October 2020

FlightCm African Aviation

Edition 144 | OCTOBER 2020

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CONTENTS

TABLE OF 08 12 18 24 29 30 33 34 36 37 38 48

Publisher Flyer and Aviation Publications cc Managing Editor Guy Leitch guy@flightcommag.com Advertising Sales Wayne Wilson wayne@saflyermag.co.za Layout & Design Emily-Jane Kinnear

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OCTOBER 2020 EDITION 144

Bush Pilot - Hugh Pryor Airlines - Mike Gough Defence - Darren Olivier MAF Founder Stuart King dies IATA - Quarantines Wilderness Search & Rescue Atlas Oil Charter Directory Alpi Flight School Listing AEP AMO Listing AME Directory The Battle of Britain Back Page Directory

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A NOTE FROM

THE EDITOR:

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has traditionally had the world’s weakest airline industry.

Thanks to the legacy of stateowned airlines with concomitant political interference and protection, and the lack of liberalisation and open skies, Africa’s airlines have been sheltered children.

It is therefore ironic that African airlines are now the best placed to recover from the Covid-19 pandemic. African governments have been more relaxed than many European countries in their response to the pandemic, and some counties such as Tanzania have done their best to ignore it entirely.

Thus, African airlines are, broadly speaking, returning to the sky sooner than their European and American counterparts. Additionally, the benefits of state ownership means that African airlines can just put out their hands for shareholder bailouts which are far more readily available than having to scrounge money from banks, or private sector investors.

However, we must not lose sight of the massive social, financial and economic impact the pandemic has had on Africa. Mr Mikail Houari, Airbus’s President for Africa and the Middle East, points out that the grounding of flights has resulted in losses, not just to the airlines, but also to sectors dependant on aviation such as tourism and trade.

Houari points out that Covid-19 has also demonstrated the intrinsically vital nature of aviation. Due to poor ground-based transport modes, such as effective road and rail links, aircraft have been the only means of transport capable of delivering essential time-sensitive cargo. Thus, the FRICA

United Nations opened a humanitarian transport hub at Addis Ababa to move supplies and aid workers across Africa to fight the coronavirus pandemic.

Prior to this pandemic, the outlook for air transport in Africa was positive. Airbus’s Global Market Forecast (GMF) for 2019 predicted that passenger traffic to and from Africa would increase by 5.4% yearly over the next twenty years. This was in line with the International Air Transport Association (IATA) predictions that Africa would be the second-fastest-growing aviation market in the 20 years leading to 2037, with passenger numbers expected to more than double — to 334 million — by then.

Over the past twenty years, out of the 20 top worldwide economic performers, more than ten were African economies. The increased demand for air transport is a reflection of that growth.

The impact that the aviation industry has had on the sustainable development of Africa cannot be overstated, and governments across the continent are leveraging the industry’s ability to bring about economic transformation. Houari points out that aviation not only gets people moving, but it also fosters regional integration, creates jobs and enables domestic, intra-African and global trade. According to IATA, the African air transport industry directly supports 6.2 million jobs and contributes $56 billion to the continent’s regional GDP. To generate further activity and improve the state of air transport in Africa, governments, regional bodies, and financial institutions have developed air transport-specific initiatives such as the Single

African Air Transport Market (SAATM). The African continent has also made significant strides towards the expansion and improvement of airport infrastructure and air traffic management. Countries such as Morocco, Niger, Senegal, South Africa, Uganda and Ethiopia are expanding existing airports or building new ones.

Aerospace manufacturing is also happening on the continent. In South Africa, Morocco and Tunisia, for example, more than 35 African companies are involved in the manufacturing of Airbus commercial aircraft in areas such as design, engineering, and the production of aerodynamic, structural, communications, control surface, electronics and

The impact that the aviation industry has had on Africa cannot be overstated cabin items. Such activities have enabled the creation of centres of learning, knowledge development, and innovation, thus supporting the creation of a pool of highly skilled aviation talent for the continent.

Although the real impact of the pandemic on Africa’s airline industry is still difficult to gauge, the Covid-19 crisis poses a threat not only to the current African aviation value chain, but also to the tremendous progress made to improve the entire airtransport ecosystem on the continent.

Considering the inherent and extensive nature of aviation and the boundless possibilities and opportunities it offers Africa’s socio-economic 6

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development - it seems necessary for all stakeholders to strongly support the sector. Indeed, the ability of Africa’s aviation industry to recover from this global crisis will depend on the level of collaboration and support invested by all stakeholders to mitigate the effects of this unprecedented crisis.

Support from governments and development finance institutions will be particularly critical, be it with direct financial support, loan guarantees, or tax relief. We already see governments in Senegal, Cote d’Ivoire, Rwanda and Uganda taking actions.

For airlines, being adaptable will be crucial; with the expected decrease in passenger numbers, airline fleet composition and aircraft versatility will be put to the test. Unsurprisingly Airbus points out

that more than ever, it will be about flying the right aircraft at the right time, with flexible approaches to business models while operating economically efficient aircraft. Post-Covid will require tailored market and fleet strategies.

Furthermore, concerted effort with airlines, airports, and the authorities will be required to reassure people who rely on air travel. Airbus points out that renewed air circulates in the cabin every 2-3 minutes through highly efficient HEPA filters that remove 97-99.95% of microbes, viral and bacterial particles from the air, including Covid-19.

With every crisis comes opportunity, and the current climate might encourage better collaboration and integration in Africa. African carriers could choose to join forces, thus increasing competitiveness, creating regional hubs, and ultimately speeding up the full implementation of initiatives such as SAATM. Airbus concludes that aviation connects people, countries and cultures, generates revenue, and improves the livelihood of millions of people. When the stakes are so high and the returns even higher, a successful and sustainable aviation industry in Africa should not be viewed as an option, but rather, as a vital sector, with immeasurable value. 

A Message to All Our Loyal Readers The Covid-19 pandemic has thrown the aviation publication business into turmoil.

QUESTION:

WHY CAN I NOT FIND SA FLYER ON THE SHOP SHELVES AND IN MY POST BOX?

ANSWER:

T HE COVID-19 PANDEMIC HAS EFFECTIVELY FORCED ALL THE AVIATION MAGAZINES TO STOP PRINTING. BUT THE GOOD NEWS IS THAT THERE IS NOW FAR MORE TO ENJOY!

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OVID-19 has brought the entire print publication industry to its knees. One of the impacts of this has been the closure of our retail distribution to shops and our inability to deliver subscriptions. For this reason, we have moved to a purely digital offering.

Our new value proposition to you, our loyal reader: We now provide not just the magazine, but 3 different ways for you to get your flying fix – and not just monthly – but with new material every day!

1. Our all new digital pdf magazine - available for free on our website www.saflyer.com 2. Our Facebook page - with by far the biggest aviation following in Africa 3. Our brand-new state of the art website - visit www. saflyer.com And best of all! We provide all three of these platforms for free!!

The core our offering remains the magazines, which, as purely digital PDF publications use an excellent ‘e-zine’ reader. Click on: https://issuu.com/saflyermagazine for your free copy of SA Flyer and FlightCom. This very

powerful yet easy to use e-zine reader allows us to fully exploit the wonderful opportunities created by digital publishing in linking videos to our articles. And we have made the font and layout much easier to read on a tablet or computer monitor.

So now – not only is SA Flyer and FlightCom available for free – it offers so much more!

Our means of reaching our readers may have changed, but at SA Flyer and FlightCom we remain committed to our core principles of quality journalism and insightful thought-leadership. Our key objective is to inform and entertain our readers, which we do thanks to the world-class contributors we have nurtured. These include: •

Peter Garrison’s unrivalled insights into aerodynamics and accidents

•

Jim Davis’s years of instructing experience

•

George Tonking’s unique helicopter insights.

•

At the same time we are nurturing young writers such as Johan Walden and the wonderful Dassie Persaud van der Westhuizen who qualified as an architect and then became a flight attendant to fund her flying training – all the way to the cockpit of an Airbus A320.

We are also the only magazine to do hands-on ‘from the cockpit’ flight tests where we actually fly the aircraft. And we bring our readers invaluable information, such as where to get the cheapest fuel – thus saving you thousands of Rands!

We live in challenging times and it will be extremely interesting to see what the aviation publication market looks like in a year’s time. But in the meanwhile, we are confident that we are still by far the most liked and respected aviation magazine in Africa.

Thank you for your support!

Guy Leitch

BUSH PILOT HUGH PRYOR

ABDUL AZIZ

I have never thought of myself as being much of a magician, even less a ‘medium’ or spiritual intermediary, but there is a customs officer in Algeria who certainly thinks that I am one or possibly even both.

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reason he gave me this completely undeserved reputation was because he had been to Ethiopia and so had I. Abdul Aziz was there in the course of his duties, ‘something to do with drugs,’ he murmured, and left it at that. I was there during the great Ethiopian Famine of 1985/6/7, flying for the International Committee of the Red Cross.

Abdul Aziz was a compact little man with a thin moustache, which he obviously spent time on.

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The grey at his temples looked too good to have been put there by his creator. His uniform was always immaculately creased. The bill of his cap had been cut back so that he could look down his nose at people, in spite of his abridged stature. His badges of rank were worn with intent and beamed his authority to all and sundry. Given a different time and place, he could have been a world leader and probably a very dangerous one, too. As things turned out, he rose to be the chief of customs at Hassi Messaoud, the oil capital of Algeria, in North Africa.

His position had considerable influence on the local economy and his services were therefore much in demand by the many foreign oil-related companies which did business in the town.

He had a reputation for being particularly hard on people and organisations who tried to find alternative methods of moving materials in and out of the country, without going through

He could have been a world leader and probably a very dangerous one, too the normal customs procedures.

The basic principle by which he lived was that if you were straight with him, he would be straight with you.

Okay, it might take a little longer, but if he caught you trying

BUSH PILOT HUGH PRYOR to bypass the system, you stood a very good chance of not receiving your goods at all. And, of course, the next time you came through, Abdul Aziz would have no reason to suspect that you were telling him the truth, since you had lied to him before, and so you would have to jump through ALL the hoops, some of them more than once, before you would get your things out of customs. This could delay your project considerably and with an oil rig costing upwards of $25 000 per day, even sitting idle, it was definitely worth your while to make friends with Abdul Aziz.

Some time later I was relieved of my duties by the company which I had been working for, for the previous fourteen years. The ‘relieving’ smarted

Everybody thought that Pryor had left the fuel caps off quite a bit, partly because it was based on baseless accusations and partly because it was carried out on the telephone, while I was on leave. But that’s

another story, with which I may possibly bore you at a later date. Be warned!

Almost simultaneously with my firing, another company offered me employment. I have been blessed several times this way and it confirms all I have heard about ‘It’s not what you know, it’s who you know’.

The new company was interested in me because they were picking up several of the contracts previously served by my ex-employers. One of these was with a very large American construction company, who had landed an enormous contract to 10

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build some big compressor stations on one of the gas pipelines feeding North African gas, from the middle of the Sahara, under the Mediterranean sea, into Europe.

I had the honour of bringing the first company aircraft into Hassi Messaoud, from Malta. I have to say that the aircraft was not, by any stretch of the imagination, a pristine example of its marque. Just because Twin Otters tend to visit the more remote corners of the world does not mean that they have to be shabby.

‘Charlie-Alpha’ was shabby. Twin Otters don’t see sophisticated airports very often, but that doesn’t

mean that the fuel tanks should leak. ‘CharlieAlpha’s’ tanks leaked so badly that I once left a fiftymetre contrail of fuel behind me as I flew off to a place called Zina, to the south of Hassi Messaoud, in Algeria. Of course, everybody thought that Pryor had left the fuel caps off, but they were wrong. I have only ever done that once in my long career, and this was not the occasion. When we landed at Zina, the caps were in place and a continuous stream of fuel was pouring from the belly of the aircraft.

So, obviously, we had to make a quick turn-around and get back to Hassi Messaoud before all the fuel leaked out. Luckily the trip was only 34 miles and there was a good black-top road all the way, in case the split in the tank got any bigger.

No, ‘Charlie-Alpha’ was a bit of an embarrassment, to be honest, and so it was just as well that it was dark when we landed that first time.

Being our first visit with the new company’s aircraft, there were various formalities which had to be complied with, before operations could commence, and Abdul Azziz was, of course, heavily involved. He was actually standing there, on the darkened apron, in full uniform, with the arc lights glittering off his insignia, as we taxied in and parked the aircraft. We shut down the engines and all the

remaining systems which still worked and while my colleague finished up the paperwork, I opened the cockpit door and jumped down onto the ground.

When Abdul Azziz saw who the driver was, he strode over with outstretched hands to meet me.

“Hello Abdul!” I said, grasping his hand, “Nice to see you again.”

“Welcome to Hassi Messaoud, Captain!” he said, shaking my hand vigorously. “So you bring a new aircraft with you this evening.”

“Well, Abdul, it’s not really new exactly. New to Algeria, yes. But it’s quite an old aeroplane, twentynine years old, in fact.”

“But it is bigger than the ones you were flying for your previous company, isn’t it?”

“No, Abdul, it’s the same type, a De Havilland DHC-6 dash 300. It’s exactly the same as theirs.”

I was tempted to add that theirs was probably in a lot better shape than ours, but managed to restrain myself.

“But you have bigger engines in yours, don’t you?”

“No, Abdul, we’ve got the Pratt and Whitney Canada PT-6A dash 27s in ours, and so have they.”

“Yes but you must have tweaked yours a bit, or something, surely.” Abdul insisted.

“No, Abdul, I promise you, we’ve got the same type of plane as they have. What makes you think ours is different?”

“Well your Fuel Control Units cost $22 000 each.”

“Yes, that’s right. I have the invoices with me, but I assume you already have them.”

“Well your previous employer’s Fuel Control Units only cost $150!”

Abdul suddenly realised he was onto a major scam, and he went for the throat. Two of the aircraft were impounded, pending the payment of $1 900 000 in back tax.

And, guess what? I got the blame! What a pleasure! 

PETER GARRISON’S NEW BOOK! Acclaimed SA Flyer (and Flying magazine) columnist Peter Garrison has just released a book of noteworthy accident analyses, and lessons to be learned, from his ‘Aftermath’ series.

He writes: “I’ve put a bunch of slightly used but still serviceable Aftermaths into a book called “Why? Thinking About Plane Crashes”, which is for sale on Amazon Books as both a Kindle ebook and a paperback.”

Guy Leitch highly recommends it; “I downloaded it for just US$5.75 on kindle and the profound insights to be gained from these accidents will make us all better pilots. From the risks of ‘taking a look’ at dubious VFR conditions, to showing-off in front of our friends, there are 32 invaluable lessons. This book should be part of every pilot’s prescribed reading list.”

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AIRLINES MIKE GOUGH

THE NEAREST ADEQUATE AIRPORT The choice between an adequate airport, as opposed to a suitable airport depends essentially on one’s level of desperation of getting on to the ground, what risks are involved and then the consequence management of dealing with the result of one’s decision.

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assume we are in the cruise, and everything is normal.

Anyone who has ploughed through the Airbus Computer Based Training aircraft technical course should have raised a smile at that one…

However. The unexpected happens. It could be as simple as a Level One warning – simply requiring crew awareness, for example the SATCOM might

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have gone on strike. Maybe a Level Two warning pings into our attention sphere. We would sit on our hands, take a look at it, discuss it, and then do something about it.

It is unlikely we would be considering a suitable airport to divert to, although it may be a possibility. ‘Suitable’ being engineering capability, company representation, onward connections and so forth.

The Level Three has our absolute and undivided attention.

This requires ‘immediate’ crew action. A fire warning, dual hydraulic failure, smoke in the cabin or the most extreme, all engine failure. Now, we are only concerned with an adequate airport where weather, runway length and strength are all that matter.

We are trained to leap into (appropriately measured) action and deal with the situation using all available resources. As soon as we have (hopefully) managed to stop the bleeding, we then need to assess the next, most appropriate course of action.

As one would probably have an elevated pulse rate and possibly that kick of adrenaline through one’s system, the chance of an uncoordinated and random decision-making process is a distinct possibility.

Being the fatally flawed human creatures that we are, we are taught that our mental processes are sometimes our own worst enemy. Confirmation Bias leads

Use the TFOReDEC process to consult - not argue.

us to seek only that information that supports our current mindset and leads us to discount alternate information. Heuristics assist our brains to shortcut the situation, and literally leap to a conclusion. We have seen something similar and thus we will do X. This has advantages and some pretty obvious disadvantages.

Thus, as much as our vivid thinking patterns can lead us down the garden path, the same thought processes respond in a gratifyingly child-like manner to simple mnemonics to get us out of a mental hole that we might find ourselves in.

We can probably all recall our elementary flight training (something I find myself busy with almost full time now, but we’ll get to that), and those epic complexities of dealing with a Cessna 172 immediately before takeoff. Variations of these themes exist throughout the ab initio training environment.

Immediately after start, “ROAMFRIES” (RPM, Oil pressure, Ammeter, Mixture, Flaps up, Radios, Instruments, Electrics, Safety), tells us the actions

and checks to accomplish when the quiet turns noisy and rattley.

“Too Many Pilots Go Fly In Heaven Early” – although not strictly a mnemonic, reminds us of the vital first letters to initiate certain before takeoff checks.

As far as single crew checklist philosophy goes, when a single-crew operation is literally in motion, one cannot safely consult a written checklist, while paying attention to the all- important ‘Aviate, Communicate, Navigate’ hierarchy of aviation needs. Thus, the simple mnemonic can assist with relatively complex tasks.

In my airline training, we have been taught to use ‘TFOReDEC’ as our go-to mnemonic when we need to declutter our decision-making process and consider all our options. Most airlines around the world use a similar process to assist crews to use a logical sequence as a Decision Making Model (DMM).

The ‘thinking’ part: Time. Do we have enough time to complete this

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process? How much time do we have? Normally fuel related, although many factors can affect this assessment.

Facts. What are the actual, underlying, causal facts of this situation? Are we both on the same page in terms of understanding this issue?

Options. What options – any and all options – are available to us? Continue. Turn back. Divert.

Descend. Enter a holding pattern.

Risks and Benefits of these various options. Play Devil’s Advocate and the ‘what if’ game to test the strength and weaknesses of each option.

The lower-case e is experience.

Have we seen this before, either in the simulator or on the line? If so, what did we do and what was the outcome?

Then comes the ‘acting’ part – putting the decision into action: Decide. Choose the most appropriate option / course of action.

Execute. Task delegation.

Who will do what, and when it will be done.

Check. What have we missed?

Is the decision achieving the desired outcome?

Start the TFOReDEC again.

Around two years ago, while I was undergoing the annual requirement to be observed by a 14

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company Check Captain on a twosector flight to assess how well we are complying with Airbus and company procedures, I had a minor issue that I had to take care of. Generally, something is bound to go south during a check flight…

After push-back, with both engines now running, the ground

it came from was somewhat irrelevant, but we could not depart in this state.

Options. We could pull back into the bay, shut down both engines, connect the airbridge, open the door and retrieve the rope. Or, we could shut down number 1 engine and open the door in the lane. Or, we could

Check Captain is also part of the decision making team.

engineer informed me that we had a green rope dangling out of

door 1 Left – the main entry door - and what am I going to do about it?

Time. We had plenty of time – engines running just meant we would start using our tankering fuel for the return sector from Maputo, but we could uplift some of their expensive fuel if need be.

Facts. Well, apparently there was a piece of rope hanging out the bottom of the door…where

simply disarm the door with both engines running and open it.

Risks and benefits. Option 1, minimal risks, but would definitely use some fuel reserves and we would lose our departure slot. Option 2, less ‘alarm factor’ for the passengers due to reduced noise when we opened the door, but caution in terms of losing one’s footing while retrieving the rope without the safety of a connected airbridge. Option 3, the quickest and simplest, but

possibly the noisiest and even though risk was relatively low, it was the riskiest.

Experience. Had we seen or done this before? No. Decide. I included the three of us in this brief discussion, as the Check Captain is still a usable resource on the flight deck.

Option 3 it was.

Execute. I decided the additional crew member would firmly hold the Purser’s belt while he knelt at the open door, and also double-check the door was disarmed before opening it. A quick announcement to the passengers about a sudden increase in jet-noise, and the first officer made a radio call to Ground to let them know why we hadn’t commenced the taxi.

The increase in noise level took us all by surprise and rendered any verbal communication between us hopeless. As we had properly briefed, additional discussion was unnecessary.

In ten seconds it was done, and it turned out to be part of the escape slide housed in the door bustle. I got a few Noddy points after the check ride for using what was then a relatively new procedure.

Allow me to look at the events of this year in terms of our Decision Making Model. In

February, the entire industry was fat and happy, in the cruise and not only was everything normal, but the future for all of us was looking positively rosy.

Then the shit-show called COVID-19 turned the entire world upside down. Airlines around the world were grounded in a flash, and tens of thousands of aircrew

students are able to get through our borders, I can continue for some time to come in the lifestyle to which my family and I are accustomed. Many are not so lucky.

Facts. The entire aviation industry globally is that allegorical battered boxer on his knees, reeling from a sucker

I expect this coming week to be my last in my airline were suddenly the target of bean counters’ attempts to maintain some form of solvency.

For the vast majority of crew in this country, the unexpected last salary was the end of March.

Retrenchments abounded. As I write this, I expect this coming week to be my last in my airline where I have made my career for the last 23 years.

Time. I am fortunate that I not only have holding fuel (financial resources), I also have a significant business in my flight school. Provided the pipeline of

punch out the blue. How long it takes for him to stand again and start ducking and weaving is the subject of much conjecture.

At this point, the facts get a bit foggy…

Options. For a lot of people, an alternate career is suddenly a necessity. Any employment in the worst recession in the history of the planet would probably be an option – much like that adequate airport. Some may be lucky enough to be re-employed by what is left of the respectable carriers, worldwide. Others are

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AIRLINES MIKE GOUGH

going to have to hold for about 18 to 24 months and that will take a heck of a lot of holding fuel.

Risks and benefits. I would wager that a lot of the more senior crew members exiting the flight deck at this point will not be coming back at all in the future.

For some, the risk of accepting any position in the interim may in itself be long term career-limiting, as licences lapse and recencies are lost. There simply are no benefits in this situation.

a lot of the more senior crew members exiting the flight deck will not be coming back Experience. Have we seen this before? Never on this scale, and that’s why it seems so overwhelmingly daunting.

Decide. I will be training ab initio students for the foreseeable future and doing some commercial licence testing and the occasional Airbus simulator session for those willing to use their resources to keep that ATP valid. It is not as straightforward for many.

Execute. The roles are allocated, the game plan in action.

Check. Monitor those reserves, refine the plan, check for changes around the globe and repeat the TFOReDEC frequently.

There will eventually be a suitable airport, with good weather and a choice of approaches.

All we need is Time. 

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TFOReDEC CONSIDERATIONS TIME- HOW MUCH TIME DO WE HAVE? Consider Land ASAP amber or red, is the fuel contained and balanced and agree on how much time is remaining. Consider starting a stopwatch. Ask how much time is available before the aircraft needs to land, are there any technical malfunctions that could change how much time is available? Consider time as either critical, available or required (i.e. buy time by holding or slowing down) FACTS- WHAT ARE THE FACTS? Identify and confirm the problem, gather all relevant facts.

Ask what is going on and what are the implications? Are there limitations we need to think about?

Can the problem be fixed (reset)? Seek information, look for a convergence of facts to point towards or confirm a problem is what you think it is.

Ask why something is the way that it is to probe understanding.

OPTIONS- WHAT ARE OUR OPTIONS? Consider continuing, holding, diverting, or turning back to where you came from. Ask what options are available, what choices we have? The use of open questions can assist “What do you think…” Consider the opposite too “What are some reasons that my initial judgement might be wrong?”

RISKS AND BENEFITS- WHAT ARE THE (DIS)ADVANTAGES? Weigh up the risks and benefits or advantages and disadvantages of each option. Keep in mind that Risk = Severity x Probability. Consider any latent or overt threats, what can be said for and against the different options. Consider other aspects like if it is safe, legal and possible, does it take into account crew, passenger or company requirements too? experience - HAVE WE SEEN THIS BEFORE? When a solution is obvious to an expert this stage is meant to bring that aspect into the process. Exchange and share your experiences and solution approaches gained in the past concerning the situation.

EXECUTE - WHO DOES WHAT? Who shall do what, when and how? This step is part of assigning tasks and communicating, it is also part of an essential aspects of leadership: workload management. Consider providing a NITS briefing x 4 (within the flight deck, to ATC, to the Cabin Crew and to the Airline). Use all available resources.

CHECK - HAVE WE MISSED ANYTHING? Review and modify plans, follow-up to check that people are seeing and doing what is expected, if what is expected is not happening, change the plan. Ask if everything is still alright, this step should be repeated whenever workload permits. Encourage the team to state when the situation has changed.

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SA Flyer 2019|03

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Defence D arren O livier

Canada's Icarus Tactical Aerial Vehicle (TAV) is a direct competitor to the AHRLAC.

THE POSSIBILITIES OF A ‘DIGITAL CENTURY’ STYLE APPROACH It’s becoming ever more difficult, and expensive, to maintain an air force. We are stuck in a vicious loop where higher aircraft acquisition and lifecycle costs result in fewer aircraft being acquired, meaning each aircraft has to do more and last longer, in turn driving up complexity plus acquisition and lifecycle costs.

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Augustine included a wry reference to this in Law Number XVI from his eponymous laws published in 1984: In the year 2054, the entire defence budget will purchase just one aircraft.

This aircraft will have to be shared by the Air Force and Navy 3-1/2 days each per week except for a leap year, when it will be made available to the Marines for the extra day.

While written with the US in ORMAN

mind, the principles are universal and affect all. More importantly, this trend has the potential to be devastating for African air forces that are already resourceconstrained and risk being priced out of the market for new and even second-hand aircraft.

While some have managed to stave off the problem for a few years by acquiring Russian and Chinese aircraft which remain significantly cheaper than their Western counterparts, that’s only a short-term solution as the same

cost and complexity increases are happening there too.

Clearly, a new approach is needed.

Fortunately, there are already a few intriguing new ideas and concepts being developed that hope to solve this problem, or at least reduce the rate of cost and complexity increases. Some are all new, possible now only because of advances in computeraided engineering (CAE), others are clever remixes of old methods.

Combined, they might just break

The modular approach adopted by AERALIS.

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us out of the cost/complexity loop and allow African air forces to remain capable on limited budgets.

So let’s look at some of the technological changes that have allowed for a new approach. Fair warning: This section will inevitably contain a number of hyped-up industry buzzwords, though I will attempt to cut through the hype to explain the actual value of each part.

First: end-to-end digital product lifecycle management (PLM), using the concept of digital twinning, has proven that if correctly applied, PLM can bring down design, development, engineering and service life operating costs by a substantial amount. It does this by reducing the number of

digital twinning is considered part of ‘Industry 4.0’ prototypes needed, the amount of rework, and both acquisition and lifecycle costs through being able to accurately model and therefore simulate every aspect of a manufactured item, from inception through to disposal. While its constituent components, such as computer-aided design (CAD), computeraided engineering (CAE) and computer-aided manufacturing (CAM) have been around in various forms for decades, it’s only in more recent years that it has become feasible to go a step further and not 20

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only model every system and sub-component, but to feed back into those models in real-time from builtin sensors incorporated into production systems.

To illustrate this let’s look at a typical air force tactical transport aircraft. Before the 1990s, even if the aircraft and many of its components were designed and built using CAD, CAE and CAM, usually only the prototypes were fully instrumented to test the validity of the models against the final system because the sensors were so expensive, bulky and heavy. Production aircraft typically only had relatively basic usage monitoring, such as engine hour meters, along with whatever information was written down by maintenance personnel working on

the aircraft.

From the 1990s onwards, this was improved by the adoption of health and usage monitoring systems (HUMS) which collected more data and stored it digitally for alerting and later monitoring.

Even these, though, were limited in what data they could collect by the size and cost of sensors. In the past few years though, the size and cost of sensors has fallen so much that it has become possible to incorporate them into production components from the very beginning, so that nearly every component on an aircraft, and every aspect of its behaviour, can be instrumented. What’s more, with data processing getting cheaper and easier each year, those sensors can output data at a much higher resolution than a traditional HUMS and it can even all be collected and analysed in real-time during flight. That analysis, in turn, can run the data against near realtime simulations that incorporate the digital model of the aircraft in order to test how the stresses, the aircraft and its components experience will impact lifespan, maintenance costs and performance.

That data in turn is fed back into the model itself in order to continuously improve the basic component and system designs and reduce production and maintenance costs for the next set to come off the

production line. In brief, this is what’s referred to as expense of manufacturing, to how much maintenance digital twinning, and considered part of ‘Industry 4.0’ a design might require, and how even small changes or the fourth main wave of industrial manufacturing. to individual components affect all those over the Modern airline engine manufacturers like Rolls- life of an aircraft.

Royce, for instance, now offer maintenance services As a result we’re seeing a raft of new designs where they collect huge amounts of data in real-time for modular aircraft emerging, which are able to from the in-service engines of their client airlines fulfil a wide variety of roles through the swapping and run simulations to predict breakdowns or other of components and sub-assemblies, including entire issues, immediately recommending preventative wing sections, engine pods, payload bays, and so on, maintenance actions that are much, much cheaper around a common base core. This is a unique new than only acting once the part has failed. This is approach. Until now with multi-role aircraft, the another beneficial self-reinforcing cycle, as the goal has been to avoid too much variation in a design data collected further improves the accuracy of so as to avoid skyrocketing production and testing the simulations and costs, so aircraft their predictions manufacturers have over time. to over-engineer An intriguing each design for all side benefit of all the roles it might this is the way need to perform. it can interact If it’s now with additive possible to both manufacturing accurately simulate (aka 3D printing) thousands of design by using the datavariations which are enriched models also cheap and easy An example of a 3D printed part designed using generative in generative to manufacture, test design. The part on the right has the same mounting points design algorithms and strength as the traditionally-designed part on the left, and fly them, it opens but is both much lighter and cheaper to manufacture. to create unique up a world where a part geometries that common basic design minimise material, cost and weight without harming can lead to multiple specialised variants that each strength and longevity. The parts in aircraft are contain only the design elements needed to fulfil going to look increasingly organic, sometimes even their roles. alien, as a result of this process.

What’s more, they can be switched between roles Second, this level of product lifecycle management and functions by merely swapping out entire subdigitisation has made it feasible to take riskier bets assemblies, meaning that the aircraft does not fly on highly modular designs that nonetheless have with any systems or components not needed for its enough commonality to keep costs and complexity particular function, saving on wear from usage. down. There’s enough data for simulations to have There are, of course, downsides. Modular designs much greater fidelity and accuracy when modelling are seldom as high performing as a specialised everything from performance, to the ease and design optimised for a small set of roles, and unless

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there’s enough discipline about maintaining commonality and standardisation, they can end up being more expensive than purpose-designed options. The goal is also often not to get a 100% solution that can do all things, but to achieve 80-90% of that solution at a lower cost. Nonetheless, they offer new options.

Amongst the contenders in this space are the UK’s AERALIS, which is proposing a modular jet training aircraft that can be switched between an advanced trainer with a swept wing (AERALIS A), a basic trainer with a straight wing and single engine (AERALIS B) and a bespoke or aerobatics aircraft (AERALIS X) while preserving 85% commonality in parts.

Another is South Africa’s own AHRLAC, now back in production after a business rescue process. The AHRLAC is built around a huge modular payload bay and open architecture software system, with the idea that the most complex and expensive electronics, sensors and components needed for each mission type are contained within standardised payload pods that can be swapped in and out as needed.

Similar to AHRLAC is a new contender in the same space from Canada called Icarus Aerospace, which is offering the Tactical Air Vehicle (TAV) in both a 22

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weaponised and high altitude variant, using modular parts.

Third, while software remains a huge problem for all aircraft projects as a result of its neverslowing cost and complexity, the same modular approaches are starting to have an effect via open architectures that separate out flight-critical software from mission-specific software so as to allow for them to be developed at different paces without compromising each other.

Traditionally, everything that ran on an aircraft’s computers required pretty much the same level of testing and certification, driving up costs. Now, as seen on Saab’s Gripen E, an open architecture concept in the onboard systems provides for mission-specific ‘apps’ to be developed, installed and removed, all without affecting the core software systems.

Bringing all this together, the US Air Force’s head of acquisition Will Roper has proposed a fascinating new approach to specifying, designing, buying and operating aircraft that he’s calling the Digital Century Series, an attempt to bring back some element of the USAF’s approach in the 1950s and 1960s when dozens of manufacturers produced the “Century Series” fighters with short development timelines and low costs.

This approach draws on all

the developments mentioned above and recommends moving to a system where modularity and shared components are embraced to allow for a wide variety of aircraft designs from the same core parts that can be created, tested, deployed and retired in a fraction of the time and cost it takes to just develop current multi-role, multi-mission aircraft designed to operate for 30+ years.

The hope is also to move away from relying on an everdwindling number of aircraft

manufacturers, with the idea that one manufacturer may be contracted to produce a core fuselage, as with the AERALIS concept, while others produce and test modular add-ons and other variations. Iteration of designs, and continuous improvement, would be prioritised over trying to create designs that last for decades.

If this Digital Century Series concept, and the enabling modular and technological approaches, succeed, it’ll represent a revolutionary change in military aircraft design and acquisition that may finally break the cost cycle and disprove Augustine’s law. It may also reverse the worrying trend where African air forces are becoming priced out of the market entirely. For that reason alone, it’s worth keeping a close eye on Will Roper’s new Digital Century Series approach. 

WORDS: GUY LEITCH

Industry Update:

BOEING 787

TROUBLES CONTINUE Boeing's production quality problems just get worse. The latest development may affect as many as 680 Boeing 787 Dreamliners.

Boeing's 787-10 final assembly is still struggling with flawed barrel joints.

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5 September Boeing disclosed a new manufacturing quality issue with the 787, this time with assembly of the airliner’s horizontal tail in Salt Lake City.

During fabrication in Salt Lake of the 787’s horizontal tail, engineers discovered earlier this year that “certain components were clamped together during the build process with greater force than specified,” potentially leaving the structure with gaps between components wider than the five-thousandths of N

an inch that’s allowable in the specification, Boeing said.

Boeing spokesperson Jessica Kowal pointed out that the gap tolerance required is only slightly more than the thickness of a sheet of paper, which is about fourthousandths of an inch. Such gaps are typically filled with small pieces of material called shims.

This flaw, which Boeing said was identified during an internal audit conducted in February, “may lead to premature aging” of the horizontal tail structure.

Kowal said none of the affected 787s currently in service with airlines around the world

“are within a window when they would experience this aging,” and so “this is not an immediate safety of flight issue. We are correcting the issue on airplanes that have not been delivered,” Kowal said.

“The rework generally involves removing fasteners at the affected locations, applying a calibrated clamping force, measuring for any gaps and shimming if required.”

Then, on 11 September Boeing confirmed that it was dealing with the FAA about substandard joints between fuselage barrels. It was revealed that the vertical fin is affected by the potential flaws, which were actually discovered almost a year ago but the company said in a statement its engineers decided “it did not immediately affect the safety of flight and no immediate action is required.”

The statement also said it expects the issue to be resolved by “a onetime inspection during regularly scheduled maintenance.”

Boeing also released data showing the order backlog for the 737 MAX has been reduced this year by almost 1,000 jets. 

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News G uy L eitch

MAF

FOUNDER

STUART KING DIES

M

Aviation Fellowship (MAF) has been a powerfully effective force for good in enabling access to remote areas. MAF’s founder Stuart King has now passed on to a higher reward at the age of 98. Guy Leitch’s column attitude for altitude in September 2019 reviewed King’s remarkable life and the column is reproduced on the following pages as a tribute to King.

Stuart King founded MAF with Jack Hemmings using a war surplus De Havilland Rapide, supported by much prayer more than 70 years ago. The exRAF engineer was convinced that aircraft could be a vital link to remote areas of Africa and he and Hemmings flew a Miles Gemini through Libya, Egypt, Sudan, Kenya and the Congo on a six-month tour to test that hypothesis.

MAF now serves 1,400 remote locations in 26 countries in support of more than 2,000 humanitarian and missionary organisations. It’s also a highly developed aviation organisation with high standards for aircraft maintenance and pilot training and fiscal management. Recognising his contribution, King received an award from the Honourable Company of Air Pilots in 2019 to add to the long list of humanitarian tributes paid to him.

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ISSION

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MAF founder Stuart King in front of their pioneering De Havilland Rapide.

GUY LEITCH'S COLUMN REPRINT:

FLYING MISSIONARIES IN AFRICA Love them or hate them – missionaries have done a huge amount to open up the ‘dark continent’. And general aviation has been an essential tool to get missionaries into and out of dark places.

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Morton Stanley’s epic travels to find the missionary David Livingstone, and Joseph Conrad’s ‘Heart of Darkness’ brought the travails of travel into central Africa to the attention of the world. You had to be nuts – or called by God – to want to travel far into Africa.

It was the call of God which was the strongest, as undaunted, the missionaries kept coming.

They lived, procreated and died in the most inaccessible places.

Some fervent evangelists won souls, others learned the native lingo, opened schools and translated the Bible, and others – well they achieved nothing ENRY

The crashed Gemini on a Burundi hillside in 1948.

much more than train thousands of women to crochet the large tablecloths which you can still find in the rural markets.

The life of many of these missionaries was often unimaginably tough. They would travel by boat, train, mule and on foot into the most inaccessible

places – the more inaccessible the better – and start a new mission station far from the comforts of home or civilisation. Particularly difficult was what to do in case of sickness. And many got sick with malaria, blackwater fever, dysentery, sleeping sickness and the myriad other tropical diseases

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they had never been exposed to in Europe.

And then the World Wars happened. The legacy these wars left for remote missionaries was a sudden huge increase in air transport capability and the availability of experienced pilots. The aeroplane had come of age and could be reasonably relied on to get to the most remote missionaries, if their local population could be persuaded to hack an airstrip out of the jungle or mountainside using spades and pangas.

The most significant of the air transport support services to missionaries is Mission Aviation Fellowship – MAF. In the 75 years since its founding, MAF has grown to provide aviation support for missionaries around the world.

MAF was founded by aero engineer Stuart King and a handful of other pilots who had been demobbed after World War 2. As fervent Christians they responded to the call of God to use their aviation skills to improve access to the most remote mission fields. For the seventieth anniversary of MAF, Stuart

Dave Forney

Modern C208 operations.

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King, then aged 94, was interviewed. He recounts; “Although we were professionals in aviation, we were all amateurs in mission! We just felt the call to go. We didn’t think ahead to what it might become, we didn’t analyse it; we just went.”

They pooled their funds, bought an underpowered Miles Gemini very light twin and flew it out to Africa. It became a nine-month survey flight across Africa, “armed with a calling from God and only £250 in our back pockets! The sight of Africa was moving and impressive: desert and swamp, later jungle and mountains. That first pioneering survey was exciting, tough and dangerous.”

A big reality check hit them when they were flying over the mountains of Burundi and were caught in a lee downdraft. They could not outclimb the mountain and crashed. Luckily without serious injury and they were able to get back to Nairobi by road without too much trouble.

The little four-seater Gemini had served them well as they had by then surveyed much of Sudan,

Uganda, Burundi, Rwanda and the Congo. It was evident that the need for fast and efficient air transport was essential if the backwaters of Africa were to be opened up. And it also became clear that this service was not just needed by missionaries, but by the governments and colonial authorities.

That first crash was a huge setback and they briefly questioned whether they really had heard God’s call. They convinced themselves that they had, and carried on, but reduced to surveying potential air strip sites by mule and on foot. King says, “I remember once trekking for two days looking for airstrips and reaching missionaries who hadn’t seen white people for six months. That was the isolation they faced. The change the plane made was startling. We served, prayed and cried with these brave people. It was such a joy.”

Back in England they managed to put the insurance pay out on the Gemini towards an already vintage 1930s De Havilland Dragon Rapide Mk 2. They needed the two engines to satisfy the government, and the performance was adequate for the flat Sudan. But their Rapide Mk 2 had fixed pitch props and thus had no single engine performance to speak of. It was one of those twins where an engine failure meant that the other engine would have just taken them to the scene of the accident.

They had taken a huge leap of faith in trying to start an air service in remote parts of Africa, and it was soon evident that there was a desperate need. In his book ‘Hope has Wings’ Stuart King describes the plight of a sick missionary at Yabus in Southern Sudan; Betty Guth had been desperately ill for two

weeks. They suspected sleeping sickness and knew she would die without help, so they dispatched a runner to the government post at Kurmuk, 110 km away, with a telegraph message. The nearest hospital was 800 km away in Khartoum, and it was the rainy season.

Betty and her husband Chuck had been able to drive to Yabus (with their three-month old baby and a year’s supplies) before the rains set in. But they could not drive out in the rainy season as the trails were swamped and the sticky cotton spoil was treacherous. It was a fearsome 250 km journey west

It soon became evident that general aviation could provide essential and safe air transport to remote regions. to the Nile which would take two weeks and they would have to traverse the Dinka swamps, where two other missionary children had already died.

They made a rough stretcher for Betty and the baby and covered it with a mosquito net.

The first hard day’s slog took them 50 km to the nearest mission station at Doro. This was in the territory of the Mabaan tribe, so the Yabus stretcher bearers refused to go any further. The mission at Doro hired new stretcher bearers and some donkeys from the Sudanese police post. They slogged on, sometimes chest deep in the swamps. They rode the animals until they could no longer carry them and then walked until they could walk no further. They slept in the Mabaan villages and boiled water from mud puddles for the baby on a Primus stove. And the next day they did it again. And again.

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The Dragon Rapide in Sudan.

As they moved on into the Dinka marshlands it became harder and harder to find carriers.

They had hoped to catch the paddlewheel steamer on the Nile, but after six days they were still a day short of the river and the stretcher bearers refused to continue. The missionaries prayed and were answered when the four strongest Dinkas agreed to go on. The next day they

heard a truck pushing through the long grass. It had received the runner’s telegram and come looking for them. But they still had a frantic 40 km dash on the truck, bouncing through potholes in trackless bush, to get to Melut to catch the post boat.

Their prayers were again answered as they made the boat in time. They then had two days on the boat to get to the 28

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railhead at Kosti, 180 km south of Khartoum. A further day on the train got them to hospital in Khartoum. The journey had taken 10 impossibly gruelling days.

King writes that such stories were only too common, some of them ending in tragedy. They made missions, as well as the Sudan government, reluctant to allow people to work in such remote situations. A better means in and out was essential.

When MAF arrived with the Rapide they based it in Malakal in Sudan, where it lasted just three years before the harsh conditions deteriorated the wood and canvas aeroplane to an unflyable condition.

A year later Betty Guth had to be evacuated from Yabus once again to have her second baby.

But by now they had made an

airstrip at Yabus and the Rapide made the journey to Khartoum in four hours, instead of ten tortured days.

It soon became evident to the Sudanese authorities, and indeed governments across Africa, that general aviation could provide essential and safe air transport to their remote regions.

The Sudanese government increasingly called on MAF to

transport officials quickly and safely.

And then, in 1956, Sudan got its independence from Britain. As in much of post-colonial Africa, the missionaries were driven out and, as Nigerian Chinua Achebe famously quoted, ‘Things Fall Apart’. The aftermath can be read in Hugh Pryor’s wonderful stories of flying for the Red Cross in Southern Sudan. 

WORDS: GUY LEITCH

Industry Update:

IATA - QUARANTINES WILL KILL AFRICAN AIRLINE REBOUND The International Air Transport Association (IATA) has called on governments in Africa and the Middle East (AME) to implement testing as an alternative to quarantine measures when re-opening their economies to international air travel.

T

countries in Africa and the Middle East have quarantine measures in place. This is an increase of seven countries since August.

The impact is that the region effectively remains in lockdown despite borders being open.

Recent public opinion research

by IATA showed that 88% of travellers would not even consider travelling if quarantine measures were imposed on them at their destination.

“Mandatory quarantine measures stop people from traveling. We understand that governments’ priority is on protecting the well–being of their citizens. Quarantine destroys livelihoods. Testing is an alternative method that will also save travel and tourism jobs,” said Muhammad Albakri, HIRTY-FIVE

IATA’s Regional Vice President for Africa and the Middle East.

“Testing provides a safe alternative to quarantine and a solution to stop the economic and social devastation being caused

by COVID-19,” said IATA’s Albakri.

Travellers support testing instead of quarantine restrictions.

The latest IATA survey of passenger attitudes in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) shows that 72% of people surveyed agreed that those who test negative for Covid should not have to quarantine, and that 80% of people feel that Covid-19 is sufficiently under control in the country to open borders.

IATA reports that quarantines, closed borders and travel restrictions continue to decimate travel demand in Africa and the Middle East. Traffic levels in

Africa and the Middle East saw the largest drop of all regions in July compared to 2019 levels.

Total passenger traffic in Africa in July 2020 was 93.7% below 2019 levels and in the Middle East 95.5% below 2019 levels.

Aviation supported more than 6.2 million jobs and $56 billion in GDP in Africa and 2.4 million jobs and $130 billion in GDP in the Middle East pre-COVID-19.

The economic impact of the collapse in air traffic in 2020 due to COVID-19 could be 3.5 million lost jobs and $35 billion in GDP in Africa and 1.5 million lost jobs and $85 billion in GDP Middle East. 

RIGHT: IATA's Muhammad Albakri - opposing quarantines.

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Search & Rescue S tory & I mages : G rant D uncan S mith

WILDERNESS SEARCH & RESCUE One of the two dedicated AMS helicopters.

If you crash in a remote part of South Africa it’s really good to know that there is a vast multidisciplinary network of resources that can quickly be mobilised to come to your rescue.

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the Western Cape, the Wilderness Search & Rescue (WSAR) is the umbrella body which coordinates the activities of a diverse coalition of government and volunteer organisations.

WSAR is a wonderful example of cooperation between government and non-governmental resources. WSAR was formed under the auspices of the Western Cape’s Metro Emergency Medical Services, and functions under the authority of Metro EMS – the provincial ambulance and rescue service.

N

Remote Search & Rescue (S&R) is a complex business, so Metro EMS provides logistical and air support, control room functions, vehicles, as well as limited financial and equipment support. In all other respects, WSAR maintains its own identity and autonomy and provides rescue services to the communities of the Western Cape and beyond, through a Memorandum of Understanding with the Western Cape Government.

It is of great comfort to know that a multitude of specialist rescue skills are available when the need arises. The many S&R organisations that fall under the Metro EMS include the Red Cross Air Mercy Service, the Mountain Club of South Africa,

the Off Road Rescue Unit of the Four Wheel Drive Club of South Africa, Table Mountain Rescue, High Angle Rescue, Hiker’s Network, Delta Search and Rescue, the NSRI, Hamnet (Ham radio), South African National Parks, CapeNature (Conservation), the South African Air Force and the South African Police Service.

The Air Medical Service (AMS) contract is for two helicopters for the whole of the Western Cape.

While there are a number of helicopters available at any given time on a rotational basis, there will always be two “response machines” on duty for WSAR, namely Skymed 1 which serves the Cape metropole and to the north, and Skymed 2 for the Southern Cape, Garden Route, Little and Great Karroo.

Both of these have ASR and MSR (ambulance) capabilities. At times, these can respond to lend a hand in the neighbouring provinces, in particular, to the Eastern Cape where many rescues are performed on the Otter Trail.

The Western Cape Department of Health Emergency Medical Service plans training sessions throughout the year for both wilderness and surf rescue. The teams, consisting of all member organisations train as they would operate, because they operate as they have trained.

Detailed safe operating procedures remain a work in progress, and these live procedures are reviewed regularly by peer review. The training and operating processes are looked after by a special technical group which is made up of rescue technicians and hi-angle technicians and AMS. There is a mountain rescue technical group (HTG) and a surf rescue technical group (ASRTG) Teamwork is key to successful deployments. At any given training there is a clear purpose planned and Rigorous training in various scenarios helps keep a high level of proficiency.

a safety officer and ground control officer allocated.

Training is not done simply for mandatory currency retention, but to ensure the Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) get drilled again and again and serve as an opportunity for all to bond, build trust, and develop the muscle memory required to make actions instinctive.

Various sites are selected around the peninsula for their distance from the general public, general aviation and safety while being as close to an operational environment as possible. Scenario based training ensures the SOPs trained on are the same processes for an operation.

Each exercise is preceded by briefings on ground safety on the Landing Zone, exercise safety and deployments and on equipment rigging. All exercises, like all operations, end with a full debrief immediately after the event on the Landing Zone.

No single training exercise is the same as the last,

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The AMS helicopter in action.

as the environment is dynamic and there are always

variables in terrain conditions and weather, such as temperature and winds.

At the training exercises volunteers and professionals from all 17 member organisations get to meet and greet, learn to work together as one team and use their individual group skills to contribute to a safe, competent and effective wilderness search and

VOLUNTEERS GIVE FREELY OF THEIR TIME AND TALENTS TO WORK IN TRAINING AND REAL-LIFE RESCUES rescue program. Almost all the rescuers in WSAR come from volunteer organisations whose members give freely of their time and talents to work in training and real-life rescues. As the umbrella body

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WSAR maintains high safety standards and upholds a strict policy of rescuer currency, demanding much time and effort on the part of rescuers to meet these standards.

In addition, the senior WSAR leadership give freely of their time to attend administrative, planning and training meetings, in furtherance of a culture of safety, self-critical introspection and constant improvement. Numerous specialist Working Groups have been formed to guide the creation and maintenance of the performance criteria, standard operating procedures and best practice guidelines offered by WSAR. The individual team members are required to self-fund fuel costs, cell phone expenses, and the costs of personal rescue and other gear, for rescues, exercises and other administrative functions. These personal costs can be considerable in the busy months of the Cape summer. Funds generated from donations are not channelled back to rescuers for reimbursement of personal costs, but are allocated to a dedicated equipment fund and used exclusively for the purchase of much-needed technical rescue and dedicated medical equipment. If you would like to support WSAR, please visit: https://wsar.org.za/ support-us/ ďƒź

Thorough briefings are vital for the safety and success of the operation.

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FLIGHT SAFETY THROUGH MAINTENANCE

FlightCom Magazine

37

Historic S tory : D es B arker

THE BATTLE OF BRITAIN â&#x20AC;&#x201C; AND GERMAN BLUNDERS

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FlightCom Magazine

The Hurricane was outclassed by the Bf-109 but the Spitfire changed that.

'Never in the field of human

conflict was so much owed by so many to so few'.

(Winston Churchill, 20 August 1940)

FlightCom Magazine

39

This article pays tribute to those that have tasted the fear of mortal combat in fighting for a cause for which they were prepared to pay the ultimate sacrifice; for their country or their comrades in arms. In the immortal words of poet Laurence Binyon (1869-1943): “They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old: Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn. At the going down of the sun and in the morning, we will remember them.”

T

90th anniversary of the Battle of Britain was commemorated on 15 September 2020 by means of commemoration services which provided an opportune time to reminisce on the most classical air battle in history.

It can be argued that poor intelligence and abandoning the Principles of War, constituted the major contribution to the Luftwaffe losing the Battle of Britain. The tenets expressed in this article are those of the writer: Maj Gen D.E. Barker (SAAF Ret).

HE

Total air superiority, in more modern parlance,

‘air dominance’, was the minimum operational requirement for Operation Sea Lion, the German invasion of Britain, to be attempted.

Hitler was winning and Britain was about to be defeated. Theoretically, on paper at least; numerically, there was no way that Britain could survive Hitler’s ill-conceived plans; 600 RAF fighters should have been overwhelmed by the Luftwaffe’s 2800 fighters and bombers when on 15 September 1940 Germany proclaimed ‘Eagle Day’.

THE BATTLE

PRELUDE

For one moment, close your eyes and recall the European Spring of 1940. The Nazis had swept through the Low Countries and into France. The British Expeditionary Force had been defeated and had retreated from Dunkirk with a large proportion of Britain’s fighting equipment left on the other side of the channel.

The last bastion facing the Nazi onslaught lay across the English Channel; Britain stood totally isolated, but at that stage, without anyone realising it, the outcome of World War II, depended on whether or not the Luftwaffe would succeed in destroying the Royal Air Force’s (RAF) Fighter Command.

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This battle has been analysed ‘ad nauseum’ at the strategic and operational level by strategists, students of air power and by air force staff colleges. Most appreciations of the battle essentially focussed on the different capabilities and resources ranged against each other, but very few dug deeper and attempted to get to grips with the personalities involved in the strategic and operational thinking, both in the RAF and Luftwaffe.

The crux is that the Great War of 1915 shaped the strategic thinking and tactical knowledge of most commanders involved in the Battle of Britain; the young fighter pilots of WWI would take centre stage in commanding the air forces of WWII, and in

South African born, Battle of Britain ace, Sdn Ldr ‘Sailor’ Malan, CO 74 Sqn, August 1940 ended the war having scored 27 kills.

particular, of what was subsequently to be known as the Battle of Britain.

Why did the Luftwaffe at the most critical moment of the battle, when the RAF Fighter Command was on its knees, sacrifice the Principles of War; why did they shift their objective of eliminating the RAF Fighter Command to the bombing of London? The answers lie not so much in strategic thinking, but the personalities and organisational politics that plagued both the RAF and Luftwaffe. History, however, provides clear evidence that failure by strategists and politicians to fully comply with the ‘Principles of War’, proved devastating for Germany.

Heresy, possibly? It would not be wrong to conclude that Britain did not win the Battle of Britain, rather, that Germany lost the Battle of Britain. After a build-up of several months, the decisive day of the Battle was 15 September 1940. The Luftwaffe attacked by day in huge numbers expecting to sweep

Britain did not win the Battle of Britain, rather, Germany lost the Battle of Britain the RAF from the skies, but the RAF fought them off. At one point, every available fighter was in the sky – when Churchill, monitoring operations from Uxbridge, 11 Group’s Operations Rooms asked Air Vice Marshal Park: “What reserves are left?” the shocking reply was “None sir!”

Like two punch drunk boxers, the Luftwaffe was also approaching the limit of its ability to sustain such attacks and losses for an extended period when in November 1940, Hitler, tiring of Goering’s empty

promises, postponed the attack on Britain. If only they had had accurate intelligence to realise to what extent they had sapped out the last bit of resistance from the RAF, who knows what the world would look like today.

Under the aggressive leadership and inspirational wisdom of Winston Churchill, the British people stood resolute and defiant that they would fight and the Nazis would be defeated. A robust psychological approach by the population, coupled to leading edge technological innovation, transcended the theoretical ‘paper odds’ and resulted in a major victory for the British people.

PERSONALITIES OF THE BATTLE

Wars are essentially driven by national ego or the fight for resources or territory, which in turn implies personalities at both the political, and military level. At the political level, the battle was between

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Hitler and Churchill; at the military level, the battle between Reich Marshal Goering and the RAFs Air Vice Marshal Dowding, Commander-in-Chief Fighter Command. Stuck between these personality groupings was the technological advancements developed during the pre-war years that would be the determinants of success or failure.

If there was one particular differentiator between the two sides, it was the superior strategic thinking of Dowding vs that of Hitler’s right hand man, Goering.

What was it that made Hitler place so much faith in Goering’s decisions? Goering’s successes as a fighter pilot in WWI and his employment strategy of the air force in the Blitzkrieg, would surely have convinced Hitler that in Goering, he had a visionary leader, a military commander that could provide a military solution to the goals of Germany in regaining its stature after the humiliation suffered under the harsh conditions of the surrender Treaty of Versailles.

After all, it was Goering that drove the revival of Germany’s air power and rebuilding of the Luftwaffe and his support to Hitler in 1935 in renouncing all the restrictions of Versailles. The Luftwaffe’s successful

Pilots scramble to their Hurricanes - which was the mainstay of the British defence as the Spitfire was not yet available in the numbers needed.

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tactical involvement in 1936 in Spain in support of Franco and the defeat of Poland in one month brought on by the aerial triumph, led Goering to convince Hitler that every major offensive would in future be spearheaded by the pilots of the Luftwaffe.

One of the lesser known names that featured most prominently in the strategic decision making on the German side, was Colonel ‘Beppo’ Schmid, an Army officer promoted to Head of Luftwaffe Intelligence.

The performance of Luftwaffe air intelligence prior to and during the Battle of Britain was seriously flawed and perhaps doomed it to failure from the outset. Poor organisation and staffing combined with the dysfunctionality of the Nazi “system” resulted in an almost complete absence of coordination amongst the various intelligence agencies. All combined to help ensure defeat.

‘Chastise the bearer of unhappy tidings’. If not the motto of the Nazi regime, certainly this was the apparent attitude of many individuals, including Hitler and Goering; they demonstrated a dislike of intelligence reports that did not fit their own personal visions with the result that intelligence analysis

was often watered down to reach conclusions more acceptable to the intended reader. Thus, the reputation of Col “Beppo” Schmid, evolved within the Luftwaffe for garnishing his reports to make them more palatable to Goering. During interrogation in 1945, General Adolf Galland was less diplomatic, calling Schmid a “complete washout as an intelligence officer, the most important job of all.”

GERMAN INTELLIGENCE APPRECIATION

For Goering’s Luftwaffe, during the euphoric pre-Dunkirk period, no task was too great. However ominous indicators existed but glossed over: the loss rates against the British during the air battles above Dunkirk were either ignored or overwhelmed by the positive optimism resulting from earlier military successes, in fact, the weaknesses in intelligence both mirrored and contributed to a fatal overconfidence throughout the German High Command. Hitler’s own conviction that the British were weak and would capitulate and accept overtures for peace, either before or after a short air offensive, definitely affected Luftwaffe thinking.

Assessments of raid results were almost always overstated. For example, following the raids on 17 August, Luftwaffe intelligence claimed 11 airfields permanently destroyed with another 12 severely damaged. All of these airfields were in fact operational. Three times the actual British loss rates were claimed by German intelligence during the crucial August-September time period, while German losses, which were also high, were not accurately reported on by Intelligence.

Even within the Luftwaffe, considerable confusion developed between Luftflotten 2 and 3. Kesselring claimed that Fighter Command had been destroyed, while Sperrle claimed it had 1,000 aircraft. Based on the ‘inaccurate intelligence’, the optimistic view once again prevailed, supported by Goering, which

contributed to the German decision to shift targeting from Fighter Command airfields, factories and radar stations, to London.

STRATEGIC ERRORS

Strategic Error 1 – Goering’s Perceptions. The first major error Hitler made was to take Goering’s advice in May 1940 and order a halt by advancing German forces on Dunkirk; this decision was based on a promise by Goering to Hitler that the air force could finish the job through a Blitzkrieg at Dunkirk.

Chain Home radar installation at Poling, Sussex, 1945.

It was not only a moral victory for Britain, but more than 350,000 soldiers and airmen were saved to counter German efforts at defeating Britain.

It is clear that Goering was riding high on the euphoria of the Blitzkrieg, but had no real idea of the capabilities and resources of Britain, and certainly did not believe Britain had any real chance of resisting the rolling advance of the German forces.

The timescales allotted for the invasion plans for Britain was for the Luftwaffe to gain air superiority over a period of four days for the air battle and four weeks to defeat what was left, demonstrating his contempt for the RAF capabilities.

Strategic Error 2 – The Spitfire. The Hurricanes were no competition for the Bf-109 and although the

FlightCom Magazine

43

The Chain Home radar station coverage and airfields.

FlightCom Magazine

44

technological advances of Britain in post war Europe were well known to the Germans, and also that the Spitfire was under development, no real importance was given to the impact of the Spitfire on the ability of the Bf-109s to protect the Luftwaffe bombers.

The Spitfire lacked power reserves but it possessed a better close-in fighting potential due to its turn-in capability.

After Dunkirk, Goering, using attacks on shipping convoys to evaluate RAF Fighter Command’s ability to respond, seemed to have learnt nothing from the RAF’s response and the Spitfire’s combat performance against the Bf-109. The Spitfire thus posed the greatest threat to the Luftwaffe bombing campaign.

By September 1940, serious conflict existed within the Luftwaffe; bomber losses had mounted, which Goering, in his failure to reduce such losses, blamed on inadequate fighter cover. To satisfy his frustrations, the fighter escort was ordered by Goering to fly at the same altitude as the bombers, thereby removing the Bf-109s flexibility. The fighter escort lost the advantage of height and were forced to weave and not allowed to leave the bombers, even if they had RAF fighters visual. This enraged Galland; squadrons of Luftwaffe bombers with a ‘lame’ fighter escort a mile behind; amazingly poor tactics of fighter escort providing the Spitfires with a huge tactical advantage which cost lives of German fighter pilots. Add to this the approximately 15 minutes fuel limit of ‘time over target’ available to the Bf-109, and it becomes evident that inadequate protection would be available to the bombers, the main strike force with which the Luftwaffe intended to bring the RAFs Fighter Command, and Britain, to its knees.

Strategic Error 3 - Radar. Perhaps the greatest failure was the German conclusions about the effectiveness of the British, Chain Home, radar stations. General Martini’s 3d Abteilung signals intelligence, using the airship Graf Zeppelin,

had detected British radar before the outbreak of hostilities. Did Colonel Schmid, as a non-pilot, fail to grasp the significance of radar’s potential? In any event, little emphasis was placed on sustained attacks against the British early warning system.

As the battle progressed, Schmid became aware that radar information was being passed to RAF fighters by radio. This served to confirm his earlier conclusions and, in his ignorance of air power, he remained convinced that the mass attacks being conducted by the Luftwaffe would overload what he considered to be an “inflexible” command and control system. In fact, the British Command and Control system, developed during the pre-war years under the astute Dowding, was a ‘first generation’

Hitler believed that the working classes could be incited against the rich ruling class to bring about a revolution net-centric system in which the sensor information provided by radar and visual sightings was fed into a centralised, command and control system which detected and tracked massed formations of German aircraft. Dowding implicitly understood Rule Number 1 of air defence: early warning was an essential element of any air defence campaign.

Further supporting Schmid’s flawed conclusions about radar was the effectiveness of an undetected deception plan derived from a British policy to continue transmitting from damaged radar sites.

Thus, radar sites that were incapable of receiving information, continued to transmit signals. The German signals intelligence was deceived into thinking that the bombing of radar stations which was undertaken early in the campaign was ineffective.

FlightCom Magazine

45

In concert with pilot reports that “led the Germans to believe that the vitals of the radar stations were located in bomb proof bunkers”, the decision was finally made to discontinue attacks against the radar sites altogether.

The only conclusion one can reach is that Goering did not understand the advantages of early warning radar with 120 mile range coverage which provided the RAF with an element of surprise the Luftwaffe pilots could not understand. One Luftwaffe pilot, in

Command and Control was key to the RAF victory - the interior of RAF Fighter Command's Sector 'G' Operations Room at Duxford, 1940.

his mission debriefing reported that: “Spitfires strike with astonishing suddenness.”

Strategic Error 4 – Target Selection. The analysis of Great Britain as established by Studie Blau formed the foundation of the bomber offensive conducted during the Battle of Britain. In addition, an “England Committee” was established to provide specialised guidance on target selection to the Luftwaffe. Although target lists were prepared by the Luftwaffe, the final decisions seem to have been made on the spot by Goering and Jeschonnek.

This created considerable confusion within the Intelligence and Leadership communities of the Luftwaffe over the choice of targets for a strategic campaign.

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FlightCom Magazine

identified when, in 1936, the director of operations of the Luftwaffe General Staff identified the lack of good intelligence as having “very great significance in a bombing war.” This director further established that the current knowledge and experience within the military was inadequate to properly identify the relative vulnerability of “technical-industrial” systems. Throughout the Battle of Britain, there was “a preference for the choice of a large number of targets for simultaneous attack as a precaution, lest one important target be left out, rather than concentrating on the most important targets”.

One point appears to have received singular agreement within the German High Command. The common belief arose from the experiences of World War One that civilian populations could be driven to panic, even revolution, as the direct result of aerial bombing.

Goering and Jeschonnek obviously shared this view, as did the England Committee. Hitler and the England Committee believed that the poorer working classes could “be incited against the rich ruling class to bring about a revolution”. This ideological and sociological viewpoint remained ingrained in the Luftwaffe leadership’s thinking until the end of the war and had a major influence on the decision to change the original plan to destroy the RAF Fighter Command and rather bomb London.

Apparently no specific priority for the destruction of the identified target types was established. The focus was to be on those targets having the greatest effects upon the population. Again, the dominant influence of the German belief in the “fear of aerial bombardment” is evident. Furthermore, by midOctober Goering would personally order “frequent changes of targets in order to achieve the necessary effect on the population of London and to confront the enemy’s defences with a new situation.”

Strategic Error 5 – Force Levels. Without actually realising it, the German High Command, based

on the expeditionary offensive against the Low Countries, had created a tactical air force; one in which light bombers and light fighters, both with limited range, were used for the Blitzkrieg.

Taking on strategic warfare with a tactical air force prevented the Luftwaffe from optimising its strike force for maximum effect with the limitations of range and bomb load, significantly reducing the potential to achieve its objectives. It’s not for nothing that the Allied Air Force’s strategic component developed ‘heavy’ four engine bombers with long range escorts; for example B-17s and P-51 Mustangs. One month after the high-point of the bombings, the Chief of the Operational Staff, General Jeschonnek, stated that England’s

destruction would require an air fleet four times as large as the Third Reich possessed. A statement of that kind revealed once again the sheer foolishness of the German High Command’s appreciation and estimations of the extent of conducting such an operation.

PRINCIPLES OF WAR

In the final analysis, it is clear that inadequate regard was paid by the Luftwaffe to the ‘Principles

of War’, more particularly, Selection and Maintenance of the Aim, that is, the main principle in conducting warfare was weakly pursued. No real compliance was evident in the other principles such as: Maintenance of Morale, Offensive Action, Security, Surprise, Concentration of Force,

Economy of Effort, Flexibility and Sustainability. This clearly reveals the extent to which the RAF, strategically and tactically, were destined not to lose the Battle of Britain.

The performance of the RAF can best be summarised by Churchill’s speech to the nation on 18 June 1940. Following on from the British Army’s miraculous evacuation from Dunkirk, and realising the precarious position Britain found itself in:

“The Battle of France is over – I expect that the Battle of Britain is about to begin. The whole fury and might of the enemy must very soon be upon us... Let us therefore, brace ourselves that, if the British Empire and its Commonwealth last for a thousand years, men will say, “This was their finest hour””. 

The slower thicker wing of the Hurricane is evident compared to the sleek Bf-109.

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Alpi Aviation SA Dale De Klerk 082 556 3592 dale@alpiaviation.co.za www.alpiaviation.co.za

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www.eaglehelicopter.co.za ops@guardianair.co.za Blackhawk Africa

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Jaco Pietersen 012 567 3139 Enstrom/MD Helicopters Indigo Helicopters +27 [0]82 672 2262 Willie Breytenbach Andrew Widdall Gerhard Kleynhans jaco@airfincorp.co.za admin@breytech.co.za 011 397 6260 082 927 4031 / 086 528 4234 www.airfincorp.co.za aerosa@safomar.co.za veroeschka@indigohelicopters.co.za Bundu Aviation www.safomar.co.za www.indigohelicopters.co.za Aircraft Maintenance @ Work Phillip Cronje Opelo / Frik 083 485 2427 Era Flug Flight Training IndigoSat South Africa - Aircraft Tracking 012 567 3443 info@bunduaviation.co.za Pierre Le Riche Gareth Willers frik@aviationatwork.co.za_ www.bunduaviation.co.za 021 934 7431 08600 22 121 opelonke@aviationatwork.co.za info@era-flug.com sales@indigosat.co.za Celeste Sani Pak & Inflight Products www.era-flug.com www.indigosat.co.za Aircraft Maintenance International Steve Harris Pine Pienaar 011 452 2456 Execujet Africa Integrated Avionic Solutions 083 305 0605 admin@chemline.co.za 011 516 2300 Gert van Niekerk gm@aminternational.co.za www.chemline.co.za enquiries@execujet.co.za 082 831 5032 www.execujet.com gert@iasafrica.co.za Aircraft Maintenance International Cape Aircraft Interiors www.iasafrica.co.za Wonderboom Sarel Schutte Federal Air Thomas Nel 021 934 9499 Nick Lloyd-Roberts International Flight Clearances 082 444 7996 michael@wcaeromarine.co.za 011 395 9000 Steve Wright admin@aminternational.co.za www.zscai.co.za shuttle@fedair.com 076 983 1089 (24 Hrs) www.fedair.com flightops@flyifc.co.za Air Line Pilots’ Association Cape Town Flying Club www.flyifc.co.za Sonia Ferreira Beverley Combrink Ferry Flights int.inc.

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Skyhorse Aviation Ryan Louw 012 809 3571 info@skyhorse.co.za www.skyhorse.co.za

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North East Avionics Keith Robertson +27 13 741 2986 keith@northeastavionics.co.za deborah@northeastavionics.co.za www.northeastavionics.co.za Landing Eyes Gavin Brown Orsmond Aviation 031 202 5703 058 303 5261 info@landingeyes.co.za info@orsmondaviation.co.za www.landingeyes.com www.orsmondaviation.co.za

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United Charter cc Jonathan Wolpe 083 270 8886 jonathan.wolpe@unitedcharter.co.za www.unitedcharter.co.za

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