bugle player”. The flight commander undergoing unusual attitude recovery training in the Boeing 737 full flight simulator. at No 1 BFTS, Flight Lieutenant Val Turner DFC was a former wartime fighter pilot not known for his fatherly 17^^ November 1955 was a memorable day. It started approach to students and instructors alike. He scrawled a with one dual and one mutual trip in Wirraway 732 with note over Mann’s remarks which said “Pilot Officer Mann - Randy Green and Flight Lieutenant Griff Boord we are training pilots - not bloody bugle players”. I had respectively. The sequences pattered included aerobatics, tangled with Val Turner a couple of years previously during instrument flying, practice forced landings and circuits and a fighter pilots course that I attended at Williamtown (not landings. Griff was a RAAF College graduate of 1950 who very successfully, I might add). While flying a Vampire in had flown Meteors in Korea and after tours as a fighter formation with Turner in another Vampire, he ordered me pilot at Williamstown was posted to our course No 15 FIC. to take over as leader and take us to a railway tunnel in He was a pleasant fellow, well liked by all. With him at the countryside near Williamtown. CFS was another graduate of RAAF College. This was To my chagrin I discovered too late that I had Flight Lieutenant Bill Hughes who had won a DFC in forgotten to bring my charts in the aircraft and was forced Korea. Bill was an outstanding officer who eventually rose to admit shamefacedly over the radio that I did not know to Air Vice Marshal rank. how to locate the tunnel. After landing I received a well After sharing the mutual instructor period with Griff I deserved blistering attack by Turner on my lack of was then scheduled to undergo a dual flight in a Vampire airmanship and was given the punishment of walking the Mk 35 (two seat) with another flight commander. Squadron perimeter of the airfield carrying my parachute over my Leader Ken Andrews. His nickname was Chu Chu after his shoulder. Never did a parachute feel so heavy. propensity for offering his students lollies after a flight and 15‘^ November saw our course undergoing dive- saying “Here - have a chu-chu”. bombing using six 5 kg practice bombs per sortie. I shared I had flown several hours on single seat Vampires, but four trips in one day with other trainee instructors. This none on the dual version. The Mk 35 Vampire had a time my scores were marginally better than the gunnery cockpit canopy which was a clam-shell type rather than debacle. The technique was to fly a left hand circuit over the more common sliding canopy found on the Mustang, the bombing range at 3000 feet, then on base leg carry Sabre, and Vampire Mk 31. As some of the instructor out a wing over into a 45 degree dive angle. The throttle course pilots had not flown jets, CFS had decided that a was partially closed to avoid propeller overspeed and also jet familiarisation flight would be a good thing. Accordingly, to keep the airspeed manageable. At 1500 feet a single Ken Andrews took me up in the dual Vampire for a bit of bomb was released followed by a straight pull-out of the horsing around in the upper levels. The dual Vampire was dive. By this time the Wirraway had reached 800 feet at very cramped in the cockpit and those instructors who the bottom of its dive. Once the climb was established eventually taught students to fly Vampires were subject to wings level, a climbing turn to 3000 ft was made back on re-occurring back problems in later years, to the downwind leg. The exerecise was repeated using the five remaining bombs. During the climbing turn it was The Vampire has a very limiting fuel endurance of just possible, by craning one’s neck, to spot the smoke of the over an hour and after a couple of touch and go landings, bomb burst. Ken decided his back was too sore for more. Parked on

8 AHSA Aviation Heritage the tarmac, he closed down the engine and opened the performer on three engines, things could become a bit canopy allowing us to vacate the cockpit (or egress, as the unstuck when it came to going around again with one Yanks say). After unclipping my oxygen mask, radio leads feathered if the speed was allowed to deteriorate below and parachute, I grasped the front windscreen and started the safety speed of 120 knots. As the landing speed of the to haul myself up and out of the cockpit. Immediately Ken aircraft was around 100 knots, it takes little imagination to warned me of the dangers involved of climbing from the imagine what would happen during a three engine go- Vampire without first ensuring the canopy was correctly around at that speed. The aircraft was a conventional tail- locked in the open position. He explained that an wheel design and that means they can really bounce unsecured canopy could slam down and cause grievous unless care was taken to carry out a smooth landing. After bodily harm to anyone foolish enough to have his fingers losing three Lincolns that bounced badly and attempted to in the way. go-around during practice feathered landings, the RAAF - rather belatedly in my view - banned the exercise as too dangerous. In fact the RAAF lost more Lincolns practicing feathered landings than with real engine failures. In later years as a flying instructor at No 10 Squadron at Townsville, that directive was to save my skin one night. I had been giving dual instruction on a new pilot and the exercise called for simulated feathered landings with the “dead” engine at idle power. This was known as zero thrust. The advantage being that the drag of a throttled back engine simulated that of a "All my own work" The result of a three engine Lincoln 'go* around! feathered propeller Gratefully I took this advice on board and decided to let with the advantage Ken vacate the cockpit first - age before beauty so to that in event of a bad bounce or late go-around, the closed speak... Well, just like the man said, the canopy was not throttle lever could simply be brought back into action. On correctly locked open and Murphy’s Law was self that night, the new pilot who only had 220 hours in his log actuated. As Ken placed both hands on the windscreen book, was doing very nicely and coping well with a bow to lever himself out of the left seat, the canopy fell simulated engine failure on take off. down with a bang, trapping his fingers akin to a slammed Downwind on three engines, with the fourth engine door. He gave a frightful well mannered oath something idling at zero thrust, the student requested landing gear along the lines of “Scheissenhausen” which, translated down and one quarter flap to be set. This was a standard from the German, means shithouse (or something like asymmetric configuration. When I selected the flap lever that), and sat back among a tangle of oxygen, radio, and to down, it broke away in my hand leaving the hydraulic dinghy leads, wringing his squashed fingers in obvious selector valve in the full flap down position and severe pain. uncontrollable. The Pilots Notes for the Lincoln warned I sympathised and muttering something about “there that on a go-around with full flap, immediate flap retraction but for the grace of God go I”, couldn’t help remarking to to half flap was needed to avoid a strong nose up change Ken that he had given a bloody good demonstration of the of trim. Failure to act could lead to the nose rising and loss dangers of unlocked canopies. By this stage, the normally of forward elevator effectiveness. On three engines this urbane Squadron Leader K. Andrews - “A” Flight could be highly dangerous due to airspeed loss and thus Commander, Central Flying School, had lost his cool and loss of rudder control. snarled back at me that my remark was not funny. That was a matter of personal opinion of course, although I In our case, the flaps went to full down and up went the must say that I felt that then was probably not the most nose with a vengeance. I brought the fourth engine back appropriate occasion to fall over laughing. For the next few to full power along with the other engines. This only weeks Ken was off flying with his fingers in splint looking exacerbated the pitch up, but with a rapidly deteriorating like an indignant version of Napoleon without his airspeed we were damned if we did and damned if we Josephine. didn’t. Fortunately I was able to bring the situation under control and we landed safely. If by the previous rules of That evening I was scheduled to fly as second pilot to engagement we had flown the circuit with one engine Alan Mann on night flying in Lincoln A73-1. We carried feathered, I believe we would have been in serious control out several touch and go landings interspersed with one difficulties. After that I mentally thanked the wise engine feathered landings. While the Lincoln was a good headquarters staff officer who placed the kibosh on

9 AHSA Aviation Heritage

and into the cavernous bomb- bay of our Lincoln. Remember this bomber can carry over 20,000 lbs of bombs - so it has a fair size bomb-bay. It is heavy work flying a Lincoln there are no powered controls - and after a few formation turns I decided it was time to go home. Calling the others by radio that I was breaking off the exercise, I asked the second pilot to pull up the flaps while I closed the bomb doors. I had no idea that Hibben was almost directly underneath our aircraft. He was caught by surprise at the sink caused by the retraction of flaps, and his practice feathered landings. If there was a funny side to it, Wirraway was nearly squashed beneath us. It was only his It was when the new Lincoln pilot initially thought that I was quick reaction in diving away from the fuselage of the merely attempting to demonstrate an unbriefed runaway Lincoln that saved what could have been a nasty accident. flap control. He must have been kidding. At night, with one A Court of Inquiry would have crucified me for playing with engine throttled back? No bloody way! Wirraways while on a test flight. Three years earlier therefore, during the night circuits A few days before qualifying as a flying instructor in at CFS as second pilot to Alan Mann, I was blissfully mid-December 1955, I managed to talk my flight ignorant of such potential dangers and happily feathered commander into letting me fly two more trips in a Vampire his engines on request. plus a final go in a Lincoln and Dakota. The Vampire was 1®* December 1955. Busy day, flying five sorties. a single seat Mk 30 version A79-1. It did not have an These included a test flight after a Lincoln major ejection seat. The cloud base was low at 200 feet and inspection, an instrument rating test by CFS instrument after a VHF/DF instrument let down I was fortunate rating examiner (IRE) Flight Lieutenant Ron Graham, and enough to get talked down by Ground Controlled three Wirraway dual and mutual instructor training sorties. Approach (GCA). This is a remarkably accurate final The Lincoln flight was carried out at 5000 feet and approach by a radar controller. With no radio navigation Involved feathering each of the four Rolls Royce engines - aids in the Vampire, a pilot was entirely dependent on the one at a time, of course. Acting as second pilot was skill of a radar operator in a truck near the runway to get Warrant Officer Fisher, a wireless operator/gunner. The back on to the deck. A serious limitation of GCA was rain Lincoln was designed as a single pilot aircraft although we attenuation where the aircraft echo could be lost in screen usually carried a second crew member for safety reasons. clutter caused by reduction of radar efficiency in heavy If a qualified pilot was unavailable we would grab the precipitation. In later years I realised with some guilt that I nearest volunteer - ground staff or half-wing aircrew - to never thought to say thanks to these unknown air traffic operate the flaps and undercarriage and help start the controllers who spent hours in a cramped van either engines. There was rarely a shortage of someone to sit up freezing or sweating depending on the season. Thanks front to enjoy the shattering noise of four Merlins at take chaps, if you happen to read this nearly fifty years later.. off power. W/0 Fisher drew the short straw on this A few days before the end of the instructors course we occasion. were checked out on the new Winjeel basic trainers. My After carrying out all the mandatory tests on the first dual flight was on A85-804, followed by sorties in A85- Lincoln (A73-1, again) I was about to return to base when 404, and 406. At the time we felt that it would be a big we spotted three Wirraways below us in formation. Their jump for student pilots on Tiger Moths to the heavier and pilots were Randy Green and Viv Barnes flying dual, plus faster Winjeel. We were wrong as it turned out, and the Roy Hibben and Bill Hughes All were fighter pilots and time to first solo on the Winjeel averaged 8-10 flying good for a spot of fun. Mock dog fighting was permitted in hours. The Winjeel proved a successful ab-initio trainer the training area and so rolled over I dived behind them in and as with Tiger Moths, new students transitioned from a quarter attack. As the Lincoln could cruise at least 50 Winjeels to Wirraways within five hours. knots faster than the Wirraway it was no trouble to catch The QFI course at East Sale was sheer enjoyment and up with them. After a little horseplay it was mutually I was indeed fortunate in having Randy Green as my agreed by radio that they could practice formation flying on instructor throughout. He taught me that patience and my Lincoln. To reduce speed to their level it was good humour are amongst the vital attributes of a good necessary to lower the flaps and open the bomb doors to instructor. Having been given curry by the odd pompous create some drag. airline check captain that I was unfortunate enough to That done, we cruised sedately around the sky at 120 encounter in my later civilian career, I will always regard knots with the Lincoln the centre of attraction. A Wirraway Randy Green as one of the finest instructors that I have sat on each wing-tip and another slid in behind in close flown with. Thanks Randy - if you happen to read this line astern. I think Roy Hibben was flying the line astern story. I owe you. They were halcyon days at East Sale and position and he came in real close until he could look up many years later It is nice to still run into some of the many friends that I made around the old pot belly stove.4-

10 AHSA Aviation Heritage

PRELUDE TO ‘AIRWAYS’ Norman Brearley develops the environment to support an air transport industry in Western Australia, 1919-1921 By Dr. Leigh Edmonds The aeroplanes Brearley brought back to Western Australia had been tested by war and were a vast improvement over the earlier aeroplanes seen briefly in Western Australian. An Avro 504 could carry a pilot and one passenger in open cockpits at a maximum speed of about 90 miles an hour.^ Brearley was a far more experienced pilot than any who had previously flown in the State, having had a great deal of flying experience over the Western war front in Europe and as a flying instructor. The question was whether or not he and his aeroplanes were capable of successfully Introducing aviation to Western Australia and making it a profitable business. Brearely and one of the Avro's. Norman Brearley was born in In July 1919 Norman Brearley returned to Western Geelong in 1890 and his family moved Australia from the war in Europe with two Avro 504 to Western Australia in 1906.------He became intensely aeroplanes. He intended to introduce aviation to Western interested In aviation, saw Hammond’s flights over Perth in Australia where a small population was spread across one 1911 and avidly read the aviation journals of the time. In of the largest areas on the face of the earth under unified April 1915, when he had completed a mechanical political control. Yet almost no Western Australians had apprenticeship, he worked his passage to Britain and ever seen an aeroplane or knew anything about what they enlisted in the Royal Flying Corps to learn to fly.® He was could do. Brearley’s job was to teach them. To succeed severely wounded in mid 1916 and returned to Western he had to persuade Western Australians that aeroplanes Australia to convalesce. While in Perth he married Violet were useful and convince them to use air travel. To do Stubbs, the daughter of Sydney Stubbs, MLA, and she this he had to make Western Australians air-minded and accompanied Brearley when he returned to England. He create a solid base on which a business of flying could spent the rest of the war in Britain learning to become a flying instructor and later training other flying instructors. Brearley was not the first person to bring flying By the war's end he commanded a Royal Air Force flying instructor's school.^ machines to Western Australia. Twenty-eight years earlier, in 1891, 'Professor' Price and Miss Viola had made Unlike many aviators Brearley returned from the war a series of balloon ascents and in April 1910 another with a broad range of experience and skills that would be ascent had been made from the Western Australian useful in successfully establishing civil aviation in Cricket Association (WACA) ground.^ In January 1911 a Australia. He possessed mechanical and technical team from the British and Colonial Aeroplane Company, training and he was an excellent pilot. As the with the pilot J J Hammond, stopped in Perth on their way commanding officer of a flying school he had learned to the eastern states and made several successful flights.^ management and administration, skills not usually gained In mid 1914 A W Jones failed to fly In Perth but later flew by pilots who spent most of their war in squadron flying, for seven minutes at Kalgoorlie before a crowd of between 10 and 15 thousand people.® The only other aeroplane to When Brearley returned to Western Australia public fly in Western Australia was built in Kalgoorlie. It made a curiosity about aviation was very. high By 1919 number of flights in the Kalgoorlie-Coolgardie area perform amazing feats of speed, agility between May and October 1915 and then around Perth in ^^^t captivated the public imagination. For December 1915 and January 1916 before being put into followed reports of storage.^ ^ preparations to fly the Atlantic Ocean and the attempts that were made. The Western Australian press also These flights attracted public Interest simply because reported many other record breaking flights in America, they defied gravity. The balloon ascents were stunts and Britain and Europe as well as the first post-war civil flights their human cargoes flew at the mercy of the winds, in Australia and plans to create an Australian air force. By Aeroplane flights had shown that pilots could have some rnld 1919 attention was turning to plans for the air race control over the elements but they were made only in very between England and Australia for which the calm weather because even a gust of unexpected wind Commonwealth government had offered a prize of could bring disaster. The aeroplanes which had flown in £10, 000.® Western Australia were simply too fragile, too Western Australians were curious to see, first hand, underpowered and unreliable to Inspire anything' more than curiosity and wonder that they could fly at all. the wonders of modern aviation so Brearley's arrival was

- 11 AHSA Aviation Heritage greeted with great interest. He was keen to talk about his aerobatics. All displays were given from enclosed plans to promote aviation, starting with giving short flights grounds so he could charge an entrance fee but large of about ten minutes each to introduce the public to flying. crowds also gathered at vantage points around the Then he would float an aviation company to extend grounds for a free view of the flying. In an attempt to aviation services as people became used to flying and the capture a wider audience Brearley organised a combined possibilities for commercial and pleasure uses increased.® aviation display and motor-cycle racing event at which he Advertisements for Brearley's first flying demonstration performed aerobatics and gave joy-rides between the races. promised it would take place no matter what the weather was like. This was a bold claim because all previous flying Joy rides cost £5 for ten minutes in the air. This was a in Western Australia had taken place only under ideal lot of money at a time when the average weekly wage was weather conditions. The day, Saturday 2 August 1919, about £4/10/-.^® Brearley said that those who flew with was miserable with heavy rain in the morning and some him experienced no difficulties and that many of them rain in the afternoon. Brearley used the WACA ground wanted to fly again.The press carried long descriptions because it was an enclosed popular venue with good of what it was like to take a joy-ride and wrote glowingly of transport to the city and suburbs for paying spectators the wonderful sights, the pleasant sensations and the lack although the electric lighting wires hanging around the of discomfort.®® edge of the ground for trotting obstructed the flying path.^° Brearley used every opportunity to advertise himself The programme was relatively simple with patrons invited and aviation. When the Prince of Wales visited Perth in to watch as Brearley performed some aerobatics and took 1920 he flew a newspaper reporter out to meet the train people up on joy-rides. There was also a band present to and then performed aerobatics over Perth Station where entertain the crowd during the breaks in flying.^^ the welcoming crowd had gathered.®^ At the opening of The Mayor of Perth was Brearley's first passenger. the first Peace Loan he performed aerobatics for a large They flew from the Belmont racecourse where Brearley crowd including the Prime Minister and Treasurer and then had set up his aerodrome to the WACA ground and circled dropped pamphlets advertising the loan and himself.®® He gently before coming In to land. Brearley misjudged the became a well known figure around Perth, his activities approach; the aeroplane clipped the electric wires and were well reported in the press and there was very little came to rest on its nose with the propeller and landing criticism of his flying activities.®® Within a couple of skid broken. Neither Brearley nor the Mayor were Injured months of his return to Perth he had firmly established and the passenger was barely shaken by the experience. himself in the public mind. Despite this he had not found While the band entertained the crowd Brearley drove back any secure flying work apart from dropping advertising to Belmont, collected his second Avro and was back over pamphlets and providing joy-rides. Within a few months the WACA ground within 30 minutes.He was scheduled the supply of patrons around Perth started to dry up so he to land and take up his next passengers but, instead, he improved his patronage for a time by fitting two passenger thrilled the spectators with the first aerobatic display given seats in an Avro and charged £3/15/- each for joy-rides in In Western Australia that left them breathless. it. He "looped the loop" in quick succession, followed by To further prove the usefulness of aviation and to seek several remarkable evolutions which stirred the crowd to a new customers Brearley undertook a series of flights to high pitch of excitement and brought forth unstinting applause'.”*® the country areas of Western Australia but still relatively close to Perth. Towards the end of August 1919 he went Next Brearley took aloft two more joy-riders. One take­ to Moora, carrying copies of the West Australian, Peace off was aborted because of the oval's boggy condition and Loan pamphlets and a consignment for a local store. on the following attempt the aeroplane's wing again While there he did 'good business' and decided to clipped the electric wires.The damage was slight and, organise further excursions into the country.®^ In mid- as if to show that it was of no importance, Brearley September he flew to Northern and by November 1919 he performed more spectacular aerobatics for the crowd had made further inland trips, going as far as some of the below before flying back to Belmont. The display was wheat belt towns and Kalgoorlie.®® In December he toured reported glowingly in the local press; 'Major Brearley's the Great Southern area, south to Wagin and, in the first Thrilling Flights' said the Western Mail, while the Sunday few weeks of 1920 he spent over three weeks in Albany.®^ Times proclaimed 'Brearley Soars Aloft, Thrilling Flying At the end of April 1920 he spent over a week on a trip Exhibition, Stirring Aerial Manoeuvres Before an into the South-West of the state, visiting Bunbury, Enthusiastic Crowd. Donnybrook, Bridgetown and Harvey.®® In August he Brearley's first display was a success because he was toured more of the wheat belt area as far east as Merredin willing and able to fly in poor weather, the brilliance of his as part of the second Peace Loan, combining joy-riding aerobatics and the kudos of having the Mayor as his first and aerobatics with speeches about the Loan delivered passenger. His cause was also helped by the presence from the cockpit of his Avro.®® among the spectators of the Governor, various members Rural trips broadened the acceptance of aviation in of the State Ministry and Members of Parliament. The Western Australia by giving country people the opportunity following Monday Brearley performed aerobatics over the to see and fly In one of Brearley’s Avros. They opened up Swan River for the children of Perth who had gathered for new sources of revenue for his flying and generated a peace demonstration. A forty mile-an-hour gale blew but additional press publicity for him In Perth. The tours he still entertained the children and dropped pamphlets proved very popular and people at each town along his advertising a local store. route ran outside excitedly to watch him fly over. At In subsequent weeks Brearley gave displays at various Donnybrook there were people who had travelled over locations around Perth including the Belmont Racecourse, sixty miles to see the aeroplane.®® The people of the Claremont Show Grounds, the North Fremantle Oval Kununoppin held a working bee to clear a landing ground and Subiaco. All demonstrations took the same form as in the centre of the town for him. They also erected a his first display with some passenger flights and some large bough shed where the big crowd that had spent the afternoon watching the flying retired to for dinner and

12 AHSA Aviation Heritage dancing in the evening.^^ At Albany 50 people went up in this 'bus' and thus prove how wonderful the right class of three days and Brearley was kept occupied there for about aeroplane would be on a similar run.^^ three weeks. Over 40 passengers were carried at Moora Brearley sent the aeroplane to Carnarvon by coastal and at Narrogin a 'very large number of people' flew. steamer to save engine time. He gave displays and joy- Despite his need to exploit new territory Brearley rides there and then headed north for Onisow, stopping at initially remained relatively close to Perth so he could stations on the way to give a large number of flights. The easily maintain his aeroplanes. After a slight accident at return journey to Perth took four days with many stops. Pingelly he was able to return to Perth and pick up his He was worried about his engine in the heat and his second aeroplane to continue the tour.^^ When the passenger and mechanic, who were not protected from aeroplane he was using for the second Peace Loan tour the sun by the upper wing of the aeroplane as Brearley needed an overhaul he put it on the train back to Perth was, suffered terribly in the direct heat of the sun. There and used the other aeroplane to complete the trip.^^ was also some bad weather and a cyclone. By the end of 1920 Brearley estimated he had flown 20,000 miles, made over 2,000 landings and carried approximately 3,250 passengers.Z'"At that time the white population of the State was about 340,000 so about one person in a hundred had flown with him."^^ Brearley thought his tours were successful in promoting aviation and showing that it could be useful to Western Australia In the future.. I feel that the demonstration In the South-West has done a lot towards helping along aviation in WA, and when suitable landing grounds are provided in convenient places throughout the State, and experienced pilots have control of all flying operations, then Western Australia will Brearly in the 504J at York, WA, with the two Prideaux sisters ready for their joy flight. be able to advance more rapidly than Longer range flights worried Brearley who was afraid has been possible in the past."^^" his little Avros could not cope with them.^"^ However, in After the success of the second Peace Loan tour September 1920 the Western Australian representative of Brearley claimed the modern aeroplane had proved itself the eastern states based Larkin-Sopwith Aviation to be an all-weather, reliable means of transport and his Company announced he would shortly open a branch of flying had helped create a sense of aviation's value in the that company in Perth to popularise aviation among community. Of those who did not yet appreciate aviation station owners who would buy aeroplanes. The he commented that 'If people only knew what flying was announcement promised that when the company's like they would never hesitate about taking the air on aeroplanes arrived they would tour the State giving every possible occaslon'.^"^ exhibitions, passenger rides and instruction to pupils. The first flight was planned to visit Onslow.^^ Many press accounts of Brearley's flying had points in common. Some were written by Brearley and others were Nothing came of the proposal. It may have been too written from interviews with him so they show the kinds of optimistic in the first place or it may have been because things he wanted the public of Western Australia to think Brearley quickly countered with his own flights. In the last about aviation. They included the speed of flight, its week of September 1920 he flew to Tamala Station, at the pleasures. Its utility, Its popularity and its safety, bottom of Shark Bay and, in late October, he started a tour which took him as far north as Onslow. He demonstrated the speed of flying by reporting the times taken on many of his flights. On the trip to Moora he The trip to Tamala seems to have been unplanned, reported times to the minute and emphasised speed by Brearley was flying at the Geraldton agricultural show making comparisons with other forms of transport. The when two men, one of them the owner of Tamala Station, trip to Moora took two hours and twenty minutes and when asked him if he would make the trip. The complete flying he had been in the air for only an hour and twenty minutes time from Perth was six hours and the distance covered he overtook the train which had left Perth three and a half 470 miles. After staying a day at Tamala Brearley and hours earlier.*^^ On a trip from Perth to Bunbury Brearley his passengers returned south and the following afternoon and his passengers took one hour and fifteen minutes to Brearley was at the Moora agricultural show. The fly 105 miles. Governor was there and agreed to fly back to Perth with Brearley. They did not leave until late in the afternoon and One of the great pleasures of flying was the view from arrived over Perth after dark but landed safely.^® a thousand or more feet in the air. On his return from the South West Brearley and his passengers were treated to The trip to Onslow was much more arduous and not the spectacle of the sun sinking into the ocean, the moon undertaken so casually. Brearly told the press: I was rising and the beautiful beaches while 'the machine sailed never very much struck with the idea because the along with plenty of power, and as calm as if on still machine Is quite unsuitable for that class of work, but I water’.^^ Brearley's report of a trip to Wagin is full of thought it would do a great deal of good to make the trip in pleasant references; to Mundaring Weir which 'lay among the hills, the blue water looking like a jewel amongst the

13 AHSA Aviation Heritage

huge mass of scrub', to the beauty of the coastline he told the press 'I had to circle around a bit before between Fremantle and Bunbury and to Perth which landing ... as the picture was too wonderful to leave', he 'looked a picture just after the sun had set'."^® later wrote he was too worried to take in the beauty of the Brearley always emphasised safety and claimed flying sprawling city because he could hardly see where to land was as safe as travel in a motor car. He wanted to create in the darkness.Although he made the landing safely the impression that aviation was safe and reliable In the the aeroplane passed only a couple of feet over the head public mind and get away from the dare-devil image of the visiting Governor General who was standing on the promoted by many aviators. He reported a 'mishap' at edge of the landing ground waiting to meet the Governor. Pingelly when the excited crowd rushed in front of his A couple of feet lower and Brearley would have made his aeroplane and he had to swerve and damage it slightly name in aviation history for a totally different reason.^® rather than injure anyone."^^ He said the second Peace There were four aspects to the public image of aviation Loan tour was cut short because It became necessary to that Brearley thought had to be overcome if he was to overhaul the engine.Brearley's report of his tour of the make Western Australians an air-minded state ready for South-West emphasised the planning and organization commercial aviation. They were the common beliefs that necessary before the tour could start. it was warlike, that it was an occupation fit only for However, his pioneering flying was not as safe as he daredevils, that it was Inherently dangerous and that it was wanted people to believe and his emphasis on safety unreliable. meant some of this reports differed from his later versions Brearley was ambivalent about aviation's military past. of the same events. Three examples demonstrate the While he tried to downplayed his own military experience point. he also knew it attracted wide public enthusiasm and Following his first flight at the WACA ground in which support as a returned serviceman so his war exploits were both aeroplanes were damaged Brearley told a reporter reported in the press and he was commonly referred to as that while the ground had not been entirely suitable for 'Major Norman Brearley, DSO, MC, AFC’ for a long time aviation purposes he was thoroughly satisfied and after his return. During his second Peace Loan tour he encouraged by the public reception. He said that the and his mechanic wore their military uniforms.He also second incident, in which he had struck the wires during left the military markings on his Avros during this period of take-off, had been caused by a change in wind direction his flying in the State. which had necessitated him taking a slight risk rather than Brearley had little time for pilots who tried to make their putting spectators in danger.^^danger. Ini his autobiography reputations by risking accidents but believed himself a Brearley tells a different story; the WACA was the only good enough pilot to take risks. Later in life he said that a suitable ground he could hire but the Trotting Association pioneer had to take risks but, 'if you weren't skilful enough also used the ground so there were tall poles strung with you shouldn't be doing it'. To Brearley dangerous pilots electric light wire surrounded the ground to floodlight the were those who did not take their flying seriously, who did track. Beside the west end of the ground high tension not check their machines and had not honed their skills. power lines ran from the near-by East Perth Power Station He used his own skills to demonstrate this point and the and behind them in Queen's Garden tall Norfolk pines press emphasised it. One report of Brearley's first rose even higher. The length of the available run was only aerobatic display over the WACA ground said 'No a doubtful 200 yards and as the ground was an oval there exhibition could have revealed a more perfect control, a was only one way to take off and land, no matter from more easy confidence, or a more masterly handling of the which direction the wind blew. The hazards were obvious, aeroplane'.^® A reporter who flew with Brearley during an but probably only to somebody who knew as much about aerobatic display described his confidence in his pilot, flying as Brearley did, so the crowd was not concerned. assuring readers that 'the flight furnished delightful and He should perhaps have cancelled the display but to do realistic comprehension of the mastery of the air and the that would have tarnished his reputation before he had safety of modern aviation'. even begun Owning two Avros allowed Brearley to show the public The highly publicised second Peace Loan tour was that aviation was reliable. His first demonstration would planned to conclude at Toodyay but finished instead at have been a failure if he had not been able to return to the Goomalling. At the time he told the press that the change WACA ground with his second aeroplane; his trip to the was necessary because the length of the trip had made It Great Southern would have been cut short had he not necessary to overhaul the aeroplane's engine before been able to return to Perth for his second aeroplane and continuing and that took so long that Toodyay had to be he would not have been able to give the impression of the left out of the schedule. successful conclusion of the Second Peace Loan tour had In his autobiography Brearley was more honest: He he not been able to fly over Perth with his second was taking a passenger for a joy-ride when the engine aeroplane. He also gave the impression that aviation was started running rough and the whole aeroplane vibrated. reliable by taking calculated risks. They often did not He landed and yelled to his mechanic, for his passenger's appear as risks because most people in the State knew benefit, that the spark plugs had oiled up and there would little about aviation and so the public was generally be no more flying that day. In fact one of the engine obliged to believe what he told them. cylinders had cracked at the base and was on the point of Throughout this period Brearley was the only aviator flying off, so it could only be repaired in Perth. Brearley, flying in Western Australia and he consequently made a however, had to be in Perth the next day to complete the 'good living' in comparison to many pilots struggling to set tour so he and his mechanic caught the train back to up flying in the eastern states where there was much more Perth, spent the night painting a 'Buy Peace Loans' slogan competition. In the west Brearley and aviation became on the lower wing of his other aeroplane and he was flying synonymous and may have frightened off competition. He over the city the next day.^"^ also had the foresight to buy his Avros in Britain and The return flight Brearley made from Tamala with the shipped them home, giving him a lead over most other Governor could easily have ended in tragedy. Although Australians who either purchased obsolete aeroplanes in

— 14 AHSA Aviation Heritage

Australia, imported them later from Britain or waited for Brearley’s plans to retire from flying showed that he them to be manufactured locally. Distance and desert had failed in doing what he had said he wanted to achieve, separated Western Australia and the east, isolating him Aviation was still not a viable business in Western from the competition occurring there. On the other hand, Australia. When he returned to Perth in July 1919 he said Western Australia’s vast size, a third of the continent, was he hoped to set up an aviation company and establish a offset by its tiny population. In 1921 there were only about system to carry mails and passengers by air and he 334,000 people living in Western Australia and over five expected there would be an air mail link between east and million in the rest of Australia. west and to the north-west of the State within two years. By the end of November, however, he was less confident However, Brearley was tiring and losing interest In his about any long term commercial success because attempt to promote aviation by the end of 1920. government officials and men of commerce were not Lieutenant John McIntosh, who had flown out from Britain ready to support aviation.®® By the following April he had with Damien Parer the year before, arrived in Perth on a resigned himself to making a living out of demonstration motorcycle in December 1920.""60 He told Brearley he flights and joy-riding and the possibility of having to move intended to bring over an aeroplane to start flying in on when the supply of customers dried up in Western Western Australia but Brearley told him that he was Australia.®® As the only aviator in Western . Australia Brearley gained recognition, if - not support, from the most important ^ men in the State. He took the Governor for several flights and was invited into the company of the most important people in Perth.On one occasion at least he was invited to ^ attend receptions at Government r House and there met the most I influential men in the state.He had 3| been helped by his choice of a marriage partner and his father-in-law, Sydney Stubbs, was a Member of the Legislative Assembly and this gave t J Brearley access to the highest levels of Western Australian society. Stubbs took a personal Interest in Brearley's aviation activities and looked after them Brearly (R) and McIntosh (L) at Langley Park, Perth, in January 1921. when Norman and Violet went to the already negotiating to sell his aeroplanes. The men eastern states for a holiday. reached an agreement that McIntosh would buy Brearley's Brearley also gained the reputation as a pioneer in a complete aviation business and the agreement was signed state where pioneers and pioneering were particularly in January, 1921.®^ Brearley told the press he was giving respected. His tours, especially those to Tamala and up flying because his war wounds deprived him 'of Onslow, were seen as pioneering journeys in the same sufficient strength to conduct those strenuous country vein as overland expeditions of the previous century. The tours'. He said he did not Intend to leave the aviation Western Mail called him the 'intrepid pioneer of aerial business entirely: he would remain in Perth as an navigation'.^® 'aeronautical adviser and test pilot for those requiring such services'. He also intended to import aircraft and had Despite the advantages and pleasure that Brearley options for securing some worthwhile agencies for both gained from his flying he had decided to retire by the end motor cars and aeroplanes.®^ McIntosh said he intended of 1920 for number of reasons, marking what is now to follow in Brearley's footsteps to achieve bigger and clearly a transition in his aviation activities but may have better things but he was killed In a flying accident at seemed like an end to his flying at the time. He may have Pithara in March 1921.®® decided to retire because of his health, during the war he had been shot through the lungs and this made extended From mid 1919 to mid 1921 the name Brearley had tours to the north-west and inland of Western Australia become almost synonymous with flying In Western difficult.^"^ Second was the lack of future prospects. Third, Australia. There were, however, other people in the State Brearley may have been concerned about the remaining with an interest in flying. His brother, Stan Brearley, who life of his equipment, particularly his motors, having flown had also learned to fly during the war accompanied over 20,000 miles in them after they arrived in Western Norman on the second Peace Loan tour.®^ In early 1921 a Australia.^® ■ Fourth, he might have seen little long term branch of the Australian Aero Club was formed in Western future in aviation In Western Australia and wished to move Australia with a committee comprising N Brearley, Val Into a more secure business while he still had the Abbott, F E Tregellis, A G Simpson, A Blake and E C opportunity. The other possibility is that Brearley was Broadhurst.®® All these men had some interest in aviation. watching events in the eastern states where the Simpson was Brearley's first student in Western Australia. Commonwealth government was showing a serious Tregellis had formerly been an instructor at the air force interest in aviation. By divesting himself of his small joy flying school at Point Cook. Broadhurst had been the riding business Brearley may have been preparing himself representative of the Sopwith Larkin Company in the for far more rewarding flying business. State. Abbott and Blake had flown during the war and were among the pall-bearers at McIntosh's funeral.®® Although Brearley had not been able to make flying a permanent paying business in Western Australia there were men in the eastern states who could and did set

15 AHSA Aviation Heritage about putting civil aviation on a business like footing. In in the territory I have described, and they are being denied September 1920 the Commonwealth government decided fair play. The Commonwealth can well afford to send a to support the development of civil aviation, applications ship or two there, and by that means insure the retention for the position of Controller of Civil Aviation were invited of their holdings of these pioneer settlers. The national in the Commonwealth Gazette on 4 November 1920 and aspect of this matter has to be borne in mind. In the the Air Navigation Act was given assent on 2 December north-west portion of Western Australia there is a territory 1920. H C Brinsmead was selected as Controller of Civil greater than that to be found in any other portion of the Aviation and took up duties on 16 December 1920 as the Commonwealth. Its population of 20,000 souls, by reason head of the Civil Aviation Branch of the Department of of the defective occupancy of that area, is entitled to Defence which began to function on 28 March 1921.^® special consideration." It took the Commonwealth government less than a In August 1920 H Gregory, Brearley's supporter in year to turn its policy of support for civil aviation into Parliament, sent the Prime Minister a prospectus Brearley Australia's first subsidised regular air service. It would had prepared for an air service from Fremantle to begin the process of setting civil aviation on a commercial Broome.®® Despite the basic air mail function of the basis by subsidising an air mail route in some remote part proposal it also highlighted the defence value of such a of the country. The Postmaster-General's Department service; There is no doubt, if this service can be studied likely air mall routes in Australia and successfully carried out. It will be of value from the postal recommended that one along the north-west coast of point of view, and if properly controlled, should be of Western Australia from Geraldton to Derby would be inestimable value to the Defence Department. I contend suitable for a trial air route because it was the part of that commercial aviation should precede Defence Australia most isolated from mail facilities. Aviation, and if some small subsidy could be granted by the Defence Department, this Company could provide the Traditions of progress, pioneering and development Department with photographs and other information which supported the air mail service In Western Australia. By would certainly be of great value to that Department. ®® the 1920s a large portion of the Australian continent had been occupied by white settlement but there were still Other representations also directed the Prime large areas which were only sparsely settled. The ethos of Minister’s attention to Western Australia. In September taming and developing the land had been a part of 1920 the Premier of Western Australia asked if an element Australian political and social life for a century and had of the air force could be established in some of the State's previously been typified by the extension of railway lines. northern centres to carry out training and observation The railways, postal and other services that went with duties and also help the State to extend its medical them were believed to encourage settlement in remoter facilities to those areas.®^ In the same month the Prime areas where the nation's future wealth would be produced. Minister met a deputation of Western Australians to Reduced isolation would encourage people to move to discuss the development of the north and north-west of remote areas by providing the facilities of city or town life Australia. Although the meeting was primarily to discuss and reducing the fear of sickness or accldent.^^ The fears the proposal for a railway to serve the region it is likely this of isolation were said to effect women In particular and matter also helped to focus the Prime Minister’s attention many married men who went to work in Western on Western Australian claims for an air mail service.®® Australia's north-west did not take their wives while those Initially the government proposed to use the air force to women who did go north rarely ventured from the towns. pioneer the first air mail service before giving it to a civil Air services would 'do vast good in the Never Never' by contractor but later the government also considered alleviating the fear of isolation ^by providing access to 80 letting the contract for the service direct to a private medical services and air mails."" The Commonwealth company.®® By early 1921 the air force was showing less agreed with these claims.®^ interest in flying an air mail service and proposed to use Even though the Western Australian service was 11 aeroplanes and 43 men at a cost of around £86 000 for recommended by the Postmaster-General's Department a 12 months service.®® Brinsmead told the government there was pressure for the experimental service to be that a civil contractor could do the job for an estimated provided in inland Queensland by the Queensland and £25,000 that was calculated at four shillings a mile for the Northern Territory Aerial Services (QANTAS) company total number of air miles to be flown in a year. Brinsmead which made its first official approach to the Government in confidently told the government he did not 'anticipate that February 1921.®^ Brinsmead, however, supported the any satisfactory tender will be received for the Western Postmaster-General's Department's recommendation for Australia Service at less than the maximum allowable an air mail service for Western Australia because Western subsidy'.®^ Australians felt they had been... neglected, owing to their Isolation, since the days of Federation, and it is therefore Brearley was on holiday in the eastern states while the certain that if the first Government Aerial Service is government was reaching decisions on the Western commenced there it will create great local interest and Australian air mail service and Brinsmead asked for his every possible assistance will be given to ensure its advice about it. When Brearley returned to Perth in May success. ®® 1921 he was well informed about the government's proposal and expected that quite a number of aviation The north west was one of the most isolated parts of companies would tender for the service. It is not Australia and one Western Australian Senator spoke improbable that Brearley timed his trip to the east to about it: "The north-west coast of Western Australia coincide with Brinsmead’s drafting of contract documents extends for a distance of 2,000 miles. Along that immense for the north-west service because Brearley knew more stretch ports are dotted at Intervals, but there are no about flying In Western Australia than anyone else and he vessels trading there, with the exception of one which and Brinsmead were on very good terms. belongs to the State Government, captured from the Germans, and unsuitable for the trade. All that she could Organization of capital to tender for the north-west air do to serve the requirements of the people of that area is mail contract took place in Perth during June and July 1921. ■ very little. There are from 15,000 to 20,000 people settled Brearley, with his good family and business

16 AHSA Aviation Heritage connections, was well placed to organise an air transport Simpson’s enthusiasm they lacked Brearley's experience company. However, it Is possible he may not have been and knowledge and his contact with important Perth central to creating the company which he later controlled. business men. On 2 August 1921 the Government It may have been originally put together as a hoax by a announced that Brearley had been awarded the contract confidence trickster. to conduct the air mail service between Geraldton and Derby for one year with a maximum subsidy payment of With the call for tenders barely advertised Brinsmead £25,000.^“ reported that at least two prospective tenderers already had promises of sufficient capital to enable them to make Brearley had won the tender because he knew what satisfactory proposals.In mid-June Brearley told the the Commonwealth wanted from the service. His tender West Australian that half a dozen groups were interested was for a service using six Bristol Tourer aeroplanes; a and that some had approached him with a view to level of equipment that required the full subsidy permitted amalgamating, but as their ideas were not attractive to him by the government. Simpson and Tregellis proposed to he had decided to keep with the people who had use three low-powered Armstrong Whitworth aeroplanes supported him in the past.^"^ At the same time the Sunday for a subsidy of £16,000. The Commonwealth believed Times reported that some of the State's most prominent that their aeroplanes would be insufficient to meet the men had formed a company to develop aviation and had needs of the service and 'valueless to the government as secured the services of Major K L Williams, said to be a potential war machines, owing to their low speed, and noted British pilot, and E C Broadhurst, who had been poor performance'. The aeroplanes Brearley had chosen involved In the earlier Larkin-Sopwith proposal, to set up were civil adaptions of one of the most successful and an aviation business in Western Australia.A week later liked fighter aeroplanes the British had developed during the same paper reported that E Lee Steere, one of the the war and the government described them as 'the most most influential men in Western Australia, had advised efficient general purpose war machine yet designed. Brearley and Williams to combine their efforts and they Western Australian Airways (later generally called had agreed.^ Williams' name soon disappeared from ’Airways') first prospectus appeared the day after press reports but he seems to have remained involved in Brearley's successful tender bid was announced and was the organization until after the tender had been accepted followed by a more detailed document later in the by the government. He was mentioned In the first month.Twenty thousand shares were initially offered prospectus for Western Australian Airways, but by then he for public subscription at £1 each. The provisional was no longer a partner.®^ directors were all well known and respected in Perth Brearley's autobiography makes no mention of those business circles. Western Australian Airways was events but refers to a pilot with the same qualifications as registered on 26 August 1921.^°® However, while he had those claimed by Williams who sought a flying position been successful in making flying a respectable novelty at with the company. This man later turned out to be an £5 or £3/10/- a ride, he had much more difficulty in imposter. Williams and this pilot were probably the same extracting investment funds for aviation business, even person who, when he was exposed, caught the next train with a guaranteed income for the first year. to Sydney.^® If Williams was an imposter those organising Brearley calculated he would need about £16,000 to the company would have been too embarrassed to establish the service; £12,000 for aeroplanes, £2 000 for publicise the fact and Brearley may have Inherited the spares and £2,000 for the erection of hangars.This cooperation of a group of business men who had been the amount was well beyond the financial capabilities of any subject of a confidence trick. Confidence men were not individual aviator and required the support of men with unknown In early aviation and there were several cases of capital. Australia's largest aviation company at the time, Australian companies which never bought or flew an 99 the Australian Aircraft and Engineering Company had paid aeroplane. up capital of £35,815 in August 1921.’°® QANTAS, which Although Brearley tendered personally for the was founded in November 1920, had, a few months later, government contract he entered an agreement with one of a total subscribed capital of £6,850.^°^ his backers that if he won it he would sell his personal Within a few days of ordering the company's interest to a company which would pay Brearley's aeroplanes Brearley heard that some of his expected expenses in connection with the tendering process and backers had withdrawn.He ascribed the failure of the pay him 5,000 fully paid up £1 shares in the company. As general public to support his company to commonly held the capital of the company was not to exceed £50,000 attitudes about aviation but perhaps Williams' withdrawal Brearley was therefore to be given at least one tenth of Its from the project or word of his disappearance to Sydney initial total worth. The agreement also assured Brearley also had some effect on investor confidence and Airways that he would be the company's first managing director was close to failure even before it started operations. and technical advisor for a term of three years at a salary By September only 6,200 shares had been applied for and not less than £1000 per annum.Thus, if his tender was promises had been received for another 3 000, making a successful, Brearley stood to gain by no less than £8000 total expected capital of £9,200 against an expected over three years. This was certainly the beginning of a expenditure of £16,000.^^^ good business and showed Brearley intended to make as much as he could from his flying business. The crisis was eased when H V McKay, the noted Victorian industrialist, agreed to help finance the purchase The only other tender was Simpson Tregellis Aircraft of the company's aeroplanes.This arrangement and Transport Limited Company. It's main shareholders required Airways to pay for the aeroplanes when they were A G^ Simpson, a brewer, and F S Tregellis, an 101 arrived in Perth and for that Brearley needed the engineer. It Is likely that the isolation of Western government's agreement to advance £8 000 against Australia had daunted many prospective tenderers and the expected subsidy payments.McKay's help and the Australian Aircraft and Engineering Company of Sydney Commonwealth's £8 000 advance allowed Airways to start told the Commonwealth It was interested in tendering for operations but when the new business commenced it had the service but later withdrew because the service was too far from its base of operations.Despite Tregellis and

17 AHSA Aviation Heritage

'insufficient to pay for buildings, fuel, salaries and other strain, he had, he said: "... had an uphill fight from the essentials. start, educating people up to the safety of air craft and dragging money out of them as if it were a donation, but As well as attracting public finance Brearley also had there were men there who had stuck with him through to recapture public confidence in aviation because he did thick and thin. There was not an atom of doubt they would no flying until the end of 1921 and could not use it to go through the first year with not as much trouble as the promote his new service. He gave the press frequent average motorist experiences."^^® progress reports as plans for the service took shape and spoke to such bodies as the North-West Conference Due to government delays in approving the advance of about details of the service. Unlike QANTAS, which £8,000 Brearley took delivery of Airways' six aeroplanes had aeroplanes and pilots to help promote interest and only ten days before the service was due to commence. sell shares, Brearley had very little to publicise his air Most of them were ready, however, for the official opening service apart from his own reputation until his pilots and of the air mail service on 3 December in which five aeroplanes arrived. The five other pilots he had selected aeroplanes took part.’'^^ Thousands of people gathered at to fly on the service were officially presented at a function the aerodrome on the Esplanade to watch and many went at the Perth Town Hall in mid-November.^^^ In a speech for joy-rides during the afternoon. The first Australian Brearley, who was usually very careful in what he said, regular public transport air service commenced two days spoke with unusual candour which might hint at unusual later. ^

1 Neville Parnell & Trevor Boughton, Flypast: A record of Aviation in Australia, Canberra 1988, p.5 and Sir Norman Brearley, Australian Aviator, Adelaide 1974, p.3. ^ Parnell & Boughton, Flypast, p. 11. ^ Parnell & Boughton, p. 15. Parnell & Boughton, Flypast, pp.20-21. ^ The Illustrated Encyclopaedia of Aircraft, London 1982, pp.395-6. ^ Brearley, Australian Aviator, pp.2-11. ^ Brearley, Australian Aviator, pp.24-39. ^ Western Mail, 23 May 1919, p. 11. Western Mail, 17 July 1919, p.42. BxQ?ix\ty, Australian Aviator, \iA6. Sunday Times, 27 July 1919, p.2. Brearley, Australian Aviator, pp.47-8. Sunday Times, 3 August 1919, p.l. Brearley, Australian Aviator, p.48. Western Mail, 1 August 1919, p.42 and Sunday Times, 3 August 1919, p.l. Sunday Times, 3 August 1919, p.l and 10 August 1919, p.l. Western Mail, 11 September 1919, p.25 and Sunday Times, 1 September 1919, p.l. Sunday Times, 20 July 1919, p.9 md Official Year Book of the Commonwealth of Australia, No.l4 - 1921, p.lOOl. Sunday Times, 10 August 1919, p.l. Western Mail, 1 August 1919, p.42. Brearley, Australian Aviator, p.54 and Western Mail, 8 July 1920, p.9. Western Mail, 11 September 1919, p.28. 2^ One report criticised possible dangers to the public at a display, Sunday Times, 17 August 1919, p.2. 2"* Brearley, Australian Aviator, p.56. 2^^ Moora Herald and Midland District Advocate, 5 September 1919 and,^^^^^^;^ Times, 31 August 1919, p.2 & 7 September 1919, p.l. 2^ Sunday Times, 21 August 1919, p.2; 7 September 1919, p.l & 23 November 1919, p.l3. 22 Sunday Times, 28 December 1919, p.l 1; 8 February 1920, p.l8; 23 February 1920, p.l & 29 February 1920, p.l3. 2*^ Sunday Times, 16 May 1920, p.l3. 2^ Western Mail, 26 August 1920, p.l4. Sunday Times, 16 May 1920, p.l3. Western Mail, 26 August 1920, p.l4. ^2 Sunday Times, 28 December 1919, p.l 1. Brearley, Australian Aviator, p.60. Brearley, Australian Aviator, p.62. Perhaps also nothing happened because Sopwith went broke around this time. Western Mail, 21 September 1920, p. 15. Parnell & Boughton, Flypast, p.35. ^2 Western Mail,l OcXohQX \92^,pA2. Western Mail, 1 October 1920, p.42. Western Mail, 11 November 1920, p.41. Western Mail, 11 November 1920, p.41. Western Mail, 21 January 1921, p.l6. “^2 Official Year Book of the Commonwealth of Australia, No 14 - 1921, Melbourne 1921, p.l 158. Sunday Times, 16 May 1920, p.l3 Sunday Times, 29 August 1920, p.8. M?//, 11 September 1919, p.29. Sunday Times, 16 May 1920, p.l3. ^*2 Sunday Times, 16 May 1920, p.l3. Sunday Times, 28 December 1919, p.l 1. Sunday Times, 28 December 1919, p.l 1. Western Mail, 26 August 1920, p.l4. Sunday Times, 3 August 1919, p.l. ^2 Brearley, Australian Aviator, pp.44-5. Sunday Times, 29 August 1920, p.8 & Western Mail, 26 August 1920, p.l4.

18 AHSA Aviation Heritage

Brearley, Australian Aviator, p.60. Western Mail, 1 October 1920, p.42 and Brearley, Australian Aviator, p.58. Brearley, Australian Aviator, p.59. Sunday Times, 8 August 1920, p.l. Western Mail, 1 August 1919, p.42. Sunday Times, 29 February 1920, p.l3. Nelson Eustis, Australia's Great Air Race, England-Australia 1919, Adelaide 1977, pp.71-106. Aircraft, 1921,p.l66. Western Mail, 27 January 1921, p.l6. Western Mail, 31 March 1921, p.29 & 7 April 1921, p.30 and Sunday Times, 3 April 1921, p.l0. Sunday Times, 1 August 1920, p.l4 and Western Mail, 26 August 1920, p.l4. Aircraft, A^xW 1921, p. 185. Brearley, Australian Aviator, p.50. Aircraft, April 1921, p.l85 and Western Mail, 21 September 1920, p.l5 & 7 April 1921, p.30. Western Mail, 14 July 1919, p.42 and Sunday Times, 10 August 1919, p.l. Sunday Times, 23 November 1919, p.l3. Sunday Times, 25 April 1920, p.4. Western Mail, 1 July 1920, p.l6. Mary Durack, Sons in the Saddle, London 1983, p.356. Harper-Nelson, A Need for Glory, p. 161. Western Mail, 11 November 1920, p.41. West Australian, 25 May 1921, p.5. Western Mail, 17 July 1919, p.42 & 27 January 1921, p.l6 and Brearley, Australian Aviator, p.62. Shearer, 'Foundation', pp. 15-19 and C Arthur Butler, Flying Start, the History of the First Five Decades of Civil Aviation in Australia, Sydney, 1971, p.l3. Memorandum from Chief Accountant, Postmaster-General's Department, 10 February 1921, MP 273/1, item G1930/2886, NAA. G D Snooks, 'Development in adversity 1913 to 1946' in C T Stannage (ed), A New History of Western Australia, Nedlands 1981, pp.250-51. H Gregory, Commonwealth Parliamentary Debates, Volume 89, 7 August 1919, p.l 1359. West Australian, 18 March 1927, p.lO and J Page, CPD, Volume 94, 17 November 1920, p.6612. Senator G F Pearce, CPD, Volume 96, 22 July 1921, p.l0490. Senator J F Guthrie, CPD, Volume 94, 14 October 1920, p.5613 and John Gunn, The Defeat of Distance, p.26. Shearer, 'Foundation', p.24. Senator P J Lynch, CPD, Volume 91,18 March 1920, p.513 85 Letter from H Gregory, 10 August 1920, CRS A2, item 1920/3061, NAA. Letter from H Gregory, 10 August 1920, CRS A2, item 1920/3061, NAA. Letter from Premier of Western Australia, 6 September 1920, CRS A2, item 1920/1389, NAA. Western Mail, 7 October 1920, p.l5. 89 C D Coulthard-Clark, The Third Brother, The Royal Australian Air Force 1921-39, Sydney 1991, pp.29-31 ^ Gillison, Royal Australian Air Force, pp. 16-17 and attachment to minute by Minister for Defence, 18 April 1921, CRS A2717, Volume III Folder 11, NAA. Minute by Controller of Civil Aviation, 14 July 1921, CRS A1195, item 863-2-114, NAA. West Australian, 26 May 1921, p.8. Minute by Controller of Civil Aviation, 15 June 1921, CRS A1195, item 863-2-114, NAA. West Australian, 18 June 1921, p.lO. Sunday Times, 19 June 1921, p.l. Sunday Times, 26 June 1921, p.9. West Australian, 4 August 1921, p.6. 98 Brearley, Australian Aviator, p.82. For examples of less than totally ethical behaviour see; Aircraft. March 1921, p.l 37 and September 1921, pp.45-50. A reference to itinerants collecting capital for almost illusory aviation companies also appears in Daily News, 23 November 1919, p. 13. 100 Agreement between Norman Brearley and Charles Henry Lamb, 23 July 1921, Acc 2782, AN 193/4, item 62/1921, Western Australian Archives, 101 , Memorandum of Association of Simpson Tregellis Aircraft and Transport Limited', 14 July 1923, Acc 2782, AN 193/4. item 53/1921, WAA. 102 Letters from the Australian Aircraft & Engineering Company, 20 May 1921 and 26 July 1921, CRS A1195, item 863-2-50, NAA. 103 West Australian, 3 August 1921, p.7. 104 Western Mail, 6 October 1921, p.l4. 105 West Australian, 4 August 1921, p.6 Aircraft, August 1921, p.41. 106 Memorandum and Articles of Association of Western Australian Airways Limited, 26 August 1921, Acc 2782, AN 193/4, item 62/1921, WAA. 107 Letter from Norman Brearley, 19 September 1921, CRS A705, item 192/12/70, NAA. 108 Aircraft, October 1920, p.50 and August 1921, p.28. 109 Sir Hudson Fysh, Qantas Rising, Sydney 1965, pp.97-98. 110 Brearley, Australian Aviator, pp.77-8. Minute by Controller of Civil Aviation, 7 October 1921, CRS A705, item 192/12/70, NAA. Letter from Brearley, 19 September 1921, CRS A705, item 192/12/70, NAA. Brearley, Australian Aviator, p.78-79. Minutes of meeting, 13 October 1921, CRS A705, item 192/12/70, NAA. Brearley, Australian Aviator, p.79. For example. West Australian, 1 September 1921, p.7; 7 October 1921, p.6 and 26 October 1921, p.6. The five pilots were C Kingsford Smith, L E Taplin, R N Fawcett, H A Blake and V R Abbott. Blake and Abbott were both from Perth, Blake had helped Brearley at times in his earlier flying and Abbott was the solicitor who had drawn up Brearley's legal agreements and the memorandum and articles of association of Western Australian Airways. Western Mail, 24 November 1921, p.34. Western Mail, 24 November 1921, p.34. ’ Brearley, Australian Aviator, p.85. 120 Daily News, 3 December 1921, p.8.

19 AHSA Aviation Heritage

Hawker Demons in the West. From the Aviation Heritage Museum, WA.

Arguably the most beautiful of the Bi-plane fighters was the Hawker Demon. Seven Hawker Demon aircraft served with 23/25 Squadron at RAAF Pearce before the war and these pictures, cho­ sen from the museum's extensive pictorial collection, illustrate the activities of some of them. The museum is able to supply copies of any photograph in their 30,000 plus collection at a mod­ est fee and enquiries should be directed to The Cura- tor/Manager, Aviation Heritage Museum, Bullcreek Drive. Bull- creek WA 6149. POO5168 Al-47 and Al-45 formating on a third over the Pearce training area.

POOS 165 Al-54 in its natural elempnt

POO 1579 If at first you don't succeed try dry again...... Al-45 on the way to being converted into components after a steep turn on take off had the inevitable ending. The crew walked away so probably called it a good landing, but the CO's comments may have differed! POOS 152 20 AHSA Aviation Heritage

P001536A1-52, Al-46 andAl-60 in a nice tight group over Pearce in early 1939

POOS 169 The Pearce hangar filled to capacity with WA's airforce in 1938. Demons to the fore and Ansons to the rear.

P891 709 Al-52 having a rest from flying duties in the Pearce hangar. AHSA Aviation Heritage

Billy Stutt by Neville Hayes William John Stutt He later transferred to the Royal Aircraft Factory at was born on Dec 11, Farnborough as chief test pilot, testing British machines 1889, the son of an Irish before they entered service, and also many captured immigrant and later enemy types. He served there from late January 1915, Victorian parliamentarian. and was given permission from the War Office to go "Billy" Stutt was related night-flying after Zeppelins. on his mother's side to Sergeant Kennedy of the Stutt was commissioned in the Royal Flying Victoria Police, killed in Corps,(Hampshire Aircraft Parks) in 1916, and not only 1878 at Stringybark served as a test pilot at the Royal Aircraft Factory, Creek in a gun battle with Farnborough, but was also engaged in ferrying aircraft Ned Kelly's band of over the channel to St.Omer for service squadrons.. bushrangers. He performed duties as 'King's Messenger', delivering Following a primary and collecting dispatches from Hounslow to the Stutt in the UK with Be2. education, he attended headquarters of the B.E.F., France, making forty such Xavier College, Kew, flights. Returning from his first such trip he landed (Melbourne) from 1900. His hobbies were recorded as "somewhere in France" in order to determine his location. walking, shooting, and kite-making. Quite early he showed The locals mistook him for an enemy and were about to aptitude for matters mechanical spending time in fire on him when he shouted the one word, "Anglais", and workshops and cellars piecing together old bits of he was promptly mobbed amidst kisses. His admirers machinery from scraps he'd found, and making friends packed his machine with blossoms and he resumed his with train crews at Spencer Street railway station, riding flight . On the way he passed over a barren piece of the cabs and sometimes being permitted to 'drive'. His territory where women were tending graves of allied father despaired that the lad showed no interest in sport. soldiers. Dipping low, Stutt distributed his trophy of flowers to those beneath.. Leaving school, he was apprenticed to Kelly & Lewis, motor engineers of Melbourne, and later went as head No record of Stutt taking part in hostile action has engineer to a freezing works at Bendigo. come to light, and alas, his log books and most of his photographs were thrown out upon the death of his wife Off to England many years ago. Around 1911 he left Australia for England to study Back to Australia aeronautical engineering. He learnt to fly at the Bristol Stutt was still with the Royal Aircraft Factory in March works, one of his instructors being Willy Voight. Stutt 1916, but in May of that year he was recruited as Chief gained the Royal Aero Club's certificate No. 742 on a instructor to the newly-established New South Wales State Boxkite at the Bristol school at Lark Hill on Salisbury Plain Aviation School at Richmond, on the outskirts of Sydney. on Feb.24, 1914. His weekends were spent at Brooklands, This organisation was set up by the NSW government in order to promote aviation and pave the way for the state's air future, but during the war priority was to be given to training airmen for the front. Being a civil school, it gave no military instruction, but passed -out students to the standard required to obtain the Australian Aero Club Certificate, equal in status to that of the Royal Aero Club. He arrived at Richmond with his deputy, fellow Australian Andrew Lang, pre-war airman and racing motorist, in July of 1916. With a grand hangar, a Caudron purchased from pre-war airman and Caudron agent Andrew Delfosse Badgery and two Curtiss JN4's from the USA, the school was first overseen by a Committee of Control, but later passed to the administration of the Minister for Public Instruction. Students went into quarters just before the Bristol Boxkite with Stutt aboard, the post card is endorsed "to my official opening by the state governor, in late August 1916. friend and pupil W Stutt from Willy Voight. ” From this date until the end of the war, Stutt oversaw where Sopwith landplanes were assembled and tested. A the training of six courses of students, totalling more than leader in practical jokes, he baited the Russian brothers, seventy men, most of them serving in either the Australian the Counts De Bolotoff, by suggesting that they could get Flying Corps, RFC , RNAS or RAF. One, H G Murray from more revs out of their motor by trimming inches off their the second course was retained as assistant instructor prop blades. He also tied a heavy garden roller to the tall until war's end. of their oversized triplane, but with an inadequate 100 hp engine It had no prospect of becoming airborne anyway. During the Easter break in 1917, Stutt married long term sweetheart, Stella Reddan, and in the fullness of time He was still with Bristol when war broke out, and the union was blessed by two sons. already an Inspector and instructor. After the school was taken over by the military, Stutt was appointed to similar duties at Brooklands.

22 AHSA Aviation Heritage

19th. With the rank of Captain, he was appointed O.C. Aeroplane Repair Section at the Central Flying School. No medals for missing men? On February 20th 1920, Stutt enquired into his entitlement to the British war Medal, General Service Medel and Victory medal. As Stutt,(centre) with students offirst course, NSW State Aviation School, 1916. Stutt's military service An eventful flight was entirely in British A long flight to Melbourne, although planned early in service, it could not be decided in Australia, and the July, began on November 1st 1917 with the NSW Minister request was sent to the war Office in London. The for Public Instruction, 'Gus James as passenger in one of question was still undecided when Stutt went missing. In the newly-delivered Curtiss JN4B's. It was ostensibly mid November the forms from Britain were completed on intended to prove aircraft as a post-war transport prospect; Stutt's behalf, in absentia. to give the Minister an opportunity to discuss the NSW Lost without trace On August 21st 1920, the 300 ton school with the Minister for Defence; to allow Stutt to schooner Amelia J left Newcastle loaded with coal for examine timbers that might be suitable for aircraft Tasmanian ports. It was sighted off Jervis Bay three days production and -, to awaken interest in the school. Cynics later, and following a WNW gale was declared missing. suggested that it coincided too neatly with the running of Despite extensive sea searches it remained unlocated. the Melbourne Cup to be pure chance. The flight came unstuck at Goulburn, when one wing On September 22nd the Federal government struck a post on take-off. The machine circled once and authorised an aerial search by two of its machines. Next landed, whereupon fractures to the lower starboard day, two Airco de Flavilland DFI9A's took off from Point mainplane were discovered.... A new wing was brought Cook, one crewed by W FI Anderson and FI J Chester, from Richmond by rented lorry and fitted overnight, but the brother of Stutt's 1917 companion. Minister elected to continue by train. The other, E8616, was crewed by Stutt and Abner Stutt, with mechanic R H Chester who had been Gilchrist Daizell. With a wife and three children, Datzell positioned at Albury for just such eventualities and who was Tasmanian by birth and had seen three years active had travelled up to assist with the repairs, arrived in the service abroad in the Navy, being a member of the Naval southern capital within ten minutes of the express. Several & Military Expeditionary Force involved in the capture of days later Stutt made the return flight , taking Chester as German New Guinea, and later as a Sergeant in B flight, far as Cootamundra before completing the journey alone. No.3 Squadron, Australian Flying Corps. Stutt selected Daizell for his superior qualities as a rigger. Much of Stutt's time at Richmond was taken up by the pedestrian task of instruction, but the arrival of a French The pilots were instructed to search the Victorian coast mission to the district provided a break in 1918. The Eastward as far as Port Albert, then the islands of Bass mission visited the small-arms factory at Lithgow, Strait, follow the east coast of Tasmania and land at jollied-along the students at the local agricultural college, Brighton near Hobart.. and engaged in sight-seeing. At Richmond, Stutt took E8616 was fitted with two Avro tanks mounted above fellow airman. Commandant d'Andre of the French the upper planes, but they were left unfilled, and the mission, for a ten minute flip. machine departed with the standard fuel capacity of 108 With the armistice, flying came to a stop and the gallons giving a duration of five to six hours. Stutt and school fizzled out The NSW government didn't know quite Datzell wore life jackets and carried an inflated motorcycle what do with the school or it's aircraft, and Stutt stagnated inner-tube. The two machines crossed the Strait together in idle administration. (Remaining machines were shifted and flew down the cast coast of Flinders Island until to the Uni of NSW as instructional airframes In 1923) Anderson spotted what he thought was wreckage, but which proved to be driftwood. A new position Meanwhile the Federal government had set up a body Stutt flew straight on at 11, 500 ft heading towards to dismantle the Australian Flying Corps whose wartime Cape Portland on the north-eastern tip of Tasmania, and role was concluded, and to ponder the Imperial Gift was never seen again. machines; also to consider the formation of what was to The searches for the Amelia J were extended to become the Australian Air Corps- include the missing aircraft. Residents of Vansittart Island On May 22, 1919 the secretary for the Acting Prime reported hearing an aircraft with a misfiring engine. Minister wrote to the NSW Premier to the effect that the Another report of a ball of flame falling from the sky came Federal government wanted Stutt to join the from the Tasmanian mainland. Information regarding Commonwealth Defence Department in the acting strange night lights was traced to out -of- season possum capacity of workshops manager at Point Cook, pending poaching. Air and sea searches continued until October permanent establishment of an Air Force. Stutt accepted 18th, 1920, when all hope was lost. No trace of the Amelia this appointment and left Richmond at short notice on July J or Stutt's aircraft has ever been found.^

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The right man at the right time John Watkins by Macarthur Job John Leslie Watkins, QBE. BE, DIC (Aeronautics), then responsible for administering civil aviation throughout Ceng, FRAeS, FIE Aust, FCIT. Aeronautical engineer, air Australia. In September 1935, only weeks after he married accident investigator and airline executive. Born his childhood sweetheart, Gertrude Carey, daughter of the Musselburgh, Scotland, May 29, 1911. Chief Engineer to the Zinc Corporation's mine in Broken Hill, he flew to Flinders Island In the twin-engined The life and career of John Watkins parallelled the Monospar operated by the Air Board's Civil Aviation development of air transport from its beginnings. Born at Branch to investigate the mysterious loss of Holyman the time "flying machines" were about to be transformed Airways' DH-86 Loina with all on board. Suspecting the by WW1 from flimsy experimental contraptions into integrity of the four-engined biplane's design, he made test serious weapons of war, he grew to maturity as the flights with Holyman's chief pilot, Captain Ken Frewin, in a aeroplane developed as a serious means of transport, sister aircraft. Both wearing parachutes as a contingency, graduating from university just as Australia's first interstate he asked Frewin what signal he would give if they had to airlines were making a tentative beginning. abandon the aircraft. "Just follow me," was the answer, "I'll Living through a unique time in world history - an era be first out!" that saw airline aircraft develop from a primitive single- In 1937 John Watkins was appointed Senior engined biplanes to the advent of today's massive jets - Aeronautical Engineer with what now had become the Civil his abilities, skills and aptitudes were able to make the Aviation Board, which a year later became the Department most of the extraordinary career prospects the period of Civil Aviation, one of the outcomes of the far-reaching offered. He was the right man at the right time. Kyeema Inquiry. Throughout the war years that followed, The son of a professional engineer, John Watkins he and his small team of aeronautical engineers migrated to Australia from Scotland with his parents at the undertook an extraordinary range of technical design work tender age of two, growing up in Adelaide where his father for the RAAF and the war effort, in addition, he was Chief Assistant Engineer with the Municipal investigated major Australian aircraft accidents, often Tramways Trust. Inheriting a fascination for all things being called upon to travel long distances interstate at mechanical, and with flying a glamorous, if reputedly short notice. hazardous pursuit, he became interested in aviation from The coming of peace in 1945 signalled a period of an early age. At the age of 12 he built and flew a fine enormous growth and development in Australian airline model of a DH-4. flying and in 1946 Watkins, based in Melbourne, became While an engineering undergraduate at Adelaide Acting Superintendent of Airworthiness and Aeronautical University, he became secretary of its gliding club, he and Engineering in the rapidly expanding Department of Civil his fellow students building and flying a Zogling primary Aviation, then responsible for supervising of all non­ glider of German design. He also began pilot training with military flying in Australia and the territories of Papua and the Aero Club of South Australia at Parafield, and on New Guinea. graduating in mechanical engineering In 1930 at the age When Australia's Chifley Labor Government formed of 20, gained his "A" licence in the Club's DH-60 Gipsy Moth, VH-UAW. It faced him with a decision. Would he Trans Australia Airlines in 1946 as a result of the High make flying his career? Or would he become a Court overturning its plans to nationalise interstate professional engineer like his father? A minor colour vision airlines, one of the most significant decisions made by defect helped him to decide - It could be a continuing TAA's newly appointed Chairman, Sir Arthur Coles, and obstacle to commercial flying. his General Manager, Captain Lester Brain, was to appoint John Watkins to the post of Technical Superintendent. After spending the next two years at the Imperial College in London obtaining a post-graduate diploma in The new TAA faced a formidable task. Australian aeronautical engineering, he joined the design office of National Airways had long held a virtual monopoly of Vickers (Aviation) Ltd on the Brooklands motor racing interstate services, its vast network extending from far circuit at Weybridge, under the legendary Barnes Wallis, north Queensland to Hobart, and from Sydney to Perth. designer of the successful R-100 airship, the Wellington Starting from scratch against the giant, old-established bomber and later the "bouncing bomb" that gave the and reputable airline would be no easy task, especially Dambusters their legendary reputation during World War given the fact that TAA's handful of former military DC-3s 2. During the three years he spent in England altogether, and its few new four-engined DC-4s, offered no advantage John Watkins would often ride his 350cc Levis motor cycle over ANA'S similar but much bigger fleet. to weekend flying meetings at various aerodromes, among Rising to the challenge of his TAA appointment, other events witnessing the German ace Ernst Udet's Watkins embraced his new position with enormous drive. spectacular low level displays, and seeing the airship Graf Places in the new airline were being filled for the most part Zeppelin at close quarters. by enthusiastic young men recently demobilised from the In 1934 at the age of 23, Watkins returned to Australia, RAAF, delighted at being offered the opportunity to working his passage as an assistant marine engineer on continue their careers In civil aviation. The qualities the New Zealand Shipping Company's 9000 ton tramp Watkins exemplified were soon reflected in the strong steamer, Tasmania, a pre-war former German vessel that sense of purpose that pervaded almost every aspect of was In such poor condition that she was scrapped not long TAA's rapid growth. afterwards. Within weeks of his appointment, Watkins convinced In Melbourne, armed with the experience he had Coles that to compete effectively against ANA, TAA had to gained at Vickers, he joined the Technical Services offer something better than merely duplicating ANA's Section of the Air Board in the Department of Defence, services with the same types of aircraft. Watkins believed

24 AHSA Aviation Heritage

the new Convair 240 would give TAA the competitive edge introduce Lockheed 188 Electras in 1959, TAA was it needed. Not only was it much faster than anything the compelled to buy Electras too, instead of its Caravelles. airlines were then flying - it would be Australia's first For John Watkins and TAA it meant not only an enormous pressurised airliner, for the first time offering passengers reorganisation; it also meant Australia would not get its the comfort of high altitude flight above the worst of the first jets for six more years, when both airlines weather. TAA's acquisition of five Convair 240s in 1948 simultaneously introduced Boeing 727-100s in 1965. became the first step in TAA's rise to success - and in the During 1958 Watkins was awarded an QBE for ultimate downfall of ANA. services to aviation. Six years earlier in 1952, when he had signed the order for TAA's first Viscounts at the Vickers works, he had asked the chief designer, George (later Sir George) Edwards, when Vickers could be expected to offer a smaller, twin-engined turboprop version of the Viscount. Edwards reply was, "Never - the day of the twin-engined airliner is over!" For several years In consequence, Watkins worked with the Fokker company in the Netherlands to help develop specifications for the smaller turboprop TAA needed to replace Its DC- 3s. The Fokker F-27 Friendship, with two Rolls- Royce Darts, was the result and In 1959 TAA John Watkins (1) signing the contract for TAA's Viscounts. became the first airline In world outside Europe to Shortly after TAA's first Convair entered service, operate the type. Watkins responsibilities increased when he was appointed Watkins wife Gertrude died after a long illness in 1965, Technical Adviser to British Commonwealth Pacific ending 30 years of happy marriage, and in 1966 he Airlines, then owned jointly by the Governments of married Jean Anderson, He officially retired from TAA Australia, New Zealand and the United Kingdom. In this 1971, but remained an engineering consultant to the capacity he was involved in BCPA's acquisition of DC-6B airline until 1976. During some of this time he also acted sleeper aircraft for the Australia-USA service across the as a consultant to the French Dassault aviation company Pacific, and in the airline's abortive planning to introduce in Pahs. DH-106 Comet 2s to the route. He fulfilled the role of Having joined the Royal Aeronautical Society as early Technical Adviser until BCPA's services were absorbed as December 1931, he was chairman of the Melbourne into Qantas in 1953. During 1950 also, TAA made Branch in 1957 and In 1960 delivered the Sir Charles Watkins' services available to the Government of India as KIngsford Smith lecture. In the Wake of the Southern a technical adviser on air transport, and for four months of that year he was based In Bombay. Cross, to the Sydney Branch. He continued to play a leading role in the Society in his retirement, as well as In 1953 Watkins' ability and drive were recognised in remaining active in his profession. The RAeS honoured his promotion to Director of Engineering for TAA. A year him in 1976 with the Australian Division's Lecture Prize later, his far-sighted fleet planning upstaged the rival ANA medal for his Lawrence Hargrave Lecture of that year, for a second time when he succeeded in introducing the appropriately entitled. Airlines' Role in Australian Public new turboprop Vickers Viscount to Australian skies. A Transport. passenger aircraft radically different to anything on the civil register. Its Rolls-Royce Dart turbine engines were He also found time in his retirement to write a detailed unlike anything the flying public had experienced before genealogy. Dear Descendants, tracing the history of his and it created a furore. For the first time, passengers ancestors and those of his first wife, Gertrude. Published could travel in an environment free from the vibration and in 1982, it won generous acclaim from the Genealogical engine noise of the past. Society of Victoria. A lover of nature, he also became an enthusiastic cyclist, continuing to ride almost dally until The Viscount's only shortcoming for TAA was that It well into his eighties. lacked the range to compete effectively against ANA's DC- 6Bs on the long-haul Adelalde-Perth route. Undaunted, His second wife Jean died in 1989 and in the latter Watkins planned another coup - the purchase of two years of his life he formed a close friendship with Peg French Sud Aviation Caravelle jets. Specifications for the Jones, herself a widow and a grandmother. TAA version of the aircraft type were refined, and by the Almost up to the time of his death in Melbourne, on end of 1957 the order was ready to be signed. But to the October 31,2000 at the age of 89, John Watkins retained dismay of the entire airline, the Menzies' Liberal an enthusiastic interest in aviation - in its technical Government now in power refused it permission. It was a development, its accident investigations, and Its severe blow to the morale of all in TAA. personalities, never tiring of providing help whenever he ANA had by now collapsed and, with government was asked, including much-needed encouragement to this approval, its operations had been taken over by the writer. In his last years he was Increasingly frustrated by previously minor Ansett Airways Ltd to become Ansett- deteriorating eyesight but his infectious enthusiasm for his Interests and love of life, family and friends, hardly ANA. To ensure the continuing viability of both airlines, the waned. government now introduced Its Two Airline Policy - the two Interstate operators, one private enterprise and the Appropriately, his elder son Ian, a senior Qantas other government-owned - would henceforth compete on training captain, became President of the Royal an absolutely equal basis. With Ansett-ANA planning to Aeronautical Society's Australian Division in 2001. ^

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FULL MILITARY HONOURS AND A SILVER MEDALLION By M.J.Flanagan Deniliquin, NSW, to join No.37 Pilots’ limited offensive role, the first sorties Course. He was awarded his wings of which had been flown on 17th April. on 17th November 1943 and was then posted to 2 O.T.U. at Mildura, The Exercise. Vic, where he went on to Spitfires. Records indicate that Sgt. Dunning was due to return to 55 In March 1944 Sgt. C. W. O.B.U. on 25th April 1944. On the Dunning, 437405, was ordered to 55 day prior to that, a Monday, he was Operational Base Unit at Birdum in up flying. A section of four aircraft the Northern Territory, Shortly had been dispatched on an exercise afterwards he was transferred to No.1 calling for a climb to altitude and there Fighter Wing HQ and from there to B to practise shadow shooting amongst Flight, No.452 Squadron based at the the clouds. Allocated the callsign 27 Mile Strip, officially known as Bellboy Blue, they took off at 1515 Strauss. This was one of a series of hours and, passing over Darwin, sealed airstrips constructed alongside climbed out to sea in close single file straight stretches of the Stuart towards Bathurst Island. At about Highway in 1942. 15,000’ the leader (Blue 1 F/0 E. L. Sgt C. W. Dunning, 437405 Mahar) experienced problems with (Photo: Mrs. M. Horsington) No.452 Sqdn was commanded at Mr. and Mrs. Samuel Dunning of that time by S/Ldr. L. T. (Lou) the fuel flow from his slipper tank and 22 Restormel Avenue, Fullarton Spence, DFC, later to be killed in the engine faltered, He quickly Estate, S.A. had three children, two action in Korea. Like the rest of the switched over to the main tank and boys and then a girl. The second Wing, No.452 was still equipped with the Merlin picked up but not before child, Colin William, was born in the Spitfire Mk. Vc(T) but the first of his plane had fallen back and been Unley Park on 28th December 1924. the new Mk. Vllls had just arrived. nicked by the propeller of the next Brought up in suburban Adelaide, The squadron, together with No.457 aircraft in line. The contact was such Colin was educated in Roman Sqdn, had only just arrived back in that, apart from a strange noise, F/0 Catholic schools, studying at the the Topend after helping to reinforce Mahar was unaware that he’d been Marlst Brothers School, Queen Street, the Perth/Fremantle area from a hit. However, the other Spitfire (Blue Norwood for his Intermediate perceived attack by the Japanese 2 flown by Sgt. Colin Dunning) dived Certificate and at the Sacred Heart fleet that had failed to materialise. away steeply, recovered and climbed College, Somerton, for his Leaving. A The 1943/44 Wet Season was almost to rejoin the others. good sportsman as well as a good finished and with the improved Back in single file formation they student, he played most of the weather it was expected that the continued up to 17,000’ where Blue 3 popular team games football. Spitfires, whilst maintaining their (F/0 R. L. Sprake) called up to say he cricket, tennis, baseball, handball, defensive duties, would undertake a swimming and cycling as well as trying his hand at boxing. In particular he excelled at scouting, earning for himself the distinction of becoming a King’s Scout and leader of his troop. In 1939, in Third Year, Colin won an accountancy and secretarial scholarship at Blenner-hassetfs Institute of Accountancy, King William Street, Adelaide, and upon leaving school at the end of 1940 joined the Australian Taxation Office as a junior clerk. He continued his studies part- time and passed an examination In Intermediate Accounting In November 1942, only a few weeks before enlisting. When he joined up, a month after his 18th birthday, young Dunning was 5’9y2” (1.765m) tali and weighed a trim 129 lbs (58.63 kgs). Of British stock, he had green eyes, brown hair - and an appendix scar. Colin enlisted in the RAAF at No.5 Recruiting Centre in Adelaide on Saturday 30th January 1943. At that time he had no flying experience. After passing through 4 I.T.S. (Victor Harbour) and 1 E.F.T.S. (Parafield) he was sent interstate to 7 S.F.T.S. at

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had engine trouble and was returning Bushfire (Point Blaze) for over an copies of all correspondence were to base. Blue 1 then ordered the two hour, again without success, then passed on to the office of the Air remaining aircraft into battle formation Board In Melbourne and the The Search. and the climb continued. They had correspondence continued from reached about 23,000’ when Blue 1, A full-scale search was quickly there. with faulty fuel pressurisation, organised. Twelve aircraft, mostly dropped out of formation, issuing Spitfires but including a DH-84, The Dunnings had refused to give instructions to Blue 4 (F/Sgt J. D. logged 17 hours 40 minutes up hope that their son was still alive Tamlyn) to take over and continue the searching that afternoon. Next day it and so it was a sad day when, in late exercise and then rendezvous with was expanded to nineteen aircraft (40 September, they received a letter him over Banjo (Point Patterson). hours 20 minutes) now with a pair of advising that for official purposes Sgt. DH-84S involved. Two Beauforts Colin Dunning’s death was presumed Tamlyn took the lead but things were called in on the third day to have occurred on 24th April 1944. continued to go wrong. At 25,000’ he although numbers were down a little This was reinforced in December by called up Blue 2 and told him to come with 16 aircraft flying just on 26 hours Form D.R.1 Death in the State of in closer. Sgt Dunning replied that his with nothing sighted. The area Northern Territory as reported by the engine had failed but shortly covered was from the Cox Peninsula Directorate of War Graves Service, afterwards advised that It had southwest to Point Blaze, including Date and place of burial or cremation recovered and that he was heading the islands, and, as time progressed, were listed as unknown. It was to be either for base or Banjo, the extended further inland but generally another two years before Colin’s transmission being distorted. Now centred on Point Patterson which is death was to be confirmed, alone Blue 4 carried on and reached located about 65 kms from Darwin. 29,500’ before turning about and The Spitfires. descending towards Banjo. As a result of this lack of success The fighter flown by Sgt. Dunning it was surmised that Sgt. Dunning had that fateful day was A58-232 (ex Meanwhile, Blue 2 s problems had attempted to ditch his Spitfire, always MA353), a late production Mk.Vc(T) escalated. He called Control (code- a risky proposition. Nevertheless, at built by Vickers-Armstrong at their named Earthking) and advised them the request of the RAAF, an officer Castle Bromwich complex on the that he was at 1,200 over Banjo with and 41 men of the 40th Australian outskirts of Birmingham. It arrived in a failed engine brought on by a glycol infantry Battalion commenced, on Australia on 2nd August 1943 at leak. He was told to go over to button 27th April, a search of the Cox much the same time as the first of the D for Dog and call for a fix. A minute Peninsular that lasted for several new Mk.Vllls. Issued to No.54 Sqdn or so later he came back saying that days. The North Australia Observer RAF on 18th October 1943 it was the he had not received a reply. Unit also dispatched a party of twelve 218th of 245 Mk.Vs taken on strength Earthking responded with instructions to the Point Patterson area, arriving by the RAAF. It went to No.452 Sqdn to go over to button D for Dog, not C by launch at 1600 hours on 1st May, on 9th March 1944 and had flown 164 for Charlie, but again there was no a week after the aircraft had gone hours 55 minutes up to the day of the response. Blue 4 (F/Sgt Tamlyn) who missing. Sleeping on the launch they accident. A58-232 carried the was monitoring the transmissions on searched solidly for four days in fuselage codes QY-Z and blue and his way down, broke in “Don’t wait for difficult circumstances without result, white ‘Pacific’ roundels. A report an answer - give them a long cair The launch was recalled on 6th May issued after the discovery of the Blue 2 did so, calling from 1 to 10 and forcing the search to be abandoned crashed aircraft stated “It also bore back again. Within two minutes of The Next of Kin. the markings “MA.353” on the port this Blue 4 was over Banjo at 2,000’ side in 1!4’’ letters.” No mention is Colin Dunning’s designated next but could see no sign of another made of its A58- serial which aircraft or a parachute. of kin was his father Samuel, suggests that it wasn’t carried, an telegram was sent to Mr. Dunning on Blue 1 (F/0 Mahar) had also unusual occurrence at that period of 25th April stating that his son had heard part of these conversations. the war. Permission to write off the been posted missing, having failed to “He (Sgt Dunning) called Earthking aircraft was requested on 7th May return from a non-operatlonal flight and said he was at 1,200’. I 1944 and approved twelve days later. the previous day. The knock at the immediately called him and told him door came at 1.30am. Four days F/0. Mahar’s Spitfire, A58-242, to bale out before he got below later the family received a lettergram landed back at Strauss with six cuts 1,000’. Earthking told him to go to containing little additional information to the trailing edge of the port button D for Dog and get a fix”. other than Colin was still missing mainplane root and fairing. The cuts Mahar, who thought he had heard the despite a thorough search having had an approximate depth of one to word “Charles” flew towards Charles been mounted. two inches and were presumed to Point, searching as he went. have been caused by the aircrew of It wasn’t until 15th May that a In the meantime Blue 4 (F/Sgt another aircraft whilst In flight. It was letter from S/Ldr. Lou Spence arrived, Tamlyn) called Earthking, gave his classified as slightly damaged and almost a week late because of some position and requested instructions. was repaired on site, confusion over the address. Mr. A58-242 He was told to search between Banjo survived until eventually SoC in mid- Dunning responded by thanking the and Point Charles and was doing so November 1948. squadron leader for the details when he was joined by F/0 Mahar. provided and, finding It difficult to The Discovery, They found nothing and returned to understand how a plane could On the morning of Saturday 28th Strauss, landing at approx 1715 1 hours. Within 15 minutes Mahar was disappear from a formation, produced December 1946^ Acting back in the air, followed a quarter of a list of eight basic questions to which Superintendent E.A. (Sandy) McNab he requested answers. S/Ldr. an hour later by Tamlyn. They joined Spence declined to answer on the up and searched between Banjo and I grounds of strict censorship rules and On what would have been Colin Dunning's 22""^ birthday

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indeed a Spitfire^ and it was immediately obvious that it didn’t warrant a salvage attempt, having broken up in the attempted landing. The fuselage, minus engine, wings and tail section fell onto its starboard side and was burnt out to the rear of the cockpit section. The fire almost certainly resulted from fuel tanks being ruptured as the aircraft ploughed its way through the timber. Found nearby, out of the cockpit, were the remains of the pilot. They were described as being in good condition. Having reached their destination it didn’t take long to gather up the remains and a few small items, such as a cigarette lighter and the plane’s cine-camera, establish the identity of The fuselage ofA58-232 in 1969 just after it had been rolled upright (Photo: Mr. J. Hasten via Mrs. M. Horsington). the Spitfire and record its location - of the Northern Territory Police was at of Ian Littlejohn, son of one of 12° 46728 130° 24E. There was his desk with the morning’s mail when McNab’s work associates, ammunition on site but little appears to have been done to dispose of it. he opened a letter advising that ex­ They cast off at about 8.30am and The patrol had departed Darwin on police tracker George had found a proceeded around the coast to Indian Sunday morning and returned about crashed Spitfire and its dead pilot Island where they anchored. dusk on the following Tuesday, which whilst on walkabout in the Fog Bay Crossing over to the mainland the meant they were away for two nights. area to the southwest of Darwin. party pressed inland with George Documents to hand are not clear as McNab passed the letter on to his leading the way. It was tough going. to just where the party bivouaced on superiors who, later in the day. The Wet had set in, much of the those two nights but at least one of Instructed him to contact the RAAF country over which they had to them must have been on the authorities and assist with the traverse was swampland and there mainland and it must have been retrieval of the pilot’s remains. were creeks to cross so that they pretty miserable. Not only were they In consultation with F/0. Mooney were always wet. After walking for an wet and tired but, because of the of the Air Force’s service police, a estimated 25 kms they found the nature of the patrol, they were patrol was quickly organised. There crash site - a fine effort by George travelling light and food had taken low wasn’t an ASR vessel available so a who was approaching the area from a priority. Sleep too would have been launch was hired from local identity completely different direction from difficult. Mr. Leo Hickey. A/Supt. McNab then that taken when he was out on went out looking for George and the walkabout. The Interment. tracker was amongst the party Located on relatively high ground Sandy McNab and F/0. Mooney gathered on the wharf next morning. for that area, the site was thickly reported back at Darwin Police With him were McNab, F/0. Mooney, wooded with stringybarks and Headquarters at 7.45pm on New S/Ldr. Holdsworth who was an air woollybutts, the canopy of which had Year’s Eve, good management on the accident investigator, Leo Hickey and hidden the camouflaged fighter for part of the Scotsman. The remains of his off-sider Jack Murray (a native over 214 years. The wreckage was the pilot were retained by the RAAF affairs officer) and a lad by the name whose task it was to identify them. With the serial number of the aircraft now known this didn’t take long, Mr. Dunning receiving a telegram on 2nd January 1947 advising that the body of his son had been found. This was followed a few days later by a letter from the Casualty Section confirming details of the discovery and of the proposed funeral. Further contact included an offer to fly Mr. and Mrs. Dunning up for the funeral, an offer that was accepted. In Darwin they were ‘interviewed’ by A/Supt. McNab and later spoke ft with Superintendent of Police A. V.

€ ^ When asked how he had known that the crashed aircraft was a Spitfire, The inner section (inverted) of the starboard wing. George simply answered that he had (Photo: Mr. J. Haslett via Mrs. M. Horsington) seen a lot of them during the war.

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Stretton^. Next morning, Tuesday George.” Supt. Alf Stretton made the unsuccessful and it wasn’t until some 14th January 1947, after Mass in the presentation, at Berrimah just out of years later (1969) when an ex Catholic Church in Smith Street, the town. In front of a large crowd, many Vietnam pilot flew his helicopter cortege left for the Adelaide River of whom were aboriginal. Mr. and between the tree tops and spotted the War Cemetery, a drive then of about Mrs. Dunning weren’t present but wreckage a couple of miles away IV2 hours down the bitumen. There, were represented by a neighbour from the officially recorded WWII with the Rev. Fr. Frank Flynn working at the time in Darwin. location. officiating and with RAAF servicemen The Headstones. Apart from during the wet season acting as pall bearers, Sgt. C.W. Mr. Dunning had been promised a the Pt. Patterson peninsula is virtually Dunning, 437405, was laid to rest with photograph of his son’s grave. This waterless and consequently devoid of full military honours. had failed to materialise because the cattle, game or wandering aboriginals Speaking to a local reporter that unit that usually carried out that task for most of the year. day Mrs. Dunning said their son had had been disbanded. The crash site is only accessible been posted missing, presumed Correspondence, commencing 13th during the late dry season and even dead, for nearly three years and it July 1949, produced results some then we had to bash and chop a 4WD was a great relief to now know what eight months later that the Dunnings track through miles of dense cycad had happened. She also publicly considered disappointing. The photo palm, metre high grass and large thanked the Air Force for their was of a white wooden cross upon fallen logs, topped by 40 feet high kindness and consideration during which a metal plate had been stringy bark and woollybutt forest. such a traumatic period for the family. attached, the details of which were unreadable. Also, the wooden cross The Medallion. All components of the wreckage was out of place amongst the upright Whilst in Darwin Mr. Dunning found had varied degrees of fire headstones although the expressed a desire to see George’s damage and corrosion, yet the accompanying letter did state that the efforts acknowledged. On advice that ammunition contained in the cross was a temporary fixture. the tracker had already been separated wings was undetonated rewarded by the RAAF, Mr. Dunning In the meantime, they had and surprisingly clean. There was suggested that a silver medallion received from the RAAF a tastefully only molten metal and ash in the fuel might be an appropriate way to presented scroll commemorating Sgt. tanks area but the rest of the fuselage express their appreciation. That Dunning’s sacrifice in the service of had obviously fallen onto its starboard decided, on returning to Adelaide he king and country in wartime, a gift that side where an intense fire in the fuel immediately set about getting things delighted the family. area charred and separated it. organised and the presentation was A permanent headstone After two sorties during the made to George on 23rd March 1947, eventually replaced the wooden cross following dry seasons most, if not all, just over two months later. over Plot 5, Row B, Grave 7 of the of the wreckage was salvaged. An It was a Sunday and an entry in A.R.W.C. The headstones, however, empty 44 gallon fuel drum was left at the Darwin Police Journal for that day were not destined to be permanent. It the crash site as a visible marker. states “A/S McNab during the day was found that the water being During more recent times I, supported searched for and located ex tracker pumped up from the nearby Adelaide by dedicated associates, revisited River contained elements that were many of the WWII fatal crash sites damaging the stone and in 1984 each and at our own expense erected was replaced by a neat metal plate engraved metal memorial plaques mounted at an angle on a low both to honour those lost but also to concrete base. discourage the increasing hordes of souvenir hunters who desecrate such Sgt. Colin William Dunning, sites. RAAF, lies today in peace In a serene, beautifully maintained setting. Several years ago I attempted to retrace my track into Colin’s crash The Site Rediscovered. site with the intention of replacing the Darwinite John Haslett and a fuel drum marker with a memorial group of local aviation enthusiasts plaque (only to find) flamin’ barbed spent a considerable amount of time wire fences blocking the way and effort from the mid-1960s locating northbound. That portion of Finniss crash sites in the Topend. Spitfire River cattle station having been sold A58-232 proved to be an elusive to developers to become Dundee objective. Recently (third quarter of Beach, a fishing and weekend shack 2002) Mr. Haslett has been resort, complete with roads and communicating with Mrs. Mel residents who discourage visitors Horsington, Colin Dunning’s sister, seen loitering near their property.” ^ George with his siiver medaliion, believed to and some of the correspondence has been passed on to this writer, with Mr. Primary Sources: have been taken on the day of presentation. NAA Files A1986/7; A1986/137; (Photo: Mrs. M. Horsington) Haslett’s approval. The following are A9301/2A10297/369; A705/15 selected passages. DSIC (NTAS) files F77; F282; F284; F287; F831 Various issues of The Argus: The Advertiser and ^ Alfred Victor Stretton, at that time “We proceeded to fly, low and The Northern Standard the Territory's senior policeman other slow, over the Pt. Patterson peninsula Acknowledgements: in the hope of spotting wreckage in NTAS staff, Darwin than the Administrator who the long grass below the rather dense NAA staff, Darwin and Canberra automatically assumed the role of Mrs. M. Horsington, Kiangra, NSW tropical forest canopy. We were Mr. J. Haslett, Darwin, NT Commissioner of Police.

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?? Sutty” Sucliffe’s Story as told to Chas Schaedel (all photos from Sutcliffe's albums). An article in “Aviation Heritage” for December 2002 broke out Sutcliffe enlisted and went to France as 2Lt in described an incident in which pilot Arthur Affleck the Northumberland Fusiliers, but after being badly experienced great trouble keeping the nose down on the wounded in the shoulder and hips on 25 September 1916 ANEC III G-AUEZ Diamond Bird of Larkin’s Australian he later transferred to the RFC and underwent pilot Aerial Services, a tail-heaviness that evidenced itself after training, graduating from the CFS Upavon on 1 June 1918. take-off from Echuca on the first occasion that he flew the He instructed at various training schools in England until aircraft with a full complement of passengers and a after the Armistice and reached the rank of Capt, then condition that required full trim and a foot against the stayed on in the RAF until 1923 with a spell in Ireland control column to keep from stalling. flying Bristol Fighters. For the next two years he flew Handley Page commercial machines across the Irish Sea There Is no reason advanced except Affleck’s before migrating to Australia for health reasons. statement that the aircraft seemed to be decidedly underpowered, but AAS pilot Eddy Sutcliffe had a definite Sutcliffe was checked out by Ron Adair at Brisbane for explanation for his own similar but opposite experience his Australian commercial licence, the check consisting of while flying an ANEC during the same period. The ANEC two circuits of the aerodrome after which he was granted III tailplane incidence was achieved by means of different Licence No.94. So in 1925 he became a pilot with the length bobbins, by his memory some about and some Larkin Aircraft Supply Co and was based in Adelaide to fly about 114", and on this occasion they were accidentally Larkin’s Australian Aerial Services route between Adelaide reversed during assembly. Sutcliffe got the machine off and Cootamundra, operating first from the Albert Park the ground but then found that he was unable to keep the aerodrome and later from the Levels airfield opposite nose up when he closed the throttle, and fortunately he Parafield that was officially opened by the SA Governor Sir discovered this before his actual landing approach. He Alexander Hore-Ruthven on 5 August 1929. was then forced to come in low to Coode Island from Shortly after that Larkin lost his subsidy and Sutcliffe several miles back, dodging chimney stacks at half throttle took over two aircraft and the Larkin aerodrome on lease and flying the machine right down on to the ground before to carry out joyriding and charter work, for which he was in closing the throttle completely. “Very annoying” was his an ideal position to catch the customers before they comment. reached the official Parafield site that was a little further Shackleton redesigned the ANEC III from a six to a along on the other side of the main road. He also ten-seater by substituting a more powerful Jaguar engine obtained a contract with Adelaide undertakers to transport for the original Rolls-Royce Eagle, and according to bodies back from outlying centres to the city for burial, an Sutcliffe the need to compensate for the loss of weight idea that arose when he was asked to bring back the body with the lighter radial gave the ANEC a nose like a dying of a jockey who had been killed at a Port Augusta race swan with the engine stuck on afterwards. He considered meeting. Bert Hussey joined him at times as a pilot and that they were quite nice to fly and had no vices. engineer, as did Orme Denny, and between them they had Sextus Edward Sutcliffe ("Sutty"or "Eddy") was born in all the necessary certificates to maintain and fly the England and came to Australia at the age of three years. aircraft, while at weekends there was no dearth of young He spent much of his early life in the Northern Territory volunteers to handle the mundane jobs of selling tickets where his father was a medical practitioner, and returned and directing the public to the joyriding machines. to England before the First World War to complete his Sutcliffe also organised the first aerodrome on education at Bridlington Grammar School. When war Kangaroo Island during the time that he was operating from the Levels aerodrome at Parafield. He had one of the ANEC Ills and used to do weekend trips with groups going on big- game fishing parties. It used to be a half hour flight to Kingscote, and he would bring them back to Adelaide on Monday. This venture came to an end late in 1930, after which Sutcliffe was employed by the Goldfields Air Navigation Co to operate the ex- Eyre Peninsula Airways Junkers FI3 VH-UKW from Kalgoorlie in WA. The Junkers was damaged during 1931 Sutcliffe (centre) with a DH50A and passengers at the ex-Larkins 'drome -'The Levels'. and sold to Guinea Airways, and Sutcliffe

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reduction in fuel consumption, but he didn’t apply the practice to his operations after he was shown that the saving in petrol costs came nowhere near compensating for the cost of replacing all the burnt valves in the engine and the damage caused through using the too lean mixture. At Wyndham there was a DH53 Humming Bird which had been sent out crated from England for the local doctor, who assembled it and tried to fly it from a strip near the town but damaged a wing Loading a coffin in the passengers compartment of a DH50A. against the Bastian, a big red cliff, when the Stayed in WA as a pilot with Norman Brearley’s West small machine swung on take-off. The doctor, presumably Australian Airways. On 15 June 1932 he located the Dr. Clyde Fenton who later became well known as the Junkers W33 seaplane of Hans Bertram which had been Flying Doctor in the Northern Territory, crated up the missing on the North-West coast since 15 May after flying damaged machine and it remained at Wyndham when he across the Timor Sea from Koepang, although the left the area. It was then acquired by a young chap who German pilot and his mechanic Klausmann were not found had a garage in the town, and he reportedly bought the and rescued until much later. aircraft by paying the custom duties it had earned. At the Norman Brearley had his own system of ensuring that new owner’s request Sutcliffe repaired the wing with he maintained a full complement of pilots. He had agents materials that he flew up from Perth on his regular run, to check the passenger lists for pilots coming out from then test flew it with practically the whole of Wyndham as England, and would contact people in England to an audience. The Humming Bird flew really well and he examine their records. Anyone he considered suitable often took it up, but being a single-seater he was not able would be met at Perth and offered a job before he had a to teach the owner to fly it. After Sutcliffe left WAA to go chance to get to the Eastern States, where the prospects to New Guinea it again changed hands, this time going to were usually better and more varied than WAA was able Dr. Ralph Goto the resident medical officer who re­ to provide. engined it, named it Icarus and in May 1937 made record lightplane flight to Perth, where he presented it to the Brearley ran a tight ship. Sometimes he would take Perth Technical School. It does not appear to have ever over one of his aircraft at the last moment before it was been officially registered. due to leave on the northern-west service up to Derby, giving the rostered pilot time off and setting out himself to In 1934 the WAA contract was lost to Horrie Miller, but see how his various agents along the way were by that time Sutcliffe had left the company to fly for performing. But he never caught anyone unprepared Holden’s Aerial Transport Service in New Guinea. On 2 because, almost before his wheels were off the ground, a telegram was on Its way to his first stop with the message “Please supply one tin of green paint”. And the message was relayed along until everyone was made aware that the boss was on his way to visit them. On one occasion Brearley complained that his pilots were creating too high a fuel bill, so he flew the north-west run himself to demonstrate how the engine should be run to obtain the greatest efficiency. He leaned his fuel mixture right down and achieved a considerable Sutcliffe (right) with the unregistered DH53 at Wyndham.

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November 1934 he crashed in the DH61 "Canberra" VH- required under the new management. So he marched UHW at Kaiapit when he hit a newly built native hut that across the street to the offices of W. R. Carpenter and nobody had been warned about and which obstructed the showed the telegram to one of the Carpenter family, who landing approach, and although Sutcliffe and his immediately gave him a job flying for the company at the passenger Frank O'Connell escaped from the burning termination of his leave, wreck they were unable to rescue the native passenger, On Sutcliffe’s return to New Guinea to fly for and O'Connell also died from his burns. Carpenter’s Mandated Airlines he upset Guinea Airways Sutcliffe considered that a special breed of pilot was by providing personal services such as picking up small required for New Guinea in those days, Pilots items free of charge, a practice that had been established accustomed to long runways where it didn’t matter if they by HATS and one that Guinea Airways wouldn’t allow, but used up a lot of space by overshooting found in New services like that gained a lot of business and cut into the Guinea that they only had one opportunity, which was not monopoly that the big firm was trying to establish. He and only the first but also the last. Surprise Creek off the the Carpenter operations hurt them so much that when he Watut had an uphill strip of 1 in 8 where you landed and later received an appointment with the Civil Aviation ran up to a turntable, and with the help of natives you Department in Australia, Guinea Airways sent a letter of turned the machine around and took off downhill. But if protest to the Department on the grounds that Sutcliffe you missed with your landing you were faced with a very wouldn’t give them a fair go. The Department ignored it solid 8-900 foot hill just behind the turntable. Wau had a but showed him the letter, gradient of 1 in 12, but at least it had plenty of room. It Guinea Airways started their Adelaide operations in was the smaller strips that were carved out alongside order to make use of the Lockheed 10s that were originally streams or odd bits of ground that caused problems, such bought for their New Guinea operations, but the new as the one where natives had to be employed to cut the aircraft were unable to be used on most of the airfields up top off a hill so that the strip could be safely used by there, so the Adelaide-Darwin service was initiated to save machines such as the Ford Trimotors. The technique them going to waste. there was to come in just over the top, and immediately The Carpenter company went into the air transport past the crest haul back on everything and drop it straight business when they worked out that it would be cheaper to onto the ground, enough to cause new pilots to lose all buy their own aeroplanes than pay the costs of having their hair trying to emulate it. The take-off was their goods freighted to their stores at Madang and Wau accomplished by slewing off to one side as soon as the after the ship landed them at Salamaua. Originally they machine became airborne, and easing it out towards the only carried their own cargo but later branched out into stream near the strip and skirting around the side of the general transport work. hill. This type of flying was born in a pilot, and if he hadn’t got it he either killed himself or crashed his machine. When the Japanese attacks on New Guinea began in January 1942 about 200 women and 100 children were Salamaua was only 4 or 5 degrees from the equator evacuated from Salamaua and Wau and flown out to Port but It had a really good climate, humid all the time but Moresby. They were not expected and were left in a shed good when one became acclimatised. Hazardous flying on the wharf all day, before being brought out in the conditions were more pronounced in the wet season. troopship “Katoomba” by which time there were 500 Sutcliffe flew up to Wau one day at the start of the wet and women and 300 children. The ship was due to sail on the didn’t get back to Salamaua for 10 days. Wau was clear, Tuesday but the Japanese announced over the shortwave but over the mountains there was an unbroken blanket of radio that they were being evacuated on that day, so the cloud. After the pilots trying to get back from Wau had captain delayed departure until the Thursday because of failed to get through and petrol was getting short, it was the danger. During the left to individual pilots In turn each day to check the voyage to mainland Australia they were fed on powdered weather. If the selected pilot didn’t come back to Wau it was known that the path was clear and the rest of them eggs and cabbage, and three babies were born on board. took off. Sutcliffe’s wife was on board, while he himself was flown to Salamaua from hospital in Rabaul where he was being The most useful aircraft for getting in and out of small treated for a serious blood disorder, and then to Australia places was the De Havllland 84 Dragon. It was practically on the second last evacuation aeroplane, foolproof and could do wonderful things when handled properly, although it was not easy to fly on long runs When Sutcliffe recovered his health he joined DCA unless the pilot knew how. A good Dragon pilot would get and was appointed senior air traffic controller at Parafield, it trimmed something like being on the step on a speed from where he retired in Adelaide and died there on 19 boat, flying at a certain speed at a certain angle of attack February 1981. ^ slightly tail up which would give another five or six miles per hour over the normal maximum cruise, and it was even possible to reduce engine revs without loss of speed or height. The ability to do this seemed to be a peculiarity of the Dragon alone. Sutcliffe didn’t like the DH86, and the Dragon Rapide was too unstable at low speeds because of the tapered wings compared to the square wingtips of the Dragon. After Les Holden was killed in the crash of Puss Moth VH-UPM at Byron Bay in NSW on 18 September 1932, his company continued to operate very successfully in New Guinea for a few years but was eventually absorbed into the large Guinea Airways organisation. When this took place Sutcliffe was on leave In Sydney, where he received a telegram advising him that his services were no longer The Carpenter hangars at Salamaua after the first Japanese air raid on January 21 1942. 32 AHSA Aviation Heritage

• ••• One Aeroplane by Macarthur Job “/ have come across a photo of a DH.84 Dragon that I took at Bankstown in 1959...The aircraft has a distinctive colour scheme and I wonder if any of our members might be able to identify it..?’’ ^ e „ So wrote Captain Warwick Henry in the December, faster derivative, the DH.89 Dragon Six, soon to become 2002 AHSA Newsletter (Vol 18, No 2). To say I the DH.89A Dragon Rapide. recognised the photograph would be a considerable understatement - that very aeroplane once played a But for the major role in my aeronautical life, becoming the passport intervention of to a wealth of experience in the gentle art of bush World War 2, g pilotage. Dragon manufacture But let us begin at the beginning. In 1932, when De would have ended Havilland’s remarkable DH.83 Fox Moth, “the first British at this point. As it ^ aeroplane to support itself financially in the air”, was was, when an g proving itself as a low-cost, commercially viable urgent RAAF 1 passenger aircraft, a demand soon arose for a twin- requirement for a engined version that could carry twice the load and still radio and pay its way. navigation trainer Edward Hillman, successful Essex bus proprietor developed in turned airline operator, placed the first order while the Australia In 1940, design was on the drawing board, intending to run a no suitable aircraft Mac Job in the 'office' of the Dragon service to Paris In competition with Imperial Airways. “I was available. DH showing the triangular panel. don’t want no subsidy,” he declared In his cockney Rapides - named (Norman Clifford) accent. “Nor highfalutin’ pilots and toffee-nosed the Dominie for RAF use - were being built for the same hostesses. I’m going to run it like a bus service.” And he purpose in England, and consideration was given to did! producing a batch of Rapides at De Havilland Australia. So was launched the DH.84 Dragon, an aircraft that The problem was that export Gipsy Six engines were revived the fortunes of the manufacturer at a time when simply no longer available from hard-pressed Britain. The the Great Depression and market saturation were solution was ingenious: an abundance of Major I engines affecting DH-60 Moth sales, and opened the way for De were available in Australia - they were being produced by Havilland aircraft production for years to come. General Motors Holdens Ltd for De Havilland Australia’s A h,. asp,c, ratio ^o-bay biplane (tbo outer wjnps ^o^^oClolllo an0= b:« “"te were adapted Gipsy Moth mainplanes designed to fold) instead of the Rapide? Drawings, jigs and the Dragon accommodated six to eight passerigers in fg^turing tools were despatched from Hatfield and comfort in a well-glazed spruce and plywood fuselage. Its « „ two Gipsy Major I engines were in neat nacelles on the " lower wing, which also housed the aircraft’s two 30-gallon Altogether 87 Australian “second generation” Dragons fuel tanks, giving an endurance of four and a half hours. were produced, some 53 surviving the war. The “mystery” Dragon Warwick Henry photographed at Bankstown in The first Dragon was delivered in December 1932 and 1959 was one of these. Built as s/n 2017, it began life as throughout 1933, they came off the Stag Lane production the RAAF’s A34-28. Unfortunately, its adventures line at the rate of one a week. Within months, fleets of between its genesis at Sydney’s Mascot in November them were plying not only the air routes of the British 1942 and 1945 are lost in the mists of time, except that at Isles, but of Canada, South Africa, Egypt, Persia, and of one stage it was involved in a taxiing accident. But course Australia, where they were operated by Holyman’s certainly by the end of the war, if not a few months before, Airways, Butler Air Transport, MacRobertson Miller and A34-28 was one of a number in storage at the RAAF’s No the Western Mining Corporation. 5 Aircraft Depot, Cootamundra, NSW. Never before had it been possible to carry passengers Many of these, bought at ridiculous prices from by air so cheaply, the Dragon’s 5.2 ton miles per gallon Commonwealth Disposals, entered civil aviation during payload comparing more than favourably with 4.5 for the 1946-47, where they became the backbone of developing Fox Moth and only 3.75 for De Havilland’s earlier multi­ air services and other hopeful aviation enterprises in engined airliner, the massive DH-66 Hercules trimotor of Australia and New Guinea. They also attracted the 1926. Yet the Dragon’s construction was so simple that it attention of Australia’s aerial medical services. Some, could be maintained almost anywhere and its well-proven equipped with two 15-gallon auxiliary fuel tanks to engines were as straightforward as those of any motor increase their endurance to six and a half hours, had car. been fitted out for RAAF ambulance duties. Ideal for Eight built for the Iraqi Air Force carried 16 201b bombs Flying Doctor operations at the time, a number were and were even fitted with two Vickers machine guns in the acquired for the nation’s various far-flung medical service nose and a Lewis gun in the mid-upper position at the operations, the Dragon’s unmistakable silhouette rear of the cabin. A few Dragons were also used for long becoming almost an unofficial symbol of that work in the distance record-breaking, the most notable being Jimmy early post-war years. Mollison and Amy Johnson’s Seafarer, which flew non­ Flying doctor operations at that time were far removed stop from Pendine Sands, South Wales, to Connecticut, from the sophisticated, well-funded RFDS operations of USA, in 39 hours. Altogether 115 Dragons had been today. Various operators undertook the flying work under delivered by the time production was supplanted by its the general oversight of the different State Flying Doctor

33 AHSA Aviation Heritage

Councils. With the exception of the government Northern a DH.84 unbelievably in prospect, it was time to put my Territory Aerial Medical Service, most operated on a money where my heart was. shoestring, using Dragons, Rapides, or Avro Ansons. VH-APJ hardly lived up to boyhood memories of what Only at Broken Hill were the aircraft owned and a DH.84 “airliner” should look like. The club’s rather operated by the FDS (the “Royal” prefix was not granted gluggy colour scheme of dull gold and blue, with wavy until later). At Alice Springs, the flying was done by stripes down the sides of the fuselage, did not seem an Connellan Airways; in the North-West by MacRobertson appropriate livery for an aeroplane to be taken seriously. Miller Airlines, in the Kalgoorlie area by Goldfields Inside however, all looked more professional. Airways, and in Queensland by both TAA and the North Dominating the single seat cockpit was the characteristic Queensland Ambulance Transport Brigade. In South De Havilland control column, topped by a yoke worthy of Australia, the work was operated by the Anglican Church, any large multi-engined airliner, while on the left, below which also staffed bush hospitals at Cook, Tarcoola and the instrument panel was the equally massive tailplane Wudinna, in addition to their main base hospital at trim wheel, requiring many turns to wind from fully nose Ceduna. up to fully nose down. The trim cables did not actuate a Begun in 1938 with a Fox Moth, the Ceduna-based tab, but a substantial screw jack connected to the leading network had expanded. The ex-RAAF DH.84 Dragon in edge of the tailplane to alter its incidence a la jetliner. As I question, A34-28, s/n 2017, personally selected for the was learn later, the system’s ultra-low gearing provided a work by DHA’s Murray Jones, and civilianised as VH-AGI, large measure of fore and aft trim, with a very fine had been added in 1947, and in the early 1950s, the ex- adjustment,. The instrument panel - triangular to fit the space available in the sharply tapering nose - carried what was then a “full Sperry blind flying panel”: airspeed indicator, altimeter, gHI large Tiger Moth style turn and bank indicator, artificial horizon, directional gyro (the early I horizontal ribbon type which, to I modern eyes, operated in the I opposite sense), and vertical speed indicator. The magnetic compass, recessed into a cutout at the The Ceduna base's aircraft in 1954: the ex-Arnold Glass Percival Proctor III, VH-BQR, and the base of the panel, was a DH.84 Dragon, VH-AGI, originally the RAAF's A34-28. (Author) splendid Air Ministry P.8, with adjustable grid ring. Centrally Arnold Glass Proctor III, VH-BQR (a “high performance” placed below It was a narrow sub-panel carrying the four aeroplane with a 210hp Gipsy Queen engine and a large toggle type magneto switches, two vertically constant speed propeller!), was bought to replace the Fox calibrated tachometers, and below them, two oil pressure Moth. With the service’s radio base, VKB Ceduna, also gauges. being established, an additional pilot was required - and unbelievably the author was to be the one! On the left were the twin throttle and mixture control levers, while further down on their respective cockpit To say I was introduced to the DH.84 in the early sides were the fuel cocks - one for each tank-engine 1950s would only be half true. In my childhood I had been combination, with no provision for cross-feed. But one given a book. Aircraft Today, which featured a photograph could look in vain for fuel gauges - they were on the of the prototype DH.84, E.9, on the cover. And I was engine nacelles, simple mechanical indicators mounted pleased I could explain the difference between a DH.84 directly above the tanks, to be viewed at a distance and a DH.86 - the former had two engines and the latter through the side windows. four! So it could be said I had been an admirer of the type since I was a boy. Indeed, on one occasion at a country A small rudder bias crank protruded from the control aerodrome when no one was looking, I had even climbed linkage box between the pilot's legs to provide rudder trim in the cabin door of one and sat for a time gazing at the in the event of engine failure. The brake lever beside the array of instruments in the cockpit. seat on the left operated cable brakes connected differentially through the rudder pedals. But to continue the story: the Royal Aero Club of NSW, where I had learnt to fly Tiger Moths, had a rather tired Visibility - ahead of the wings, engine and propellers - looking Dragon in their fleet. Registered VH-APJ, it was was excellent. But no nose was visible for attitude formerly the RAAF’s A34-75, s/n 2064, and with twin- reference - an unexpected problem initially for a relatively engined training in mind, the workshop had modified it to low-time pilot conditioned to Tiger Moths and other long- incorporate dual controls. The instructor’s seat was nosed, single-engined tail wheel aeroplanes immediately behind the cockpit on the centreline of the My eagerly-awaited endorsement training proved fuselage in place of the front pair of passenger seats. disappointing. For reasons that escaped me at the time, VH-APJ was not used much; Its hourly hire rate of the club instructors seemed no more anxious to fly VH- £5.10s ($11) was much too princely a sum for most club APJ than members who had to foot the bill. Perhaps they members. (Bear In mind that Tiger flying cost me £2.10s thought I was wasting their time; perhaps it interfered with [$5] an hour in those days!). But in my case, the their busy schedule of Tiger instruction. In any event, the expenditure was an investment - with a job actually flying three different instructors who condescended on different

34 AHSA Aviation Heritage occasions to humour me all had different ideas on how a impressions as he subjected me to an apprenticeship in DH.84 should be flown. Each of them made me do it DH.84 flying and outback navigation. Throughout this differently. (With hindsight, I think none were really too period, \A/e flew the medical trips together. Initially he did sure!) the takeoffs and landings, but let me fly for long periods in cruise, including night flights. Then he allowed me some The end result was far from satisfying. At the takeoffs and, when these had been accomplished with completion of four hour’s dual, I was signed out as modest competence, a landing. competent to act as pilot-in-command of DH.84 aircraft. It was simply not true! My Impression was of a large and Coming at the end of a long day's flying, that first clumsy flying box, directionally unstable in take-off (no landing seemed very much a hit or miss affair. Three slipstream over the rudder), unresponsive to trim weeks had passed since my unsatisfying dual in VH-APJ. adjustment, (only weeks later did I realise my training was Could I do it? Heart in mouth, I came over the fence at conducted without ballast - and with two pilots up front, Ceduna, conscious of the aircraft's growing shadow out of the aeroplane was excessively nose-heavy) and the corner of my eye. Vaguely, looking nowhere in haphazard to land with nothing beyond the windscreen for particular, I eased off the power and drew back on the attitude reference. No solo time was permitted; it was control column. VH-AGI came down with a thump, probably just as well. skipped and thumped again. We stayed down, and I taxied in. A fortnight later and 1500 miles away, I made my first acquaintance with the Dragon that is the subject of this The federal secretary, a passenger on the day's trip, essay, DH.84A, VH-AGI. It had been serving outback snorted genially from the rear of the cabin, "That wasn't South Australia as a Flying Doctor aircraft since being bad for a first try". Not a pilot himself, he was the man converted for the role at Mascot several years before. who had hired me. Chadwick, poker-faced in a seat behind the cockpit, refrained from comment. I first set eyes on it late one afternoon in the aerial medical service hangar on Ceduna’s lonely grass "We'll do some circuits," he announced later. We did, aerodrome. In the half-light of the hangar interior, the high while he stood behind me, unflappable, talking me nose and wings, immaculate in silver dope, loomed above through it, showing me where and how to look when me like some gigantic insect of science fiction. Geoffrey rounding out. The end result was a transformation in my de Havilland had named it well - it was like some landings -- something that has remained with me, not enormous dragonfly. because I am any hotshot, but because (at last!) someone taught me.. The cabin, lined in cream upholstery, with curtains over the windows, was as businesslike as the exterior. Four years of outback Dragon operations followed - Towards the rear, two stretchers were installed like lower scheduled trips for “Doctor’s Day” clinics; mercy flights to and upper berths in a railway sleeper. Aft of the door, low uplift the seriously ill or injured; frantic dashes with down on the port side, was the rectangular hatch through pregnant women; night epics (with no navigation aids) to which a stretcher could be lifted. Forward of the stretcher remote settlements for emergency surgery; days of installation, on either side of the narrow aisle, were two Intense heat and turbulence, marathons to the John Flynn tubular-framed armchairs upholstered in green leather, hospital at Oodnadatta in the teeth of a howling northerly with a third chair in front of them on the port side. Only the that could last five hours; occasional days of pouring rain diagonal crossmember bracing the forward fuselage when we had to come all the back from the Nullarbor separated the cockpit from the cabin. A Traeger MA-51 because the plain was too boggy to land at Cook. From H/F Flying Doctor Service transceiver was attached to the time to time I also flew the Proctor, but because of its cockpit floor to the right of the seat, with a headset versatility, the Dragon was my usual mount. extension to the front armchair. Thankfully, despite my lack of pilot maturity to begin I found It hard to believe I was to command this with, those years were relatively free of “incidents”. In fact professional aeroplane, and I was swept by a feeling of only three could be described as dramatic; Inadequacy - In this single-control DH.84 that worked for The first was at Tarcoola late one hot midsummer its living in the outback, I would be utterly on my own. afternoon. A station hand had severed a leg artery while I reckoned without the intervention of Chief Pilot A. E. “tailing” sheep, and lost blood to a dangerous extent. The Chadwick (later MBE and Oswald Watt Gold Medalist). A local bush hospital had him on a saline drip, but he bush pilot of the old school, he had learnt to fly on DH.60s urgently needed a transfusion. The doctor and a nurse in the early 1930s with Arthur Lovell and Arthur Schutt at accompanied me from Ceduna to collect him, we landed Eric Chasling’s Victorian Flying School. He had pioneered at Tarcoola late In the day, and after the usual the South Australian operation before the war with one preliminaries, loaded him on a stretcher with his drip still the two Fox Moths De Havilland Australia built for medical going. There was also an additional hefty woman work in 1937-38. (The first, VH-UZS, was for the passenger, making five in all - on top of luggage, full legendary Dr Clyde Fenton at Katherine, NT; the second, auxiliary tanks and our usual load of maintenance VH-AAA, was for Dr Roy Gibson’s work under the equipment auspices of the Anglican Church in the far west of South Australia). As I started the engines just on sunset, the temperature was still hovering above 40‘^C, with only a A neat, imperturbable little man who was also an light air from the southeast. Thinking it better than LAME, Chadwick was something of a paradox. Before I nothing, I taxied for the southeastern strip. But winds from joined the staff at Ceduna, he never submitted a flight this direction are uncommon at Tarcoola, and the sandy plan, and rarely prepared a load sheet, preferring to work surface of the seldom-used strip was unconsolidated and to rule-of-thumb methods developed from his own bush “heavy”. flying experience. But he was perfectionist as far as aircraft handling was concerned. Unlike my earlier Acceleration as I opened the throttles in that hot still air instructors, he led me gently, scoffing at my aero club was sluggish and it took a long time for the tail to come up. Even when it did, the Dragon only seemed to be

35 AHSA Aviation Heritage ambling down the strip. We used its full length before I on the other side! (To this day I can still see the tops of could persuade the aeroplane to fly, picking a clear path those mallee trees looming above us!) between the spindly trees that encroached on its far end. We staggered on at full throttle, while I utilised of every But suddenly the Dragon lurched, there was an unnerving little patch of thermal turbulence to help gain a few more twang, and the starboard propeller began emitting a feet. We were not only overloaded - we were excessive whistle. Looking around, I beheld wire trailing from the nose-heavy! I had one of my passengers to move some of port undercarriage - we had flown through the telephone the luggage to the rear of the cabin, but it didn’t help line to Wilgena Station! much, and it took a full hour of wrestling with the controls We were still flying, but what was I to do? If I turned to reach 1000 feet. back and landed In the dusk, we’d be at Tarcoola for the A little over an hour later again, in cooler conditions at night and the patient would probably die. The alternative cruising height, I was at last able to open the auxiliary was a hour and a half in the dark of over uninhabited tank cocks to gravity feed them into the main fuel tanks. sandhills and scrub in an aircraft with unassessed The change in CofG as this took effect, together with the damage. I chose the latter and we made It - but the fuel burn-off, finally returned the aircraft to some starboard propeller, gashed and holed by the wire, had to semblance of normality, and we completed the flight be replaced. without further drama. A later estimate of the load revealed the Dragon was above its all-up weight by at ^ least 10 per cent. And this was for a standard atmosphere - for the density altitude on that hot January morning, we were undoubtedly grossly overloaded. I resolved never again to embark on another heavily laden Dragon flight without first completing the prescribed load sheet! Unlike the previous Macarthur Job tops up the fuel during an extended medical trip in outback South Australia, It wasn't escapades, my third “incident” really water! (Author) more than two years later was The next “incident” was not dissimilar, though for a unpredictable. It was mid­ different reason. I was to ferry the Dragon to Parafield for winter’s day, but a mild one nonetheless with strong its annual CofA overhaul. Ceduna in those days was an northerly winds. Some distance off the west coast of isolated place, much of its 500 miles of road to Adelaide South Australia, lies a pleasant little island named after no more than dusty rough gravel, and any air transport the renowned navigator Matthew Flinders (not to be opportunity was eyed with hope. Not surprisingly, I found confused with the bigger island that also bears his name myself with a full load -- more than full as it turned out. in Bass Strait). This Flinders Island of grassland and small trees, was home to a small but picturesque sheep The cloudless January morning was again almost still, grazing property, serviced occasionally by coastal with only a slight breeze from the northeast. As well as full steamer from Port Adelaide. fuel for the four hour plus trip, I had four substantial passengers plus an enormous amount of luggage and Whether or not because of the extreme isolation, a freight, including a heavy automotive part. But any worker on the island had gone berserk, and the grazier misgivings I might have had while distributing the load radioed our base for assistance. The local Ceduna were swept away by my chief pilot’s assurance that the sergeant of police, accompanied by a Justice of the Dragon offered “plenty of room”. Peace, agreed to go to the island to certify the man and take him into custody. Taking advantage of what little wind there was, I selected the 4600 foot northeastern strip. It was lucerne- Contacted late in the morning, I picked up some covered and, some 2000 feet beyond its far end. Its sandwiches on the way to the airfield and had the Dragon extended centre line passed over the main road to ready when they drove up. We set off, and with 40 knots Adelaide, bordered by twin rows of mallee scrub of wind on our tail, made good time. Thirty minutes after concealing a powerline. takeoff we were abeam Streaky Bay, halfway there. I had no difficulty getting the tail up, but from then on From this point, the direct track to the island diverges the aircraft seemed to run and run, with no inclination to increasingly from the coast and, with another 60-odd fly. Fast approaching the end of the strip, the Dragon nautical miles to fly, I climbed to 5000 feet. Though our became gently airborne in ground effect, yet reluctant to tailwind remained strong, conditions were smooth, and I climb normally. We passed over the end markers hugging settled down to enjoy my sandwiches. the ground, only imperceptibly gaining a few feet. A little later, the port engine, churning evenly in its Using up most of the clear ground between the end of cowling, suddenly missed a beat. A moment more and it the strip and the road, we were still below the level of the coughed ominously, then began to leap in its mountings mallee scrub directly ahead. At the last moment, nearing as the coughing became continuous. Fearing it would tear the straggling tree-tops, I eased the control wheel back itself free, I quickly shut it down, increased power on the ever so gently and we soared over them with little to spare starboard engine, trimmed for best single engine speed, - only to sink back into ground effect in the open paddock and wound on rudder trim. There was no question of

36 AHSA Aviation Heritage turning back against that northerly - even if we made It As mentioned, MacRobertson Miller Airlines, under back to the coast, there was no where close to land. I had contract to the local Flying Doctor base, conducted the no alternative but to go on - but I had never been to the medical flying, and late in the day, MMA pilot Pieter van island before, didn’t know where its airstrip was, or what it Emmerik, with two nurses from the Derby hospital, took off was like. in Avro Anson VH-MMG, landing at Tableland just on sunset. Not heavily laden this time, we seemed to be just about holding our height. And with the island only about The turnaround at the airstrip was brief. The child, 15km long and 6km wide, I was sufficiently confident to let accompanied by her father, was placed aboard, and the down to 3000 feet as we crossed its coast. Soon I spotted Anson took off into the dusk at 6.32pm. But after its the white-painted homestead - the strip was just to its departure report, nothing more was heard. Although it was west, a lovely swathe of north-south green - and right into fine at Tableland Station, and fine also at Derby, a line of wind! intense tropical thunderstorms had developed over the King Leopold Ranges -- right in the path of the aircraft.. Keeping it close, I flew a downwind leg, turned on to a short base and then on to final, and in that wind the Despite a large scale air search, hampered by days of Dragon came down like a lift - judging the approach just heavy rain, the wreckage was not sighted until several became a matter of progressively reducing power on the weeks later in flooded country in the foothills of the King live engine. The engine problem proved to be sheared Leopold Ranges. After enormous difficulties reaching the cylinder head rocker bolts. site, DCA found the Anson had dived almost vertically into * * * the ground, with both engines under power. The official For a time at Ceduna, as at other Flying Doctor conclusion was that it “encountered a thunderstorm of bases, we had a virtual carte blanche to operate as we such severity that control of the aircraft could not be saw fit - at night or in non-VFR conditions. But although maintained.” DCA were uneasy about such flights without radio nav The accident became a watershed for medical flying aids, they was in something of a “bind”. throughout Australia. DCA cracked down hard, insisting If they cracked down and said “no more” - and then that only “mercy flights”, whose urgency could be someone died because a Flying Doctor aircraft wasn’t substantiated, would in future be given latitude to operate allowed to answer a call, there would have been a furore “outside the rules”. And pilots would be required to provide in the media. On the other hand, if DCA condoned round- a written report on each and every such flight, detailing the the-clock flying by our relatively primitive aircraft, and one circumstances behind the decision to make it. Thus the crashed, the media would also have had a field day! definition “Mercy Flight” entered Australia’s official aviation parlance. DCA’s problem was that, apart from the new De Havilland Doves (with which the government Northern The enforced regulatory measures that followed Territory Aerial Medical Service would soon replace their continued to make things difficult, and by the end of 1956, Dragons), there were still no suitable new aircraft the question of re-equipping could no longer be available, nor In most cases the money to buy them. disregarded. As well, fearing another Derby tragedy, DCA were getting twitchy about Anson and Dragon-type aircraft The DHA Drover was intended to fill the gap. But as a still being used for round-the-clock emergencies. result of two accidents in New Guinea - one of them fatal, involving a Qantas Drover, and the other flown by an Other bases were replacing theirs - the NT Aerial Examiner of Airman - its constant speed propellers had to Medical Service already had their new Doves, Broken Hill be replaced with fixed pitch propellers. After this (until and TAA’s flying doctor operations in Queensland were some Drovers were modified with Lycomings), the type now lumbered with Drovers (a debatable improvement), would only do on three Gipsy Majors what the old Dragon and in the North-West, MacRobertson Miller were also had always done on two! considering a Dove. So, pending the availability of new aircraft, DCA had to But at Ceduna, a new aeroplane seemed an compromise, recognising risks were necessary at times to Impossible dream. A Dove would be ideal, but it was like save lives. A policy was adopted whereby aerial medical asking for the moon. A Beech 18, with all its available services were allowed to “bend the rules” to save the life options, looked marvellous too but, like the Dove, was of a patient who was gravely ill. For their part, the quite out of the question financially. And though a new Department’s hinterland Aeradio units provided all Drover might just be possible, it offered little advantage. possible assistance. But in early 1957, Aircraft magazine reported the Zinc As a result, pilots professionally engaged in this class Corporation (today CRA) were buying a Scottish Twin of operation had a great deal of discretion, and there were Pioneer and that their executive Lockheed 12A, VH-BHH, no questions asked, even if the regular clinics at outback was to be sold. A rugged, high performance aeroplane, centres took longer than scheduled and we had to fly similar in specification to the Beech 18, but even more home in the dark. Indeed, this “flexibility” became almost sturdy, the Lockheed idea seemed worth following up. the rule, being excused on the grounds that it was Visits to cedar-panelled offices In Melbourne’s Collins “medical work” - even if the only “urgency” was one of Street followed, then a demonstration flight from economics and medical staff convenience! Essendon with veteran pilot Bob Watt in the left-hand seat. For a time, these unwritten rules, more often than not “honoured in the breach”, worked fairly well. But as a The Zinc Corporation proved magnanimous. We could result of events on the evening of 4 February 1956 out of have the Lockheed, with a spare engine and a full set of Derby, WA, all this operational latitude was to vanish. spares, for £12,000! It was unbelievable. We were getting a better aeroplane than the coveted Beech 18, one that At Tableland Station, nearly two hours flying east of had been immaculately maintained, that had less than Derby, W.A. on the Kimberly Plateau, a child fell seriously 3000 hours in its log book, was fully equipped for IFR, and ill and the Derby doctor wanted her admitted to hospital. had long range tanks.!

37 AHSA Aviation Heritage

dismasted during the Sydney-Hobart race, had limped into nearby Eden. But the venture was only moderately successful, for the simple reason that, without workshop facilities, maintaining the Dragon in first class condition became an ongoing problem, Indeed despite nearly five years’ experience in remote South Australia, I was still to learn that even a small serviceability gamble can be potentially A typical aviation scene from the mid-thirties? No - Merimbula, NSW in mid-1961. With the DH.84 disastrous. VH-AGl is the DH.60 Gipsy Moth, VH-ULM, then owned by Mike Richards, later to become part of the Drage Collection. (Author) On one flight with a So it was with mixed feelings that I flew VH-AGI to capacity load of tourists, I lost power on one engine over Adelaide for the last time, to return with her replacement - Green Cape, a jagged finger of coastline jutting three - the gleaming, aggressive incredibly noisy twin-tailed miles out into the ocean to the north of the equally Lockheed 12A, shortly to become the first VH-FMS. inhospitable Disaster Day, well south of Eden. The only Having command of a "modern" aeroplane was a dream habitation in the area was the lonely lighthouse on the come true. Yet somehow I knew that bush flying would cape's farthermost tip, a favourite photographic subject. never be quite the same. Little did I know it, but another I had throttled back a little, easing into a shallow period of Dragon flying awaited me in the future. descent while we made a circuit of the lighthouse, when I Put up for sale at Parafield, the old Dragon was felt a sudden yaw and heard the smooth drone of the eventually bought by Surfers Paradise Air Taxis, who engines drop into an unsynchronised beat. Quickly I found used it for sight-seeing on the Gold Coast. But things that no amount of throttle pumping would vary the evidently didn’t work out, for some time later the starboard engine's steady 1200 rpm - the linkage had aeroplane was in the hands of a Sydney finance parted somewhere and the throttle had closed itself company. The Dragon has always been noted for its “negative For family reasons by this time, I had moved to rate of climb” on one engine, and prospects for a safe Merimbula on the far south coast of NSW where a fine asymmetric arrival from only 500 feet over rough country new DCA airport had just opened, and among other didn’t look bright. Yet I was astonished to find we were things, I was doing a bit of charter and aerial work in a just holding our height - the trickle of power from the rather tired Auster. I heard about a Dragon that was sitting "dead" engine was offsetting the drag of the windmilling at Bankstown, and on going to have a look at It, was propeller. I wound on rudder trim and for the next 30 astonished to find it was my former Ceduna “mount”. minutes, 10 knots above the stall, and just out to sea from Enquiries from Kingsford Smith Aviation Service elicited the coastal cliffs, we staggered back to Merimbula. the fact that it now belonged to a Cooma motor dealer The full story is too detailed to relate here, but my (the Snowy scheme construction was at full throttle at this heart-in-mouth experience eventually became the subject time and he had made a lot of money selling heavy of an “I learnt about flying from that...” article in the vehicles to contractors), who was neither a pilot, nor using February, 1963 issue of the U.S. Flying magazine the aircraft. (incidentally, giving me my first start in air safety writing!). Cooma is not far from Merimbula by air, and when I Back safely on the ground, I opened the cowling of the went to see him he told me he’d “got the aeroplane in a offending engine to find the throttle linkage hanging deal” and was looking for some way of putting it to work. beside the carburettor. Never again would I fly without a The upshot was that I picked the aeroplane up from thorough daily inspection! Kingsford Smith’s at Bankstown at the end of 1959, and The charter business dragged on for a few months for about the next 18 months operated it on charter, more. But then a Sydney finance company contacted me - mainly out of Merimbula. The motor dealer’s mooted “joint - their former esteemed Cooma client had mysteriously venture” with me never materialised, the fellow soon “disappeared”, leaving various debts and, as they held a losing interest. But, trading as “South Eastern Air hire purchase agreement over his Dragon, they intended Transport”, I carried on, using the Dragon on an Informal to repossess it. They commissioned me to ferry it to leasing arrangement. Bankstown, where I handed it over to De Havilland’s. I The lumbering old twin was useful for sight-seeing wasn’t really sorry - it was costly to operate and maintain, flights along the wild and beautiful but highly inaccessible business was slow, and I was only just making ends meet coastline to the south of Twofold Bay. And I had numbers with its charter work. of charter trips to Sydney - sometimes with medical Some months later a chap called Baldwin and his evacuations, and once with the crew of a yacht that. business partner bought it, but not long afterwards they

38 AHSA Aviation Heritage ran into extreme rotor turbulence in the lee of the Great wheel on the left of the cockpit can provide a vernier-fine Dividing Range while flying down the coast in high adjustment. The aeroplane has great lateral stability; in westerly wind conditions. The turbulence was severe smooth air it can be flown on trim and rudder alone - enough to crack some of the plywood fuselage skinning, visually or on instruments. Balanced Rate One turns can and in some consternation they attempted an emergency be accomplished with the pressure of one toe. landing on the Bateman’s Bay golf course. With neither flaps nor constant speed propellers to The undercarriage was damaged when they hit a worry about, the angle of descent can be judiciously bunker, and for weeks afterwards, the aeroplane sat controlled with power and airspeed - with power right off forlornly on the golf club fairway. Finally they came down and the speed back to 60 knots, the approach becomes from Sydney by road and took away everything that could surprisingly steep. possibly be removed from the basic fuselage and centre Wheel landings are a delight; come over the fence at section.. 65 knots with a trickle of power and ease it off as the So that was the inglorious end of dear old VH-AGI. My aeroplane rounds out; hold it there, just above the ground, last sight of it was the gutted fuselage sitting in as the speed decays - and the wheels brush on almost someone’s back yard at Bateman’s Bay in 1963 for small imperceptibly. The big tyres make light of surfaces that boys to play in. I think it was eventually burnt. This wasn’t would be the undoing of modern nose-wheels. With its very long before I moved to Melbourne to join the staff of differential brakes, asymmetric power, and superb vision DCA. from the cockpit, it Is a dream to taxi. Happily it was not to be the end of my DH.84 “affairs”. One drawback is speed - or lack of it. Eighty-odd Years later In 1975, Ian Macarthur asked me to bring the knots can be made to look silly on a long haul punching Drage Collection’s DH.84, VH-AON, Puff the Magic into a 40 knot headwind. Another is rate of climb, Dragon, from Wodonga to Casey Field, Berwick, for the particularly on hot Inland days with a full load, when the AHSA’s 50th anniversary celebrations of the DH.60 Moth. OAT gauge may show 40^0. Then only the frequently Later again, Jim O’Connell appointed me “honorary chief encountered thermals enable an acceptable rate of climb. pilot” of his Dragon, VH-AGC, based at Point Cook, that he had so painstakingly restored to mint condition over Loading? A doctor, a nurse, two stretcher patients, several years.. seats for one or two additional passengers, luggage and medical equipment, fuel for six and a half hours, and The best of “my” Dragons, I flew VH-AGC on various enough spares and tools to do a 100-hourly in the field - outings and displays, including the AHSA’s first National all on the meagre power and economy of two Gipsy Major Conference at Wodonga in 1976 (notable passengers Is! included Air Commodore A.H. Wheeler, chairman of the Shuttleworth Trust, Group Captain Clive Caldwell and Like the pages of a book remembered from long ago, racing driver Alf Barrett, well known Alfa Romeo exponent memories floods back as 1 write; and Grand Prix competitor In the early post war years). I ...I scan the instruments and glance ahead. We are also gave endorsements to several would-be Dragon slightly starboard of track; the quartering wind has pilots, including VH-AGC’s proud owner. Tragically, some freshened. I reduce the setting of the compass grid ring time later, he killed himself in It while attempting to take 2®, re-tension its clamp, and reset the directional gyro. off from Point Cook one hot day of violently gusting northerly winds, when he was two years out of flying Small white bakelite placards on the instrument panel practice. constantly remind me to “Climb 65-70 knots on normal load” and that “Flying speed on one engine should be 65- 70 knots”. What was the DH.84 like to fly, I am sometimes Below the compass and ignition switches, on the small asked?. Certainly the DH.89A Dragon Rapide, the vertical panel between my legs, the twin tachometer cleaned-up, more powerful version with Gipsy Six needles are quivering slightly above 2000 rpm. I ease the engines, is the better aeroplane from a pilot’s point of throttles back a touch, ensuring the engines remain view. But you could say that, fully laden in all manner of synchronised, until the the readings settle at 1975, and conditions, the Rapide doesn’t quite provide the same readjust the mixture controls. sense of adventure! Even after such a minuscule reduction in power, the Some might tell you the Dragon was just a great big altimeter is creeping back from where it has been Tiger Moth with twice the chance of engine failure! They hovering at 7000 feet as the aeroplane tries to fall off the have no soul! In contrast to the cold and draughty, step. Leaning forward, I take hold of the trim wheel, cramped constraint of a Tiger’s cockpit, with its limited adjusting it gently until the altimeter steadies again. view of where the aeroplane is going, where even the simple task of unfolding a chart becomes a major I gaze in turn at the gleaming arcs of the propellers, operation, the Dragon is a gentleman’s aerial carriage. and the engines churning in their cowlings. I study the whirling metal spinners on the polished wooden propeller The single seat cockpit is a miniature flightdeck - not bosses, alert for any abnormal vibration or mis-tracking, big, but roomy enough to be comfortable, even for hours then glance down at the landing wheels, their great on end. There is space beside the seat for a bulging flight balloon tyres hanging below the engines in the slipstream. satchel - and room on the other side for inflight Finally, amongst the interplane struts and rigging wires, I refreshments. The view is magnificent - sitting well in note the indications of the fuel gauges on the engine front of the wings and engines, there Is nothing in the nacelles, mentally checking their readings against the way. For the same reason, the noise Is tolerable, even time flown. All Is as it should be... without a headset. Other flying can never be quite like It. Will I ever have The flying controls, with the exception of coarse aileron the privilege again? Who knows... ^ (hardly ever used) are finger light; the vast elevator trim

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