Hermanus history and powered flight – Part 2

Writer Dr Robin Lee

People I have interviewed have told me that the Imperial Airways flying boat service between the UK and South Africa in the 1940s and 1950s sometimes made a stop at the Bot River Estuary. I have not been able to verify this information, and it seems such a stop would be too soon after take-off from Cape Town and too soon before landing at Cape Town. I continue to look for confirmation.

Readers may be interested to know that the first weekly flights took 10 days, with 18 stops and lots of low-level sightseeing opportunities. In 1938 flights were doubled to two a week. By 1950, the final year of operation, the flight time was down to 4 days on the route Cape Town – Vaal Dam – Port Bell (Uganda) – Khartoum – Cairo – Augusta (Sicily) – Southampton and train to London.

In the 1960s, Hermanus got its own airstrip, built where part of the suburb of Zwelihle is now. Many visitors flew into Hermanus on holiday, rather than drive from Cape Town and other parts of South Africa. Local flying enthusiasts kept hangars for private planes there and flew for pleasure. Readers of the Facebook post version of this article responded with stories of their own. Mary Krone wrote:

I landed at the Hermanus airstrip in the 1970s on one of my early training flights. What made it so special was that lots of tall trees surrounded the airstrip and it was rather a windy/gusty day. The ‘long & the short’ of it was that one had to ‘crab’ it in (i.e. keep the nose of the plane facing the 'wrong way' against the wind) until you were just at the height of the surrounding trees, at which point you had to adjust and aim at the runway itself quickly, or else you would have crashed into the trees due to the sudden loss of wind below the height of the trees. Scary stuff at the time, but exhilarating all the same.

Click below to read more. (The full article can be found on page 5)