_-........- •- '! • The years between 191 9 and 1939 saw the binh, growth and establishment of the aeroplane as an accepted means of public travel. Beginning in the early post-u•ar years with ajrcraft such as the O.H.4A and the bloated Vimy Commercial, crudely converted from wartime bombers, the airline business T he Pocket Encyclopaed ia of World Aircraft in Colour g radually imposed its ou·n require­ AIRLINERS ments upon aircraft design to pro­ duce, within the next nvo decades, between the Wars all-metal monoplanes as handso me as the Electra and the de Havilland Albatross. The 70 aircraft described and illu­ strated in this volume include rhe trailblazers of today's air routes- such types as the Hercules, H. P.41, Fokker Trimotor, Condor, Henry Fo rd's " Tin Goose" and the immortal DC-3. Herc, too, arc such truly pioneering types as the Junkers F 13 and Boeing l\'fonomajl, and many others of all nationalities, in a wide spectrum of shape and size that ranges fro m Lockheed's tiny 6-scat Vega to the g rotesque Junkers G 38, whose wing leading-edges alone could scat six passengers. • -"l."':Z'.~-. .. , •• The Pocket Encyclopaedia of \Vorld Aircraft in Colour AIRLINERS between the Wars 1919- 1939 by KENNETH M UNS O N Illustrated by JOHN W. WOOD Bob Corrall Frank Friend Brian Hiley \\lilliam Hobson Tony ~1it chcll Jack Pclling LONDON BLANDFORD PRESS PREFACE First published 1972 © 1972 Blandford Press Lld. 167 H igh llolbom, London \\IC1\' 6Pl l The period dealt \vith by this volurne covers both the birth and the gro\vth of air transport, for Lhere "·ere no a irlines ISBN o 7137 0567 1 before \Vorld \\'ar 1 except Lhose operated by Zeppelin air­ All rights reserved. No part of this book may be ships. For the airlines, therefore, the 1920s were as much a reproduced or 1ransmi11ed in any form or by any pioneering period as 1903-1+ \vas for aviation itself, and means, electronic or mechanical, includin~ photo­ copying, recording or by any information stora'e xnany \vere the historic flights and fan1ous n1en and aircraft and retneval system, without permission 1n involved. In a \'Olume of this size the selection of aircraft '"riling from the Publisher. to be included can only be a representati\'e one, and for the omission of any reader's favourite type I apologise in advanc.c. Ne\·crtheless, the 71 aircraft illustrated do, I believe, give a reasonably balanced cro~s-sec tion of the more important types, and related variants are mentioned in the text. T he products of Boeing, de J{avilland, Douglas, Fokker, Junkers and Lockheed figure prominently, which is as it should be. A second apology is perhaps needed for the brevity of the aircraft descriptions, even though this volun1c is longer than any other in the series. In the main, space has not permitted fuller details of aircraft sold from one airline to another, and only the initial customers are normally re­ corded. Similarly, it has not been possible to include full registration and fleet details of types built in very large numbers. There are, ho\vever, other more comprehensive a nd more detailed \\'Orks \vhich do give such infonnation, and which I am grateful to ackno\vledge as major sources of my O\.,.n reference \vhile compiling this volume. In particular I \vOu ld n1en tion British Civil Aircraft 1919-59, by A. J . Jackson (Putnam, 2 volun1es); European Transport Air­ craft since 19101 by John Stroud (Putnan1); US Civil Air­ craft, by Joseph P. Juptner (Aero Publishers, volumes 1 to 5); a nd A History of tire 1¥orld's Airlines, by R. E. G. Davies (Oxford University Press). T o a ll of these the reader can confidenLly be recommended for further information about the aircraft and airlines mentioned in this volume. I n Colour printed by The Ysel Press, Deventer, Holland addition, ackno"•ledgment is made of items published at Text printed by 'f onbridge Printers Ltd., and books bound in Great Britain by various times by Richard Clay ('fhe Chaucer Press) Ltd., Bungay, Suffolk Air Enthusiast, Air Pictorial, Air Progress, Aircraft l llustratrd, Aviation Afagazine, the j ournal of tir e American Aviation 1-fistorical Socit!ty, and Profile Publica­ tio11s Ltd. Advice concerning the colour schemes portrayed again came predo1njnantly from Ian D. HunLley, and among others who kindly provided help and encouragement in various ways were Everett Cassagneres, Lt Col :\ils Kindberg, \ V. B. 1:-\TRODUCTION Klepacki, Alec Lumsden, John Stroud and John \\'. R. Taylor. T o then1, and to Mrs Janet Ho,o;ell for typing tl1e Jn the period bet\,een \Vorld \Vars 1 and 2, t\vo great manuscript, my thanks are extended. competitive Aying events stand out above all others - the contests for the Schneider T rophy, \\'hich ended with a British victory in 193 1, and the '1\lacRobertson' race from England to Australia in 1934. The latter event \\'as held as part of the centenary celebrations of the state of Victoria and of 1\lelboume, its capital, "vith prizes donated by Sir \Villiam 1'lacPherson Robertson. The race \vas open to all nationalities, and \Vas djvided into a speed section (based June 197i on elapsed tune for the journey) and a handicap section (based on ffying time only). It started from 1\Iildenhall, Suffolk, and ended at Flemington racecourse, 1'1:elbourne, with main control points at Baghdad, Allahabad, Singapore, Darwin and Charleville; the total distance was 1 1,300 miles (18,185 km). So far as the record books are concerned, the 'MacRobertson' also ended in a British victory : the de 1I avilland D.H.88 Comet \Vas designed to win the race, and it did so. But of infinitely greater significance \vas the identity of the second aircraft to arrive in 1'1elboume, \vhich had ffo\11n a standard commercial route of 12,530 miles (191875 kn1) - 1,230 miles (1,6go km) longer than the pre­ scribed route - and had done so in only 5f hours' flying time more than the D.H.88. I ts a\·erage speed for the whole journey '''as about 16o mph (257 km / hr). This aircraft ,.,,as a t\vin-engined Douglas DC-2 of KLl\1 Royal Dutch Airlines, cnrrying a 4-01an cre'"• 3 fare-paying passengers and a 420 lb ( 19 1 kg) cargo of mail. Before the race, many people had been sceptical of the chances of a normally-loaded commercial transport aircraft flown by an airline cre\v. It would be competing against several faster aeroplanes, some of them ffo,vn by such eminent competitive pilots as Charles Scott and T om Campbell Black, Roscoe 7 Turner and Clyde Pangborn, James and Amy ~Iollison, and d ecided to amalgamate them in 1924 to form Irnperial Air­ J acqueline Cochrane. I ndeed, one London ne\vspaper \vas \vays, the 'chosen instrument' of a ne\v British air uansport moved to dismiss the KLl\{ entry as 'an audacious assurnp­ ' policy. T he \vorld 'imperial' did not then provoke the in­ tion that such a ship could expect to compete \vith the ffanunatory reaction that it does today. I ndeed, one rnay fastest planes on the Continent'. KL~i, hO\vever, kne\v a \vell ponder how different the \vorld air transport scene thing or two about its latest An1erican acquisition, and might have been if tllere had been no empires forty years proved - as it had set out to do - that a standard, modem ago to provide tlle incentive to pioneer the global and trans­ commercial transport aircraft, carrying a useful payload, continental air routes \vhich \\"e no\v take for granted. The could CO\'er tl1e \\'Orld's longest air route in less than 4 days, a ir transport adventure of the 1920s and 1930s 1night have without any sacrifice of its passengers' comfort. The successes follo\ved a very different path \vithout tlle initiative of of botl1 tlle 0.I 1.88 and the DC-2 proved, more con\·incingly G reat Britain in opening up air routes to the ~{iddle East, tllan ever before, that the retractable undercarriage and South Africa, India and Australia; of France to North Africa variable-pitch propeller \vere henceforth essential ingredients and the Orient; of Belgium to tlle Congo; of the Netherlands for commercial aircraft of the future. to the East and \ Vest I ndies; and of Germany to South Until that time, the air transport scene tlle \VOrld over America. had been dominated first by biplanes and tllen by lumber­ Cornfort, safety and speed : these were the attractions \vith ing, fixed-gear tri-n1otors. Prior to World War 1 tllere had \vhich the airlines set out to win tlleir prospective public. been no scheduled airline services in existence, apart from Designing cornfort into an aeroplane •.vas no great prob­ those operated in Germany with Zeppelin airships, and lern, but the number of airline accidents in the early years hence the early 1920s saw not only the beginnings of air of operation \vas too high to become an accepted nonn. transport as a business, but the use of many improvised Operating conditions, including the need to maintain 'airliners', many of then1 embodying only the minimum of schedules in often unfavourable weather, were partly to conversion from the wart in1e roles for which they \vere blame, but all too often aircraft succumbed to circumstances designed. I n some of these primitive conversions, the \Vhich more powerful or more reliable engines \vould have passengers were as exposed to the elements as the pilots, and O\•e rco1ne.