Flightpathfebapr2016

DE HAVILLAND DH 88 COMET RACER SPECIAL

CAMDEN COLLECTION Rare look inside the private museum

The Folly of Numbers WWII records reveal startling ‘victory’ figures

A6M2 ‘Zero’ wreck in a PNG swamp And the tale of its elusive pilot

DH 88 COMET

Shuttleworth’s ‘Race Day’ MacRobinson Air Race 80th anniversary Rediscovered 1934 Comet photos

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Contents

38

February –April 2015 Volume 26 - Number 3

Features 12 The Camden Collection The Camden Museum of Aviation has recently undergone a significant revamp. Editor Rob Fox takes us inside this eclectic and private museum.

18 The Elusive Ito South Pacific Correspondent Michael Claringbould’s account of the Japanese airman Itō Tsutomu’s bizarre adventure.

26 New Guinea Packhorse In the 1930s Guinea Airways carried more freight than the rest of the world’s airlines combined. Via the AHSA archives Ben Dannecker profiles the Junkers G.31 workhorse.

30 The Folly of Numbers Accurate aces’ scores will always remain controversial.

Michael John Claringbould reveals some startling figures.

DH-88 COMET RACER SPECIAL 38 Celestial Restitution Gary R Brown tells the story of G-ACSS’ survival into preservation and controversial restoration.

54 A Much Travelled Puss Neil Follett documents the many lives of DH.80 Puss Moth, VH-UPA.

58 Avian Mk Iv M G-ABEE Paul Wheeler finds another Avian project!

62 Evaluating The Luftwaffe Jets Mike Shreeve recounts test-pilot Captain Eric Brown’s experiences at the end of W.W.II with Germany’s new technology.

68 Wild Warbirds’ Wildcat Luigino Caliaro visits Wild Warbirds and reports on their Wildcat, awarded the EAA AirVenture Reserve Grand Champion W.W.II & Gold Wrench Awards.

74 The ‘Peashooter’ Frank B Mormillo profiles the Planes of Fame Air Museum’s flying Boeing P-26 Peashooter.

78 Hendon’s ‘First World War in the Air’ exhibition The RAF Museum’s new Great War exhibition in the revamped Graham White Factory building at Hendon.

46 Charleville Comets

Regulars

Recently re-found Images from 1934 Queensland explained by Contributing Editor James Kightly.

80 Shuttleworth’s ‘Race Day’ The Shuttleworth Collection commemorated the 1934 MacRobertson Air Race.

48 ‘Unbroken’ Gold Coast B-24 B-24 Liberator expert Bob Livingstone gives Flightpath an exclusive behind-the-scenes view of the film ‘Unbroken’ recently filmed in Australia.

COVER: Wild Warbirds’ Conrad Huffstutler and his award winning FM-2 Wildcat, (BuNo 86774).

Photography by Luigino Caliaro.

4 News 24 Mailbag 35 Personal Effects 42 Poster 79 Airshows F L I G H T PAT H | 3

News

Editor: Rob Fox Ph: (03) 9580 7436 Email: mail@robfoxphotography.com Contributing Editors: Michael Claringbould, James Kightly, Ron Watts All letters and contributions should be sent to the editor: PO BOX 253 Bentleigh Victoria 3204.

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LEFT: The cutaway Sabre A94-960 and former RAAF Museum Sabre A94-910 at Wagga Wagga dismantled for transportation. [Dave Jones]

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BELOW: Sabre A94-960 leaves the RAAFSTT at RAAF Wagga Wagga on its way to Point Cook. [Dave Jones] ABOVE: Museum staff and volunteers dismantle Sabre A94-960. [Dave Jones]

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The Great Sabre Swap The RAAF School of Technical Training’s (RAAFSTT) inventory at RAAF Wagga includes several old aircraft and items of value to the RAAF Heritage Collection. These are now surplus to needs as the contract to provide training to ADF technical personnel recently changed hands. CAC Winjeel A85456 and CAC Sabre A94-960, both “cutaway” training aids for basic and electrohydraulic flying control systems respectively, and ancient in terms of today’s platforms, were two items the RAAF Museum wished to retain in the Collection. The decision was made to relocate the two airframes, and other valuable items, to Point Cook. CAC Sabre A94-982, a gate guardian

at RAAF Wagga, was also to head south. It was not, however, all one-way traffic. In exchange, museum staff and volunteers dismantled and prepared Sabre A94-910 for transport to Wagga to replace the historic A94-982. This aircraft is the last remaining Australian Sabre to have fired a shot in anger during the Malayan Emergency. It flew several strike sorties in 1959 and 1960 while serving with 77 Squadron RAAF. Once at Point Cook A94-982 will undergo restoration for ultimate display in the museum.

Time, however, got away from the hardworking staff and volunteers towards the end of 2014 so the changeover of the two Sabres will be completed early this year.

News

Flying Dutchman Heads To Germany The Australian-built CAC Mustang (A68100), known in the United States as ‘Flying Dutchman’, has been sold and was shipped to Germany in November 2014. The aircraft was flown to the Planes of Fame Air Museum in Chino, California, prior to being disassembled and packed for shipment in their restoration hangar.

Delivered to the RAAF in November 1947 as CA-18, Mk.21 serial 1425,it served with 78 Wing RAAF from 2 November 1948. After various unit transfers it was put up for disposal in April 1958 and was purchased by A.J.R.‘Titus’ Oates. Two years later it was sold to Mustang operators Fawcett Aviation at Bankstown, New South Wales, and modified for high altitude survey work.

Ed Flemming/Skyservice Aviation of Camden, New South Wales, acquired it in 1967 but quickly sold the Mustang to L. James Ausland in Seattle, Washington, on 20 November. It was rebuilt by Sports Air of Seattle (using serial 44-14777) and was registered N51AB four years later. The aircraft changed hands several times until 1990 when Norm Lewis purchased it for his Kentucky Aviation Museum. It was Lewis who had it painted to represent the P-51D Mustang ‘Flying Dutchman’ flown by 31st Fighter Group ace Robert J.‘Bob’ Goebel in Italy during W.W.II. The most recent US owner, Steve Craig of Lawrence,

Norm Lewis at the controls of ‘Flying Dutchman’ over California’s Catalina Island in 1994. In the jump-seat is the late Lt. Col. ‘Bob’ Goebel who flew the real ‘Flying Dutchman’ in W.W.II. [all images Frank Mormillo]

Kansas, sold the aircraft to its new German owner in late 2014. The pre-purchase inspection was performed by Achim Meier and was shipped to Meier Motors in Freiburg, Germany, for reassembly and has since been assembled and test flown.

Frank B. Mormillo ABOVE RIGHT: The cockpit of the CAC Mustang ‘Flying Dutchman’. RIGHT: ‘Flying Dutchman’ in the Planes of Fame Air Museum’s restoration hangar just before it was disassembled and packed for shipment to Germany by Steve Hinton’s Fighter Rebuilders crew in November 2014.

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Call Rob 0411 336 156 or email: rob.eastgate@gmail.com F L I G H T PAT H | 5

News

Dave’s Dak Following the 2010 Wide Bay Air show at Bundaberg, the Caboolture Mustang group encountered a problem with their Mustang. A fellow approached me offering to help, saying he was an aircraft engineer and had experience of working on Mustangs. I introduced him to Ed Field and the boys and quickly found he knew what he was talking about.

He was certainly not one to blow his own bags, but when pressed for his background he looked too young to have the experience he claimed. He had worked as the chief engineer of the UK’s Air Atlantique’s Classic Flight’s vintage aircraft fleet for seven or eight years.

This fleet included an Avro Shackleton, Anson, DH Dove, Chipmunk, Rapide, and a Percival Prentice. He had also worked on the big prop aircraft such as the DC-3 and DC-6 in the other sections of the Air Atlantique fleet.

What had lured him to Australia was an Aussie girl, Kate, now his wife.

David Kingshott comes from Brighton on the south coast of England. He attended a four year aircraft engineer trade course at Northbrook College, graduating as a Licenced Aircraft Engineer. A wounded DC-3 had diverted in to there with a failing engine, and gave him his first chance to work on a DC-3, or ‘Dak’ as he prefers to call them.

He also restored, repaired and maintained a number of Daks and a Catalina around Europe over several years prior to moving to Air Atlantique. This all started a lifelong passion for him to own a Dak. While in the UK a few years ago I met people who knew him there and, as well as speaking highly of him, they asked “is he still Dak happy?”

In Australia, David undertook some Oklahoma Gal is lifted in readiness for the road transporter.

The W.W.II veteran C-47 43-48234 is now headed for a full restoration to flying condition.

ABOVE: David Kingshott and his much travelled C-47 43-48234 “Oklahoma Gal” at Mareeba prior to dismantling for its road transportation south to Caboolture.

TOP: All the fabric covered flight controls have suffered badly from exposure to the elements. Here ‘Speedy’ Gonzales prepares to remove the elevators.

RIGHT: Troy Smith (left) and Ray Vuillerman begin removing the hundreds of bolts that mate the centre section to the wings.

6 | F L I G H T PAT H

News aircraft maintenance at Bundaberg, but there was not enough work there to sustain his business, though it was notable that he immediately established a high level of credibility with CASA. He moved to Brisbane and was most helpful with advice on our Tiger Moths and Chipmunks. But he had to keep bread on the table, so went out and worked in the mines for a while. We missed him while he was away, as he had become a great resource for our Tigers and Chippies. We all hoped he would be able to set up a maintenance organisation at Caboolture. Fortunately a ‘perfect storm’ occurred shortly after Sandora Aviation closed its doors, with a grouping of appropriately qualified people, and Complete Aircraft Care (CAC) is now in business with Dave as Chief Engineer and Accountable Manger. Caboolture has the Commonwealth Aircraft Corporation Mustang, Wirraway, Winjeel, North American Aviation SNJ, five DH Chipmunks and five Tiger Moths, some Austers and a mixed general aviation fleet of about seventy

aircraft, as well as a growing W.W.I fleet. With all that, a maintenance facility is a huge asset, especially one with the skills required for older aircraft.

David still wanted a Dakota, so he researched the available DC-3s, and came to the conclusion that Mike Spaulding’s Mareeba-based aircraft was the best option. This was the Dak formerly of Drage Air World. It has been around a bit; in W.W.II it was in USAAF service in New Guinea, then with the Department of Civil Aviation, Brain and Brown’s airline, Malcolm Long’s museum at the Gold Coast, Joe Drage’s collection in Wangaratta and North Queensland Warbirds. Its last flight was from the Gold Coast to Wangaratta in 1987 with Tony Lucas, Alan Searle and myself the wheel house.

David arranged for Troy Smith (T-34 owner and newly elected Caboolture Aero Club president), Craig Paulsen (Caboolture Warplane Museum Secretary),‘Speedy’ Gonzales (who now works with Dave at CAC), and myself to go to Mareeba to help disassemble and load the aircraft. This was far from a very pleasant prospect, as far north Queensland temperatures and humidity in the summer months are exhausting, especially if one has to work in the open and on top of an aluminium aircraft.

Our task required removing the fin and rudder, both wings and propellers, and then being involved in loading the lot onto three large trucks. The first morning proved we could not work on top of the aircraft in the

sunshine, so we decided to start at first light (approximately 4am) the next day and get things done. This turned out not to be necessary in the end as it became cloudy, so we could work in the open. Nonetheless it was hard, hot, tiring work, and the beer at the end of the day didn’t hit the sides. David had made arrangements with Mareeba Cranes and Heavy Haulage Australia, a dedicated heavy/wide load company from Brisbane, who kindly offered to assist Dave with his project. Cooperation between all parties saw the lot loaded by Friday night. The trucks departed Sunday morning and were due at Caboolture early on Wednesday. It was good to see the job finished, as we were all pretty exhausted, and doubted we would be capable of another day. We all jetted back to Brisbane on the Saturday afternoon.

David worked tirelessly and totally ignored two heavy storms to keep moving.

Naturally we came upon problems regularly, but David kept his calm and thought only in terms of solutions, not problems. His knowledge of the aircraft was very obvious throughout. An inspiration for him, as the stripping progressed, was that he got to see inside components and found everything to be in much better condition than he had expected. There is virtually no corrosion, and the aircraft is complete. He realises time estimates can easily slip back, but has a two year restoration in his plans. A lot will, of course, depend on the dollars, and he is not swimming in them. Ray Vuillermin

BELOW: The first wing is removed.

F L I G H T PAT H | 7

News

Another Dak Comeback The Douglas C-47 that was once a popular attraction outside a fast food ‘restaurant’, in West Lakes, South Australia, is set to return to the skies.

After 17 years next to the ‘Golden Arches’, it was sold to Jeff Morgan on 19 June 2000.

Since then, Jeff and his sons have been restoring the veteran aircraft on their farm at Karoonda, near Marama, South Australia.

This C-47, 41-18646 (CN 6007), first saw active service in 1942 when it was assigned to the 6th Troop Carrier Squadron, Fifth Air Force, in New Guinea. Here it received nose number 52, and carried the nickname ‘Irene’ in honour of the Crew Chief’s wife (he was the only married crew-member at the time).

Based at Port Moresby, it flew missions delivering supplies to Kokoda and Wau. The flying was dangerous with the crews threading their way between storms and mountain peaks to deliver their loads. The aircraft was the regular mount of Ernest Ford. He was a Staff Sergeant pilot, a rarity in the USAAF, when he arrived in New Guinea and flew a record 364 combat missions during W.W.II. In July 1944 the aircraft was transferred to the RAAF and registered as VH-AER. It never received a RAAF serial number as it was assigned to Australian National Airways the following day. It was converted for civilian use and leased to Guinea Airways from 1945 to October 1946.

In early 1955 it was registered as VH-EWF and flew with East-West Airlines. On 4 November 1957 it departed Sydney with 24 passengers but suffered an engine failure and crash-landed into a freshwater lake on the East Lakes Golf Course. There were no fatalities, fortunately, and the aircraft suffered minimal damage. It was repaired and re-entered service as VH-EWE. From this time onwards it changed operators several times before finally being retired.

In March 1983 it was sold to the West Lakes McDonald’s Restaurant to serve as a tourist attraction and dining area. The cockpit was fortunately protected behind a clear Perspex panel that saved it from vandalism.

Today, out on the farm at Karoonda, just a two-hour drive from Adelaide, the aircraft once again sits on its undercarriage and is painted in authentic W.W.II livery, complete with ‘Irene’ on the nose.

Though still without its wings, the aircraft has been restored with great attention to detail. The avionics have been restored, re-installed and are fully functional. Control lines have been replaced and the engines have been run.

Jeff plans for the wings to be painted and refitted by spring this year. If all goes well, around that time Australia could be home to yet another airworthy ‘Gooney Bird’.

Phil Hosking

CLOCKWISE FROM TOP: The C-47 in TAA livery outside the ‘restaurant’. [Daniel Tanner] Inside the cavernous fuselage of the Dak. The cockpit and panel have been returned to stock configuration.

The Douglas C-47 ‘Irene’ on the farm today at Karoonda S.A. [All Phil Hosking]

8 | F L I G H T PAT H

News

Refurbished Kaydet at NMUSAF Newly Restored Stearman PT-13D Kaydet on display at the National Museum of the U.S. Air Force. [National Museum of the U.S. Air Force Via Eric Janssonne]

Following a fifteen-month restoration, a Stearman PT-13 Kaydet is now painted as it appeared when it left the Boeing assembly line in January 1945, and is now back on display at the National Museum of the U.S. Air Force (NMUSAF). A major training type in the USA during W.W.II, the Kaydet was a standard primary trainer flown by the United States and several allied nations during the late 1930s to the end of the war. It represents a family of trainers that also included the PT-17, PT-18 and PT-27, which all used a common airframe and were differentiated only by engine and minor fuselage modifications. Following the war,

the USAAF phased out Kaydets in favour of more modern trainers.

This PT-13D (serial number 4217800) was the 63rd from last built and was donated to the museum by the Boeing Airplane Co. in 1959. It was on display in the W.W.II Gallery until it was removed in 2013 to undergo a complete overhaul. Museum restoration specialists removed the old fabric and cleaned the frame and structure. The wooden wing ribs were re-varnished to prepare them for the new fabric, and aircraft grade cotton fabric obtained from Europe was used to cover the airframe. The PT-13 is now back on display in the W.W.II Gallery, where it will be part of an expanded Tuskegee Airmen exhibit scheduled to open in February 2015.

The National Museum of the U.S. Air Force, located at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base near Dayton, Ohio, USA, is the world’s largest military aviation museum.

Eric Janssonne

DH 90 Dragonfly Sold The Shipping and Airlines Collection at Biggin Hill airfield has acquired de Havilland DH.90 Dragonfly G-AEDU from previous owner, Sir Torquil Norman. It is one of only two surviving examples of the elegant thirties twin-engine British executive biplane.

The only other survivor, ZK-AYR, currently resides in New Zealand, and is also maintained in airworthy condition. A total of 66 production examples of the four-seat Dragonfly were built by the de Havilland factory at Hatfield between 1935 and 1938. G-AEDU joins Shipping and Airlines’ eclectic stable of airworthy pre-war and wartime classics, including a DH.87B Hornet Moth, a Miles Messenger and a Rearwin Sportster, which are often seen at fly-ins, shows and events during the summer. Eric Janssonne

‘PRESS ON’ was a highly valued spirit in the RAF and RAAF 1939-45.

I

n RAF Bomber Command ‘pressing on’ meant going on to the target in bad weather through enemy defences, and when at the target going on for those extra seconds to put the bombs onto the target, rather than releasing them at the closest edge of the activity.

Squadron Leader Frank Lawrence DFC DFM RAAF enlisted in 1941, was a Sergeant Pilot in 1942, flew his first tour of operations in 1943, and by 1945 was a flight commander on 460 Squadron RAAF. This is an account of the flying career, not only of Frank Lawrence, but of men who trained with him and flew Lancasters against Nazi Germany.

The book is in two parts.

First, enlistment, training and an operational tour from March to August 1943, followed by time at 27 O.T.U. and a second tour in 1945, on both 467 and

460 Squadrons, including food drops in Holland and flying home released prisoners of war. In this Part, when a crew fails to return, as in 1943, they cease to be part of the life of the Squadron.

The approach paths of the bomber streams are provided, to illustrate the level of skill in night flying required and of the navigator in each aircraft.

Details of the experiences of crews are included, plus of the destruction inflicted on the targets, and 460 Squadron ‘Line Book’ entries add to the human side of squadron life.

Part Two presents what became known post-war of the circumstances of each aircraft loss and the fate of the crew. In some instances the German night-fighter pilot can be identified. Details are

included of the service of each

man, whether he survived or where he is buried or commemorated.

This is a detailed account of what was required of a bomber crew 1943-45.

There is also a section on the Service career of each of the men who trained with Frank Lawrence on No.19 Pilot’s course at 8SFTS, Bundaberg.

‘PRESS ON’ is available on • CD, $22.00 including postage within Aust • Book, $55.00 including postage within Aust • Amazon-Kindle, $7.99

Banner Books

122 Walker St, Maryborough QLD 4650 Phone: 07-4123-0255 sales@banner-books.com.au For your own security, please telephone your card details. We do not enter this in the computer.

F L I G H T PAT H | 9

News

Douglas A-26B Invader to Texas For the majority of its recent life and carrying the same registration number since the 1960’s, Douglas Invader N74874 has operated as a fire tanker in the north-western area of the United States.

Its last mission was with B-26 operator Air Spray in Canada. Built as a Douglas A-26B Invader, serial number 44-34508, it was purchased in 2001 by Jack Bazler who began its slow restoration at the Charles M. Schulz – Sonoma County Airport in Santa Rosa, California. Ten years later in 2011, the A-26 took to the air again, first flying at the local Wings Over Wine Country air show that August. Recently the Invader was sold to Scott Glover of Mt. Pleasant in Texas, and late last year was flown to its new home.

Roger Cain

The former firebombing A-26B, N74874 at Sonoma, it has recently departed for its new home in Texas. [Roger Cain]

Belgian Boomerang The CA-13 Boomerang replica, ‘A46-139’, made its first flight in European skies on October 18. Re-assembled by Belgian company Flying Aces Services & Training (FAST), the aircraft was testflown by FAST’s general manager Frédéric Vormezeele.

“The Boomerang handled as expected and it’s a fantastic aeroplane to fly! I believe it’s actually the first time a Boomerang has ever flown in Europe”, he said. Built by Sanders Aeronautics, in Ione, California, in the mid-1990s, the aircraft was sold by Platinum Fighter Sales to new owner Remko Sijben. Sanders built the Boomerang using an original CA-13 centre section, windscreen, canopy and firewall forward, while its rear fuselage appears slimmer than that of a genuine ‘Boomer’, due to the use of a modified T-6 Texan fuselage.

The replica was delivered to FAST at the end of August but, although re-assembly was swift, it required some remedial work.

“We did a few mods, including a stabiliser spar reinforcement, and had to rectify a few squawks, but it all went really well”, said Vormezeele.

“Matt Denning from Australia has been a great help, giving us valuable tips and a good briefing for the first flight.”

The new owner is keen to fly the Boomerang at airshows throughout Europe. It will remind European airshow visitors of Australia’s contribution to the Allied victory in W.W II. Andy Wright

‘Malcom Hood’ Mustang Flies Max Chapman’s North American P-51B Mustang 43-24837, (N515ZB) recently made its first post restoration flight at Idaho Falls airfield in the hands of John Muszala, owner of Mustang restorers, Pacific Fighters. This P-51B flew with the 9th Air Force’s 363rd FG out of RAF Staplehurst in Kent, England. It crashed in Beckley after the pilot was forced to bail out during a training exercise on June 10th, 1944. However it was restored as Berlin Express, the livery of the 357th FG P-51 flown by legendary American ace Bill Overstreet, famous for flying under the Eiffel Tower while successfully shooting down an Me-109 in 1944. Eric Janssonne

QANTAS B747-400 for HARS

The CA-13 Boomerang replica, ‘A46-139’, N32CS made its first flight in European skies at Antwerp Airport piloted by FAST’s GM, Frédéric Vormezeele. [FAST] 10 | F L I G H T PAT H

In a coup for the Historical Aircraft Restoration Society (HARS) Qantas is to donate its first Boeing 747-400, VH-OJA ‘City of Canberra’, in March. It will be the first 747-400 in the world to be preserved for public display and the biggest aircraft on show at the HARS facility at Illawarra NSW. The newly retired B747 holds the record for the longest non-stop commercial flight from London to Sydney in 20 hours, 9 minutes and 5 seconds,in 1989.

Bob De La Hunty, President of the Historical Aircraft Restoration Society, said HARS is delighted to be part of preserving a remarkable piece of modern aviation history. “Our volunteers, including many former Qantas employees, are overwhelmed. We expect it to attract lots of attention together with our Lockheed Super Constellation, both of which were integral in building Qantas’ international reputation.”

News

Fly the Flag

CLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFT: Steven Gale in his Siai Marchetti S211 jet trainer. Darren Craven in his Winjeel A85-440 formates on Matt Henderson in his CT-4.

Several T-28 Trojans flew down from Toowoomba Queensland for the event.

As Australia gears up for the 100th anniversary of the Gallipoli landings, the Australian flag will be prominent at ceremonies, airshows and memorials as we remember those who gave their all. A flag on the wall of the hangar or man cave is almost a pre-requisite and bigger is always better. Three Green, an Australian-owned and operated promotional products company from Albury offers a range of giant Australian flags up to fifteen feet wide. All are made of the finest sustainable and durable material and ready to hang, see them at www.threegreen.com.au. Andy Wright

[All Michael Jorgensen]

Warbirds Gather The normally quiet skies over Cowra were interrupted with the rumble of many radials in formation when the Australian Warbirds Association held their inaugural Warbirds Fly-In & Annual General Meeting at the picturesque NSW country town over four days in October.

Twenty five ex-military aircraft attended the fly-in event which was held in conjunction with a mass formation clinic, another first for the association. While the majority of aircraft in attendance were training types, there was a special visit by Graham Hosking’s F4U-5N Corsair. The Corsair was being ferried from Darwin to Point Cook by Peter Clements and was timed perfectly to allow Peter to attend the formation clinic and allow those present

the privilege of witnessing this magnificently restored aircraft, a deserving winner of the Grand Champion Award at Saturday night’s presentation dinner.

Common basic training types were represented with Nanchangs, Yak 52s, Winjeels, CT4s and Australia’s only T34 Mentor being joined by larger advanced trainers including T28s, and T6s. Those keen to see some jets weren’t disappointed with Stephen Gale doing plenty of flying in his ex-Singapore Air Force Siai Marchetti S211 and Charlie Camilleri making the short hop from Bathurst in his L39. The Temora Aviation Museum were also welcome attendees with their Cessna 02, CAC Boomerang and CAC

Wirraway making a late appearance after the museum’s flying day on Saturday. Other award winners were Judy Pay’s North American AT-6C Harvard for Best Piston Warbird and Charlie Camilleri’s L39 for Best Jet Warbird.

Planning is already underway for the 2015 event, which will be held in conjunction with the Temora Aviation Museum’s Warbirds Downunder Airshow in November.

Matt Henderson

W IN

NER 2014

MUSEUM FEATURES ibition • Qantas Founders Exh 22 • Heritage Listed 19 Qantas Hangar rs • 747 & 707 Air craft Tou Tours ck De ht Flig & lk • Wing Wa • PBY Catalina Simulator s • WW1 and F35 Flight nt • McGinness’ Restaura re Sto t • Founders Gif • New Exhibit s Coming

Find us on

The Museum is open daily from 9am-5pm (except Christmas & Boxing Day).

Tours operate daily and bookings are essential.

Phone: (07) 4658 3737 Fax: (07) 4658 0707 Email: info@qfom.com.au

www.qfom.com.au F L I G H T PAT H | 11

One of several aircraft held by the museum with documented combat history, Bristol Beaufighter Mk 21 A8-186 served with 22 Squadron RAAF in 1945.

[All pictures Steve Long]

The

Camden Collection

The Camden Museum of Aviation (CMA), one of the largest privately-owned collections of military aircraft in the southern hemisphere, has recently been undergoing a significant revamp. The museum’s heritage value – 22 aircraft, 200 engines and a myriad of other items – cannot be overstated but it remains closed to the public for the foreseeable future.

F

ounded by the late Harold Thomas more than 50 years ago, the museum, now located at Harrington Park, developed into one of Australia’s largest specialist aircraft collections. Representing all of our military aviation services - RAAF, Army Aviation and Fleet Air Arm - the aircraft were returned, where possible, to taxiing, but not airworthy, condition. The collection is renowned for the rarity of some of the aircraft in its care.

Nicole Thomas, granddaughter of Harold and his wife Verna, now holds the reins of the museum and, in a recent interview, she updated Flightpath on CMA’s status. Nicole, as a 12 | F L I G H T PAT H

practicing Heritage Consultant with 22 years’ experience and now specialising in aviation heritage conservation management, is well qualified for the role. Her recent projects include the restoration plan for the oldest Douglas DC-2 in the world, ‘The Uiver Memorial’, owned by a community trust in Albury.

“We have been rearranging the hangar to work on a couple of the aircraft in the collection and better display them all. We have brought the Avro Anson down from its ceiling display for maintenance and proposed restoration work. The de Havilland Sea Venom and Gloster Meteor are also currently under maintenance and plans are underway

to begin the restoration of the Lincoln cockpit. All this is made possible by our core of about thirty volunteers. All the moving has also allowed us to complete an extensive inventory of the aviation spare parts.”

Harold Thomas was one of the earliest pioneers of Australian aviation preservation.

His interest in aviation went back to the time he was a trainee with the original Australian National Airways, operated by Sir Charles Kingsford-Smith and Charles Ulm, where he was their first apprentice. He transferred to the Flying Boat Base at Rose Bay and later taught aircraft engineering at the Sydney Technical College.

LEFT: Fairey Firefly TT.5 VX388 joined the Royal Australian Navy in 1949 and flew from HMAS Sydney during the Korean War. It was later converted to an AS.V and then a TT.5 before being retired in 1966.

VX388 is the sole surviving RAN Mk V and the only surviving RAN Firefly with combat history.

Commonwealth Aircraft Corporation Wirraway CA.16 A20-685. Used as a training aircraft by the RAAF, ‘685 is in superb condition and is fully original inside and out.

DH Mosquito FB.IV HR621. Used by 618 Squadron RAF at Narromine, NSW, for continuation training, the remains of the aircraft were recovered by the museum in 1968. To date it is the largest restoration carried out by the museum.

F L I G H T PAT H | 13

RIGHT: Arguably the most famous aircraft in the collection, Vultee Vengeance EZ999 is the only complete example in existence and is, uniquely, a zero-time airframe as it was never flown before being declared surplus to RAAF requirements.

ABOVE: Fairey Gannet AS.4 XA334. While in RAN service, as an anti-submarine aircraft, XA334 is most famous for blowing its flaps off before ending its career in the barrier of HMAS Melbourne.

ABOVE RIGHT: Museum volunteers move the DH-100 F. 30 Vampire (A79-14) cockpit pod. The Museum has the complete aircraft but only the cockpit is on display.

BELOW: Carrying on the Thomas family’s legacy are Heritage Consultant Nicole Thomas and her son, Simon Fransen, who is an engineer and aviation enthusiast.

14 | F L I G H T PAT H

The acquisition of his first complete aircraft in 1961 was the inspiration for an aviation museum with engines and aircraft on display to entertain and educate the public.

The then Department of Civil Aviation (DCA) also showed interest and sanctioned the concept by allowing the use of half a hangar in 1963 (this was later expanded to one and a half hangars) at Camden Airport, New South Wales.

However, after fifteen years on the site, the lease was not renewed and, as was reported in the Sydney Morning Herald on 8 October 1978, the Federal Government ordered its removal from the airport. By then the collection of aircraft and artefacts, acquired from across Australia, had grown substantially and, as it does today, contained exhibits rarely seen in preservation.

At the time it also displayed aircraft on loan like P.G. Taylor’s famous Consolidated Catalina ‘Frigate Bird II’ (now at the Powerhouse Museum), CAC Mustang A68-118 (now Jeff Trappett’s well-known ‘Eclat’) and Supermarine Spitfire A58-758 (now airworthy with the Temora Aviation Museum). In 1979 the entire collection, including the loaned aircraft, was moved 10 km to Harrington Park (Narellan). The then new, 1,600 sq. metre building has been the museum’s home for the past 36 years.

Harold, his wife Verna and son Alan continued to develop the collection. For much of that time, when the museum was open, a lot of effort was made to enable some of the collection to be classed as ‘live’. Indeed, photos of the world’s only complete Vultee Vengeance running its engine are firmly

burned into the memories of many Australian aviation enthusiasts. The Vengeance is certainly one of the better-known aircraft that call the CMA home. The most extensive restoration to date, however, has been that of the de Havilland Mosquito. A former 618 Squadron RAF aircraft, the ‘Mossie’ was used as a trainer to save hours on, and maintain the secrecy of, the modified ‘Highball’ (a small bouncing bomb intended for use against shipping) aircraft flown by the squadron. The Narromine-based unit did not see action in the Pacific war. The remains of eight 618 Squadron aircraft have been used in this most ambitious, and continuing, project.

The military aircraft understandably attracted their fair share of attention from enthusiasts. Where else can you see the largest surviving remnant of an RAAF Lincoln (a structurally-complete nose section) or one of the very few Beaufighters on display? However, the museum also houses several civilian airframes unique to Australia. The Victa Gyroplane was a late 1950s attempt at an affordable way to fly but did not go in to production. William Gray’s Monoplane, unlike the Gyroplane, never flew and remains in its unfinished state. Again, these aircraft can only be seen in the Camden collection and, while not as ‘sexy’ to some, they tell a story of Australian design innovation.

Harold died shortly after Verna, at the age of 88, in 2006 and, sadly, was followed by Alan in 2007. As Harold aged, the museum’s operating hours dwindled until the doors finally closed with his passing. For some time

LEFT: Hawker Sea Fury FB.11 VW647 served in RAN front-line service from 1949 to 1955. After retirement VW647 was used as a wind machine by the Experimental Building Station at North Ryde, NSW. RIGHT: DH Sea Venom FAW-53 (WZ907) all-weather strike fighter. It served on HMAS Melbourne and from NAS Nowra. WZ907 is the most original and complete Sea Venom surviving and has been restored with fully functioning electrics and hydraulics.

BELOW: Avro Anson VH-AGA served in the RAAF as R9883 and later as VH-AVT & VH-AGA with Ad Astra. It spent many years perched high above the other exhibits on large stands. Brought back down to earth in January 2013, the Anson is in very good condition and is undergoing preventative maintenance and conservation.

involved in ensuring the future of this reno one, outside of the family, knew what the markable collection. future held for the CMA. As is often the case “Together with over 75 volunteers, all when museums hit hard times, there was aircraft, engines, instruments and associsome conjecture among enthusiasts and the ated documentation have been catalogued,” historic aviation media about whether the Simon said. aircraft would be sold off and that the mu“There has been speculation about the fuseum would simply cease to exist. ture of [the] museum, such as relocating the Happily, this is not the case, as the collection to another site, and this and other Thomas family and the museum’s volunoptions have been previously considered, teers have worked hard to maintain Habut there has been no suitable alternative rold’s legacy. Jenny Gould (Harold’s that meets our needs. Our main focus is to daughter) and great-grandson Simon assess, document and preserve the collecFransen (a fourth generation engineer as–is,1 and our current plans are to and aviation enthusiast) are also heavily3:11 tion 0153-B AVB Third Pg Sept.qxp 23/09/2014 pm Page

maintain our collection in Narellan. We are closed to the public as insurance, planning regulations and building compliance are beyond the scope of the museum’s resources to re-open at the present site.”

Flightpath certainly hopes a way can be found to re-open this historically important collection so its unique and prized aviation treasures can once again be seen and appreciated by the public. It is certainly an exciting prospect and we, like all historic aviation enthusiasts, wish the team at CMA the very best as they work towards ensuring the museum’s future. Rob Fox

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The Elusive

Itō

The wreckage of the Nakajima-built A6M2‘Zero’ lies in a swamp not far from the village of Kosipe. [MJC]

South Pacific Correspondent Michael John Claringbould

I

n a remote New Guinea valley, several village elders still remember the wartime story of a young Japanese pilot who wandered their valley seventy years ago.

He first enraged the locals when he stole their sweet corn, but later became friendly with them and even helped them clean the bones of their ancestors for a funeral. On his final day in the valley, he caused much mirth when he pointed to a nearby mountain and told them he would return after the war and name it after himself!

This is the remarkable account of the only Japanese airman to walk the Port Moresby end of the Kokoda Track. Itō Tsutomu’s bizarre adventure eventually returned him to Japan, via the Cowra prisoner of war camp, but not before a stop at one of Melbourne’s more stately homes.

The author accompanied a New

ABOVE: The author poses with a Goilala tribesman and his children near Kosipe. The mountains in the background are the ones through which Itō travelled to attempt to make Lae. Itō Tsutomu is the only Japanese airman to walk the Kokoda Track into Port Moresby during W.W.II. BELOW: Aviators and film-makers Graham Orphan and son James with Itō’s well-preserved A6M2 in the middle of Kosipe Swamp which lies, at 4,300 ft altitude, about halfway between Port Moresby and Lae.

18 | F L I G H T PAT H

Zealand film crew to the site of his downed aircraft, an A6M2 ‘Zero’ of the Tainan Naval Air Group, in September 2014 to document this prodigious tale.

The Nakajima-built ‘Zero’ still lies in a swamp at 4,300 feet above sea level and not far from the village of Kosipe. The nearby rivers are abundant with trout, and gardens growing strawberries are surrounded by mountainous scenery both exquisite and daunting. French anthropologists visit the valley occasionally to study burial pits of ancestors long departed.

Itō tried to walk back to Lae, from whence he had departed, after his forced-landing.

The villagers from the Goilala tribe say that, even today, Lae is a demanding three-week walk as there are few defined tracks. Surrounded by Allied patrols looking for him, Itō had little hope of reaching that elusive goal.

The last the Kosipe villagers saw of him was in late May 1942 when they guided him out of the area. They handed him over to another tribe to continue his journey northwards but, shortly after, he was captured. Today the Kosipe folklore recounts that Itō eventually made his way to New Guinea’s northern coast where he was rescued by a Japanese patrol boat. This is not the case, for he was captured

by Australians. The story of how this young Japanese pilot wound up in the middle of a forlorn Shangri-La is ordinary enough. His subsequent adventure is not.

On the morning of 17 May 1942 eighteen ‘Zeros’ from the Tainan Naval Air Group (NAG) had left Lae at 0720 hours and planned to rendezvous with bombers bound for Port Moresby. The formation, consisting of two squadrons (with flights designated as shōtai), was led by Commanding Officer Nakajima Tadashi.

Just after takeoff, Kumagaya Ken’ichi of the Second Squadron’s 3 Shōtai aborted and returned to base. This, however, was the least of the formation’s problems. The two Tainan squadrons flew separately.

Both were scheduled to escort ‘Betty’ and ‘Nell’ bombers from the 4th and Genzan NAG. Accordingly, at six o’clock that morning, just ten minutes after the sun rose, eighteen Genzan ‘Nell’ bombers were airborne from Vunakanau but, by 08:50, their planned rendezvous with the ‘Zeros’ had not materialised. After circling for some time, they headed back to Vunakanau and landed shortly before noon. Meanwhile, at 07:30, nine faster ‘Betty’ bombers, led by Lt Maruyama Saihei, departed Vunakanau to join the main formation off the New Guinea coast but they too failed to rendezvous at the planned time of 08:30. After circling for forty minutes, Maruyama also turned back for Rabaul where his bombers landed at 10:40. This coincided with the same time the Tainan fighters, who had continued to the target, had finished over Port Moresby.

First Squadron 1 Shōtai: Lt-Cdr Nakajima Tadashi, FPO1c Nishizawa Hiroyoshi, FPO3c Utō Kazushi 2 Shōtai: Lt(jg) Yamaguchi Kaoru, FPO2c Itō Tsutomu, FPO3c Arai Masami 3 Shōtai: WO Yoshino Satoshi, FPO2c Yamazaki Ichirōbei, Flyer1c Yamamoto Ken’ichirō Second Squadron 1 Shōtai: Lt Yamashita Masao, FPO1c Ōta Toshio, Flyer1c Motoyoshi Yoshio 2 Shōtai: Lt(jg) Sasai Jun’ichi, FPO2c Yonekawa Masayoshi, Flyer1c Suizu Mitsuo 3 Shōtai: FPO1c Sakai Saburō, FPO2c Kumagaya Ken’ichi, Flyer1c Hidaka Takeichirō It is clear that for whatever reason, the ‘Zeros’ failed to join up with the bombers. Perhaps a confused timetable was given or weather conditions intervened.

The Allied fighters defending Port Moresby’s airspace had ample warning of the incoming raid. Sixteen Bell Airacobras of the 35th and 36th Fighter Squadrons launched and were supplemented by a less experienced and mixed bag from the 39th and 40th. A detachment of 8th Bombardment Squadron Douglas A-24s was evacuated to 30-Mile Field, a satellite airfield still under construction, where they would

Tall, thin trees covered the area into which Itō stalle d his fighter, as seen here in this rare photo taken around June 1942. The airfra me later found its way through branches flush onto the swamp floor where it still lies today. The author welcomes any information that will identify the tail number of the aircraft.

F L I G H T PAT H | 19

hopefully avoid any attack. Other USAAF aircraft on the ground at 7-Mile were well dispersed. Combat commenced at 10:14 hours. Yamashita’s squadron concentrated on strafing the airfields while the Nakajima squadron engaged the Airacobras six minutes later before they too descended to conduct strafing attacks. The raid was Port Moresby’s 51st and the ‘Zeros’ swept in at low level from the north. They strafed 7-Mile and Bomana airfields and continued along the Laloki Valley while some ventured further towards targets of opportunity in the harbour. The audacity of the Japanese pilots would ensure a chaotic day.

The Airacobras that now engaged the low-level Japanese fighters included 2/Lt Jessie Bland flying a P-39F. Bland first engaged the intruders at 1,000 feet over 7-Mile where he encountered a shōtai of three ‘Zeros’. He fired and dived away but the tailend ‘Zero’ pestered him for five minutes before turning back. He climbed to 6,500 ft where another ‘Zero’, as it emerged from cloud, caught him unawares and hit his engine. Bland guided his crippled fighter towards the sea off Pyramid Point, adjacent to Bootless Bay. There he ditched about 100 yards offshore. The aircraft nosed over in the shallow water and Bland sustained a deep gash when his head struck the gunsight. Dazed, he made it back to the shore and was assisted to 7-Mile by supportive villagers and an Australian jeep. Key components of his aircraft were later recovered against the impressive backdrop of the tri-

20 | F L I G H T PAT H

angular-shaped hill but the engine block remains there today.

Meanwhile, 1/Lt Paul Brown had also taken off from 12-Mile Field to intercept the attackers. His Airacobra was damaged by a cannon shell that exploded near the star insignia on the outer port wing. The force from the explosion briefly threw the aircraft into a spin. Brown chose to put down at 30Mile Field and did so safely. He was later returned to 7-Mile, as a passenger in one of the evacuated A-24 Banshees, by none other than Captain Floyd Rogers who was the commanding officer of the 8th Bombardment Squadron. Engineers were later flown out to Brown’s aircraft where it was repaired and returned to service. In a separate incident, another Airacobra put down safely in a field at Beagle Bay but returned to a Port Moresby airfield later that afternoon when it was safe to do so.

Seventeen ‘Zeros’ had attacked Port Moresby but, at 10:40, as they reformed over the town for the return journey, one was missing. While strafing 12-Mile, Australian Bofors gunners scored critical hits on the two ‘Zeros’ flown by Itō Tsutomu and Yamaguchi Kaoru. Itō decided to try for Lae alone and broke away early while Yamaguchi rejoined the main formation with a faltering engine. Meanwhile, having re-grouped, the return track to Lae at first took the sixteen retreating ‘Zeros’ north-east to traverse the Owen Stanley mountains to the east of spectacular Mount Victoria. Both squadrons slowly ascended the savannah foothills

north of Port Moresby but Yamaguchi Kaoru struggled below and to the left of the main formation at an altitude of around 1,500 feet. He was having trouble keeping up so the other pilots took turns to complete lefthand circuits in vain attempts to assess the cripple from the rear. His engine eventually failed and he crashed into the jungle below.

The remaining seven ‘Zeros’ from Yamashita’s squadron resumed their formation in cloudy sky and climbed northwards over the Owen Stanley mountains. Nakajima’s squadron was also low on fuel – two of their ‘Zeros’ prudently detoured via Salamaua to refuel before continuing to Lae where it was discovered three of their unit had sustained bullet hits - Utō Kazushi (two), Arai Masami (one), and Yamazaki Ichirōbei (one) with the latter also wounded. A Kanga Force forward patrol reported on the Salamaua detours thus: “ . . . two fighters arrived and landed . . . while landing one plane got bogged and tipped up on its nose and it was lifted and put on the runway. Later both planes took off and returned to Lae. There had been up to 80 men working on the drome nearly every evening for the past few weeks and they have gravelled the runway, put red flags down both sides of gravel, and cut the grass on the drome. ” After landing at Lae at 12:45, the Nakajima squadron reported they had engaged eleven enemy Airacobras claiming five victories plus one probable. Reporting their successes featured less on their minds when they rallied at the command shack for per-

mission to fly a rescue mission to locate Yamaguchi Kaoru. All were unanimous that they should agree on the location of the crash before they launched and luckily there was consensus on that practical matter. The pilots made the case to their superiors that, since there was a chance Yamaguchi was alive, they should drop him supplies. Accordingly, a rescue package (biscuits, sweets, bandages, medicines, water bottles and cigarettes), all from limited supplies, was wrapped in a blanket. Sakai and Sasai refueled and flew back to the remote spot some 130 miles south of Lae in the mountains. Over the site Sakai tossed the package through his open cockpit and said a prayer as it descended.

Meanwhile, forty minutes after leaving Port Moresby, and also with a faltering engine, Itō wallowed flaps down into trees in the Kosipe valley approaching Mount Albert Edward. Itō clearly tried to find a gap in the mountains for his return to Lae but he knew his fate was sealed when the insurmountable terrain loomed ahead. Tall, thin trees covered the area into which Itō stalled his fighter. The aircraft fell through the foliage before finding its way through the larger branches to land nose-first on the swamp floor. Itō, cut and dazed, clambered from the wreck.

Itō walks the Kokoda Track

Itō contemplated destroying his fighter but realised the smoke would attract the enemy so decided against it. A first hand account of Itō’s subsequent wanderings survives

ABOVE: Future ace Nishizawa Hiroyoshi (left) flew as wingman to the Tainan NAG’s commanding officer Nakajima Tadashi on the mission. The latter appears photographed in Lae in June 1942.

BELOW: A Tainan NAG A6M2 warms up at Rabaul in April 1942 not long before transferring to the Lae wing. This ‘Zero’ had the tailcode V-158. The fuselage ‘donation’ markings indicate the fighter was purchased with funds donated by the Hayashi Forging Corporation.

F L I G H T PAT H | 21

courtesy of District Officer Captain W.H.H. Thompson who, on 8 June 1942, advised Australian New Guinea Administrative Unit (ANGAU) HQ: “I saw an airman in the vicinity of the Kerau Mission peeling potatoes in the village garden. The airman then proceeded north by Loleava towards Mount Dickson – he was a tall man with two guns, and said to have lost his ’plane in the Kosipi [sic] swamp”. Assistant District Officer for Goilala, Lieutenant Gerry Toogood, was sent to investigate. A subsequent report reads, “From Goilala Police Camp Lieut. Toogood went to the Kosipi Swamp to investigate a ‘plane crashed there. The Jap airman had got away before Lieut. Toogood arrived – he is reported to have been captured in the Ioma District by Lieut. J.B. McKenna. The Village Constable of one of the Goilala or Tsuwadd villages, Ivei-Lava, stated – When the airman was seen eating sweet potatoes in a garden they did not know who he was. They thought him just a ‘flying machine taubada [Motuan word for European]’ and took him to the village.

They then tried to explain by signs that they would take him to the Government but he would not go, so that they then tried the Mission – still he did not want to go – they were quite perplexed as to what to do. They let him remain in the Rest House that night, but next morning early they found that he had gone”.

Traveling by day, and sleeping in trees at night, Itō was led by villagers to Australian Patrol Officer Lieutenant Eric Owen-Turner nearly two weeks later. In a desperate bid to avoid capture he drew his Nambu pistol but was tackled by his native escorts. OwenTurner kept Itō under guard for the remainder of the patrol and always marched him ahead of the single-file column. On a later occasion, Itō actually became separated from the main party but strode straight into an oncoming party, surprising Australian Army officer Lieutenant Alan Hooper. There was a brief, tense stand-off before Turner caught up to explain the situation. Turner handed Itō over to Australian authorities in Port Moresby on 28 June 1942 whereupon, the following day, the prisoner was flown to Townsville for interrogation. Itō Tsutomu had just become, and remains, the only Japanese airman to walk the Kokoda Track into Port Moresby during W.W.II. In Townsville Itō first gave his name as Tetsuo Yamakawa. He claimed he was the sole survivor of a bomber that had crashed near Kokoda whilst dropping supplies to Japanese troops. He doubtless fabricated the information in the hope Allied authorities would not attempt to examine his intact ‘Zero’ for intelligence purposes. However, unbeknownst to Itō, Owen-Turner had already dispatched an ANGAU patrol to locate his aircraft. The patrol arrived at the site on 4 June 1942. On 7 July 1942 another report from Toogood was forwarded to ANGAU HQ, “Going forward tomorrow to Kairuku for onward transmission is the gun sight recovered from a Japanese fighter plane 22 | F L I G H T PAT H

The crew of a 4th NAG G4M1 ‘Betty ’ bomber take time out for lunch en route to Port Moresby in the first half of 1942.

He claimed he was the sole survivor of a bomber that had crashed near Kokoda which crashed in the Kosipi Swamp. Efforts to locate the remaining parts had been unsuccessful, so any missing parts for the sight must now be considered either smashed or irretrievable. Two fuel tanks have been recovered from the wings and appeared to be in fairly good condition, these can be forwarded at a later date should they be of any value to you.

Several belts of machine gun ammunition will be forwarded as soon as possible”. The Mitsubishi was nose-down and relatively intact but the remoteness and high altitude of the crash site precluded salvage and the wreckage remains there to this day.

Itō was later sent to Redholme Mansion in South Yarra, Melbourne, for further interrogation. During that time he suffered a bout of malaria for four days. Itō, after initially lying to his captors, eventually truthfully submitted, “ . . . I was strafing Moresby air base following Lt. Yamaguchi. AA fire perforated the engine. I decided to return to Lae by direct route. While flying solo the engine stopped and I crash landed in the jungle before crossing the ridge.” On 14 September 1942 he was transferred to Hay Camp, New South Wales, where he was quartered with civil internees. He volunteered to undertake road maintenance to earn extra money to spend at the canteen.

Itō’s initial interrogation report describes him as “docile, slightly despondent, unmilitary in bearing. Answered freely, made out Registration Form readily.

Evaded questions but once. Will use pencil and paper freely for giving details and diagrams”.

On 9 January 1943, Itō was sent to Cowra POW Camp where he was later hospitalised

for three weeks when the malaria returned.

He participated in the ‘Cowra Breakout’ during the early morning of 5 August 1944 but spent the first night pinned down by machine gun fire in a drainage ditch. The next morning he ran towards a sentry post ignoring shouts to halt. He was shot six times, sustained compound fractures to both shoulders and was taken to Murchison Camp and then the hospital at Goulburn, New South Wales. On 2 March 1946 he departed Sydney aboard the Daikai Maru bound for Japan. There he chose to live under the assumed surname Isshiki. Itō refused to participate in ‘Zero’ pilot reunions and was initially reluctant to apply for veteran’s medical benefits, as he was too ashamed of his captivity. He eventually applied, but claimed via affidavit that he had survived the war living with natives.

In September 2014 the Kosipe villagers were pleased to hear the full story of how Itō made it back to Japan after the war.

There is one remaining mystery about his ‘Zero’ however. The constructor’s number, 645, was obtained by Allied intelligence but not the tail number that would have remained clearly visible for years after the war. A record of it should exist somewhere, perhaps in colonial records, and the author would be much obliged for any evidence to reveal its identity.

Sources The author discussed Ito’s story with the Goilala villagers of Kosipe in September 2014. Other sources include Australian colonial records, kodochosho of No 4, Genzan and Tainan NAGs, USAAF squadron records and www.pacificwrecks.com.

Mailbag

Dolphin Details Hi Rob, Regarding the Douglas Dolphin article in the latest Flightpath, I was surprised to learn after all these years that, how the RAAF procured the aircraft registered NC982Y (which later became A35-3 in RAAF service) is still unknown, but there you are, yet another minor aviation mystery.

Presumably the RAAF purchased it from a US source, but the ‘Received from RAF’ reference is certainly both wrong and odd. Another odd point in the story is why the RAAF ever went to the trouble of purchasing yet another Dolphin, again from US sources, as late as 1943, given the limited

suitability of the type. This was the Dolphin which became A35-4 in RAAF service and was lost in No. 4 Communication Flight’s hands, but 4 CF was only ever a second-line unit and not operational as stated in the article. No. 9 Squadron was an operational unit, however, and all of the other Dolphins served with this unit for varying lengths of time. It should be noted, though, that No. 9 Squadron was not only based at Rathmines, but moved to Bowen, Queensland, in January 1943 when it operated under North Eastern Area control. There were plans to send both A35-2 and A35-3 to 9 Squadron at Bowen, but in the end only A35-2 was received there; that was in July 1943. Only limited use appears to have been made of it at Bowen, however, before it was allotted to No. 2 Flying Boat Repair Depot for overhaul in November. In fact the only reference I could find to it in the unit history sheets during this time was a flight to Cairns in September, and I expect that this was when the photo of it (as YQ-Z) together with Walrus YQ-S (X9513) was taken. I provided the authors with this shot, the original source being keen photographer and former No. 460 Squadron wireless air gunner, later air traffic controller, A. A. “Bill” Penglase. Regards, Dave Vincent S.A. Thanks Dave, as we prefaced, these articles come from the archives of the AHSA and as such some were originally published some time ago. An updated version of the RAAF Dolphin research can be found under “Australian Aviation” on Geoff Goodall’s invaluable website, www. goodall.com.au If readers haven’t looked at Geoff’s website, it is well worth the time.

DOUGLAS DOLPHIN 2 Dear Rob, Once again your excellent magazine had me researching my father Geoffrey Marshall’s RAAF Log Book for entries related to particular articles. On 1 May 1941 Geoff logged the following flights: Catalina (PBY)

1st Pilot W/C Garing DFC

Rose Bay to Rathmines

Douglas Dolphin

1st Pilot W/C Garing DFC

Rathmines to Rose Bay

Under “Second Pilot Pupil or Passenger” Geoff listed, “F/Lt Marshall crew 4” and recorded his hours as “Passenger”.

These are unusual entries in that they do not record the identification number for either aircraft – a rarity in Geoff’s meticulous records. At the time Geoff was posted to Air Force Headquarters (from February 1941) as leader of section TS5 in the field of instruments, and a new field, breathing oxygen for aircrew. There is no clue as to the purpose of the visit to

24 | F L I G H T PAT H

Rathmines, although he next flew Moth Minor A21-8 from Archerfield to Evans Head (1 Bombing and Gunnery School) and Amberley on 5 and 6 May 1941 respectively. There followed a hiatus with no flying logged until 21 August 1941.

Undoubtedly the pilot on 1 May 1941 was the highly regarded Wing Commander

(later Air Commodore) William Henry ‘Bull’ Garing. The date indicates the Catalina had to be one of the first four delivered to Australia in early 1941 and, according to your article, Dolphin A35-1 was the only Dolphin then on charge.

Yours sincerely Rick Marshall, Forrest, ACT.

A copy of the page from Geoff Marshall’s Log Book showing the May 1941 entries for his flight in the Catalina and Dolphin.

Mailbag

Red Devil Mystery Solved Thanks for the story, Minlaton Monoplane Marvel, which contained a lot of very interesting information about Captain Harry Butler I didn’t know before, and solved for me a mystery about the look of the aircraft. As a very young boy, I remember seeing the Red Devil with an inline motor and slim fuselage profile (see photo from early 1960s attached). This memory didn’t line up with what I saw in recent online searches - an aircraft with a radial engine and rounded fuselage, but being credited as the Red Devil belonging to Captain Harry Butler! The thought hadn’t occurred to me that aircraft could shape-change in such ways, but now I know they can. Also solved is the mystery of where this photo was taken. I had thought it was taken at Adelaide Airport but now realise that the building I saw in the 1960s is the same one in Minlaton presently housing the Red Devil, it too having undergone some shape-changing modifications with the addition of a curvaceous roof. The little person in photo on left is myself, my older and taller brother, Phillip, is on the right.

Regards, Tony Cox S.A.

Testing Times in the Wirraway Dear Rob, I thoroughly enjoyed the threepart history of the Wirraway in your excellent magazine. My father, Geoffrey Marshall, graduated in Mechanical and Electrical Engineering from Perth University. He joined the RAAF in 1938 in response to advertisements seeking engineering and science graduates to join as technical officers. They’d be known as ‘General Duties Technical Officers’, and do the same flying course as the sixmonthly intake of cadets at Point Cook and be given the rank of Pilot Officer from entry.

Geoff received his wings with an ‘Above Average’ rating. He applied to Air Force Headquarters to be posted to an operational squadron for a period to complete his flying experience. This request was granted and he was posted to 21 City of Melbourne Squadron as a Flying Officer and spent nearly all of 1939 in 21 Squadron, finishing up (just after the war started) as a Flight Commander having done a flying training course to become an instructor on the Demons that had been converted to dual control.

In his memoirs he wrote, “During 1939 we didn’t get as much flying as we had hoped for, saving hours for the Squadron, but still we did get to fly the other types of aircraft which were starting to come out including the new fighter, the Wirraway, from Commonwealth Aircraft Corporation.”

Geoffs’ Log Book records his first flight in NA16 A20-1 on 10 October 1939. That was one hour dual with F/O Wiley as first pilot.

He went solo in A20-1 the following day. He logged three more flights in A20-1 to December 1939. “After war broke out, 21 Squadron remained basically a fighter squadron but lost a lot of its personnel to new squadrons being formed. Volunteers were called for to go to Singapore with 21 Squadron. I put my name down at the top of the list but within a

week I was posted to No. 1 Aircraft Depot at Laverton in mid December 1939.”

The Log Book records his first Wirraway flight on 19 December 1939 in A20-32 as second pilot with F/Lt Hey (later Air Vice Marshal Ernest Hey) on a Flight Acceptance Test at CAC. On 20 December he did one hour dual with F/O Wiley as 1st Pilot in A2022 and went solo the same day. “The Log Book shows that I was flying nearly all day, every day. This test flying was for the acceptance of the Wirraway by the Australian Government from Commonwealth Aircraft Corporation and its subsequent fitment with armament and other modifications. In 1940 I accepted 127 new aircraft from CAC. Some of the time I was doing the factory test flights as well as our own acceptance tests.

All in all, with the subsequent re-testing, for example testing the guns and firing them into the Bay, I did 604 Wirraway flights.

Many of them were very short, a matter of minutes. The pace was hectic. I remember collecting an aircraft with the equipment officer from Laverton. Next morning the resident technical officer at CAC says: “Is this your signature for accepting an aircraft? It says “G.D. Magneto”! Of course my landing of Wirraways was improving. I could land them in all sorts of circumstances. It got me into trouble. I worked late one afternoon and flew until after dark and I was put on charge for not calling up a flare path.

We developed a handbook for the Wirraway on range and performance and different power settings. You didn’t have flow meters in those days, so you used to measure out of a 44 gallon drum into the left tank and fill the right tank of the aircraft. You would then fly at a steady speed at the setting that was required for that particular test until the engine coughed. That meant you had a measure of the fuel used over

that distance and you rapidly changed over to the right tank for the rest of the trip.

The Army had developed an anti-aircraft searchlight for establishments around Melbourne and they asked Laverton to supply some night flying aircraft over their area. I was to do the job using the NA16 that had been lying idle. I had to fly at about 12,000 feet, and they would try to pick me up in the searchlights. It was a little disturbing being caught in the searchlight and I had to do evasive action, which is essentially doing aerobatics at night time.

The tempo built up with aircraft production. I made arrangements with the resident technical officer, John Holden, to help me with the testing and delivery to Laverton. By the time I left they instituted a Test and Ferry Flight, where the sort of work I had been doing was kept on but in addition the aircraft were delivered to their destination by this group. In effect, this Test and Ferry Flight developed into the Aircraft Performance Unit that was built up during the war for doing not only serviceability tests but also the whole performance testing of new types of aircraft. The next step was that the APU turned into the Aircraft Research and Development Unit. I was posted from Laverton to Air Force Headquarters in February 1941.”

Geoff’s relationship with the Wirraway continued sporadically over his career. He was posted to London from 1943 to September 1945 and the first Log Book entries on 20 December 1945 after his return from UK list “Practice” for W/C Marshall flying Wirraway A20-657, Spitfire A58-303 and then Mustang A68-635, each for one hour. His last Log Book entry for a Wirraway is for 4 December 1958 when he flew A20-671 in the farewell fly-past over Melbourne. Yours sincerely, Rick Marshall, ACT. F L I G H T PAT H | 25

New Guinea Packhorse In the 1930s Guinea Airways became one of the largest air transport operators in the world, carrying more freight than the rest of the world’s airlines put together. In an article first published by the Aviation Historical Society of Australia, Ben Dannecker looks at the Junkers G.31, the all-metal tri-motor and mainstay of the Guinea Airways fleet of transports.

I

ABOVE: Cockpit of the G.31 with Captain Cannon in the left seat.

LEFT: This photo shows the robust but crude construction of the G.31

26 | F L I G H T PAT H

n the minds of most aviation historians, the name “Junkers G.31” conjures up visions of a giant three-engined behemoth, lumbering over steep, impenetrable mountain ranges of pre-war New Guinea, carrying enormous loads of dredging equipment from coastal ports to the inland gold-mining sites. This description contains the essence of the actual raison d’etre of the type, which traces its lineage back to the original Junkers J1 fighter of 1915. Professor Hugo Junkers of Dessau, Germany, had pioneered two design principles which have become cornerstones of aircraft manufacturing universally employed today.

Junkers had conceived the idea of a fullycantilevered wing as well as all-metal construction. These innovative principles were slow in gaining acceptance, and their true value was not realised until years later. The fact that the G.31was the first of the ‘heavy lift’ concept aeroplanes, civil or military, makes it significant in aviation history.

GOLD

In 1922 the Koranga Creek discovery sparked off a huge interest in gold mining in the Territory of New Guinea. When prospectors Royal and Glasson made their epic strike at Edie Creek in January 1926, the level of financial and technological advances in the Territory took a decidedly upward swing.

Men of vision and quick intelligence began to see the awesome potential of the era ahead of them. Such a man was C.J. Levien, who had participated in all the major finds, beginning with the 1922 discovery. A settlement was established at Wau, which was handy to both Edie Creek and Koranga Creek, and land cleared for a proposed landing site for aircraft. Levien persuaded a group of financiers to form Guinea Gold No Liability, in Adelaide, soon after the 1926 strike.

Junkers G.31

Captain George Cannon with his charge, Junkers G.31, VH-UOW, at Wau, 1938.

The almost impassable and dangerous mountain country that lay between the goldfields and the ports of Salamaua and Lae created the necessity for using aeroplanes to transport personnel, supplies and equipment between these centres. The first aircraft to land at Wau was the Guinea Gold DH.37 flown by Pard Mustar, in April 1927. The air link had been forged, and the era of goldfields flying had begun. Later that year, in November, Guinea Gold formed a wholly-owned subsidiary, Guinea Airways Ltd., to operate a fleet of aeroplanes in support of its mining and exploration operations.

The need for a larger capacity aeroplane soon became apparent and a total of four single-engined Junkers W.34 all-metal aeroplanes had been placed in service by March 1930, the first having commenced work in April 1928. These machines were each capable of lifting a payload of over 2000 lb, and looked exactly like scaled-up Junkers J.1s of the Great War, which in effect they were, save for the new method of construction using stressed, corrugated aluminium skinning. A larger model employing three engines was developed by Junkers and made its first flight in mid1928. This aircraft became the G.31, and a specially-modified version, using larger engines, strengthened cargo floor and detachable roof hatch was ordered by Guinea Airways. This was after Allan Cross, the company’s manager, had himself tested the aircraft in Germany. The need for an aircraft capable of carrying extra-heavy loads stemmed from the fact that large dredges would be required to mine the river gravel for gold extraction. Special dredges were designed, capable of being disassembled into components weighing no more than 3.5 tons, the normal maximum payload of the G.31.

George Cannon’s commercial licence showing the varied types he was licensed to fly.

F L I G H T PAT H | 27

A large, heavy piece of machinery being lowered into VH-UOV. Illustrating the length of items that the G.31 could accommodate. VH-UOU is the G.31 pictured.

PETER, PAUL & PAT

Originally, Guinea Gold had obtained leases in the Bulolo River basin, but later sold these to the Canadian Placer Development Ltd concern, headed by Charles Banks. To form Bulolo Gold Dredging, Banks had convinced his board of directors of the positive potential of known gold reserves, and persuaded them to accept the only method of extraction open to the new company – several large dredges and the biggest freight aircraft available at the time – the G.31 – to transport these huge machines to the mining sites. This was an unprecedented but (as the world found out) resoundingly successful basis for floating a new company. The first of the big Junkers trimotors was placed in service at Lae in March 1931. This was VH-UOU, “Paul”, followed by VH-UOV “Peter” in May. VH-UOW commenced work in June 1931 and VH-URQ , “Pat”, began operations in June 1934.

The unnamed G.31, VH-UOW, was the sole example owned by Guinea Airways, the

VH-UOW

28 | F L I G H T PAT H

three others being owned by Bulolo Gold Dredging and operated on their behalf by Guinea Airways. By November 1939 a total of eight giant dredges had been flown into Bulolo, two of which were then the largest in the world, weighing 4000 tons each. World freight records were continually being shattered, with the combined effort of the New Guinea goldfields flying companies (most of the capacity of which was provided by Guinea Airways operated aircraft), exceed the total freight flown by the rest of the globe, an unusual situation which continued until the late thirties.

Many notable pilots were employed to fly the G.31s, including Ian Grabowsky, George Cannon and Bert Heath, the latter holding undisputed claim to the title of the “most hours flown on the G.31.” Everything from live horses and cattle, to small motor cars, were carried in the cavernous hold of the big Junkers, not to mention thousands of tons of mining equipment. The heaviest items carried were the 12 foot long, four ton tumbler

shafts. Initially, Allan Cross was the only Australian pilot certified to fly with this overload. The “corrugated monster” soldiered on faithfully without major mishap until W.W.II arrived in New Guinea.

Following the Japanese advance on Lae, most of the goldfields aircraft were flown south, or to Wau, held by Australian troops. At 12.30 pm on 21st January 1942, a large Japanese air attack was made on Bulolo aerodrome. All three Bulolo Gold Dredging G31’s were destroyed in this raid, along with other aircraft and buildings. The fourth aircraft, Guinea Airways’ G.31 VH-UOW, had already escaped to Port Moresby and flew to Australia via Darwin and Adelaide, arriving at Laverton on 30th January 1942. The aircraft was then fitted out as an ambulance and serialled A44-1, served with No. 36 Squadron until an accident caused it to be withdrawn from service on 31 October 1942.

JUNKERS OPERATION

In service, the G.31 carried a crew of two, pilot and crewman. The latter, whose nickname was “bottle-boy”, had a number of tasks, which included: 1. On take-off and landing, operate the fuel supply wobble pump to provide fuel flow from the gravity-feed tank behind the pilot’s head; the two wing tanks only being used for climb out, cruise and the initial stage of the approach.

2. Ensure that the supply cock for the gasbottle located under his seat was on, permitting gas to pressurise the braking system, for take-off and landing and all ground manoeuvres.

3. While airborne, wiping the windshield free of oil and grime spat out by the central engine.

Engine starting was accomplished by rotating the flywheel in each engine nacelle via a crank-handle, and when the required RPM had been achieved (determined by a characteristic whine) the starter clutch was engaged, turning over the engine, until it, hopefully, fired. Controls for the power plants were basic, with throttles, magneto switches and fuel selectors the only ones

Loading a car into the hold of VH-UOW, one of the many large pieces of cargo carried by the Junkers G.31s.

JUNKERS G.31:

Loading the dismantled fuselage of Stinson VH-ABJ into the hold of VH-URQ through the roof-top cargo hatch.

Manufacturer: Junkers Flugzeug & Motorenwerke A.G., Dessau, Germany.

Total built: Thirteen. Four for Guinea Airways, plus others for Lufthansa.

Capacity: Freighter version – loads of up to 8000 lb.

Crew: Pilot and crewman.

Maximum weight: 18,740 lb.

Engines: Three Pratt & Whitney Hornet radials, each 525 hp.

VH-UOU. c/n 3011. Bulolo No. 1 “Paul”.

VH-UOV. c/n 3012. Bulolo No. 2 “Peter” VH-UOW. c/n 3010 unnamed.

VH-URQ. c/n 3000 Bulolo No 3. “Pat”.

[Details for the Junkers G.31 model as built for Guinea Airways and operated in New Guinea]

available to the pilot – no mixture or pitch levers being fitted, the big three-bladed Hamilton propellers having fixed pitch. The take-off was normal for a tail wheel aircraft, although no steerable tail wheel was fitted to the Junkers. Speeds for climbing and descent were the same, 75 mph, and performance was quite good in these regimes, even with an engine stopped. The approach to land was characterised by a long, flat descent angle, due to the absence of wing flaps, and a three-point landing was usual.

With the gas bottle selected on, the pilot could use his three way brake lever, selecting either side or both together, as required.

Loading and unloading was achieved by parking the G.31 on a special ramp area at each aerodrome, to permit a steam crane mounted on rails to chug up to the aircraft with the first load item and delicately place it inside the hold. Several natives were always on hand to lift off the roof hatch, which was not heavy, and then steady the cargo as it was lowered into the aircraft, after which it was secured with ropes.

These operations naturally took time, and the pilots were not cheap to have sitting around idle, so the drill was to park the aircraft in the appropriate space, shut down,

grab the seat cushions and get out, walk over to another aircraft, freshly loaded, (which would already have its engines checked and running by an engineer in the cockpit), get in and take off. The other machine could be any type operated by Guinea Airways – another G.31, a W.34, Ford Trimotor, Stinson Reliant or a DH-83 Fox Moth.

Pilots were expected to be able to fly anything - not type specialists as is the case today. One exception to this rule was the highest-time G.31 pilot, although he did also fly other types occasionally.

The Junkers G.31 saw a dozen or so years of service in Australian markings, and as the first all-metal multi-engined type and also the first dedicated all-cargo aircraft. The direct descendant of the G.31 was the Ju 52/3m, which it closely resembles, and in the mid to late fifties, Junkers trimotors were once again throbbing their way over New Guinea mountain ranges, in service with Gibbes Sepik Airways.

The hulk of one of these machines is still to found at a highland airstrip. No other known vestiges of the Junkers era remain there. No examples of the G.31 are known, although several dozen Ju 52/3ms survive, flying and in museums.

THE AVIATION HISTORICAL OF AUSTRALIA The Aviation Historical Society (AHSA) was formed in 1959 and has members in all Australian states and in several overseas countries.

Part of our Statement of Purpose is: • To encourage and assist the research and writing of Australian aviation history.

• To record the achievements of Australian aviation and its people.

• To produce journals relating to Australian aviation history.

Since the inception of the AHSA a Journal has been produced. Now titled “Aviation Heritage”, published quarterly, covers all aspects of Australian civil and military aviation and is now in its 45th volume. A quarterly Newsletter gives information on current events, and short historical articles.

Visit www.ahsa.org.au for further information and to download a membership application form. Or email: editor@ahsa.org.au F L I G H T PAT H | 29

The Folly of Numbers

By South Pacific Correspondent Michael John Claringbould

BELOW: The Japanese would have been amazed to discover that 70% of all U.S. Fifth Air Force losses in New Guinea were operational, and nothing to do with combat. This F-5 of the 8th Photo Reconnaissance Squadron was written off at Tadji after losing control on landing.

LEFT: The scoreboard of a P-40N at Hollandia in late 1944. At this stage of the war the skies were almost denuded of Japanese aircraft. The skill level of enemy pilots had been seriously degraded since the Japanese opened the Pacific theatre in 1942.

30 | F L I G H T PAT H

T

he word ‘ace’ is enshrined in both the lexicon and mythology of aerial warfare. Comparisons are readily made of ‘aces’ of both friend and foe, building reputations and setting myths in concrete.

Accurate aces’ scores will always remain among the more controversial subjects in the field of aviation history.

The concept of ‘ace’ was initially imposed

by U.S. and Commonwealth culture when a score of five or more enemy aircraft entitled the pilot to the desirable title of ‘ace’, thus admitting him to awards and public endorsement. The concept originated in France, during W.W.I. Neither the Japanese Army nor Navy Air Forces in W.W.II recognised or promoted an ‘ace’ system. Achievement in battle was emphasised as a collective achievement.

However, a question mark should appear over the term itself. Air combat is chaotic by nature, and it is often impossible to make a balanced judgment of individual encounters even when well documented. Discussion of the subject to date continues to be opinion rich and fact poor.

IT is more difficult to quantify Japanese operational versus combat losses in the Pacific, however it is safe to state that far more Imperial Army Air Force aircraft were destroyed on the ground than in the air, such as this Ki-61 set afire from strafing in late 1944.

It is rare that we are sufficiently privileged to be able to accurately compare combat claims against actual results. Often as the data is either simply not there, or its paucity means it is too complex from which to draw definitive conclusions. However, a particular theatre and timeframe enables a study of combat claims with accuracy. The theatre is New Guinea, and the timeframe is from mid March to November 1942. The comparisons are accurate, as aside from seaplane detachments, there was only one Japanese fighter unit then operating in New Guinea skies - the Tainan Naval Air Group (NAG). Furthermore, we are privy to precise Allied losses and claims in this timeframe, including the Kittyhawks of 75 Squadron RAAF. The records of the Tainan NAG are detailed, in many cases more so than their Allied counterparts.

Allied combats on all days in this timeframe can be accurately aligned, however the results surprise. Saburo Sakai is the best known Japanese pilot from this era, largely through post-war publication of his memoirs in English. Whilst Sakai is credited with 64 aerial victories, this number is a fiction, attributed to his biographer Martin Caidin.

This figure was never endorsed by Sakai himself, who is on record as being surprised by the total and querying its basis.

Here are the facts; Sakai scored only 4.3 victories with the Tainan in New Guinea (the decimal is due to several kills being divided equally among participants). He later downed an SBD Dauntless and an F4F Wildcat over Guadalcanal on 7 August 1942, pushing his total to 6.3, and he has one previous confirmed kill over China raising the total to 7.3 (his earlier three claims over China cannot be substantiated). He also claimed a B-17 on 10 December 1941 over Clark Field, but U.S. records don’t support this, or his other claims over Borneo and Java. When he returned to duty after recuperating from medical issues in June 1944, he made further claims, again none of which can be substantiated. Thus if Sakai is given full benefit of the doubt, it can be concluded he scored somewhere between 7.3 and 11 victories, a long way from 64.

Another famous Japanese ‘ace’ is Nishizawa Hiroyoshi. He is credited with varying numbers of aerial kills, up to 120, from different ‘authorities’. Nishizawa’s most

conservative score of 36 is recognised by the Japanese ZeroSen Association, a score officially granted him by the Imperial Japanese Navy in W.W.II. During his time with the Tainan NAG in New Guinea he recorded 25 individual and 12 shared kills, of which only 3.9 can be substantiated. When he returned to combat with No. 251 NAG in May 1943, he claimed a further five kills, and from June 1943 this unit ceased to record individual victories. He transferred to No. 253 NAG in September 1943, however neither did this unit record or acknowledge individual victories. Nishizawa reported a total of 86 definite victories to his Commanding Officer Okamoto Harutoshi when he departed Rabaul in October 1943. Newspaper articles in

ABOVE: The 105th Naval Air Detachment was created to stay behind to fight on from Rabaul after the Navy Air Force evacuated the area. This rare photo is the only one of the unit in existence.

L to R, front row: Yoshio Sakamoto (958th NAG), Yoshinobu Ikeda, Sekizen Shibayama, Jiro Nagai, and Katsushi Hara (958th). Standing left to right: Nobuo Miwata, Takashi Kaneko, Masajiro Kawato, Kingo Seo, Minamigawa, Shigeo Terao (958th), Isao Kochi, Fumio Wako, and Toshikazu Umezu (958th). Masajiro Kawato wrote his memoirs which border on fiction. He made a living by selling his books at airshows which claimed inter alia that he shot down Pappy Boyington. The truth is anything but, and former Zero pilots who were at Rabaul shunned Kawato at reunions for his colourful claims. [Zero pilot Yoshinobu Ikeda] F L I G H T PAT H | 31

LEFT: A definite claim which occurred over Guadalacanal on 7 August 1942 was re-lived when the two former adversaries met in 1982 in America. Left to right: E.E. Rodenburg and unknown (both members of SBD squadron VB-6), Tainan NAG pilot Saburo Sakai and SBD rear gunner Harold Jones.

Sakai is showing his damaged flight helmet to Jones, who wounded him that day. [Henry Sakaida]

A ‘Tess’ - the Japanese version of the C-47 - is shot down over the Philippine Sea. Destruction of enemy aircraft was not always this obvious.

In other words, for every fourteen ‘definite’ claims, only aircraft one was actually shot down.

Japan at the time of his 1944 death credit him with more than 150 victories.

In Japanese wartime culture, particularly when someone was killed in combat, the military went overboard to praise the deceased. Even where a pilot died of sickness, publicly the military would state that “he died heroically in combat.” If ambushed and shot down, a letter to his family would state that he “died heroically in aerial combat after shooting down one plane” When the Imperial Japanese Navy bulletin promulgated in 1944 that Nishizawa shot down 36 planes, such claims were never contested; neither of course were Allied records available from which to substantiate such claims. Nonetheless, such figures have been accepted as being the truth. And yet, when we compare Nishizawa’s claims against actual results, using the same calculus as applied to Sakai, we come up with a score of around twelve.

A more extreme Japanese case study is that of Army pilot Anabuki Satoru with an acknowledged score of 51. This number derives from a self-assessed score allegedly made on the basis of his diary. During the Burma campaign, his self-proclaimed score stood at 48, contrasting his official score of 30 kills. His greatest single action allegedly occurred on 8 October 1943 over Burma. On this day he maintained he shot down two Liberator bombers and two P-38s, followed by a ramming attack on a third Liberator. This action has been immortalised in Japan via art and articles, however the day’s score is not simply a case of optimism, but a complete fabrication. No matching mission appears in U.S. records for the day.

However it is grossly unfair to focus only 32 | F L I G H T PAT H

on the Japanese, as over-claiming was common to all sides. In 1942 the Tainan NAG lost a total of twenty-five Zero fighters in New Guinea to aerial combat, with most losses operational. That is the definitive figure; 25, no more, no less. The 8th Fighter Group operating Airacobras from Port Moresby claimed 45 ‘definite’ Zeros in this timeframe and about twenty ‘probables’, with 35th Fighter Group Airacobras claiming similar numbers. Aerial gunners in B-26 Marauders and B-17s claimed a further 226 Zeros. If you add the claims made by 75 Squadron RAAF Kittyhawks (who in reality shot down a total of three Zeros) and RAAF Hudsons, the total number of Zeros claimed by the Allies in New Guinea in 1942 is approximately 356. In other words, for every fourteen ‘definite’ claims, only one aircraft was actually shot down.

The first pure fighter-versus-fighter combat in the Pacific between the U.S. and Japanese Army Air Forces occurred when twelve Lightnings of the 39th Fighter Squadron took on eight Oscars of the 11th Japanese Army Air Force Regiment. This resulted in U.S. claims of ten kills (plus probables) and Japanese claims of two kills and two probables.

What actually occurred? Only one Japanese fighter was shot down outright, with another damaged, force landing on its way home. Only two P-38s were damaged, including one from a mid-air collision with a Japanese fighter (the damaged one which force-landed).

Why is the gap between claims and reality so wide? There appears to be little, if any, dishonesty in the claims; it is apparent that most pilots made claims in good faith. There are key reasons for the disparity however.

The first is that because aerial combat was so fleeting it was common for several pilots to attack the same enemy aircraft. Thus when an enemy was already damaged, and was attacked by more fighters, often separate claims would be submitted for what in fact was a cumulative kill. Second, in New Guinea’s humid tropical air, it was common for wingtips to produce vapour contrails.

Thus in high ‘g’ turns it would appear that an enemy had been hit when it was simply a vapour trail. Third, the Japanese Zero had a tendency to emit a thick puff of black smoke from its exhaust when the throttle was suddenly advanced - resulting in more claims from an adversary who thought he had damaged the engine.

The last reason, perhaps the most poignant and least understood, is also the most fascinating. Combat psychologists have established that human beings under extreme pressure will often see what they want to see. Given that their very survival is at

stake, this is hardly surprising, although how and why the brain works like this is still not clear. A quintessential example is revealed in a detailed combat report submitted by a key 75 Squadron RAAF pilot from an engagement to the west of Port Moresby on 17 April 1942. The destruction of his adversary is described in detail, including seeing cowling parts fall from the aircraft, albeit with the final admission that the claimant did not see the fighter crash but concluded that he did. In fact, the Zero only sustained damage that day; Goto Tatsusuke sustained a solitary hit which also holed his leg. He wrestled the fighter back to Lae where he crash-landed tail number V-152 and wrote it off, however after brief recuperation Goto would live to fly another day.

The RAAF report is truthful in the sense the pilot submitted what he believed he saw, however the damage to Goto’s fighter was superficial at best. It is a case study of human behaviour under extreme pressure.

RIGHT: A still from camera gun footage. It shows the Ju 88 shot down over northern France by the Hawker Typhoon Mark IB flown by Flying Officer J M G “Plum” Plamondon RCAF of No. 198 Squadron RAF. Cannon shells strike the fuselage of the Ju 88 which burst into flames and crashed from 50 feet shortly after.

BELOW RIGHT: The scoreboard of Louis Curdes of the 3rd Air Commando Group at Lingayen in April 1945. The scoreboard includes Japanese, Italian, German, and U.S. victories. The Italian victory was an Mc.202 claimed over Sardinia, the Japanese one a ‘Dinah’ he claimed on 7 February 1945 offshore Formosa. This feat made him only one of three U.S. ‘aces’ to have shot down enemy aircraft from all three Axis Powers.

The American victory represented a C-47 he forced to ditch when it failed to identify itself. No-one was injured.

F L I G H T PAT H | 33

ABOVE: A FW190 is shot down by a Spitfire 1942, gun camer a footag

On the other side of the ledger are many cases where no claims were submitted and yet the contrary occurred. A quintessential example occurred earlier that same day, 17 April 1942, when Commanding Officer of 76 Squadron RAAF, Squadron Leader Barney Cresswell embarked on a familiarisation sortie with another Kittyhawk pilot, F/O Woods, towards Lae. This flight constituted Cresswell’s first combat mission. They had encountered thirteen Zeros headed the opposite direction. It is clear from the combat reports that both sides were equally surprised. The badly outnumbered RAAF pilots took their only sensible option; a bolt for safety back to Port Moresby. It is now clear that

ABOVE LEFT: Sometimes claims work in reverse; on 17 April 1942, Commanding Officer of 76 Squadron RAAF Barney Cresswell, lost his life over New Guinea when he tangled with the Tainan NAG. In a combat not witnessed from the Allied side, he hit a Zero fighter flown by Sakai Yoshimi who later fell away from formation and crashed.

Cresswell received no credit for the ‘kill’.

34 | F L I G H T PAT H

Cresswell put up a fight before losing his life, as three Zeros expended ammunition from the encounter. A while after the Zeros headed to Port Moresby after the encounter, Sakai Yoshimi fell away from formation and crashed into the jungle. Either he - or his fighter -sustained damage from Cresswell’s guns, and yet Cresswell received no credit for the ‘kill’.

This era of history is full of such analogies.

The most iconic attack on the U.S. in W.W.II Pearl Harbor - has still to produce an accurate comparison of the day’s combat of U.S. versus Japanese aircraft.

Claims vary considerably, depending on whose side you were on, and in which theatre you fought; RAF intelligence deduced from

ABOVE RIGHT: Several Japanese flying boats were claimed in the Solomon Islands theatre by B-17 gunners firing at close range. Most of these claims indeed occurred and are substantiated by Japanese records.

Japanese army officers were sometimes aboard as observers, as seen in this photo taken in the observers’ area behind the spacious cockpit.

e was often not as conclusive as this ‘victory’.

captured 1942-43 records of the Luftwaffe 12th Flying Corps that German claims were not only accurate, they actually slightly under-claimed. Moreover, official German radio broadcasts after the fact generally reflected actual losses, with some exceptions; these were termed “propaganda nights” by the RAF. To what degree can ‘aces’ be confirmed from other wartime eras and different theatres? The early war over Europe is particularly problematic, as Luftwaffe records, although available, are mostly scattered and uncoordinated. A U.S. historian is working on the matter at present, however results are still years away. Gun cameras were introduced later in the war, however even they are inconclusive; for example film taken from the P-38 was notoriously unreliable until the camera was moved from the nose to the left bomb shackle.

There are countless examples of badly hit aircraft deliberately diving away and returning successfully to base. The bottom line is that the number of accounts where both sides’ claims have been accurately dissected is miniscule. When they are, and the eventual dissection of such history is inevitable, I wager that most ‘aces’ will be demoted.

Of course, the numbers game can be viewed as frivolous; numbers are not necessarily a reflection of the eminence or significance of encounters.

There is a cogent argument that the concept of ‘ace’ should be viewed as trivial compared to the more substantive factors at play in the great aerial theatres of W.W.II not to mention the Great War. Nonetheless, it would nice to know, one day, what numbers really happened over the world’s skies in days past, as opposed to multifarious fiction which has become enshrined in so-called ‘fact’.

Sources: ‘Eagles of the Southern Sky’, and official U.S. and Japanese kodochosho records.

Personal Effects

An Expendable Squadron The RAF’s Beaufort squadrons have always been a bit overshadowed by Fighter and Bomber Command. One author’s work could always be relied upon to right this wrong and The Expendable Squadron is no exception. Sadly, this is Roy Nesbit’s last book.

217 Squadron flew its first operations with Ansons before converting to the initially troublesome Beaufort.

The Bristol aircraft was eventually put to good use attacking Channel ports and convoys and contributing to the weight of munitions thrown at whatever German capital ship happened to be docked for repairs. Losses were heavy.

The greatest developments in anti-shipping tactics came in the Mediterranean. The squadron spent two months based on Malta in mid-1942 while en route to the Far East. It left to continue its journey with only eight of the original 21 crews it had arrived with. The remainder of the war, spent mainly in Ceylon, was inactive enough to warrant just one chapter in the book.

The author flew with the squadron as an observer from early 1941 to March 1942. While he also recounts the history of the unit before and after his arrival, he masterfully weaves his experiences (incidentally during the most hectic part of the unit’s service) with those of his squadron mates and the development of the war.

Long-term readers of Nesbit’s work will find familiar ground but this well-illustrated book draws together all previous efforts to present an interesting read on a squadron that certainly did its share. A great author’s lasting legacy. (reviewer: Andy Wright).

Roy Conyers Nesbit, $48.90 plus p&p, www.pen-andsword.co.uk

Riding in the Shadow of Death In the seventies, W.W.II veterans were aging but still numerous, and were often just living next door.

An inquisitive young neighbour and a receptive ‘old hand’ could do wonders for the former’s history education.

Such was the case for Chris Keltie and Bill North. The result is this book.

Bill North grew up in Cardiff and was working as a clerk when war broke out. Always pragmatic, he waited until his nineteenth birthday before volunteering to be a pilot. Bill trained in Canada and gathered a crew around him (including Australian Norman Jarvis) upon his return. They were eventually posted to 61 Squadron and, after several misadventures in OTU Stirlings, flew seventeen operations from mid-May 1944. On that last trip, a badly wounded Bill forced the crippled Lancas-

ter safely onto a French hillside. All of the crew survived.

This is so much more than one man’s war. The amount of information crammed into over 400 pages is astounding, but it does allow the book to be read by anyone from novice upwards.

The narrative also jumps around as the author provides as much context – progress of the war, bomber tactics and so forth - as possible. There are a few errors, but this second edition has clearly evolved from its predecessor. A nice touch is the author injecting his memories of interviewing Bill and his colleagues as the story progresses.

It reminds the reader of the effort required to keep this story alive and reveals the enlightening journey the author has undertaken to do so. (reviewer: Andy Wright) Chris Keltie, £12.99 plus p&p from the UK, www.chriskeltie.co.uk

Striking Through Clouds 514 Squadron RAF existed for less than two years. It was one of the few units to operate the Hercules-powered Lancaster Mk.II and, as part of 3 Group Bomber Command, specialised in bombing obscured targets.

Four hundred and thirty-five men, including Australians and New Zealanders, lost their lives.

Striking Through Clouds is the first book to collate the squadron’s operational history – from

the Battle of Berlin to Operation Manna – and present it in an easily accessible format.

The authors, from the UK and Australia respectively, came together when they discovered their work was complementary.

Striking Through Clouds is the ‘first-step’ in publishing the squadron’s history. It is, at first glance, simply a complete and accurate copy of the Operational Record Book. This in itself is of immense value to those who can’t view the original. The authors, however, have particularly in the case of losses, gone to great lengths to cross-reference every reliable source to elaborate on what, out of necessity, can be very brief ORB entries. The ‘extra meat’ does not end there. The closing chapters of the book contain well-written biographical pieces on seven aircrew (including the authors’ relatives) and add that perfect human ‘spark’ to the book.

Striking Through Clouds deserves a greater audience. The majority of its content is relatively straightforward so don’t expect a literary masterpiece (although the closing biographies are a great read). It is exactly what it says on the cover.

It would be remiss of any Bomber Command enthusiast not to have this in their library. (reviewer: Andy Wright) Simon Hepworth & Andrew Porrelli, $29.95 plus p&p (paperback) www.514squadron.co.uk email ajporrelli@live.com.au $4.53 (Kindle), www.amazon.com.au F L I G H T PAT H | 35

AVALON2015 AUSTRALIAN INTERNATIONAL AIRSHOW AND AEROSPACE & DEFENCE EXPOSITION

Tuesday 24 February 2015 » Modernising and harmonising the rules - regulation reform » Safety management systems » Human factors and fatigue » Pilot licensing and flying training – the new rules

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image © Karen Scrimes

CELESTIAL RE

Gary R Brown tells the story of the DH 88 Comet’s three returns to flight through to its post-war survival into preservation and a sometimes controversial restoration.

T

he first of August 2014 was a momentous day in the turbulent career of de Havilland DH 88 Comet G-ACSS ‘Grosvenor House’ as it finally took to the air again after a twelve year hiatus. Shuttleworth Collection’s chief pilot Roger ‘Dodge’ Bailey was at the controls for the historic racer’s return to flight from the extended and newly-levelled grass runway at Old Warden. Like most thoroughbred racing aircraft, the Comet had gained a reputation as a difficult machine to operate, especially in the landing and take-off phase of flight, and for that reason it was essential that any test flying was undertaken only in the most favourable of conditions. The responsibility and trepidation felt by Dodge must have been immense on the first flight, but with extensive preparation a full flight test programme was successfully completed in time for a display to be flown at the collection’s annual Pageant airshow on 7 September.

The racing career of G-ACSS has been well documented over the years with countless articles covering its exploits and numerous landing accidents in the guise of ‘Grosvenor House’, ‘The Burberry,’ ‘The Orphan’ and ‘Australian anniversary’. G-ACSS

38 | F L I G H T PAT H

recorded its last pre-war flight in August 1938 with Geoffrey de Havilland junior at the controls. During W.W.II G-ACSS was requisitioned by the RAF but was not flown.

Stored at Gravesend, the wooden airframe’s condition rapidly deteriorated, especially when the Comet was pushed outside its hangar for a period of four years of external storage – protected only by a tarpaulin!

The Comet was eventually acquired by de Havilland in very poor condition. In the immediate post-war years there was considerable interest in restoring the aircraft, but the various interested parties, including Fairey test pilot Geoffrey Allington and experienced engineer Ron Paine concluded that the restoration would be difficult and expensive and way beyond the limited resources available in the very austere economic conditions that prevailed. The airframe was missing many components, and many of the metal panels and fairings that were still in place were in very poor condition. Most alarmingly, the wing trailing edges had all but dissolved through water damage. G-ACSS was eventually transported by road to de Havilland’s facility at Salisbury Hall in Hertfordshire for further storage.

In 1950 the organisers of the Festival of Britain exhibition on the South Bank stumbled upon the Comet and instigated a cosmetic restoration returning the airframe to the livery of ‘Grosvenor House’, with the Comet to be suspended above a display showcasing Britain’s industrial heritage.

The renovation was undertaken at de Havilland’s facility at Broughton, with former DH technical student Tony Chalk overseeing the project. His task was considerable as the aircraft was in a very poor state. Unfortunately (in hindsight) to save weight for the suspension, the aircraft’s Gipsy engines and fuel tanks were removed and the fuselage was almost entirely stripped of the remaining internal components. To make matters worse, the main spars had holes drilled through them to take the suspension mountings. At this time, aircraft preservation was very much in its infancy, with only a handful of historic aircraft on display, such as the Alcock and Brown Vickers Vimy at the Science Museum in London, and the idea of returning an aircraft like the Comet to flight was almost inconceivable. The concern for the future of the Comet would have been limited to a select few forward-thinkers,

RESTITUTION ABOVE: The cramped, modern equipment fitted cockpit of the Comet. [Darren Harbar Photography] BELOW: Shuttleworth ‘s chief pilot Roger ‘Dodge’ Bailey at the controls of the historic DH 88 Comet racer. Beautifully captured by Darren Harbar.

LEFT: Notables from Boscombe Down’s Empire Test Pilot’s School, the Shuttleworth Collection and BAe Hatfield gather with the two de Havilland Comet types at Hatfield. [James Kighly]

F L I G H T PAT H | 39

as the general consensus of opinion at the time was that the Comet was just another old aircraft, in very poor condition.

Sadly, again, after its five months on display, no one had the foresight to reunite the removed components with the airframe and these were lost forever. The Comet was transported to Leavesden, the home of DH’s engine division, where it was placed on display within the company’s showroom. In 1965 the Comet left Leavesden to feature in the static park alongside a pair of BOAC DH 106 Comet airliners at the company’s annual open day held at Hatfield, the first occasion both de Havilland Comet types, the racer and the airliner, were seen together.

In October 1965 G-ACSS was donated to the Shuttleworth Collection, eventually arriving on 19 October for static display, where it proved to be very popular, the tidy external appearance belying its true condition. In the early seventies, initial thoughts about an eventual restoration to airworthy condition were explored, and an application was made to the Transport Trust organisation for some assistance. The Shuttleworth Collection was fortunate to receive some initial funding in 1973 and, with the creditability of the Transport Trust behind the restoration, fund raising began to gather some momentum in the UK, with approaches being made as far afield as Australia. At the time it was expected that around £20,000 - £25,000 (equivalent to A$38,000 – A$48,000) would be enough to fund the restoration!

40 | F L I G H T PAT H

The restoration costs came close to bankrupting the Shuttleworth Collection Initial restoration began with a full survey of the airframe, undertaken by the collection’s own engineering team, then led by Wally Berry. It was quickly realised that the project was too big for the engineering team to do alone, and outside assistance was gratefully received from around fifty outside organisations, including Ted Hawes from Hants and Sussex Aviation, who offered to rebuild the Gipsy Queen II’s that took the place of the unobtainable Gipsy VI engines. (The Gipsy Queen II is almost identical to the Gipsy VI except for its splined crankshaft.) Dowty’s would rebuild the pioneering retractable undercarriage, and the other main supporter was Hawker Siddeley Aviation at Hatfield (where the Comets had been built) whose help was immeasurable. Repairs to the aircraft’s one piece wing were progressing well, with much of deteriorated timber replaced or repaired, including the suspension holes that were previously drilled through the spar. Notably, the spruce used in this work had also been donated, and had been flown over from Canada!

The missing internal components had to be researched, designed and remade from scratch as most were unique to the DH 88. It is worth recalling that the Comet was originally built in a very short time, as a bespoke racing aircraft, essentially to fly one race.

Many of the choices made by de Havilland in 1934 were neither intended for long-term operation, or standard, and while this level of technology was state of the art for late 1934, it was obsolete, and lost by W.W.II. At this stage it was decided to incorporate some modifications to the aircraft’s systems and controls that would aid safer operation.

These included strengthening and adding a motor to raise and lower the Comet’s retractable undercarriage, which had been originally actuated by a hand-wound cable-drum.

The motor chosen for the new system originally powered the sliding canopy of a Blackburn Buccaneer! Constant-speed variablepitch de Havilland propellers were fitted in place of the original French Ratier propellers used in 1934 (themselves replaced in the

Comet’s late thirties career). The Ratiers which would be much more difficult to operate as fine pitch could not be selected for approach and landing, as to select fine pitch they had to be hand pumped on the ground with a bicycle pump prior to take off. This fact made a go-around after a baulked landing that much more perilous. The revised propellers chosen had been originally fitted to Percival Proctors. These were cut down by Hawker Siddeley Dynamics to match the Comet’s performance criteria. A host of smaller modifications were also undertaken, including the provision of a tail wheel rather than the skid for operation on hard surface runways.

As the project progressed, the highly experienced engineer and pilot Ron Paine was brought in to coordinate the project. (Ron is worthy of a book in his own right. His apprenticeship was sponsored by Sidney Camm, he was assistant to Barnes Wallis at Brooklands, and later he was part of record breaker John Cobb’s ill-fated Water Speed Crusader team, as well as major roles restoring the Comet and the Percival Mew Gull GAEXF.) In 1979 the Comet fuselage was transported to Hatfield were a dedicated team could concentrate their efforts with greater ease. With the fiftieth anniversary of the Mildenhall to Melbourne air race looming, a concerted effort to get the Comet airworthy in time for this commemoration became the new goal of the team, while further

modifications to the radio and navigation systems were instigated. Various routes and staging points were planned for a commemoration flight, however this was announced to a very mixed response from both enthusiasts and the aviation media who were highly sceptical about its chances of success.

Finally it appeared that G-ACSS was beginning to take shape again, and the fuselage had finally been mounted onto the wing, with a myriad of re-manufactured and restored components now regularly arriving at Old Warden ready for installation. But, just as the restoration seemed to turn a corner, problems with the diagonal wing planking started to appear. Under the fabric, the

moisture that the airframe had absorbed whilst in external store at Gravesend was now causing serious problems to the glued surfaces, with some small areas of de-lamination being discovered. Very wisely – although with huge frustration – it was decided to separate the fuselage from the wing again to facilitate a thorough examination, and after doing so, it was determined that the only effective way in which the wing could be satisfactorily repaired would be for the entire top skin to be removed.

Then, on 11 November 1982, a bigger blow fell. Reluctantly, the Trustees of the Shuttleworth Collection stopped the restoration programme because the spiralling costs and

The Comet on AAAA float for the Melbourne Moomba parade on 11 March 1985. [Peter Kelly]

The Shuttleworth Collection’s cheif pilot ‘Dodge’ Bailey eases the throttles forward to take the Comet back into the skies over Old Warden. G-ACSS is a flying represention of the golden era of British aviation [Gary R Brown]

F L I G H T PAT H | 41

The de Havilland DH 88 Comet G-ACSS ‘Grosvenor House’- picture Darren Harbar Photography

the poor state of the Collection’s finances simply could not fund any further progress.

At this time the collection was forced to dispose of the Spitfire PR XI, Avro Anson and Auster AOP 9 to balance the books. It was a very difficult time for the collection and the Comet project specifically took considerable flack for the unpopular decision to auction the aircraft. After months of uncertainty the project was transferred to the Royal Aircraft Establishment at Farnborough and the Comet was transported there on 5 May 1983. With this move to Hampshire, the work on the wing could recommence. A specially-built jig was constructed to keep the wing true whilst 44 | F L I G H T PAT H

the structure was repaired, and a team of well-supervised apprentices took on the project as part of their training. All the remedial work was completed and the aircraft was structurally complete by the beginning of 1985. To celebrate the 150th anniversary of the state of Victoria, G-ACSS was flown to Melbourne in the hold of a Boeing 747 freighter for a three-month tour at various locations prominent in the history of G-ACSS. (The original MacRobertson Air Race of 1934 had been to celebrate Victoria’s centenary.)

On return to the UK the wing returned to Farnborough whilst the fuselage headed to Hatfield, and after two further years of work

Darren Harbar Photography

G-ACSS is a fitting tribute to those pioneers who strived to go farther, faster and longer the completed Comet was finally rolled out of the hangar on 28 March 1987. After taxi trials and the completion of numerous engine and system checks, the Comet was cleared for flight testing. On Sunday 17 May, Shuttleworth pilot George Ellis took the Comet aloft for its first flight since July 1938. A week later the Comet made a tumultuous return to RAF Mildenhall as the main attraction at the huge United States Air Force-hosted Air Fete display, which in those days was a popular highlight of the UK display season.

In early July 1987 the aircraft’s tricky landing characteristics resulted in a ground loop at Hatfield, with the port undercarriage

After damage sustained in a ground loop, the Comet under repair at Hatfield on 27 September 1987. [Roland Jahne]

collapsing, leading to the wing, aileron and propeller being damaged, but thankfully the pilot was unhurt. The castoring tailwheel modification was revised so that the tail wheel could be locked, and the braking system was also modified, as the brakes had been found to be barely adequate, and caused problems while taxying and carrying out power checks. A small spoiler was also added to the starboard aileron trailing edge which would improve the aileron trim. The air intakes were also enlarged at this time, as cylinder head temperatures were higher than was desired. The volunteer team rolled their sleeves up again to get the Comet back into the air, and by the summer of 1988 the Comet had resumed display duties.

At the Shuttleworth Collection’s ‘Moth Day’ in May 1989, the Comet flew with its famous descendant, the Mosquito RR299, in one of the most memorable displays of that year, and was the only occasion ever that the two types were flown together. In 1992 G-ACSS formated with DH106 4C Comet XS235 ‘Canopus’ on a memorable flight from Boscombe Down to Hatfield, another historic, uniquely de Havilland moment.

Four pilots flew G-ACSS during this period: George Ellis, Stuart Waring, John Lewis and Angus McVittie, while Ron Paine continued to supervise the operation of the Comet.

(At the time of writing, sadly John, Angus and Ron have since passed away). On 5 September 1993, G-ACSS made its last landing at Hatfield, then being hangared with London Business Aviation. The axe was about to fall on the famous de Havilland airfield. Initially the collection tried to find an alternative base for the Comet, with Cranfield looking like a good prospect, as the Collection had always had close ties with this airfield through the relationship with the College of

Aeronautics, but sadly the proposal fell through. In the end the Collection decided to ground the Comet and return it to Old Warden and, as the airfield was regarded as too marginal for the Comet to operate from, it was only shown with occasional taxying demonstrations and static displays, re-fitted with a tailskid for the grass. At Hatfield it had operated from long, wide, hard tarmac runways, and the limited grass strips at Old Warden were not viable. By the end of May 1994 the Comet was back at Old Warden.

The Comet proved a popular exhibit, especially when positioned on the flight line, and eventually the collection decided to realign and lengthen the runway, with a view to operating the Comet from Old Warden.

On 28 October 2002, with George Ellis in command, the Comet flew again, but sadly the starboard undercarriage collapsed on landing, resulting in damage to the wing and propeller. The Comet was quickly repaired, but it was decided that the undercarriage needed to be modified before another flight was attempted. The design was examined and a proposal was made to the CAA for the modifications. This turned into a lengthy process, but eventually the approval was gained and a stiffer, more positively-located undercarriage in the lowered position is the result.

By the end of 2012 the Comet was just about ready for another flight. A series of retraction tests were satisfactory completed, reinforcing the decision to modify the undercarriage, much to the relief of the expectant (if slightly apprehensive) chief pilot Dodge Bailey. The only delay now to the flight test was the continuing work required to smooth out the bumpy runway. Finally, in August 2014, the Comet took to the air again from runway 21.

There has always been a strong belief by some that G-ACSS should really not be flown, as its historical significance rendered it far too valuable to be risked in the air, but looking beyond the shiny paintwork it is important to remember that the Comet before restoration was just a rotting shell, with all its internal organs missing. Had G-ACSS been in complete and original condition, the author would also have questioned the decision to restore the Comet to fly. It may not be a time capsule of originality - given its many modern components, but as a flyer, G-ACSS represents a golden era of British aviation.

The restoration costs came close to bankrupting the Shuttleworth Collection, with costs spiralling way beyond the naive original estimates calculated in 1971, but the ambitious restoration can be viewed in the same light as Vulcan XH558, - hundreds of companies and individuals have helped return G-ACSS back into air. Many of those have subsequently ceased to exist, so keeping G-ACSS airworthy, in the view of the author, is a fitting tribute to those pioneers who strived to go farther, faster and longer, including all those who persevered to get the aircraft back into the air as well. Like all thoroughbred racing machines, the Comet is challenging for the nominated pilots (Dodge Bailey and Paul Stone) but in 2014 the aircraft is better placed than it has ever been for regular and safe operation.

Forewarned is forearmed, and so, armed with the excellent pilot’s notes compiled by former Comet pilot George Ellis, and with revisions to the undercarriage, the provision of a gunmetal-tipped lockable tail skid for operation on grass runways, and a host of engine and undercarriage checks behind them, the Comet is cleared for flight, ready to open another chapter in its complex history.

F L I G H T PAT H | 45

Here C.W.A. Scott and Campbell Black land their Comet G-ACSS at Charleville. At this stage they knew they were in the lead by quite a way, but their engines were suffering, and they were to be delayed here for repairs.

Charleville Comets Recently re-found images from 1934 Queensland explained by Contributing Editor James Kightly.

A

set of photographs have recently been presented by the State Library of Queensland of the 1934 MacRobertson Air Race aircraft passing through Charleville, and a number have rarely been seen since they were taken.

Charleville was important as a Mandatory Stop in the race. These stops were (after the start at Mildenhall) Baghdad, Allahabad, Singapore, Darwin, Charleville and the finish at Melbourne. Of these, Charleville was probably the most unexpected, but had everything to do with its location and ability to receive and send on the race aircraft, successfully as it turned out. It was also a great event for the outback town, and liter-

46 | F L I G H T PAT H

ally put the place on the map for those following the event around the world.

The eventual winning Comet G-ACSS arrived at 08.52 on the 23 October, and departed at 10.45 and the official Control Point Score Sheet noted “9 hours on starb motor”.

Much less dramatically, Comet G-ACSR flown

by Owen Cathcart Jones and Ken Waller arrived at 09.00 on the 25th and departed at 10.04, with ‘nil’ remarks on the official sheet.

[All images from the State Library of Queensland collection. The majority are from the Courier Mail & Telegraph collection, unless otherwise indicated. With thanks to Phil Vabre.]

ABOVE: Pilot C.W.A. Scott is assisted across the tarmac on his arrival at Charleville 1934 and his very evident fatigue was taking a toll on both he and his co-pilot.

BELOW: Nevertheless the people who had turned out had to be acknowledged, and they with Scott, here, being greeted by a large crowd.

ABOVE: The second Comet lands at Charleville a couple of days after Scott and Black had passed through. This rare image just before touchdown shows clearly how challenging the Comet was to land for these tired airmen.

LEFT: A composed looking Owen Pilot Cathcart Jones with his pith helmet as he stand on the Comet’s wing.

ABOVE: Not knowing the delay they were about to face due to their starboard engine, Scott and Campbell Black grab sandwiches and tea made ready for them in a tent on the airfield. Scott’s haste can be seen by the drip from his teacup!

ABOVE: Scott consults with an un-named official, confirming timings and checks, while the Comet is refueled and the engine problems are probed.

[State Library of Queensland Collection]

RIGHT: Although they must have been deafened, dirty and tired, both Owen Cathcart Jones and Ken Waller look very relaxed in front of a car on the Charleville airport.

F L I G H T PAT H | 47

‘Unbroken’ Gold Coast B-24 Historian, author and B-24 Liberator expert Bob Livingstone was engaged to provide expertise and accuracy during the flying sequences of the new W.W.II epic recently filmed in Australia. Bob gives Flightpath an exclusive behind-the-scenes view of Unbroken, a film adapted from Laura Hillenbrand’s bestseller and the latest production from director and producer Angelina Jolie.

48 | F L I G H T PAT H

MAIN: The 11th Bomb Group B-24 Green Hornet in which the crew bomb Nauru. It is badly damaged by Zero attacks and crash lands on return to base.

[Author’s Collection]

RIGHT: The author on the set of Unbroken in a Sound Stage at Warner Brothers Movie World on Queensland’s Gold Coast. Super Man on the compressed air gimbal behind was used almost entirely for internal filming. The pink spots on the ‘tent’ are for CGI registration. [Author]

“A

Duck walks into a bar…” was on the lips of Liberator Green Hornet’s co-pilot just before it spiralled into the Pacific, starting Louie Zamperini’s ordeal through the hell of 47 days in an open raft then as prisoner of the Japanese for the following two years.

‘Unbroken’, the new Universal Studios W.W.II movie, was shot in studios and locations in Sydney, Moreton Bay and the Fox Studios on the Gold Coast of Queensland over 2013 and 2014. The film is the story of Louis Silvie Zamperini, an Italian-American Olympic runner in the 1936 Berlin Games, and his trials in W.W.II. A notable figure of American heroism, he died after the film went into production in July 2014 aged 97. In W.W.II he joined the USAAF and, as a Bombardier, was posted to a B-24 Bomber Squadron of the 11th BG in the South Pacific. In April 1943 the B-24D 41-23938, SUPER MAN that they were flying was badly damaged by Zeros during a bombing mission against Nauru, with members of the crew being wounded and one killed.

The damage caused the aircraft to lose its hydraulics, flaps and brakes, and a landing was only attempted when Louie suggested the brilliant idea of using crew parachutes trailed from the waist gunners’ positions to bring the ailing B-24 to a stop short of the end of the runway. In the event they were not needed, as a shot-out tyre caused the aircraft to ground-loop, just short of parked B-24s.

OPPOSITE PAGE: Louis Zamperini a few months before his death on 2 July 2014. [Universal Pictures] ABOVE: The flight deck set provided by the B-24 Memorial Fund in Werribee used for filming the cockpit scenes.

The Visual Effects crew built a flight and command deck fuselage around the cockpit. [Author] LEFT: Jack O’Connell (Louis Zamperini) features on the Australian poster for the movie; the US poster is much more graphic. [Universal Pictures] BELOW: The B-24 Super Man after Louie’s accident, patched up, flown to Hawaii, repaired and modified with a nose turret. [Author’s Collection]

F L I G H T PAT H | 49

ABOVE: Louie is trapped as the shattered fuselage of the Green Hornet begins to sink into the Pacific. This was filmed in the huge water set at Movie World and utilised the cropped fuselage of a real B-25.

[Universal Pictures]

RIGHT: Waist gunners in the set in a scene from the movie with CGI in place. The 50-calibre machine guns in the waist were the real thing, firing blanks, and the noise in the sound stage was incredible. [Universal Pictures]

The Super Man set showing the B&D Roller Doors bought at Bunnings; from the inside they showed the right profile for B-24 bomb doors.

Fibreglass 500lb bombs are ready to be hung in the bomb bay. [Author]

50 | F L I G H T PAT H

Late the next month the crew were called out on a mercy mission. A B-24 had gone down in the Pacific on a ferry flight from Hawaii to Canton Island on its way to Australia. They were assigned an unloved, nonoperational B-24D, the war weary Green Hornet, 41-23972. It had been flown back to Hawaii after a tour with the 307th BG and although it had much equipment removed to keep other aircraft operational, it still mushed along tail low.

The crew were not happy flying over so much ocean at low level in an aircraft they didn’t trust, but orders were orders, so they saddled up and took off after DAISY MAE, which had also been assigned to the search mission, heading for separate areas near Palmyra Island. With cloud building up, they were down to 800 feet to maintain visual contact with the ocean. Engines one and two were using more fuel than those on the right wing and the fuel tanks were becoming unbalanced, affecting the Green Hornet’s flying characteristics. Transferring fuel to balance the tanks had really only just begun when engine number one began to shake

LEFT: Bombardier Louis in the nose of the Green Hornet scans the ocean looking for the target, Nauru, to appear through the clouds. The Intervalvometer which the author instructed Jack how to use is in the right corner.

[Universal Pictures]

LEFT: The author on the set with the War Weary ‘B-24’ re-badged as Green Hornet, in which Zamperini crashes into the ocean to begin the 47 days drifting in an open raft with two other survivors. [Author]

badly, and with revs falling dramatically it then stopped altogether.

Green Hornet immediately rolled left and descended towards the ocean with the pilots struggling to regain level flight. Too busy to feather the propeller, they called the engineer forward and in the confusion he feathered number two propeller. With both engines on the left side effectively dead, they were too low to escape and spiralled into the Pacific.

Louie, in his crash position in the waist area, amazingly found himself alive but trapped in the shattered fuselage which began plunging to the bottom of the Pacific 500 metres (1,500 ft) below. He was wedged under a waist gun mount, the snapped control wires pinning him in place. He struggled furiously, then floated free, felt the frame of the waist window, pulled himself through and inflated his Mae West. It propelled him to the surface where he gasped air at last, coughed and vomited the saltwater and fuel clogging his lungs and stomach.

It was at this point in the story that my usefulness to the filming ceased.

On set

Inside Sound Stage 8 at Oxenford on the Gold Coast, I found a full size replica fuselage of a B-24D, sitting high on a pneumatic gimbal. It was in the latter stages of being fitted out for filming of the flying scenes.

Additional sets included a cockpit section loaned by the B-24 Memorial Fund in Werribee, Victoria, a fibreglass ball turret and a glasshouse B-24D nose.

The B-24 set, built in Mexico and shipped to the Fox Studios, had arrived as a shell for which the production company scoured Australia for items to complete the fit-out. In addition to the cockpit from the B-24 Liberator Museum at Werribee, the Queensland Air Museum (QAM) at Caloundra on the Queensland Sunshine Coast supplied a great deal of smaller items. These included a Martin upper turret and Norden bombsight. The QAM President, Cameron Elmes, was asked if he knew anyone who could work with the film crew as a B-24 adviser for three weeks during the filming of the flying scenes, and he contacted me on Monday January 6. On the following Wednesday I was on the set.

Filming at that stage was still happening in Sydney with the lead actor, Jack O’Connell, but the remainder of the cast members were on their way to Queensland. My first role was to familiarise them with their various positions in the aircraft. The B-24 normally carried a crew of ten – two pilots, navigator, bombardier, radio operator, engineer (who doubled as the top gunner), two waist gunners, ball turret gunner and a tail gunner. (The tail gunner and waist gunner actors were exchanged at the last minute because the original was too tall to fit in the ball gunner’s turret!) I took each through the set, high up on the gimbal, showing them the locations where they would ‘fly’ and what their duties would have been in a B-24 in the W.W.II US Army Air Force. I also give them the back story of the work of the B-24 in the Pacific air forces.

The pilots, played by Domhnall Gleeson and Jai Courtney, I worked with together in the cockpit of the set, explaining the instrumentation and what everything did. Neither had any flying experience, so it was essential that they knew how to fly. Both were quick learners and, as it turned out, the movement of the gimbal was effective and they reacted instinctively in the scenes.

On Monday 13th the Sydney production team appeared on the Gold Coast, including Angelina and first Assistant Director, Joe Reidy, the two people I would work with most often, and lead actor Jack O’Connell as Louie. I had a copy of the script for the Nauru flight, and these scenes were the first to be shot. Apart from an early scene filming the main set from head on to show the pilots, top gunner and navigator in their positions, this set was used mainly for the interior scenes.

Angelina had a lot of questions at the beginning of these scenes, and it helped that she is an instrument rated pilot, but still there were a number of misconceptions held about the operation of a bomber in W.W.II. For instance, I had to point out the unreality of a portion of the script and Angelina F L I G H T PAT H | 51

BELOW: The QAM-sourced Martin upper turret being returned to the Green Hornet after use in the flight deck set. [Author] BOTTOM: The Green Hornet being prepared for the scenes of the ocean crash. Compressed air blasted a large volume of water through the funnels into the bomb bay to simulate the impact. The flight deck set was similarly treated in the pilots’ scene. [Author]

52 | F L I G H T PAT H

took only a few seconds to decide to cut it out of the filming. I had only met her about 90 minutes before, so no pressure!

Jack, very much Jack-the-Lad as the lead, was insistent that he know everything about his job as bombardier and particularly how to operate the Norden. While I had a basic understanding of its operation, I didn’t know it to the depth he required, so I had to get on the internet, pull up the bombsight manual and teach myself how it worked.

QAM had also supplied an intervalvometer (which basically drops the bombs in whatever sequence the Bombardier has determined) which the electricians set up with lights and I

showed him how that worked so he was able to improvise with switches on that and crouching over the bombsight as he went through the dialogue associated with the approach to the target and dropping of the bombs.

For the cockpit scenes, the Werribeesourced instrument panel and seats were set in a part fuselage, also mounted on a gimbal.

It included the upper turret supports, with the turret itself being swapped back and forth between the two sets as required. In a similar fashion, the bombardier and navigator, also acting as the nose gunner, were filmed on a gimbal-mounted glasshouse nose section which was built in-house at the studio workshop. On arrival the main set was missing the bomb doors but local ingenuity found a set of B&D roller doors with the right profile for the B-24 and these were cut to size

and fitted to the exterior of the set so that they could be opened by an electric motor.

The close-ups for the ball gunner were shot in a partial fuselage set which would later be digitally integrated into the aircraft.

On the south side of the sound stage were the sad remains of a B-25 which had been pulled out of a field after many years in the open. The faded name SCREAMIN SALLY could just be discerned. The fuselage appeared to be the real thing, but the gun packs were wood and the wings were metalskinned wood frames; I guess it had been a movie prop previously. The rear fuselage had been cut off to be reworked and repainted to be used in the post-crash scenes where Louie escapes from the waist of the B-24.

Everyone in the film had expected that bombs were dropped directly above the target; it had not been appreciated that

bombs leave the bomb bay with the speed of the aircraft and “fly” to the target. I had to explain that the Norden was an early mechanical computer which, when programmed with the various parameters affecting the bombs’ flight, calculated the optimum time for release.

This then threw up another surprise: I was asked where was the button the Bombardier presses to release the bombs as he gleefully shouts “Bombs away!”? There was disappointment all around when I explained that the Norden does it all, sending a signal to the intervalvometer at the right moment without any action on the part of the Bombardier, but at least he could still shout that immortal phrase.

The machine guns were mostly gas-operated and were pretty noisy inside a closed set. The two waist guns were however the real thing, firing .50 calibre blanks; those actors really enjoyed the opportunity of firing the weapons under the supervision of the two ex-Australian army armourers.

The ball turret, fifteen percent larger than life-size was rigged for filming the ball gunner’s close-ups, but after all the internal equipment was installed, it was still a very tight fit for the ex-Afghanistan Marine playing the part.

After the injuries and death suffered by the crew on SUPER MAN, new crew-members were drafted in for Green Hornet, so briefings for the new actors playing the radio operator and engineer were repeated for them. It must have been difficult for them as the rest of the cast had been working on the sets for a fortnight before they appeared, and there was no time for rehearsal; they were pitched in at the deep end.

The last scenes shot were of the final crash: water smashing into the various sets as the aircraft crashes into the ocean, all

simulated by water being released under high pressure from large tanks, and it was the stand-ins I felt sorry for!

Days were long – in one five day stretch I booked up 63 ½ hours on the set – and the rest of the time was spent waiting around for the call. As one actor is reported to have said, “I don’t get paid for acting; I get paid to wait.”

In addition to the role for which I had been engaged, I found myself providing other things such as watching the takes, looking and listening for ‘bloopers’ and continuity faults. On occasions my advice created variations from the script and sometimes required unscripted linking dialogue which I provided, either in written form or by having a quiet word to the actors concerned.

I can say this about the experience: the set was the best working environment I have encountered in over forty years of employment.

Everybody was professional, knew their job and did it with the minimum of fuss, there were no big egos demanding attention, and I was included as part of the team from the moment I walked on the set. I learned a lot about film making and hope I was able to add something of value to the finished product.

I had my own questions too, the most common being, “What about …?” the answer was almost invariably, “CGI will fix that.” The duck? all we know is that he ordered a Crème de Menthe but we never heard the punch line! Even with a wealth of duck jokes, the internet is silent on this one.

FOOTNOTE: Further indepth research into the 42nd Bomb Squadron Mission Reports, just before publication, reveals that Lt Philip’s crew was not assigned Green Hornet on the day of the search mission, as Zamperini always maintained, but the B-24D, 42-40219 Four Roses.

Unbroken – the Movie

Director Angelina Jolie flanked by Takamasa Ishihara and Jack O’Connell, the lead actors of Unbroken, at the World Premiere at Sydney in October 2014. [Universal Pictures]

Academy Award winner Angelina Jolie directs and produces Unbroken, an epic drama that follows the incredible life of Olympian and war hero Louis “Louie” Zamperini, played by Jack O’Connell, who, along with two other crewmen, survived in a raft for 47 days after a near-fatal plane crash in W.W.II– only to be caught by the Japanese Navy and sent to a prisoner-of-war camp.

Adapted from Laura Hillenbrand’s enormously popular book, Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience, and Redemption brings to the big screen Zamperini’s unbelievable and inspiring true story about the resilient power of the human spirit. www. unbrokenmovie.com.au F L I G H T PAT H | 53

A Much Trave

There is an old English proverb that states “A cat has nine lives. For three he plays, for three he strays, and for the last three he stays”. As Neil Follett discovered, much the same can be said of de Havilland DH.80 Puss Moth, c/n 2022, although it seems it has had far more than nine lives.

T

he Puss Moth VH-UPA was built by the de Havilland Aircraft Company Ltd at Stag Lane, Edgeware, Middlesex, England in 1930 and exported to Australia, on order for Queensland and Northern Territory Aerial Services Ltd (QANTAS) and was registered to them on 29 September 1930.

In addition to charter and joyriding work, VH-UPA served QANTAS on its western Queensland services. It was purchased by Thomas McDonald of Cairns, Queensland in December 1933 and joined the other QANTAS Puss Moth, VH-UPQ, he had purchased three months earlier. Tommy McDonald, a Cairns jeweller, initially operated as McDonald Air Services (the operating company being reorganised into North Queensland Airways Pty. Ltd. on 1 July 1936) flying scheduled passenger services out of Cairns.

By 25 October 1938 the assets of North

54 | F L I G H T PAT H

Queensland Airways were taken over by Airlines of Australia.

Roy Beresford at Cunamulla, Queensland became the owner of VH-UPA on 2 August 1938, followed by Horace Hayes at Bega, New South Wales in July 1945. In June 1946 ownership changed again to Guy Bolton who traded as Cairns Flying Service. In July 1947 Australian Air Traders, which was the parent company of Guinea Air Traders (GAT), purchased the entire Cairns Flying Service fleet in order to acquire their two Avro Ansons to supplement the GAT Ansons then operating in New Guinea.

The next owner was the Inland Methodist Mission, based in Camooweal, Queensland, who traded in their Fox Moth, VHABU, on VH-UPA. The Mission requested the Department of Civil Aviation (DCA) to re-allocate the registration of VH-ABU to

VH-UPA, as “We are known throughout the inland as ABU.” The new registration took effect from 11 October 1948 and the Puss Moth was named in honour of T.C. Rentoul who was a long time director of the Methodist Inland Mission.

After moving the Puss Moth’s base to Alice Springs, the Mission’s use of aircraft finished in December 1949 and VH-ABU was offered for sale.

The new owner, Charles Pratt, purchased VH-ABU in May 1950 and flew it from Alice Springs to Melbourne, arriving at its Essendon Aerodrome base on 21 June 1950. He used the Puss Moth for his charter, joyriding and aerial photography business “Airspy”. The author, who at the time lived on the boundary of Moorabbin Airport, can recall seeing VH-ABU arriving at the airport every Saturday and Sunday to offer joyrides.

In late 1956 the author made his first flight,

velled Puss The Puss Moth VH-UPA when operated by QANTAS between 1930 and 1933.

The DH.80 Puss Moth VH-UPA at Bankstown circa 1946.

“Inland Methodist Mission” and “T.C. Rentoul” clearly visible on the engine cowls.

ABOVE: VH-ABU at Essendon with a young Bill Waterton on left.

F L I G H T PAT H | 55

RIGHT: Now registered VH-ABU, at Alice Springs in June 1950, soon after it was purchased by Charles Pratt. [Pratt Collection] BELOW: VH-ABU at Moorabbin Airport in 1956 or 1957. Aircraft had been repainted in overall silver. [Neil Follett Collection]

Re-assembled for a photo opportunity in John Smith’s back yard in July 1967. [Geoff Goodall]

as a joyriding passenger, in VH-ABU. Little did he know at the time he was being flown by a WWI fighter pilot.

Charles Pratt was a New Zealand born pilot who flew with the RFC during the Great War. After hostilities ceased, Pratt purchased four aircraft in England, (a Sopwith Pup, an Avro 504K and two DH.6s) with the intention of commencing an aviation venture in his native New Zealand. The ship carrying his aircraft was tied up in Melbourne a result of an extended strike by dock workers so, with the assistance of the ship’s engineer, he unloaded a DH.6 onto the wharf. There it was assembled and Pratt flew it off the wharf to Graham Carey’s nearby airfield at Port Melbourne.

Pratt saw the possibilities for aviation in Australia, and in January 1920 moved to Belmont Common in Geelong to establish his aviation business. Later, he moved his operations to Essendon Aerodrome in 1938, joined ANA (Australian National Airways) in 1942 and retired in 1950.

VH-ABU was based at Essendon Aero56 | F L I G H T PAT H

drome and did not carry a radio so its operations from there were numbered. Its last flight was on 27 October 1957 and is listed in its logbooks as a local flight from Essendon. Its Certificate of Airworthiness (C of A) expired in November 1957. Renewal of the C of A was commenced by Southern Airlines at Essendon but this was never completed as a dispute erupted between Southern Airlines and Pratt. Southern Airlines ceased operations with the Puss Moth only partially overhauled. The paperwork was not completed and Pratt could not afford to start the inspection again so he abandoned the aircraft in the Essendon hangar.

Roly McKenzie acquired VH-ABU around 1959 with the intention of making it airworthy by rebuilding the wings. The fuselage had been completed by Southern Airlines before they ceased operations. No work was undertaken and it was purchased

by Robert (Bob) Burnett-Read of Adelaide in 1965 and transported from Melbourne by members of the West Beach Aviation Group (WBAG).

In a moment of high drama, the aircraft was nearly lost when the A-frame of the overloaded glider trailer, on which it was being towed, fractured while driving slowly down a long hill approaching Adelaide. A following car driver saw the trailer with aircraft slewing and pushed up against the rear of the trailer to steady it for the rest of the descent.

It was stored at Burnett-Read’s house in company with his Mraz Sokol, VH-BXY, and B.A. Swallow VH-UUM. Robert (Bob) Burnett-Read was President of the Vintage Aircraft Club of Australia and had also owned Ryan STM VH-AGW, Comper Swift VH-ACG and Percival Proctors VH-SCC and VH-GGB. All were based at Parafield.

In March 1967 the Puss Moth and Swallow were forced to move and were stored behind a car sales yard in the Adelaide suburb of Plympton. This was only a temporary arrangement as, three months later, VH-ABU was in the back yard of WBAG member John Smith.

When Smith’s property was sold for commercial development in 1969, delays in ar-

VH-ABU at Moorabbin Airport in the mid 1950s whilst conducting weekend joy flights. Note stripe along fuselage. [Neil Follett Collection]

On the road, between Melbourne and Adelaide, in November 1965. [Geoff Goodall]

A particularly nice study of VH-ABU on the tarmac at Essendon Aerodrome.

After unloading in Adelaide, VH-ABU posed for a photo in a quiet street.

ranging alternative accommodation saw VHABU still on the property when the house was demolished. A local schoolboy paid the wreckers $10 for the complete aeroplane, towed it home and advertised it for sale a year later for $45. A syndicate of four pilots from Waikerie purchased the aircraft with the intention of restoring it to fly but that did not eventuate. It was then sold to a young aircraft engineer at Parafield for $600.

Around 1972 VH-ABU was purchased by Barry Bell in Melbourne and once more the much-travelled Puss Moth was transported by road back to Melbourne. Only a year later the new owner was Clive Phillips who started collecting parts to make the aircraft airworthy again.

The last owner to make a serious attempt at putting VH-ABU back in the air was John Pettit. He purchased the project in 1984. He had the wings restored in New Zealand and had restored the fuselage on his property, ’Wooloomanata’, near Geelong.

‘Wooloomanata’ had previously been in the Fairbairn family since 1918 and during

W.W.II the property was occupied by the RAAF who established a satellite airfield there. It was here that 79 Squadron RAAF was formed and trained on the newly arrived Supermarine Spitfires.

The Puss Moth remained as part of Pettit’s collection for the next 24 years until the Hinkler House Museum and Research Association offered to buy it. Aviation pioneer Bert Hinkler was killed when his Puss Moth, CF-APK, crashed in the Pratomagno Alps in northern Italy in 1933 during his attempted solo flight home to Australia. In 1925 Hinkler had built a house in Southampton, England that he named ‘Mon Repos’. In 1985 the house was dismantled, transported to Australia and rebuilt in the Botanic Gardens in

Bundaberg. The Hinkler Hall of Aviation was opened, in 2008, near ‘Mon Repos’ and features many displays about Hinkler’s life and achievements.

The Association was, understandably, very keen to acquire a Puss Moth for display.

John Pettit agreed to the sale in 2008 and the very advanced project was soon restored to static condition. It is displayed, as CFAPK, alongside replicas of his glider, Avro Avian and his Ibis. Hinkler’s Avro Baby, GEACQ/G-AUCQ/VH-UCQ, is also displayed on loan from the Queensland Museum.

Over its 85-year life c/n 2022 has had an interesting existence, and certainly used up most of its lives, but today it is safe and secure at Hinkler House.

F L I G H T PAT H | 57

Another Avian

P

aul Wheeler’s latest Avian project started, like many others, with a phone call.

“A friend in Victoria called me about a year ago to advise me that there was an Avro Avian listed on a well-known auction website and ‘was I aware of it?’” Paul told Flightpath, adding “Thanks Dave!”

After checking the website he discovered that the Avian for sale was G-ABEE, which he had previously been to see at Naracoorte in South Australia some time previously. “I had a few photos of it and was aware of its condition, so after a bit of number crunching, placed a ultimately successful bid.”

Paul has two other Avian projects: Mk.III VH-UHC, and the wreck of another Avro 616 Avian Mk.IVM Sport VH-UVR, which is under restoration [see Flightpath Vol.22 No.3.]

G-ABEE, the Avro 616 Avian Sport (construction number R3/CN/473) was built at Newton Heath in the UK in 1930, and was

58 | F L I G H T PAT H

powered by a Cirrus Hermes engine. The aircraft was first owned by a Mr. A. A. Vograsanger of the Delta Works, Audenshaw, England. It later changed hands and went to Mr. P. J. Dunn, Secretary of the T.D.C. Flying Club of Putney. There is reason to believe that Mr. Dunn may have used the Avian whilst in RAF service, possibly with 131 Squadron, and that the flying Club may have been composed of RAF servicemen. In July 1933 the aircraft crashed at Otley and extensive repairs were undertaken back at Newton Heath where the aircraft remained until its next flight in November 1933. It was then sold in May 1935 to Hugh R.A. Edwards, registered at RAF Station Upavon, Wiltshire. At the end of 1940 the aircraft was flown from Detling to Bircham Newton, where it was stored until 1947, at which time it was flown to RAF Bassingbourn with a permit to fly. G-ABEE had

been used as an unofficial hack for the C.O. at Bassingbourn and, in 1948, found its way in a poor state to Denham. It lay there forlorn for two years, when a group set to work to restore it to full flying health, with the help of parts from G-ACKE, which had been run into by a Tiger Moth. (Paul believes that three wings, the undercarriage and de Havilland Gipsy Mk II engine were donated.) The rejuvenated G-ABEE emerged in mid 1951, complete with the overhauled Gipsy II engine, re-registered to ‘The Avian Syndicate’ Denham, Bucks with whom it remained until November 1955, before being re-registered in April 1956 to ‘The Avian Flying Group’ Bovingdon, Hertfordshire, staying with them until May 1958.

It was re-registered again in May 1959 to Peter John Houston, South Nutfield, Surrey, and then acquired in November 1963 for £5.00 from Selhurst Grammar School,

The Avian ‘Red Rose’ at Naracoorte painted to represent G-EBTU 1985 tele-move “The Lancaster-Miller Affair”. [All images Paul Wheeler]

Dave Schneider and the former owner of the Avian, Micha

el Gruetzner help load the Avian fuselage and wings.

The Avro Avian securley loaded for the 2000

kilometres road trip.

This image of G-ABEE would have been taken a short time after its rebuild in 1951, as Avian has the Gipsy Mk.II engine and the split axle main undercarriage fitted. [Paul Wheeler collection]

F L I G H T PAT H | 59

LEFT: The Avian at White Waltham housed in a very tatty WWI Bessoneau canvas hangar, circa 1959 - 1963.

[Paul Wheeler Colection]

BELOW: An image from Avro’s brochure that proudly shows the biplanes ‘metal’ fuselage.

Croydon (possibly for an Air Training Corps unit), by The Aeroplane Collection. Some parts were used in the rebuild of Avian GEBZM, which is now on display at the Museum of Science and Industry in Manchester, England. The rest was sold to Albert Murrell, of Mt Gambier, South Australia, in around 1978-80. Albert had two other airworthy Avian Mk.IVM’s, VH-UQE and VHUVX which are now with Geoff Davis in Adelaide, South Australia.

The remains, consisting of the fuselage frame, fin and tailplane, of G-ABEE were used, mocked-up, as a movie prop, for closeups and studio shots in the tele-move “The Lancaster-Miller Affair” in 1985, and painted to represent G-EBTU, the ‘Red Rose’, a scheme it still wears today.

Having acquired the Avian, Paul’s next problem was - how was he going to get it home?

“Naracoorte is around 2000 kilometres south of my home base in Brisbane, Queensland. Calls to transport companies yielded little joy. Either they were not interested, or they wanted an outlandish amount, because Naracoorte was deemed to be ‘out of the way’. My next thought was to hire a tow ve-

hicle, (a four wheel drive) and a tandem trailer. However the contract hire and fees were also eye-watering.

“The solution to the transport problem was to buy a second hand 4WD and obtain the loan of a properly set up aircraft recovery trailer (thanks Gary!).”

In late October, Paul set off, first to collect the trailer from Kingaroy, about 350 kilometres north-west of Brisbane, and then head south to Naracoorte, with two night stops on the way. The trip went well, although the winds on the plains near Hay were so strong he was reduced to 80 km/h, even with the foot flat to the floor!

“I met up with Michael Gruetzner, the former owner of the Avian, and Dave Schneider, owner of the hangar it was residing in. The Avian fuselage and wings were loaded onto the trailer in fairly short order and the rest of the bits and pieces either tied onto the roof rack or crammed into the cabin of the Landcruiser.

I then set off for the long trip home via Mt Gambier, Hamilton and Romsey in Victoria, stopping every 100kms or so to check that everything was secure. After arriving safely home two days later, I was able to unload my latest acquisition, with the help of my neighbours.

“The shed is tightly packed now!” adds Paul. “I am still looking for an upright DH Gipsy Mk I or Mk II for G-ABEE. Even a Gipsy Mk III, which is inverted, would be useful for parts. Also, any W.W.I altimeters, airspeed indicators and tachos and, naturally, any Avro Avian parts.

Famous steel-framed Avians in Australia Avro Avians were built in two basic versions. The early Avians (Mk.I, II, III, IIIa and some Mk.IVs) came with a wooden fuselage. The prototype, and most famous Avian of all, is Bert Hinkler’s G-EBOV, which is now on display in the foyer of Brisbane’s Queensland Museum.

The Mk IV was redesigned to have a wire braced, welded steel tube fuselage, using techniques reminiscent of the Fokker series of W.W.I fighters and designated the Mk.IVM (M for Metal).

Of the late model Avians in Australia, Sir Charles Kingsford Smith had two of them, G-ABCF, the ‘Southern Cross Junior’ and VH-UQG, the ‘Southern Cross Minor’.

G-ABCF ‘Southern Cross Junior’ was flown by Kingsford Smith from England to Australia solo in October 1930 and broke Bert Hinkler’s record by five days. G-ABCF went on to be used by Guy Menzies to fly the first solo crossing of the Tasman Sea from Australia to New Zealand. Guy, fearing that he would not be able to obtain approval to do this trip, told his family and the authorities he was flying from Sydney to Perth. He departed Sydney at 1 am on 7 January 60 | F L I G H T PAT H

1931 and unfortunately overturned on landing in the La Fontaine Swamps, near Hari Hari, on the west coast of New Zealand. Although Guy was uninjured, the Avian was declared to be a write-off.

VH-UQG ‘Southern Cross Minor’ was flown solo from Australia to England by Kingsford Smith in September 1931, in an attempt to break the record. However, after falling ill and being arrested in an unplanned landing in Turkey, his bid for the record failed. After arrival in England, Bill Lancaster purchased ‘Southern Cross Junior’ from Kingsford Smith, to be used in an attempt to break the solo record from England to South Africa. After departing England in April 1933, with short stops, very little sleep and getting lost several times, Bill Lancaster tried to take a short cut, at night, across the Sahara Desert.

Crashing his Avian after the engine failed, Bill survived for eight days before dying of thirst. His mummified body and the wreck of the Avian remained undiscovered until February 1962. The wreck was finally recovered in 1975 and placed on display ‘as found’ at the Queensland Museum. However it has recently been put in storage.

Doyen of naval and test pilots, Captain Eric Brown in front of the newly-refusbished Fairey Firefly and Fairey Gannet at the Imperial War Museum, Duxford in the early 1990s. [J Kightly]

e h t g n i t a Evalu s t e j e ff a w Luft

Captain Eric ‘Winkle’ Brown, CBE, DSC, AFC, Hon FRAeS, RN (Ret), is the most experienced test pilot in history, with over 487 distinct types in his logbook. Mike Shreeve here outlines some of Eric’s experience with the German jets of W.W.II and other contemporary types.

T

owards the end of W.W.II, the British Prime Minister, Winston Churchill, concerned at the advanced technologies employed by the Germans, directed that a mission to be sent into Germany as soon as the war was over (and before if possible) to evaluate the German technology and aircraft industry, and to bring back examples of the most advanced aircraft to the UK for evaluation. Additional tasks were to find and bring back to the UK (where practicable) examples of Germany’s advanced transonic wind tunnels, and to find and interview pilots, engineers and senior German leaders in captivity. This became the Fedden Mission, named after Mr W S Fedden, director of the Royal Aircraft Establishment at Farnborough, who led the group.

Captain Eric Brown, then Chief Naval Test Pilot at Farnborough, was selected as CO of the Enemy Aircraft Flight at Farnbor62 | F L I G H T PAT H

ough, and became chief pilot for the mission, due to his fluency in German and the fact that he had experience of test-flying various types, including jets (such as Britain’s first jet, the Gloster E.28-39) and many of the captured German aircraft which had been evaluated at Farnborough.

Eric had first travelled to Germany in 1936, where he visited the Berlin Olympics with his father, a Great War pilot. Whilst there he met Ernst Udet, Germany’s secondhighest scoring ace of the First World War, and later to become a General in the Luftwaffe in W.W.II. Udet took Eric flying in a Bücker Jungmann trainer, and asked him to come back when he had done two things: learned to fly, and learned to speak German.

Eric went to Edinburgh University in 1937 to study Modern Languages (French and German), where he joined the University Air Squadron. In the summer of 1939 he went

to Germany to teach in a school, and was still there in September at the outbreak of war. The Germans arrested him, and took him to the Swiss border, where he was allowed to cross into neutral Switzerland in his MG sports car. When he asked those escorting him why, when they had taken his books and his spare clothes, he was being allowed to keep his car, they replied, with impeccable Germanic logic, “Because we have no spares for it.” After that, Eric joined the Royal Navy’s Fleet Air Arm and, after active service in the Atlantic in Grumman Martlets, later became a Test Pilot at Farnborough due to his demonstrated aptitude for deck landings.

Eric was still carrying out his test flying tasks at Farnborough during this period, alongside the requirements of the German expedition tasks. The first call came before the end of the war, and was from an element

ABOVE: Focke-Wulf Fw 190A-4/U8 as flown by Captain Brown in British markings and bearing a ‘P’ for Prototype. [J Kightly Collection] MIDDLE: The Canada Aviation & Space Museum in Rockliffe, Ontario have recently re-assembled and put their Heinkel He 162 Werk-Nr 120086 on display. This is one of the machines captured at Leck.

[J Kightly]

BELOW: The He 162A-1 Werke-Nr 120235 at the Imperial War Museum, Duxford. [M Shreeve]

of the British Second Army, who were holding an airfield at Fassburg, south of Hamburg, where a pair of jets (flown by two German pilots fleeing the Soviet advance in the east) had landed, their pilots abandoning them there. Eric flew to Fassburg on 14 April, where he found a pair of intact Messerschmitt Me 262 jets. Whilst interviewing the German ground crew there, the senior British officer noted Eric’s fluency in German, and asked if he could use his services for a couple of days. Eric said he could only spare a day, and thus he found himself on 15 April among the party that liberated Belsen concentration camp, an experience that he found profoundly shocking.

After the Me 262s were brought back to the UK, they were extensively evaluated, and in Eric’s view they were the most formi-

dable fighter of the war. The fastest fighter in RAF service at the time was the Griffonengined Spitfire Mk.XIV, which had been evaluated at Farnborough with a top speed of 446 mph (717 km/h). The same evaluation was performed on the Me 262, which was shown to have a top speed of 569 mph (916 km/h), over 120 mph (190 km/h) faster. In addition, it packed a formidable punch in the form of four 30mm cannon in the nose. It did, however, have one design fault: a lack of dive brakes. At these high speeds, it closed very fast with its target. With its cannon having an effective range of some 600 yards (550 metres) and allowing time for the Me

262 pilot to break off the attack to avoid a collision with the target aircraft, that only allowed the pilot some two seconds to sight and fire his guns. Fitting dive brakes would have allowed him to shed some of that excess speed as he came in to attack, and reduce the closing speed, allowing him around four seconds to sight and fire.

The Me 262 had a swept wing (with a sweepback of 26°) and axial flow jet engines, which were more efficient than the radial flow jets in use in the UK at the time, but the downside of the German jet engines was that they had a life of 25 hours before requiring to be scrapped, in contrast to the F L I G H T PAT H | 63

British units, which had a 100-hour life before overhaul. This was due to the German shortage of strategic materials to resist heat stress (such as titanium) at the end of the war.

In addition to the Me 262, the other German type to attract great interest was the Me 163 Komet rocket fighter.

On 4 May (before the German surrender) the small airfield at Husum on the west coast of Germany, a Wing’s worth of Me 163s was captured. This type had a top speed of some 600 mph (965 km/h) - unheard-of for the era, and also a swept wing (in this case of some 22°) and twin 30 mm cannon.

Power was from a Walter rocket engine, and the two fuels used were especially volatile. The motor had three throttle settings: idle, cruise, and full power. If as much as a cupful of fuel remained on landing, the shock of landing (on the single sprung skid under the fuselage) could cause an explosion sufficient to destroy the aircraft and kill the pilot.

The aircraft was mounted on a wheeled dolly for take-off, which was jettisoned once the aircraft became airborne. The timing of this was crucial, and the dolly had to be jettisoned at between 20 and 30 feet (6 – 9 metres). Any lower and it was prone to bouncing up and becoming lodged at the front of the skid, higher and it could bounce up and hit the underside of the aircraft, causing a catastrophic explosion. Some 42 Komets had been lost in take-off and landing accidents in Luftwaffe service. The aircraft had only enough fuel for a few minutes of powered flight, after which it was glided down for a dead-stick landing. Eric flew a single powered flight in the Me 163, and says “believe you me, that was enough”, likening the flight to “being in charge of a runaway train” and saying that a pilot of that era would have been totally unaccustomed to that amount of power in an aircraft.

Before this, he flew five flights in a Stummel Habicht, a version of the Habicht glider with a dramatically-clipped wingspan used to train Me 163 pilots in carrying out glide landings at some 90 mph (140km/h). He then flew a further three flights in a glider

This Messerschmitt Me 163B ‘VF241’ was the example flown by Captain Brown in the UK with the engine removed and a flight test recorder fitted instead. [J Kightly Collection] 64 | F L I G H T PAT H

version of the Me 163A, which was towed up to around 20,000 feet behind an Me 110, before undertaking his single powered flight from Husum. It was later decreed by the RAE hierarchy that the type was too dangerous to undertake powered flights for evaluation, and the Americans took a similar view, and so Eric was the only Allied pilot to fly the type under power. Around 23 examples were shipped to Farnborough, where a number of unpowered gliding flights, towed aloft behind another aircraft, were undertaken.

Another German jet-powered type just entering service as the war ended was the Heinkel He 162, powered by a single turbojet mounted above the fuselage. Eric says he saw this a “a product of desperation”, its being built using non-strategic materials (mostly wood), although he says that it was remarkable that the elapsed time between the initial specification being issued on 8 September 1944, and the maiden flight of the prototype on 6 December was a mere 90 days. Eric says that it was a nice aircraft to fly, but would have been a handful on takeoff and landing, especially for the type of

inexperienced pilots that the He 162 was designed for. Thankfully its service entry was delayed by a lack of fuel, and only a few saw combat in mid-April 1945.

Unlike the two Messerschmitt fighters and the Heinkel 162, the Arado 234B jetpowered reconnaissance bomber was used operationally over the UK, undertaking several reconnaissance flights over the East coast, out of Sola (Stavanger) in Norway.

Eric flew the type a lot, saying that it was delightful to fly (although he did suffer an engine explosion on the runway before take-off on one occasion - probably the result of sabotage). Examples were captured both in Norway and at Grove (later named Karup) in Denmark.

Among the notable captured Germans that Eric was able to interrogate was Hermann Göring, General of the Luftwaffe and a former First World War fighter pilot.

Göring had been captured by the Americans, and was being held at the US prison camp for high-ranking German officials at Camp Ashcan, located at the Palace Hotel, Mondorf-les-Bains, Luxembourg. Eric had good relations with his American counter-

ABOVE & BOTTOM: Heinkel He 219 V-11 Werk-Nr 310189 seen at Farnborough, Hampshire. [J Kightly Collection] LEFT: The RAF Museum’s Messerschmitt Me 262 ‘AM51’ was regularly flown at Farnborough, and is currently on display in the Milestones of Flight gallery, Hendon. [M Shreeve] RIGHT: One of the ex-Farnborough airframes, this Messerschmitt Me 163 Werke-Nr 191614 can now be seen at the RAF Museum, Cosford. [M Shreeve] part (Colonel Harold E Watson), who had been tasked with bringing at least two examples of each major German aircraft type back to the US for evaluation.

In the American sector, Watson had been unable to locate any examples of the Arado Ar 234B, so he approached Eric and asked if he could provide a pair of them. The British had captured a number of operational examples at Stavanger (Sola) in Norway, and Eric agreed to trade some of these in exchange for access to Göring. The Americans agreed that he could have an hour with Göring, but only in the presence of an invigilator, and he was only to ask aviationrelated questions and no political ones. Eric was therefore able to meet him, on 17 June1945.

Göring had up to that point been interrogated by a succession of American military lawyers in preparation for his forthcoming trial at Nuremberg, but when he was introduced to Eric and told that he was to be interrogated by a British pilot he positively beamed. One of the questions that Eric asked him was what, in Göring’s opinion, was the outcome of the Battle of Britain.

The German’s response was that in his view it had been a draw. When asked how he came to that conclusion, he explained that in the last week when the Germans were able to direct their full forces against Britain, the losses on the German side were less than those suffered by the RAF. This marked the first time that the loss ratio had turned towards the Germans’ favour. However, at this point Hitler ordered the fighter forces be withdrawn from the West in order to prepare for Operation Barbarossa, the invasion of the Soviet Union. At the end of the interrogation, Göring stood and went to shake hands with Eric, who realised that he could not possibly shake Göring’s hand, especially in front of the American invigilating officer. Instead he uttered the old World War One German fighter pilot’s greeting of “Hals- und Beinbruch!” (literally “break your neck and break a leg!”), to which Göring gave a half-smile and dropped his hand. After his subsequent trial at Nuremberg, Göring was able to commit suicide by using poison smuggled to him in prison before facing the death penalty.

Eric also met leading Nazi Heinrich Himmler, and helped identify him on 23 May after his capture by the British. However Himmler committed suicide by biting a cyanide capsule when being examined by a doctor later the same day. Eric was also able to interview such leading members of the German aeronautical community as Hanna Reitsch (“an unrepentant Nazi to the last”) and Werner von Braun (“the most self-assured person I have ever met”).

The Heinkel 219 Uhu (‘Owl’) was another type flown extensively by Eric and considered notable by him. This twin-engine night fighter was unusual in that it was fitted with ejection seats for the two crew (pilot and rearward-facing radar operator).

The seats were fired by compressed air, and ejection could be initiated by either crew member, with the pilot going first and the

F L I G H T PAT H | 65

Me 262 on show at the Royal Aircraft Establishment Farnborough’s exhibition of enemy aircraft after the war. [J Kightly Collection]

ABOVE: Captain Eric Brown at IWM Duxford, last year. [M Shreeve] LEFT: The sole surviving Arado Ar 234 Werke-Nr 140312, in the Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center of the Smithsonian Collection, Washington, DC. [M Shreeve]

radar operator following 3/10 second later.

The ejection system also allowed for initiation using a handle by the left armrest, to be used if the aircraft was pulling G and the crew member was thus unable to reach the overhead handle, and still allowing an ejection to be initiated, albeit without the face protection for the pilot which would otherwise be provided by initiating ejection by pulling the overhead blind. This was the world’s first production ejection seat system. Eric mentioned that there were twelve successful ejections from operational He 219s, with all 24 crew members surviving.

The aircraft was armed with a pair of upward-firing ‘Schräge Musik’ 30mm cannon in the rear fuselage. This proved a most effective armament against the RAF’s night bombers. (‘Schräge Musik’ was the German name for jazz – or literally ‘slanted’ music.) With a conventional night fighter, the attacking aircraft, once it has located the target, would have to fly underneath it for the crew to examine the silhouette to identify the type. Once they had determined it to be an enemy aircraft, they had to drop back, and pull up into the target’s slipstream before engaging it. The use of ‘Schräge 66 | F L I G H T PAT H

Musik’ allowed the attacking aircraft to attack from underneath as soon as the target was identified, taking advantage of the relatively-unprotected underside of RAF bombers, which generally lacked a ventral turret.

Eric mentioned that, during the first operational use of the type in June 1943, five RAF heavy bombers were claimed to have been shot down in a single night by an He 219 prototype flown by Werner Streib.

Eric rated the He 219 as a very advanced aircraft for the time in terms of its equipment fit, but it was underpowered, and the loss of an engine on take-off or landing could well have prove catastrophic.

Eric also rated the Fw 190 very highly, saying that in his view the Fw 190D was the second-best piston-engined fighter of the war, after the Spitfire XIV, and ahead of the Mustang IV (P-51D). It had a very high rate of roll, but the turn rate was inferior to that of a Spitfire, and any attempt to turn with a Spitfire would probably result in the FockeWulf snapping into a spin. He said that he once got into a dogfight with a radial-engined Fw 190, whilst flying a Spitfire IX. Neither pilot was able to get a bead on the other, and eventually they broke it off. He

did say, however, that he did have one advantage in that he had flown a Fw 190, and he somehow doubted that the German pilot had flown a Spitfire!

All-in-all, Eric says that the pilots and engineers were shocked at how far advanced the Germans were technically, although their more advanced designs, fortunately, were either not ready for service, or were being used in numbers too small to affect the outcome of the War. The main advances which put them significantly ahead of Allied aircraft of the time were the use of swept wings, and axial flow turbojets. He flew and evaluated most of the German types by the time the process at Farnborough was wound down in 1946.

This article is based on a talk given by Eric Brown to the Sywell Aviation Museum in 2014, as well as his book ‘Wings of the Luftwaffe’, his autobiography ‘Wings on my Sleeve’ and a BBC documentary on his life also shown in 2014. Other reference works used include ‘War Prizes’ by Phil Butler and ‘The Captive Luftwaffe’ by Kenneth West.

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Wild Warbirds’ Wildcat

In 2013, a new restoration company, Wild Warbirds, appeared and Luigino Caliaro visits and reports on their first restoration, an FM-2 Wildcat, which was awarded the Reserve Grand Champion W.W.II and the Gold Wrench Awards at that year’s EAA AirVenture, Oshkosh.

68 | F L I G H T PAT H

C

onrad Huffstutler, despite being only 25, has lived aviation all his life. Conrad’s father Mark is the owner of Sierra Industries of Uvalde, Texas, a company engaged principally with the maintenance and modification of business jets.

However it has also had an interest in the warbird sector, having in the past restored a North American T-28 Trojan, T-33 Shooting Star, AT-6 Texan and a P-51D Mustang.

Today, these activities surrounding historic aircraft are managed by Wild Warbirds, a company associated with Sierra Industries, and managed by young Conrad.

He told Flightpath: “Thanks to my father, I grew up around aviation and airports. At fifteen, I helped my father to rebuild a

Piper J-3 Cub in which I made my first solo flight on the day of my sixteenth birthday. A passion for historic aircraft has always been strong in me, and at eighteen I started flying in a T-6, while my first solo flight in the family Mustang was at twenty one.”

“I also always wanted to personally rebuild an aircraft, and, with the support of my father, I founded Wild Warbirds. With this in mind, in 2009 I purchased the remains of three FM-2 Wildcat fighters with the intention of returning at least one of the three to airworthy condition.

“These were BuNo 86774, which had been owned by the collector Ed Maloney, which was the subject of the restoration, plus all that remained of FM-2 BuNo

The FM-2 has been restored with a cartridge stater to fire up its Wright Cyclone R-1820 radial engine.

Conrad Huffstutler of Wild Warbirds flying his Grumman FM-2 Wildcat (BuNo 86774). The former Navy fighter is finished in late Pacific theatre colours of VC-79 that was embarked on the USS Sargent Bay (CVE-83). [All images Luigino Caliaro] FAR LEFT: Wild Warbirds’ Conrad Huffstutler and the FM-2 Wildcat, The new company was awarded the Reserve Grand Champion W.W.II and the Gold Wrench Awards at the 2013 EAA AirVenture, Oshkosh for their Wildcat restoration.

F L I G H T PAT H | 69

I decided to restore the aircraft utilising an original cartridge starter system produced by Coffman which I had been able to track down 55585, registered N681S, of the Commemorative Air Force, which crashed at Ellington on 18 October 2003, and the remains of FM-2 55404, recovered in 1993 from Lake Michigan. The condition of the aircraft was decidedly challenging, as in truth they were all relics, or little more. Fortunately however, what remained of BuNo 86774 showed the best potential for restoration, albeit while numerous parts were missing or damaged, among which were a missing engine and rudder, and the complete lack of the starboard wing. The fuselage of this aircraft was also in better condition than the others, and less afflicted by corrosion.

“Having decided to return the aircraft to its original ‘as in service’ condition, I undertook extensive research and thanks to the drawings and documents provided by the Smithsonian Museum I managed to restore 70 | F L I G H T PAT H

and reconstruct many parts and components in a manner, I believe, that was extremely faithful to the original Grumman specifications.

“The most demanding work was without doubt the complete reconstruction of the starboard wing, which was missing. As reference, I used the wing from the Wildcat recovered from Lake Michigan, and in order to avoid utilising and mixing components from the various wrecks I opted for the complete reconstruction of the wing.

Thanks to the support of the technical and IT engineers of Sierra Industries I was able to faithfully reproduce the wing using the same materials and same working techniques. Particular attention was also paid to the restoration of the cockpit, utilising original instruments and reconstructing the missing panels, such as that carrying

the selector for the armament and HVAR rockets. The original Mark 8 gunsight was completely restored and is serviceable, and the only modern equipment, the radio, has been hidden in the map compartment of the cockpit; its operation uses the original antenna on the aircraft, which has been suitably modified for the purpose. It should also be noted, however, that the original radios have also been installed, and are also fully functional.”

One of the elements that distinguishes this Wildcat from the other flying examples is the fact that Conrad restored and retains the original engine starting system.

“The FM-2 (unlike other Grumman aircraft produced during the conflict) adopted a cartridge starting system, in order to reduce weight, rather than an electric start for the Wright Cyclone R-1820

This FM-2 was manufactured by General Motors and delivered to the US Navy at Naval Air Station San Diego on 17 August 1945. In 1957 it was acquired by Ed Maloney and following a rebuild it was placed it on display at the Air Museum at Claremont in California.

RIGHT: The Wildcat’s faithfully restored cockpit. Original, period, radios have also been installed and are also fully functional.

RIGHT: The original antenna on the aircraft has been suitably modified to match the modern radios installed.

FAR RIGHT: Conrad admits a negative characteristic of the FM-2 is the narrowness of its undercarriage, great care is required while taxiing and during take-off and landing in order to avoid a ground loop.

F L I G H T PAT H | 71

Conrad Huffstutler in the Wildcat 86774 formates on airshow pilot Greg Shelton in his FM-2.

engine. I decided to restore the aircraft utilising an original starter system produced by Coffman which I had been able to track down. I have got a limited stock of the cartridges, but luckily I have been able to locate a company willing to manufacture the cartridges once my stock of originals has run out, enabling me to operate the aircraft in a way that is very unusual in the warbird community. Another aspect that distinguishes the aircraft is the fact that the propeller (exactly the same type as used on the aircraft throughout the war) is fitted with an electric variable pitch control system.”

“It is an excellent aircraft, with good performance and lacking tricky characteristics.

Certainly, like all piston aircraft, you have to take account of the propeller torque, especially during take-off in crosswinds coming from the right, as the narrow undercarriage is unforgiving. A further peculiarity of the Wildcat is the undercarriage retraction system. Unlike the majority of fighters of 72 | F L I G H T PAT H

the period, the retraction process is manual, and the pilot has to use a handle placed on the right hand side of the cockpit. This fact forces the pilot to take the control column in his left hand, leaving the throttle control alone, and working the undercarriage lever with his right hand to bring up the gear, a process which takes around thirty rotations. This operation is fairly easy at speeds between 80 and 100 mph, but above those speeds the airflow makes the process very tiring. Another negative characteristic of the undercarriage is its narrowness, due to which you have to take great care while taxiing and during take-off and landing in order to avoid ground looping.

“These were four years of hard work, but I believe that the result that we can all admire today is ample repayment of the effort and research that were involved.”

HISTORY OF FM-2 BuNo 86774

The aircraft rebuilt by Wild Warbirds was manufactured by General Motors – Eastern

Aircraft Division in Linden New Jersey, and delivered to the US Navy at Naval Air Station San Diego on 17 August 1945. Unsurprisingly given the types’ obsolescence and the date, it was not used in combat, and after a few months was declared surplus to requirements, being retired on 30 November of the same year.

It seems that the aircraft was used in the film industry as a wind generator, and for this task its wings were removed. In 1957 the fuselage was acquired by Ed Maloney who, after rebuilding the wings, placed it on display, initially at the Air Museum at Claremont in California, and later as a part of the Planes of Fame Museum at Chino. In September 2009 Wild Warbirds acquired the airframe, returning it to the skies in June 2013 after a four year restoration, adopting the dark blue livery typical of the FM-2 used in the Pacific theatre during the final years of the war, and wearing the insignia of an FM-2 of VC-79 embarked on the USS Sargent Bay (CVE-83).

BELOW: Conrad’s attention to detail and authenticity sees the fighter fitted with a Curtiss Electric propeller the type used on the FM-2 throughout the war.

Wild Warbirds FM-2 Wildcat Naval fighter.

F L I G H T PAT H | 73

The

‘Peashooter’ Boeing’s Rare Fighter

Only two original Boeing P-26 ‘Peashooters’ remain today. Frank B Mormillo profiles the Planes of Fame Air Museum’s flying example at Chino, California.

John Maloney taxiing the Planes of Fame Air Museum’s Boeing P-26A out for take off at Chino Airport, California.

A

lthough it was outclassed by newer designs within a few years of its introduction, the Boeing P-26 was a big leap forward in pursuit aircraft design for the United States Army Air Corps (USAAC). Despite having drag-inducing fixed landing gear and externally braced wings, as well as an open cockpit, the little Boeing was the USAAC’s first all-metal, monoplane pursuit fighter. With a top speed of 234 mph (377 kph), it was also faster than previous American combat aeroplanes, and affectionately known as the ‘Peashooter’ because of the tubular gunsight protruding from the windscreen. Flown for the first time on 20 March 1932, the P-26A entered service with the USAAC in December 1933.

A total of 151 Peashooters were manufactured before production ended in 1936, with twelve C-models sent to overseas customers - eleven seeing combat in China with the Nationalists and one serving the Spanish Republican Air Force.

Eventually, a total of seven USAAC pursuit and composite groups used the P-26A/B/C Peashooter with some aircraft still in service in Hawaii and the Philippines at the time of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. Though USAAC Peashooters did not see combat service in W.W.II, a dozen flown by the Philippine Army Air Corps did engage the Japanese in December 1941 with moderate success. Nine Peashooters were also in service with the USAAC in the Panama Canal Zone when the war started. Seven of these survived and were supplied to the Guatemalan Air Force.

Employed as fighter trainers, the Guatemalan Peashooters remained in service until 1956 when the two survivors were returned to the United States as museum exhibits. Today, those ex-Guatemalan aircraft are the only original Peashooters left in the world, though at least three replicas have since been constructed (one of which is flyable) and there are reports of two others being built.

74 | F L I G H T PAT H

Another unique formation seen during an air show at Chino. The Planes of Fame’s Peashooter leading the museum’s North American P-51D Mustang and F-86F Sabre and The Fighter Collection’s Curtiss P-40C Tomahawk.

ABOVE: Steve Hinton flying the Planes of Fame Air Museum’s Boeing P-26A Peashooter over Chino, California. This ex-Guatemalan aircraft (serial 33-123) was obtained by Ed Maloney for his fledgling air museum in July 1957 [all images Frank Mormillo]

LEFT: The Planes of Fame Air Museum’s Peashooter with some of its forward fuselage access panels removed.

BELOW: Planes of Fame volunteer and Fighter Rebuilders technician Cory O’Bryan winding the inertia starter on the Planes of Fame Air Museum’s Peashooter. O’Bryan was responsible for researching and applying the current paint job on the aircraft.

F L I G H T PAT H | 75

ABOVE: Dummy 100-pound (45 kg) bombs mounted under the fuselage of the Planes of Fame Air Museum’s Boeing P-26A.

Of the two original Peashooters, one (P26A serial 33-135) initially went on display at the National Museum of the United States Air Force in Dayton, Ohio (in 34th Pursuit Squadron, 17th Pursuit Group colours) before finally winding up at its permanent home at the National Air and Space Museum’s Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center in Chantilly, Virginia. (Its place in the National Museum of the United States Air Force was filled by a full-scale reproduction finished in the markings of the 19th Pursuit Squadron, 18th Pursuit Group.)

The second ex-Guatemalan Peashooter (P-26A serial 33-123) was obtained by Edward T. Maloney in July 1957, for his then fledgling air museum in Claremont, California. This particular Peashooter was accepted into service by the USAAC on June 16

1934 and assigned to the 27th Pursuit Squadron, 1st Pursuit Group at Selfridge Field, Michigan. Later transferred to the 20th Pursuit Group at Barksdale Field, Alabama, the aircraft eventually wound up in Panama as part of the aerial defence of the Canal Zone.

Retired from service with the United States Army Air Forces (as the USAAC was later known) in April 1943, it was handed over to the Panamanian Air Force before finally being sold to Guatemala in 1944. Initially used as a frontline fighter, the Peashooter served as a trainer before being retired. Displayed in Claremont, California in its original Guatemalan markings until 1959, the aircraft was then re-finished as a fighter belonging to the 34th Pursuit Squadron, 17th Pursuit Group. In 1961 Walker “Bud” Mahurin, a W.W.II ace, North American Aviation execu-

Peashooter Figures With a wingspan of 27 feet 11 inches (8.5 metres), a length of 23 feet 11 inches (7.3 metres) and standing 10 feet 2 inches (3.1 metres) tall, the Boeing P-26A has a maximum takeoff weight of 3,360 pounds (1,524 kilograms). Powered by a 600 hp (447 kW) Pratt & Whitney R-1340-7 Wasp Radial engine, the Peashooter has a top speed of 234 mph (377 kph) and cruises at 100 mph (160 kph). It can reach a service ceiling of 27,400 feet and has a range of 360 miles (579 kilometres). Armament is two .30 calibre machine guns mounted in the fuselage and firing through the cylinder banks. The aircraft can also carry two 100 pound (45 kilogram) or five 31 pound (14 kilogram) bombs under the fuselage.

76 | F L I G H T PAT H

tive, and supporter of The Air Museum founded by Maloney, organised the effort to restore the little Boeing to flying condition.

Mahurin made the first post-restoration flight on 17 September 1962 and, to this day (registered as N3378G), it is the only original P-26 that is airworthy.

As Maloney’s museum moved to several different locations over the years (and is now known as the Planes of Fame Air Museum and permanently based at Chino Airport, California, since 1973), the Peashooter remained one of the star attractions. Taken off flying status in the mid-1980s, the Peashooter was eventually restored to flying condition again in 2006 and is now finished in the colours and markings of the USAAC’s 95th Pursuit Squadron, 17th Pursuit Group. The aircraft was dismantled and shipped to the United Kingdom for a guest appearance at the Flying Legends Air Show in July 2014 but is now back home at Chino as one of the stars of the Planes of Fame Air Museum collection.

Though relatively easy to fly, the Peashooter can be tricky to land because of its narrow-track undercarriage.

Crosswind landings and takeoffs are therefore discouraged. Nevertheless, this very sporty warbird from one of the most colourful eras in military aviation is certainly a glorious sight to behold.

LEFT: John Maloney flying the Planes of Fame Air Museum’s Boeing P-26A near Chino, California.

RIGHT: A unique formation showing the Planes of Fame’s Peashooter flying with the museum’s Seversky 2PA/AT-12A Guardsman and North American F-86F Sabre and Steve Hinton’s P-51D Mustang.

BELOW: A port side detail shot of the Planes of Fame Air Museum’s P-26A showing the small door that helps with access to the cockpit.

BELOW LEFT: The Planes of Fame Air Museum’s Boeing P-26A on static display at the Chino Airport, California during a Planes of Fame Air Display in the early eighties.

John Maloney banking the Planes of Fame Air Museum’s P-26A Peashooter away from the camera.

F L I G H T PAT H | 77

Airshows

Hendon’s ‘First World War in the Air’ exhibition

O

pened by HRH Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, at the beginning of December 2014, the RAF Museum’s new “First World War in the Air” exhibition at Hendon marks the centenary of the start of the conflict. Located in the Museum’s Grahame-White Factory building, the exhibition brings together Great War aircraft, aero engines, vehicles and period artefacts in one coordinated exhibition complemented by appropriate audio-visual displays. The adjoining Watch Office (dating from 1915 and the oldest building remaining on the Hendon site), relocated from elsewhere on the former Hendon aerodrome and added to the Grahame-White Factory in 2010-11 to provide more display space, is now used to house an exhibition relating to the history of the site. It contains a pair of aircraft appropriate to the history of the airfield - the Bleriot type XXVII racer (based at Hendon prewar) and the Avro 504 (a number were manufactured by Grahame-White). The Sopwith Camel, Fokker D VII, F.E.2b and Vickers Gunbus were hung from the roof allowing additional space for the floor displays. A diverse range of artefacts has been incorporated into the new exhibition. These include a lighted beacon, originally gas-powered and located at Rennington Night Emergency Landing Ground in Northumberland has also been restored to working order by volunteers and incorporated into the exhibition. The Museum has concentrated on the concept of “He who controls the air controls the battlefield” as the theme for the exhibition. An audio-visual display presents the basics of air combat, using CGI along with dogfight sound effects, and 78 | F L I G H T PAT H

a floor-mounted electronic map table display shows the role of aerial reconnaissance and fighter aircraft during the conflict. Display cases containing smaller artefacts such as uniforms, aircraft machine guns and bombs, and flying clothing, have been placed in the centre of the hall. These include a section of fabric from Manfred von Richthofen’s legendary red Fokker Dr I Triplane, a flying helmet worn by him and a mascot found in his pocket after he was shot down and killed. Diaries, medals and a temporary wooden cross, erected by the Germans to mark the grave of an RFC pilot killed in action, are also displayed.

This is an excellent exhibition overall, despite the very limited scope of the narrative and is certainly an improvement on the ‘shed full of aeroplanes’ layout of the relocated Grahame-White Factory when it first opened a decade ago. Mike Shreeve

FROM TOP: The RAF Museum’s new “First World War in the Air” exhibition in the Grahame-White Factory building at Hendon. The fully restored lighted beacon, originally it was located on the emergency landing ground at Northumberland. The Sopwith Triplane and SE.5a. The Royal Aircraft Factory R.E. 8 ‘A3930’.

Hanging from the ceiling the F.E.2b, A6526.

Airshows

Nigel Pickard’s pair of Little Gransden-based Spartan Executives in the skies above their home base.

BELOW: The Dutch-based Hunter in the hands of former F-16 demo pilot Patrick Tuit at Waddington in July, where it took the award for the best display.

UK Airshows Highlights W

hilst much of the UK airshow excitement was about the visit of the Canadian WarShuttleworth’s Mew Gull and Richard Seeley’s Travel Air Mystery Ship replica. plane Heritage’s Lancaster, many other interesting aircraft have undertaken their first full season on the UK airshow circuit this summer. This includes the Midair Squadron’s silver Canberra PR9 XH134, David Beale’s Mew Gull replica (seen at Woburn and Sywell in the hands of Charlie Huke) and Richard Seeley’s Travel Air Mystery Ship replica (flown by Jez Cooke). Waddington in July saw the return of the Swedish Air Force Historic Flight’s Saab Viggen, joined this year by the Draken (making its UK airshow debut), as well as a superb display by a Dutch-based Hunter At Woburn The Midair Squadron’s silver Canberra PR9 XH134 opened its first full display in August, all eleven active UK-based DH.87B Horseason at Abingdon in May. net Moths gathered together to commemorate the type’s 80th birthday, and were joined by newly-restored Rapide G-AHAG from Membury and a pair of Fw44 Stieglitz visiting from Germany. At Old Warden, the Shuttleworth Collection’s events were hit by the weather, with a couple of events being cancelled. Highlights included a superb pageant in September, which witnessed the first display of the DH.88 Comet G-ACSS in over two decades, the Collection’s Mew Gull flying with the Mystery Ship, and the B.E.2e pair. Duxford in September saw the Vulcan in formation with a pair of Gnats, and the unusual sight of Dan Griffith displaying a Boeing 727. The Vintage Aircraft Club celebrated its 50th anniversary with a two-day fly-in at Popham in July, which featured a visit by Joe Dible’s only surviving Foster Wickner Wicko and a pair of Tipsies. Mike Shreeve Joe Dible’s only surviving Foster Wickner Wicko was one of the stars of the Vintage Aircraft Club’s 50th Anniversary rally at Popham in July.

The newly-restored Rapide G-AHAG from Membury, on the grass at Woburn for the Moth Club Rally in August.

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Shuttleworth’s ‘ Philip Meeson’s Old Warden-based de Havilland Rapide made a rare public appearance.

T

he Shuttleworth Collection at Old Warden Aerodrome in Bedfordshire chose to hold a Race Day event as the theme for their end-of-season display on Sunday, 5 October 2014. This allowed the commemoration of the 80th anniversary of the MacRobertson Air Race from Mildenhall to Melbourne in October 1934 as well as showcasing the return to the air of the de Havilland Comet (G-ACSS) after two decades of inactivity. An excellent line-up, based on the day’s air racing theme, of local and visiting aircraft was achieved. In addition, some appropriate vehicles were present and included the magnificent Napier-Railton, powered by a Napier Lion aero engine, from the Brooklands Museum. Also from Brooklands was the Halford Special built by Major Frank Halford (designer of the Gipsy aero engine).

A surprising number of types that took part in the original MacRobertson race were gathered at Old Warden to take part in the re-enactment. Several of them are the last airworthy examples of their kind. They took off in the same sequence that they departed Mildenhall in 1934. First off was the Comet, followed by the Miles Hawk Trainer, Miles Falcon, de Havilland Rapide, Desoutter and de Havilland Puss Moth. After this sequence, the Comet performed a flypast, with a pair of Mew Gulls and Steve Noujaim 80 | F L I G H T PAT H

in his Van’s RV-7 (G-IIXF), to commemorate the history of the London-Cape Town-London record-breaking flights. Noujaim currently holds the record for the Cape Challenge after he broke, in the RV-7 in 2010, the long-standing mark set by Alex Henshaw in 1939 in the Mew Gull. This was the first time David Beale’s Mew Gull replica (GHEKL) had been seen in the air alongside Shuttleworth’s G-AEXF (Alex Henshaw’s record-breaking mount).

Other significant visiting aircraft taking part in the display flying included one of Nigel Pickard’s pair of Little Gransden-based Spartan Executives (NC17615, a participant in the 1938 Bendix race). His other Spartan was also present on the flightline for the event. Roger Mills brought his lovely Miles Hawk Speed Six (G-ADGP) from White Waltham. A 1930s-style handicap air race was also held with participants comprising such gems as the Comper Swift, Spartan Executive, a pair of Chilton DW-1s, Miles Whitney Straight, Miles Falcon, Hawk Speed Six, Magister and DH-60X Moth. The winner was declared to be Shuttleworth pilot Clare Tector in one of the Chiltons. The Race Day was possibly the first time all four pre-war Miles aircraft active in the UK (Hawk Speed Six, Hawk Trainer, Whitney Straight and Falcon) attended an event together.

A Formula One air racer demonstration, by examples of the Taylor Titch and the Cosmic Wind (other planned participants dropped out in the days leading up to the event), was followed by Pete Kynsey flying a superb aerobatic routine in his Cosmic Wind ‘Ballerina’. More modern racing types were represented by Chris Heames in Graham Peacock’s Hunter T7 and Peter Teichman in his P-51D Mustang.

The weather was excellent and allowed for the Collection’s more delicate aircraft, such as the Hawker Cygnet replica and English Electric Wren, and the Great War era S.E.5a and Bristol M.1c replica, to take to the air. After a break, to allow visiting aircraft to depart, there was the rare chance to see a number of the Edwardian aircraft in the air with the Bristol Boxkite replica and Deperdussin being ‘hopped’ while the Avro Triplane replica and Blackburn Monoplane flew overhead.

The Edwardians brought to a close one of the best Shuttleworth displays in recent memory. It was an event that brought the great and the good of the British vintage aviation world together at Old Warden on a lovely autumn afternoon. It is hoped that a similar format can be repeated again soon as the event certainly seemed to be popular among the good-sized crowd. Mike Shreeve.

s ‘Race Day’ Shuttleworth Chief Pilot ‘Dodge’ Bailey takes off in the de Havilland Comet, which has returned to the skies after two decades of inactivity

Richard Seely’s de Havilland Puss Moth.

The Miles Hawk Trainer, flown here by Peter Holloway, has since been sold to German interests.

Peter Holloway’s Miles Falcon in the hands of Shuttleworth Chief Engineer Jean Munn David Beale’s superb Mew Gull replica (G-HEKL) was a delight to see at selected events in its first full season in 2014

The Shuttleworth Collection’s Desoutter represented the Danish-entered example which finished 7th in the Handicap Division of the MacRobertson Race in 1934.

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Airshows

Wings Over Wine C

T

he 2014 Wings Over Wine Country Air Show at the Charles M. Schulz Sonoma County Airport in Sonoma, California, over the weekend of 20-21 September 2014, celebrated the 25th anniversary of the Pacific Coast Air Museum which hosts the annual event. This year’s show had to be modified due to construction work on the airport, and this resulted in a smaller display area and a runway closure. However, it was still a grand production in the heart of Northern California’s scenic wine country.

Warbird flybys featured Nanchang CJ-6A and North American AT-6/SNJ/Harvard advanced trainers, Boeing PT-17 and Waco UPF-7 primary trainers, a Lockheed P-38J Lightning, a Vought F4U-1 Corsair, a Curtiss P-40E Warhawk and a North American B25J Mitchell as well as North American P51D and TF-51D Mustangs. Kent Carlomag-

no’s highly modified Yak-11 Moose, although built as a trainer, flew together with the fighters during the show. Four Nanchangs from the Red Stars Pilots’ Association showed off their formation flying skills as well. Among other aircraft performing flybys at the show were a very plush Douglas DC-3A, a float-equipped de Havilland U-6A Beaver and a Lockheed T-33A Shooting Star flown by Greg Collier during an energetic aerobatic display.

The final act of the show was a display by a United States Marine Corps Boeing MV-22 Osprey. Two Ospreys from VMM-166 were sent to Sonoma for the show, one for the flying display and the other for static display.

Among the scores of other aircraft on static display during the show was a pair of Royal Canadian Air Force Beechcraft CT-156 Harvard II trainers. Frank B. Mormillo

Greg Collier performed an aerobatic display in his Lockheed T-33A Shooting Star ‘Ace Maker’.

The very plush JM Air, LLC Douglas DC-3A. Duane Doyle in his de Havilland U-6A Beaver.

Brent Moon’s Garland-Lincoln Nieuport 28 replica restoration project on display. This 1930s movie replica was once owned by legendary stunt pilot Frank Tallman and will be powered by a Continental W670.

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Airshows

e Country 2014

John Ward and Stu Eberhardt making a pass in Ward’s North American B-25N Mitchell. [All pictures Frank Mormillo] Donald Bayley making a pass in his Waco UPF-7.

John Hinton in the Planes of Fame Air Museum’s Vought F4U-1 Corsair.

The latest addition to the Pacific Coast Air Museum’s collection is this Grumman EA-6B Prowler..

F L I G H T PAT H | 83

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