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Aeroplane - november 2020 History in the air since 1911
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SPECIAEL ISSU
HISTORY IN THE AIR SINCE 1911
THE ULTIMATE FILM FIGHTER STARRING:
Issue No 571, Vol 48, No 11
BATTLE OF BRITAIN
NOVEMBER 2020 £4.99
Is the ‘Merlin Messerschmitt’ cinema’s greatest combat aircraft?
OUR TRIPLE BILL OF FLYING FLICKS
CATCH-22
TORA! TORA! TORA!
PLUS:
Neptune mercenary rescue British airliners’ brave new world
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Contents November 2020
See pages 28-29 for a g reat subscription offer
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38
14
84 76
NEWS AND COMMENT
100 REVIEWS The latest aviation books in the spotlight 106 NEXT MONTH
4 6
FEATURES
FROM THE EDITOR NEWS • Italy-bound Sea Fury flies in Germany • Last Beverley saved • US scheme for Biggin Spitfire …and the month’s other top aircraft preservation news 14 WORKSHOP The return to flight of the Biggin Hill Heritage Hangar’s latest two-seat Spitfire — with first air-to-airs 20 HANGAR TALK Steve Slater’s comment on the historic aircraft world 22 FLIGHT LINE Reflections on aviation history with Matthew Willis
30 BATTLE OF BRITAIN PILOT When RAF pilot John Preece started instructing on Vickers Varsities, little did he know he’d end up flying Spitfires — and all the other types — involved in making Battle of Britain 38 TORA! TORA! TORA! The story of the Pearl Harbor epic, its aircraft and the legacy it helped create for the US warbird movement 46 CATCH-22 The armada of B-25 Mitchells that helped bring Joseph Heller’s satire to the big screen IN SERVICE
An impressive seven-ship formation of cobalt liveried Buchóns bluebelonging 71 Escuadrón, operational the type’s fi to rst unit.
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AHEA VIA
IN-DEPTH PAGES
GARY R. BROWN
COLLECTION
Details
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iven the military designation handling C.4K, the of first six examples formed a the type, which large part of the experience of the syllabus. were handed HA-1112-M1L Th through to would hopefully fi over to trainers weree pair of two-seat Hispano lter it the novices, Aviación the EdA by was called, many as they were initially unavailable fresh from the on 31 December training schools. being converted prematurely, somewhat 1956. Some Cockpit familiarisation for type familiarisation into action were used Merlin power, which to Western taxiing practice in the enlarging involved Sahara. Th and maintainers, by the e French relinquished prepare those would barely instrument fin and rudder, sent to the while others were inexperienced during 1956, control of Morocco Torrejón-based pilots for changes Escuadrón what was granting and independence. de Experimentación the nation to come. host of smallera en Vuelo for flying began followingThe conflict Handling modifications. training. Arriving the The first in a steady armed incursionsa series of diminutive group stream rather On completion of pilots than en masse, by Moroccan insurgents airframe had been the twowith were eventually some 60 Buchóns supported specially rebel forces. all its power by Sahrawi taken on seaters were chosen from The type charge. became the village On 23 October 1957, and torque core of fl given the with 71 Escuadrónoperational of ight leaders a on take-off new the outskirts Bou Izargen, on designation on February of Sidi Ifni, town of Guelmim 1957. Based 15 was difficult and the HA-1112-M4L. Tablada, to the south soon it movedinitially at were taken enough, Thankfully, first group and distance and held the of to El Copero, the short 1,500 Moroccan getting down by some safely was been speciallyBuchón pilots had boasted rather which equally daunting. Liberation troops. Th chosen from Numerous core of seasoned Army is Having roommore space. a accidents of the confl led to an escalation recorded, were to train was some of whom flight leaders, essential ict as Spanish and it’s rare given the formed a a Buchón forces Bf 109 during had flown the tricky ground defensive that hasn’t to find line at Sidi Ifni, and mishap of had a and in later the civil war in one type EdA service. mobilisationNovember to the or another. Just as 71 This and Air Force of Spanish Army becoming Escuadrón was elements. fully operational had, until The EdA that point, operated mainly border patrols with
Insights
A pair of Battle of Britain fi Buchóns, ‘Yellow 9’ and lm ‘Yellow 11’, at altitude in the summer of 1968.
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WITH CLIFF SPINK
Technical
BUCHÓN DATABASE: HISPANO BUCHÓN The Merlin-powered Messerschmitt Bf 109 is far IN-DEPTH PAGES more than just a film fighter — it was a combat aircraft in its own right. Gary R. Brown details its history, while Cliff Spink provides a pilot’s report WORDS: GARY R. BROWN
film flyer
In Service
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HISPANO G
fighter to famed
Technical Details
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From front-line
COVER IMAGE: The Hispano HA-1112-M1L Buchóns — Battle of Britain film stars both — of the Aircraft Restoration Company and Richard Lake, flown by John Romain and Cliff Spink during 2013. RICHARD PAVER Developme nt
DATA ABASE The colours and markings depicted well in this profi of a standard in-service HA-1112-M1L are le of 36 at Gando in the Canaries.C.4K-104, on the strength of Ala Mixta The bulge beneath the rear fuselage denotes the installation of a radio compass. CHRIS SANDHAM-BAILEY
24 SKYWRITERS 26 Q&A Your questions asked and answered 74 BRIEFING FILE Find out how different aircraft thrust reversers work in our ‘under the skin’ feature 98 EVENTS Shuttleworth’s Vintage Drive-in show
BRABAZON COMMITTEE: PART ONE Tasked to recommend the best way forward for the development of British commercial aircraft after World War Two, the Brabazon Committee was hardly the hoped-for success — but why? 84 NEPTUNES IN AFRICA The Portuguese Air Force’s controversial use of the Lockheed P2V-5 in its colonial wars 90 AEROPLANE MEETS… LANG KIDBY England to Australia by Vickers Vimy and Avro Avian — this Australian aviator is a true adventurer 103 AEROPLANE ARCHIVE: NEWS FROM 1940
STARS OF THE BIG SCREEN
Development
REGULARS
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HA-1112-M1L. The much-pictured a shortened In use with 71 C.4K-9 was an early-production form of Maria Escuadrón, it was del Pilar, the pilot’s latterly named MAPI, wife. CHRIS
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Your Aviation Destination
SUBSCRIBER EXCLUSIVE
See page 56 for details
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From the
Editor
A
s the COVID-19 lockdown few signs of being able to emerge from it — through no fault of its began to be relaxed, the own — in the foreseeable future. prospect of late-season Surely it is high time for more air displays approaching targeted support to be provided to some degree of normality — new a sector which or otherwise — is both a major seemed a not Much of the events employer and a unreasonable industry has been in major contributor one. But, as we all know, the limbo since the onset of to the economy? Otherwise, large rising tide of COVID-19 parts of the events infections turned industry, which many plans to have been rendered unable to work dust. The most prominent British by the pandemic but are perfectly example saw IWM Duxford’s viable in normal circumstances, will Battle of Britain Air Show called simply collapse. We will all be the off with just over a week to go, but poorer for that. there have been others. Across the Channel, renewed restrictions on large public events in France saw to it that both the Melun-Villaroche STARS OF THE BIG SCREEN: DIRECTOR’S CUT and postponed La Ferté-Alais shows were cancelled. The Guernsey Air Enjoyed our film flying features Display went ahead, while Aero this month? Why not head over to Legends was allowed to proceed Key.Aero, where you’ll find more with its Battle of Britain Air Show of Aeroplane’s great coverage at Headcorn, and the Shuttleworth of cinema’s legendary aviation Collection’s Drive-in format moments. Take your seats for… continued to prove a great success. • Our memorable interview with Indeed, it was even adopted the great ‘Connie’ Edwards across the Atlantic, the Wings over • Battle of Britain — more Houston show at Ellington Airport exclusive insights going down that road. But now • The War Lover — B-17s back thoughts turn to 2021, and with it over Britain comes the realisation that normality …and many more. Plus, find out is still a long way off. about the exclusive offers and In particular, the latest package benefits available to Key.Aero of support measures announced customers. by Chancellor Rishi Sunak gives very little succour to the UK’s www. beleaguered events industry, much of which has been in limbo since the onset of COVID-19, and shows Ben Dunnell
ESTABLISHED 1911
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Aeroplane traces its lineage back to the weekly The Aeroplane, founded by C. G. Grey in 1911 and published until 1968. It was relaunched as a monthly in 1973 by Richard T. Riding, editor for 25 years until 1998.
CONNECT WITH AEROPLANE…
www.facebook.com/AeroplaneMonthly @HistoryInTheAir
CONTRIBUTORS THIS MONTH SIMON BECK
Simon is definitely one of our ‘go-to’ writers when it comes to anything relating to classic aviation films. The author of the 2016 book The Aircraft-Spotter’s Film and Television Companion, he has undertaken extensive research into movie flying and its personalities, and interviewed many leading figures in the field. This month, Simon looks back 50 years to two epics — Catch-22 and Tora! Tora! Tora! Watch out for his retrospective on Air America, coming soon.
JOSÉ MATOS
José is an independent researcher on military history in Portugal and has conducted research on the operations by the Portuguese Air Force in the country’s colonial wars, mainly in Guinea. He is a regular contributor to European magazines on military aviation and naval subjects, and collaborated in producing the Portuguese book The Air Force at the End of the Empire (Ancora Editora, 2018).
RALPH PEGRAM
Since retiring from the oil industry, Ralph has welcomed the opportunity to devote more time to his long-held interest in the multi-faceted technical and political history of the British aviation industry. He works as a volunteer archivist with the Royal Aero Club Trust, which holds a wealth of historical documents, and continues to unearth material of interest longhidden in their archive and elsewhere. Ralph is the author of several aviation books and articles published in recent years.
CLIFF SPINK
Air Marshal Cliff Spink CB CBE retired from the RAF in 2003, 40 years after he joined up as a Halton apprentice. Operational tours on the Lightning and Phantom were followed by a variety of senior command appointments, and it was as station commander at Coningsby that he first flew Second World War fighters, namely the Hurricanes and Spitfires of the Battle of Britain Memorial Flight. On the civilian warbird scene he piloted such types as the Bf 109/Buchón, P-51, Corsair, Sea Fury, T-33, F-86 and Hunter, to name but a few, and he brings his experience on the 109 and its Spanish cousin to bear in writing for us this month.
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News
NEWS EDITOR: TONY HARMSWORTH E-MAIL TO: [email protected] TELEPHONE: +44 (0)7791 808044 WRITE TO: Aeroplane, Key Publishing Ltd, PO Box 100, Stamford, Lincolnshire PE9 1XQ, UK
Still wearing the Royal Australian Navy markings dating back to its time with Guido Zuccoli, Sea Fury D-CRZY gets airborne at Bremgarten with Achim Meier at the controls on 21 September. JULIAN RODRIGO HEINRICH
Italy-bound Sea Fury flies in Germany O n 21 September, Achim Meier, the CEO of MeierMotors, took former Iraqi Air Force Hawker Sea Fury FB11 D-CRZY up for its first postrestoration flight at Bremgarten, south-west Germany. Owned by Italian aerobatic and warbird pilot Stefano Landi, the Bristol Centaurus-powered fighter will be based with a growing collection of historic machines at the Avioparco FlyOzzano near Bologna in northern Italy, alongside a former Egyptian Air Force Yak C-11, D-FJII, which was also restored by MeierMotors, and a BoeingStearman PT-13. Meier says, “The aeroplane flew incredibly
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well — I’m in love with it. The Centaurus engine is just so powerful, and super-clean. Although it has an extended canopy for a second seat, the aircraft is registered on a standard ‘D-C’ certificate, so it
The original military identity of the fighter is rather cloudy. It made its maiden flight at Langley on 18 June 1952, purportedly as WJ298, and was delivered to the Iraqi Air Force with the serial 303. Although
The aeroplane flew incredibly well — I’m in love with it. The Centaurus is just so powerful can’t carry a passenger. Stefano has now flown the aircraft, and is also very impressed”. The machine was acquired for Landi during the summer of 2018 from collector/restorer Walter Bowe in Sonoma, California, with whom it flew as N97SF.
many of the aircraft delivered to Iraq between 1949-53 were Fury FB10s, some of the later deliveries were FB11s, but the original WJ298 was still operational with 776 Fleet Requirements Unit at Hurn during September 1958.
One of a couple of dozen Furies recovered from Iraq by David Tallichet and Ed Jurist in 1979, 303 went to Australia for collector Guido Zuccoli, and following restoration in Darwin flew again in November 1983. It did so wearing Royal Australian Navy markings and the codes 308/K, which remain on the aircraft to this day. Zuccoli died in a North American T-6 at RAAF Base Tindal, Northern Territory on 6 March 1997. The Sea Fury is the second ex-Zuccoli aircraft to be restored by MeierMotors, Fiat G59-4B MM53278/VH-LIZ having arrived at Bremgarten from Australia in October 2015. It flew again as D-FIAT during November 2017.
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F
Last Beverley saved
ollowing an online auction on 19 September, it was announced that Blackburn Beverley C1 XB259, the last surviving complete example of the four-engine airlifter, had been purchased by a new owner and will therefore be saved from the scrap-man. The Beverley was among 1,048 lots put up for sale with auctioneers Gilbert Baitson following the closure in January of the military museum at Fort Paull, a Napoleonic fortress on the River Humber. This followed a bereavement suffered by a member of the museum’s team, and the retirement of its director. It did not prove possible to sell the collection in its entirety, hence the ‘piecemeal’ auction. XB259 — which never flew with the RAF, spending its career with manufacturer Blackburn and then the Royal Aircraft Establishment — was moved to Fort Paull in 2003, after its previous home at the Museum of Army Transport in Beverley closed down. Now the aeroplane will have to be transported by road again,
Beverley C1 XB259 at Fort Paull, from which historic military site it will soon be moved following acquisition by new owner Condor Aviation. VIA MARTYN WISEMAN
having been sold for £21,000, the largest sum attracted by a single lot in the Fort Paull disposal, which in total raised “a six-figure amount”. The purchaser of the Beverley is a company called
Condor Aviation, based at a private airfield near Selby, North Yorkshire, and which will keep XB259 intact there. One other complete, genuine aircraft was also included in
the auction, namely Hunter F6 XF509. It was acquired for £13,000, but no details of its purchaser or destination were forthcoming at the time of writing. Ben Dunnell
PROTOTYPE BEAGLE PUP RELAUNCHED Following its first flight for more than 50 years at Turweston on 19 May after a five-year restoration, the prototype Beagle B121 Pup, G-AVDF, had an official launch party at the Northamptonshire airfield on 26 August. The test-flying programme has been carried out by the Light Aircraft Association’s chief engineer Francis Donaldson and former Battle of Britain Memorial Flight Hurricane and Spitfire pilot Paul Shenton, and the historic machine was recently repainted in its original red colours and markings by Eastern Air Executive at Sturgate, north Lincolnshire. After ’AVDF’s first flight on 8 April 1967, Beagle Aircraft planned a Pup Christening Day so the aeroplane could be officially named. Thomas Sopwith had been consulted, and was happy to see the new design named after his World War One Sopwith Pup fighter. On 17 May 1967 the press were invited to Shoreham for the
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Light Aircraft Association chief engineer Francis Donaldson airborne in the recently painted prototype Beagle Pup, G-AVDF, at Turweston on 26 August. NIGEL HITCHMAN
occasion. Sir Tom and Lady Sopwith arrived, and after the speeches Lady Sopwith poured champagne over the nose of ’DF from an inscribed goblet which commemorated the day. The Shuttleworth Collection Sopwith Pup, G-EBKY, was transported by road from
Old Warden to stand between the prototype Pup and the mock-up B121 that had been on display at the Farnborough show the previous year. Fortunately, all the plans for that day, the speeches and letters from some of the invited guests were preserved by Beagle managing director Sir Peter Masefield and were recently discovered in the Masefield archive at Brooklands. As a result of this find the Beagle Pup Prototype Club — which will operate the aircraft with owner David Collings — decided to re-create the event, with guests including Peter Briggs, who was involved in building ’DF at Shoreham in the mid-1960s, and Mark Larroucau, whose late father John designed the aeroplane. After David Collings had poured champagne on the nose, echoing the event of 53 years ago, Francis Donaldson signed the logbook and then took the Pup for a test flight in front of the invited guests.
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US markings for Biggin ‘Spit’
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upermarine Spitfire XVI RW382/G-PBIX emerged from the Biggin Hill Heritage Hangar during mid-September in a new US Army Air Forces scheme, representing a 309th Fighter Squadron, 31st Fighter Group, 12th Air Force machine flown by Lt Robert Connor in late 1943/early 1944. The repaint comes just a month after the same organisation’s Spitfire IXT, TE308, made its first postrestoration flight from Biggin in Royal Australian Air Force colours (see News, Aeroplane October 2020 and pages 14-18). Connor was based at RAF Pomigliano, Naples from 14 October 1943, moving to Castel Volturno, 22 miles north-west of Naples, on 19 January 1944 to fly cover for the amphibious landings at Anzio which began on 22 January. The unit had carried out a similar task the previous year from Montecorvino airfield near Battipaglia, which was
Dan Griffith flying Spitfire XVI RW382 in its new USAAF markings near Biggin Hill on 15 September, Battle of Britain Day. RICHARD PAVER
captured from the Germans on 11 September 1943. That airfield became crucial to achieving victory during the second half of Operation ‘Avalanche’, the
The Hangar 11 Spitfire IX, PT879, in the Biggin Hill Heritage Hangar during early September in its Soviet markings.
landings at Salerno, which took place from 9-16 September. Following the Anzio campaign, the 309th continued to fly close support, patrol and escort
missions, re-equipping with the longer-legged P-51C Mustang in March 1944 in order to perform escort missions for Germanybound Army Air Forces bombers.
HURRICANE CARRIES FIRST PASSENGERS
The world’s only two-seat Hawker Hurricane, G-HHII, made its first revenue-earning passenger flight at the Biggin Hill Heritage Hangar on 16 September. The former Royal Canadian Air Force Hurricane XII, RCAF 1374, was restored as a Hurricane IIb ‘Hurribomber’, BE505, by Hawker Restorations and flew on 27 January 2009 before being delivered to the Hangar 11 Collection at North Weald. It was operated on the show circuit until being reacquired by Hawker Restorations, now at Elmsett, Suffolk, for conversion to a two-seater with dual controls in early 2008. ‘BE505’ first flew in the new configuration from Elmsett on 17 March.
SOVIET SPITFIRE READY
Twenty-two years after being recovered from the tundra on the Kola Peninsula in the far north-west of Russia, Peter Teichman’s Spitfire IX PT879 was engine-running at Biggin Hill on 14 September, with a first flight expected in October. Restored at the Biggin Hill Heritage Hangar, the machine was originally built at the Castle Bromwich factory in August 1944, supplied as part of Lend-Lease to the Soviet Union and delivered by sea via Murmansk to the 2nd Squadron, 767th Regiment, 122nd Division of the VVS. One of 1,331 Spitfires delivered to the Soviet forces, PT879 only flew for 29 hours before colliding with another Spitfire during a training dogfight on 18 May 1945, the pilot, Junior Lt Semyonov, bailing out and surviving. When recovered, the fighter — which had hit the ground in a flat attitude — still retained much of the original paint, and a very high quantity of original parts has been used during the rebuild.
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Biggin Hill-based two-seat Hurricane ‘BE505’/G-HHII carries a paying passenger for the first time on 16 September, with former Fleet Air Arm pilot Don Sigournay in the front. RICHARD PAVER
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Omaka Mosquito restoration begins
NEWS IN BRIEF ‘BRISFIT’ DUE AT FILTON Due to arrive at Aerospace Bristol, Filton in early October was a Bristol F2B Fighter, the fuselage and fittings of which have been rebuilt by Andy Crumpholt at Lawrence Airport north of Boston, Massachusetts.
The fuselage is one of several original structures recovered from a barn at Weston-on-the Green, Oxfordshire during 1965. More next month.
The Omaka Aviation Heritage Centre has wasted no time in getting on with the restoration/conservation of the late John Smith’s Mosquito FBVI NZ2336, the tail section having already forsaken its previous silver scheme for a coat of camouflage. GRAHAM ORPHAN
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estoration of the former John Smith Collection de Havilland Mosquito FBVI, NZ2336 — recently moved from Mapua, near Nelson, on New Zealand’s South Island to the Omaka Aviation Heritage Centre (see News, Aeroplane September 2020) — is now under way, the tail section having been painted in camouflage. The ex-Royal New Zealand Air Force fighterbomber, which Smith saved from destruction during the summer of 1956, is to be finished in No 487 Squadron, RNZAF markings. John Smith died in August 2019, and his family has worked with the New Zealand Aviation Museum Trust to ensure that the historic Standard Motors, Coventry-built machine remains in the country where it has resided since being delivered to No 75 Squadron, RNZAF at Ohakea during April 1947.
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BUCHÓNS LEAVE UK Two of the ex-‘Connie’ Edwards Battle of Britain film Hispano HA-1112-M1L Buchóns that have been restored to flight at Sywell by Air Leasing over the past few years are heading for pastures new. G-AWHM ‘Yellow 7’ is said to be bound for Germany, and G-AWHR ‘White 5’ is destined for a new owner in Hungary. ‘BIGGLES BIPLANE’ CRASH Matthew Boddington survived a spin into the ground in the ‘Biggles Biplane’ Royal Aircraft Factory BE2c replica G-AWYI at Sywell on 2 September with serious injuries. We wish him well with his recovery. MITCHELL ACCIDENT The Latham, New York-based B-25J Mitchell 44-28938/N7946C Old Glory was severely damaged in a forced landing near Stockton, California on 19 September. Two of the three crew members were hospitalised with non-lifechanging injuries. NEXT FLYING LEGENDS DATE SET Following the recent news that the Flying Legends Air Show would no longer be taking place at IWM Duxford, Nick Grey of The Fighter Collection announced on 22 September that it is hoped that, COVID-19 permitting, the show will be held on 10-11 July 2021 at an as yet undisclosed location.
The rear engine nacelles being prepared for painting. GRAHAM ORPHAN
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Travel Air arrives at Old Warden
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n 8 September, Travel Air 4000 Speedwing NC8115 arrived at Old Warden for display in one of the Shuttleworth Collection hangars. Imported from Canada by Ron Souch and Richard Seeley during 2008, the biplane recently flew again for the first time in eight years, following restoration work undertaken by Graham Keele of Hants Light Plane Services at Chilbolton. This Travel Air has an illustrious history, having been ‘barnstormed’ by Nick Rezich during the 1930s, and by his brother Frank in the late inter-war years, before the machine went into storage in early 1942 following America’s entry into the war. Nick Rezich was one of Benny Howard’s early employees, working in the finishing department of the Howard Aircraft Company on the south side of Chicago Municipal Airport. Benny won the 1935 transcontinental Bendix Trophy race in his Howard DGA-6 Mr Mulligan and Harold R. Neumann was victorious in the Thompson Trophy at the Cleveland Air Races later that year in the same machine. After the
Test pilot Charlie Huke brings Travel Air 4000 Speedwing NC8115 in to land at Old Warden on 8 September. NIGEL HITCHMAN
establishment of the Howard Aircraft Corporation in January 1937, Nick Rezich went on to become plant superintendent. During the late 1940s Nick and Frank designed and built the Rezich Brothers Special racer, a Goodyear Trophy-class machine for the National Air Races at Cleveland. It would become one of the first donations to the Experimental Aircraft Association Museum when it was first set up at Hales Corners, Wisconsin.
In 1959, the EAA inaugurated an annual fly-in at Rockford Airport, 85 miles north-west of Chicago, where Nick Rezich flew an aerobatic routine in the 1929 Travel Air — one of several of the type owned by the family — and also commentated at the event. He continued as the show announcer, and after the fly-in moved to Oshkosh, Wisconsin, Rezich became famous as the ‘Voice of EAA’. He died from cancer of the oesophagus in
1981. During 1937, Nick taught his 14-year-old brother to fly in an OX-5-powered Travel Air. Frank Rezich also went on to work at Howard Aircraft, and remembered Benny Howard as “intense, demanding, and a perfectionist”. In the last year of the war Frank flew ‘the Hump’ on transport missions from India to China over the eastern end of the Himalayas in Consolidated C-87/C-109s, Douglas C-54s and Curtiss C-46s.
CHILTONS MOVE TO BREIGHTON
established being a reference to The line-up of vintage aircraft Chilton Lodge near Hungerford, on the strength of the Real Berkshire, where it was built. Aeroplane Company at Four examples were produced Breighton, North Yorkshire, was before hostilities broke out, further enhanced during ’AFSV being the last. It was September with the addition of moved by road to Breighton on two Chilton DW1s, both 3 September. previously owned by type Following exactly two weeks expert Roy Nerou. later, this time by air, was First of the attractive 1930s red-liveried DW1 G-AESZ. This sporting machines to arrive was was the first Chilton built, taking black-painted DW1A G-AFSV, Chilton DW1A G-AFSV and DW1 G-AESZ at Breighton on 17 September, to the air in the hands of Ranald powered by a 44hp Train following their acquisition by the Real Aeroplane Company. VIA RAC Porteous on 16 April 1937. Its engine. It has not flown for some powerplant is a 30hp Carden years, having latterly used a Ford, a modified Ford car engine. Having suffered an accident on Mikron II powerplant. The 1939-vintage aeroplane won the last 24 May 1953 while preparing for that year’s King’s Cup, the pre-war British air race, the Folkestone Aero Trophy on 5 August wreckage of ’AESZ languished until its purchase by Roy Nerou in 1939, in the hands of The Hon Andrew Dalrymple. He was one of the 1984. He embarked on a full restoration, and ‘Dodge’ Bailey took two de Havilland Aeronautical Technical School students — the other the DW1 into the air again at Rendcomb, Gloucestershire, on 14 being Reggie Ward — behind the design, the DW in its designation September 2001. Ben Dunnell standing for Dalrymple and Ward, and the Chilton company they
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AWM BRONCO COMPLETED
Following a four-year restoration, the Australian War Memorial’s Vietnam War veteran Rockwell OV-10A Bronco 67-14639 was unveiled at the Treloar Technology Centre in Mitchell, Canberra during mid-September. Although the type was never operated by the Royal Australian Air Force, ’14639 was one of several examples flown by 23 Australian pilots on strike/attack missions in the conflict with the 19th Tactical Air Support Squadron. Several Royal New Zealand Air Force pilots are also thought to have flown ’14639. The Bronco has been reconfigured and painted in the markings it wore on 13 July 1970, a day on which it flew two separate missions with Australian crews. It made 131 flights in south-east Asia, 30 of those being strike/attack missions, and completed 203 flying hours there. Falklands veteran Sea Harrier XZ459 being reassembled at the Tangmere Military Aviation Museum on 24 August. The dark sea grey scheme represents that sported by the machine in FRS1 guise from early 1980 until April 1982, and was never worn on the FA2 variant. HUGH TREVOR
OV-10A Bronco 67-14639 shortly after its unveiling in Canberra. COLIN A. OWERS
Following its combat career, ’14639 was assigned to Europe, being operated from the USAF base at Sembach, West Germany from May 1977 until August 1983, after which it returned to the USA and went to George AFB in Victorville, California. During January 1992 the aircraft was at Sangley Point — now named Danilo Atienza Air Base — near Manila, where it was attached to the 15th Strike Wing of the Philippine Air Force. It made its last flight the following October, and after long-term storage was declared beyond economical repair due to corrosion on 12 December 2002. Its future looked bleak after removal to a reclamation area, but following an approach to the US government by the AWM the historic machine was gifted to the memorial in July 2003, the transfer being confirmed by the Armed Forces of the Philippines on 13 April 2004. Philippine Air Force personnel assisted in dismantling ’14639 during late 2006, and it arrived in Sydney on board HMAS Tobruk — a landing ship (heavy) known as the workhorse of the Royal Australian Navy — on 16 March 2007. During restoration, all the fittings and control surface attachment points on the original wing were found to be too badly damaged and corroded. A replacement — amazingly, from another 19th TASS Vietnam veteran, 68-3811, that also had Australian Vietnam provenance — was sourced from Marsh Aviation in Mesa, Arizona where the company reconfigures OV-10s for fire-fighting purposes.
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Sea Harrier delivered to Tangmere
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he Tangmere Military Aviation many missions as the strike leader for Museum took delivery of BAe Sea bombing attacks on targets including Stanley Harrier FA2 XZ459 on 24 August from airfield and enemy shipping in the total a private owner in the south-east of exclusion zone. On 4 May he led a low-level England, who had kept the Falklands conflict attack on the airstrip at Goose Green, during veteran in his back garden. Acquired by Chris which his number two was shot down killed. Wilson, managing director of Jet Art Aviation For these actions, Batt was nominated inin Selby, Yorkshire during 2007, Chris and his theatre for a Distinguished Service Cross. team restored the V/STOL jet into a light grey On 23 May, shortly after launching from scheme as worn by the FA2 variant, but after Hermes at night with three other Sea Harriers its sale the new owner decided to paint it in for a bombing attack on Stanley airfield, the extra dark sea grey worn on the original Batt’s aircraft was seen to explode ahead of FRS1s when they entered service in the early the carrier and he was killed. The cause of the 1980s. accident has never The machine made been established, The Sea Harrier made the its first flight, as an and Batt’s DSC FRS1, on 1 March was gazetted first operational sortie of the 1980. It went on to fly posthumously. Falklands war on 1 May 1982 49 combat air patrol XZ459 was (CAP) sorties and converted to FA2 four bombing missions during the Falklands configuration during 1993 with a more conflict, making the first operational sortie powerful version of the Pegasus engine and of the war on 1 May 1982 from HMS Hermes much-improved weapon systems, the most with Lt Cdr ‘Gordy’ Batt DSC at the controls. visible modification being the extended nose On 16 May it took part in a bombing attack on to house the Blue Vixen radar. The type was the Argentinian supply vessel Rio Carcaraña retired from Royal Navy service during 2006. off Port King in Falkland Sound, which For 11 years Tangmere had the prototype Sea resulted in the crew abandoning ship. Harrier FRS2, ZA195, on loan, but on 12 July Thirty-seven-year-old Batt flew a total of 2020 it departed to the South Wales Aviation 29 operations, often making up to four air Museum, where owner Gary Spoors hopes to defence CAP sorties a day. He also completed get it back into ground-running condition.
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News November 2020
Dutch Catalina for restoration
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n 28 August, the only surviving ex-Royal Netherlands Navy Consolidated PBY-5A Catalina was moved from the Nationaal Militair Museum at Soesterberg to the Nederlands Transport Museum in NieuwVennep, seven miles south-west of Schiphol Airport, for a thorough restoration. The work will be undertaken by members of the Stichting Neptune Association, and is expected to take up to five years, after which the amphibian will return to Soesterberg. The Marine Luchtvaartdienst flew the type from 1941 and used both the flying boat and amphibian versions. During World War Two the Royal Netherlands Navy flew the type from Australia, Ceylon and South Africa on anti-U-boat patrols and rescue missions. After the war PBYs were employed in the Dutch East Indies (now Indonesia), Dutch New Guinea and in the Netherlands. The last MLD Catalinas were struck off
The last remaining former Royal Netherlands Navy Catalina arriving at the Nederlands Transport Museum in Nieuw-Vennep on 28 August for restoration. JAN WILLEM LAROO
charge and scrapped in 1957, only BuNo 46521/16‑212 being saved. In August 1957 it went on display in a park in Bosbad Hoeven, where it remained until 1984. The strippedout airframe then went to Valkenburg for restoration before being placed on gate guard
duty at the then Military Aviation Museum at Soesterberg. In 1996 the Stichting Neptune Association began another restoration in a hangar at Valkenburg, but after the base closed in 2006 the Catalina was moved to Soesterberg and put into storage.
SIEBEL RECORD-BREAKER RE-CREATED employee from the Si 202 years The undoubted star of a fly-in at — at the famous Wasserkuppe Bienenfarm airfield, 18 miles west gliding field in central Germany of Berlin, from 11-13 September in the year 2000. Wolfgang was Wolfgang Knobloch’s newly Knobloch explains, “I bought the built replica of a record-breaking Siebel ready to fly with a Siebel Si 202 Hummel, D-EMDR, Limbach engine. This engine which in February 1939 set two went hot all the time so I sold it. records for aircraft with an A lot has been changed, rebuilt engine of two-litre capacity. or reconstructed, including the Originally flown in prototype undercarriage, windows, form from the Siebel electrics, seating, instrument Flugzeugwerke airfield at Halle, panel, fuel tanks, interior, paint Saxony-Anhalt, with a 45hp scheme and much more. This nine-cylinder Salmson 9Ad radial took a total of 3,500 hours over powerplant in May 1938, the 14 years. Developing the engine Hummel (meaning bumblebee) installation was very timelight sport-plane achieved fame consuming.” on 2 February 1939 when the first Wolfgang Knobloch flying his pretty little Siebel Si 202 Hummel The Hummel is now fitted with ’EMDR set a new altitude record replica near Bienenfarm on 12 September, its dumpy appearance a Czech-built seven-cylinder of 19,626ft (5,982m) for a light living up to the type’s ‘bumblebee’ appellation. DIETMAR SCHREIBER Verner Scarlett engine of 117hp. aircraft powered by a two-litre Wolfgang says, “A take-off with engine and carrying two people, full power will bring me to 3,300ft in four minutes. Cruise power will being flown on this occasion by Siebel test pilot Wolfgang Ziese. show a 300ft-a-minute climb like the original. Since April 2020 I Four days later another record was set with just pilot Christophe have had a permit to fly.” Hilliger aboard, the four-cylinder in-line air-cooled Zundapp A total of 66 Si 202s were built, eight examples of the dual9-092-powered machine reaching a dazzling 23,107ft (7,043m). control machine being delivered to the Hungarian Air Force. There Construction of the replica was undertaken by Josef Kurz and are no original survivors. two other elderly gentlemen — including a former Siebel company
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WORKSHOP
NURSED BACK TO H With the addition of Spitfire IXT TE308 to its fleet, resplendent in the most distinctive wartime livery of No 457 ‘Grey Nurse’ Squadron, Royal Australian Air Force, the Biggin Hill Heritage Hangar can now boast a quartet of two-seat ‘Spits’ for its passenger rides programme. But what did it take to return this aircraft to British skies, 12 years on from sustaining quite serious damage while under previous ownership in the USA? WORDS: RICHARD PAVER 14 www.aeroplanemonthly.com
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n May 2019, the Biggin Hill Heritage Hangar announced that a fourth two-seat Spitfire would be joining its collection with the addition of MkIX Trainer TE308, which had been purchased in the USA. This was a very wellknown aircraft, which had flown regularly in the hands of its previous owner Bill Greenwood until April 2008, when it was damaged in an accident. Now it’s made up a quartet of Spitfires available for customer rides — and, what’s more, appears in a colour scheme never previously seen in the UK. TE308 was built at Castle Bromwich in 1945 as a low-
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to Elstree by a crew from the RAF’s Battle of Britain Flight. The next day it was ferried to Henlow and leased to Spitfire Productions for use in the Battle of Britain film. Its role was often as a camera aircraft, being flown — as also recounted on pages 30-37 — from the rear seat, with a camera fixed into the front seat position. ’GB was also used near the back of some large formation shots where its configuration as a twoseater was not obvious. With filming complete, the aircraft was acquired by Sir William Roberts and flown to Shoreham, West Sussex, but in July 1970 it was sold on to Don Plumb who shipped it to Toronto in October 1970. It was registered as CF-RAF and flown a great deal in Canada by Plumb and Jerry Billing. During its time with Plumb the aeroplane was extensively overhauled at Windsor, Ontario, painted in non-authentic gloss green and dark earth camouflage and given the fictitious codes R-AF. In 1973 Plumb made a further change with the removal of the rear canopy and windscreen, plus a fairing over the rear cockpit to create the impression that the aircraft was a single-seater. This created a totally non-authentic profile as the front cockpit was situated 13.5in further forward than normal, and did not look right. Spitfire MJ772, now also part of the BHHH fleet, underwent a similar conversion in the USA some years ago.
O HEALTH back Spitfire HFIXe, fitted with a Merlin 70. It was delivered to No 39 Maintenance Unit at Colerne in June 1945, but was never issued for RAF squadron service and remained there until January 1950, when it was briefly transferred to No 29 MU at High Ercall. On 19 July 1950 it was sold to Vickers-Armstrongs, having been selected for conversion to twoseat configuration at Hursley Park, Hampshire. It was included in the order for the Irish Air Corps and became IAC 163. TE308 is unique in that it is the only two-seat trainer to have been factory-converted from a low-back single-seater — the high-
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back variants were simpler and less expensive to modify in this way. IAC 163 was delivered to Baldonnel on 30 July 1951, serving as a fighter-trainer and often being fitted with guns and bomb racks. It was allocated to the Advanced Flying Section of the IAC’s Flying School. Retired in the autumn of 1961, when its flying days were over the machine was allocated for ground instructional purposes and mainly used for practising ground-running. Three Irish trainers were put up for sale in March 1968, all being bought by Tony Samuelson. IAC 163 was registered G-AWGB. On 7 May 1968, the Spitfire was flown
MAIN PICTURE: Don Sigournay flying Spitfire IXT TE308/ G-AWGB along the south coast near Beachy Head on 16 September. RICHARD PAVER
Don Plumb was killed in a P-51 accident in 1975 and the Spitfire passed to Thomas Watson, who owned it between 1976 and 1979. It was registered N92477 and flew very rarely. On 7 October 1979 it was sold to Woodson K. Woods, who again altered the registration to N308WK and flew it from his base in Phoenix, Arizona, with the codes WK-C. During his ownership Woods returned the aircraft to a correct grey/green livery. April 1983 saw Bill Greenwood’s purchase of TE308, which he moved to Aspen, Colorado. Bill applied the new codes RJ-M in 1994 as a tribute to the Spitfire’s designer R. J. Mitchell. He had notched up more than 1,000 hours in the machine by 26 April 2008, when it was involved in a ground collision with the Hawker Hurricane from the Lone Star Flight Museum. During an airshow at Scholes
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WORKSHOP Spitfire TE308
The immaculate, yet very original, front cockpit, some modern items of avionics equipment the only non-period elements. RICHARD PAVER TOP: A rainy 21 November 2019, and TE308 is unpacked at the Biggin Hill Heritage Hangar’s premises, following its transAtlantic journey.
BHHH
ABOVE: The two-seat Spitfire dismantled in the BHHH premises. Work to return the aircraft to airworthiness would not take long to start, given the demand for passenger rides.
BHHH
International Airport in Galveston, Texas, the Hurricane groundlooped when landing ahead of the Spitfire in stream. Unfortunately, the Spitfire was unable to avoid the stricken Hurricane during the landing roll-out and the two aircraft collided. No-one was injured, but the Spitfire suffered damage to its engine, propeller, port wing and undercarriage. After the accident the airframe was dismantled and shipped to QG Aviation at Fort Collins, Colorado for repair. Some work was done there on the wings and engine, but the aircraft was not completed to airworthy condition and remained in storage in its unfinished state until being purchased by Peter Monk for the BHHH in May 2019. The aircraft was prepared for shipping to the UK. It arrived at Biggin Hill in a container on 21 November 2019
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and was immediately put into the BHHH workshops for restoration to airworthy condition. By July 2020, the Spitfire was nearing completion. As it does not have any affiliation to an RAF combat squadron, the BHHH team decided to put TE308 into a most unusual but very distinctive livery. It received new markings to represent A58-606/ZP-W, a Spitfire VIII of No 457 ‘Grey Nurse’ Squadron, Royal Australian Air Force. ZP-W was the mount of Sqn Ldr Bruce Watson, commanding officer of 457 from November 1944 to November 1945. On 7 August this year, Pete Kynsey took TE308 for its first flight from UK soil in some 50 years.
Describing what was required to get the aircraft back into the air, Peter Monk says, “We require very high standards in the restoration work on all of our Spitfires, because with the two-seaters their utilisation is extremely high and achieving excellent reliability is a particularly important factor. “A lot of repair work had been completed on TE308 by Ray Middleton in the USA, and our first task was to check that this had all been done in accordance with the required standards as laid down in the official manufacturer’s repair manuals. Ray was well-known for having worked on Spitfires and Seafires in the States for many years. He had
Achieving excellent reliability is a particularly important factor
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Fully painted in the stunning No 457 ‘Grey Nurse’ Squadron markings as unit CO Sqn Ldr Bruce Watson’s personal Spitfire VIII, A58-606. RICHARD PAVER
Come March 2020, and TE308 remained in the markings it wore in the ownership of Bill Greenwood, but was well on the way to flying again. The work done on the airframe before it left the USA had been suitably verified, but it was given a complete, detailed overhaul. RICHARD PAVER
excellent engineering experience on the Spitfire, and the work was in accordance with the repair manuals and was very good. Most of the structural repairs to the wings and fuselage had been completed but the aircraft was never finished in the USA. The wings had been rebuilt by Ray with new main spars and new carry-through spars. When we received the aeroplane, it was dismantled but essentially complete. However, we completely overhauled it to ensure that we could get it to the very high standards that are required due to our intense use of the aircraft. “We fitted a new prop, which had been overhauled to zero-time by Skycraft, and a new prop hub which we had in stock. The aeroplane came with an overhauled RollsRoyce Merlin 76 engine; however, we fitted a freshly overhauled Packard Merlin 266 as we prefer
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THE ‘GREY NURSE’ SQUADRON
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o 457 Squadron, RAAF was formed at Baginton in the UK during 1941 under the leadership of Sqn Ldr Pete Brothers, albeit with a mostly Australian cadre of pilots. With training complete, the unit’s Spitfire Vs became very active on offensive sweeps over France and Germany. Then on 28 May 1942 Prime Minister Winston Churchill personally requested the transfer of a wing of Spitfires to Australia, the so-called ‘Churchill Wing’, and 457 was one of the three squadrons involved. It became part of No 1 Wing, RAAF on 1 October 1942, and deployed to Darwin, New South Wales,
that December in order to bolster air defences against Japanese attacks. Known as the ‘Grey Nurse’ Squadron as a result of the shark’s mouth markings applied to its Spitfires — ‘grey nurse’ was an Australian term for a type of sand tiger shark — 457 re-equipped with the Spitfire VIII and saw a great deal of action in the South Pacific theatre. Latterly assigned to No 80 Wing, it moved successively to Morotai in the Netherlands East Indies and the island of Labuan, taking part in many operations against the Japanese. After the surrender of Japan, No 457 Squadron was disbanded on 7 November 1945.
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WORKSHOP Spitfire TE308
ABOVE: Never before has an Australian-marked Spitfire flown in the UK, and TE308 will no doubt become very popular with visitors from Commonwealth countries who come to fly in the Biggin Hill-based twoseaters. RICHARD PAVER
to use Packard engines in an aircraft that can be flying 25 hours a week. The Rolls engine was designed in 1936-37, whilst the Packard was designed in 1941. In those five years, engine technology was moving forward at an incredibly fast pace and so the Packard is better for a high-utilisation aircraft. “We have also fitted a Packard 266 to MJ627, and there are significant environmental benefits with the Packard engine. For example, the Rolls engine will often leak oil on shut-down, whilst the Packard will be as dry as a bone. When we are having eight to 10 flights a day, it makes a substantial difference in the work required to turn the aircraft round and also to keep the ramp clean. In addition, when we remove the cowlings on a Rolls engine for a check the engine will be covered in oil and requires a lot of cleaning before any work can be done. The Packard units are always dry and clean, and as a result this makes regular checks and turn-arounds so much easier. Our preferred use of Packard engines is not a matter of reliability — it is mainly about the environmental benefits and ease of turn-around. “We also fitted a new engine bearer to TE308 which we had in stock, and at the same time we renewed all the bearer fittings to the fuselage. In terms of the systems, we totally replaced them all with new — the aircraft has been rewired throughout, the pneumatic and hydraulic systems are also
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completely new, and we fitted newly overhauled instruments to both cockpits from our stock. All this renewal work was done to very high standards as we have such high utilisation. We wanted the aircraft to be in better condition than the day it was originally converted to a two-seater. “We fitted new undercarriage legs, which we had in stock, and brand-new undercarriage pintles and locks. The wheel axles were also brand-new — these are made by us to the exact original specification but using modern materials. This was a major project with a huge amount of work, which we started in November 2019. We had the aircraft rolled out in better-than-new condition and flying by August 2020, so the whole BHHH engineering team did an incredible job. “As the aircraft had no actual wartime combat history, unlike MJ627 and MJ772, we decided that we needed to put it into a new colour scheme intended to make it both very distinctive and very memorable. My son Alex and a number of the younger-generation engineers in the BHHH team came up with the idea of the shark’s mouth ‘Grey Nurse’ squadron scheme. Initially I wasn’t so keen — I thought it was a bit jazzy — but now I am so pleased, as it was a great idea that has resulted in the aircraft being widely recognised and remembered. We must also not forget that many
of our flight customers come to Biggin Hill from all over the world to fly in a Spitfire, and it is therefore most appropriate that we can present a Commonwealth aircraft to commemorate all the Commonwealth squadrons and crews. If we had put it into a standard RAF camouflage scheme without a squadron history, it might have become just another Spitfire. It was for the same reason that we have repainted RW382 so that it can really stand out as a very distinctive Spitfire [see page 8]. “I have recently flown TE308, and I am very pleased to say that I think it is very much the besthandling two-seater from all the Spitfires I have flown. We have nailed the centre of gravity down to the nearest tenth of an inch and it is very stable in pitch. The majority of two-seaters have a tendency to be pitch-unstable, especially during approach — the weight of a passenger makes a big difference. However, this aircraft is the most stable… It is a lovelyhandling aeroplane.”
FLY IN TE308 Spitfire IXT TE308 now flies regularly on SSAC (Safety Standards Acknowledgement and Consent) passenger experience flights at Biggin Hill. For more details and to book, see flyaspitfire.com
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Comment
STEVE SLATER
HangarTalk Comment on historic aviation by the chief executive of the UK’s Light Aircraft Association
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brief encounter with a Douglas C-47 recently reminded me of a group of unsung heroes who continue to influence aviation today. While it is now taken as natural that armies and victims of natural tragedies can be provisioned by airlifts, the concept was unknown when, in the spring of 1942, the Japanese army occupied Burma and sealed off the only ground supply route from British-held India to China. In order to provide supplies to the Chinese and American armies commanded by Gen Chiang Kai-shek as they engaged a force of more than one million Japanese troops, the world’s first ‘air bridge’ was created across the toughest terrain imaginable: the Himalayas. Perhaps in an attempt to talk down the risks, the crews referred to their 500mile route across the world’s greatest mountain range merely as ‘the Hump’. They routinely flew aircraft with a maximum altitude capability of just 16,000ft, through ranges of mountains in excess of 20,000ft high. They faced winds of over 125mph, ferocious turbulence and, for a quarter of the year, monsoon conditions in the air and on the ground. Radio facilities were basic, navigation aids non-existent and most of the mountains and the surrounding dense jungle were uncharted.
Brig Gen William H. Tunner at his desk in 1943. He deserves to be recalled as the father of humanitarian airlift operations. USAF
Over a four-year period, 509 aircraft crashed and 1,314 crew members were killed. A total of 1,171 airmen walked out of the mountains and neighbouring jungle after bailing out or surviving crashes. No fewer than 345 are still missing. The early mainstay of the operations was the ubiquitous Douglas C-47 Skytrain. However, its limited ceiling saw crews threading their way through mountain passes with snowcovered pinnacles rising a mile above them. The Curtiss C-46 Commando offered more performance and range than the C-47, but suffered reliability problems in the hot, humid conditions. Many crews struggled home on a single engine.
Tunner’s template stood the test of time
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The Consolidated C-87 and C-109 were the first fourengined aircraft to fly ‘the Hump’, transporting thousands of gallons of high-octane aviation fuel for bombers based in China, but they had a fatal flaw. Adaptations of the B-24 Liberator heavy bomber, their handling characteristics were poor in the hot, thin air. One pilot, future novelist Ernest K. Gann, once came within feet of colliding with the Taj Mahal when his aircraft failed to gain altitude after takeoff from Agra. In August 1944, at Kurmitola in the Irrawaddy Valley, 10 fuel-laden C-109s crashed on take-off in a single day. All were destroyed in the ensuing fires. In early 1945, a new aircraft transformed the airlift. The Douglas C-54 Skymaster offered the same viceless handing as
the C-47, but four-engined performance, extra range and carrying capacity. At the same time, a new commanding officer, Brig Gen William H. Tunner, made his mark on flying operations. He developed a second route to China called the ‘low Hump’ to increase efficiency, and instituted maintenance and flying safety programmes that reduced the accident rate to less than a quarter of what it had been when he took command, despite more than doubling the tonnage and hours flown. As one veteran said, “all of sudden it wasn’t so frightening any more.” By the end of the war Tunner was in charge of more than 700 aircraft, frequently flying over 1,000 round trips a day. A total of 650,000 tons, almost 90 per cent of all supplies to China, were shipped before the airlift came to a conclusion. There was no rest for Tunner, however. In June 1948, he was rushed to Germany to take control of the Berlin Airlift. He assumed leadership of an airlift being run like a series of bombing missions, and applied the same methodology as in India. As a result, the per-day tonnage flown to Berlin by aircraft eventually exceeded the amount of supplies that had previously been brought in to the city by train. Tunner’s template for air support planning has also stood the test of time. It is still used by air forces around the world to this day.
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Comment
MATTHEW WILLIS
Flight FlightLine Recollections and reflections — a seasoned historian’s view of aviation’s past
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viation history is full of myths and misconceptions, and writers must not shy away from addressing them wherever they are found. ‘Revisionism’ has become something of a dirty word, but in reality all good history is revisionist in that it doesn’t accept the orthodox version of events as a rigid starting-off point. This is no more apparent than in the study of the North American Mustang. Having just completed a longterm project on early Mustangs, the extent to which mythology has overtaken the aircraft’s story seems to me astonishing. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the aircraft’s name. To this day, it has proved impossible to pin down precisely what it was officially named at all points of its career. Even more strangely, the established name of a Mustang variant turns out to have arisen from errors in published sources fully three decades after the type was in service. It’s not too odd for myths to spring up in the early years after an aircraft’s operational career, with fallible memory and the fog of war creating fact out of supposition, personal agendas and Chinese whispers. It’s rather more surprising to come across something people have come to believe as fact long after the event. That troublesome name is, of course, Apache. The truth,
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North American A-36s 42-83707, 42-83716 and 42-83715 in formation — but should they be called Mustangs, Apaches, or no name at all? NATIONAL ARCHIVES AND RECORDS ADMINISTRATION
insofar as it can be nailed down, is that for a while in 1941 and early 1942, North American Aviation marketed its new fighter model with that name. The British had applied the name Mustang in late 1940, but NAA wanted something distinct, and in its advertising pushed its own title. By July 1942, after the US Army Air Forces had begun to acquire their own supply of the North American fighter, the company had changed its tune. The Mustang had been gaining a name for itself on intruder missions over occupied Europe and the British name had better ‘brand recognition’. When the AAF began to formalise its system of applying names
as well as alpha-numeric designations, NAA suggested that the air force use the name Mustang, not Apache. So far, so straightforward. But to what extent had the Apache name permeated into the consciousness of the AAF and the public by that time? Adverts, magazine articles and model kits from the period can all be found bearing the title ‘P-51 Apache’. There’s no evidence that the AAF adopted the name Apache before deciding on Mustang, mainly because the air force had no means of ‘officially’ recognising a name at that time. As to what people called it informally, that’s less clear. Published sources since then have stumbled over
this, and nobody has managed to pin it down with certainty. This leads to the fabled ‘A-36 Apache’. The dedicated attack version of the Mustang probably has a greater mythsper-airframes-built ratio of any aircraft in history, and none is greater than its name. It may surprise many, but the A-36 was never called Apache at any time before the 1970s. The late Michael Vorrasi of the P-51 Special Interest Group studied sources exhaustively and concluded that the name was not applied to that specific variant until the mid-1970s, pinning down the publications in which the error appears to have arisen — probably from confusion over the earlier unofficial use of the name — and quickly became mainstream. So mainstream, indeed, that what is now the National Museum of the US Air Force labelled its own A-36 with the name Apache! It took lengthy correspondence from Mustang enthusiast and historian Tom Griffiths before the museum corrected its signage last year. Then there’s the contemporary use of the name Invader for the type, but that’s another story. All this acts as a lesson not to take the published record as fixed and immutable — and as a warning to authors not to present something as fact when there may be some uncertainty over it. Though it is nice to know there will always be work for historians.
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Skywriters
In association with… WRITE TO: Aeroplane, Key Publishing Ltd, PO Box 100, Stamford, Lincolnshire PE9 1XQ, UK E-MAIL TO: [email protected], putting ‘Skywriters’ in the header
In every issue, the writer of our Letter of the Month wins a £25 book voucher to spend with leading military and transport publisher Crécy.
LETTER of the MONTH
Wolfgang Falck during his service with Luftwaffe night fighter unit NJG 1 in 1940.
View from the ‘other side’ I was intrigued by the article on the 1937 York International Meeting in the August issue. It might be of interest that, besides the press statements on the meeting by Oskar Ursinus, one of the German participants, Wolfgang Falck, supplied an official report to the Luftwaffe — and he was certainly interested in the tensions between the French and British. In his autobiography Falkenjahre, he describes the event and the background to his participation. As adjutant of the Jagdgeschwader Richthofen, his tasks included dealing with any demands for representatives for social events, so it was not surprising that he was selected to participate in the event — which he describes erroneously as the “inauguration of York aerodrome”, together with seven other Luftwaffe officers. For this, they were required to wear civilian clothes instead of their usual Luftwaffe uniforms, probably as a sign of goodwill rather than an attempt at secrecy. Falck confirms that, from the first encounter, one had the impression that the relationship between the RAF and Luftwaffe was exceptionally friendly.
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Taming the Puss “We Germans were received with exceptionally cordial hospitality and obligingness and catered for overabundantly, so within a short time a very comradely relationship between the English and Germans had developed. At the beginning, it was nearly more cordial than between the several German groups themselves who had not known each other before… The hospitality of the English is admirable. We were invited to everything imaginable, even newspapers with reports on the meeting were given to us free of charge… Also, a bond of friendship was immediately created with the officers of the RAF with whom we met in the course of the day, and besides the tribute that was again and again paid to German aviation, from all sides the warm wish for closer co-operation and friendship between English and German aviators was expressed… During a reception and civic luncheon in the Mansion House, which was held by the Lord Mayor of York, he gave a long, very cordial speech to the guests. As the Germans were the most numerous team, Mr Gerbrecht answered for us in quite warm words. Because of the advanced hour, no further speeches were accepted, which the French took as a provocation, and they expressed their discontent concerning this unhospitable behaviour to the English. Due to this incident, about which the English informed us, they asked us to pay court to the French for peace’s sake, which was done in the form of a joint evening in one of the hotels. When talking to us, the English made no secret of their fundamental dislike of the French in general and of the participants in particular, while they treated the Belgians, who were also air force officers, cordially… We were received everywhere most cordially and the warmest sympathy was shown to us, and it remains only to be hoped that we in Germany will receive our English comrades just as cordially and prepare just as pleasant a stay for them in Frankfurt.” More critically, he comments on the first evening spent in London where he and fellow Luftwaffe officers were invited by a higher RAF officer to his home on the banks of the Thames. When one of the British tuned the radio in to a German station playing the Horst-Wessel-Lied, some of the RAF officers lifted their arms in the Hitlergruß towards the radio set — something Falck and his comrades wouldn’t have done, but now they were forced to join in and found themselves, according to Falck, in a rather awkward position. Maybe some of the officers went too far in their hospitality. Maximilian Meindl
I thoroughly enjoyed the article on Puss Moth G-AAZP (Aeroplane June 2020). What a fascinating history. I flew ’ZP about a dozen times from the end of September 1963 to early December 1963 with the then DH Chester flying club — a real privilege. If my memory serves me correctly, we were forced to swap a Tiger Moth, G-ALBD, which we had rebuilt from a wreck for ’ZP. The Puss was owned by Harry Dobson, son of Sir Roy Dobson, boss of Hawker Siddeley. We didn’t have much say in the matter! I do recall a bit of a fright I had in it while doing a touch-and-go — I let go of the throttle to swap hands to bring the airbrake in, but I hadn’t tightened the friction knob and the throttle closed. With another quick swap of hands, I pushed the throttle up too quickly and the poor old Gipsy coughed and picked up just as I was running out of runway. I got airborne just in time… John Hardy
Never the same again… I have just read the HS748/ Andover Database (Aeroplane September 2020) — it’s very good. I used to work as an engineer for LIAT in Antigua and two of its 748s were the ex-Channel Airways aircraft that went off the grass runway at Portsmouth on the same day, 16 August 1967. The army put chains through the adjacent back doors to pull them clear. Forever afterwards, the door seals used to shriek, no matter how we tried to re-hang the doors! Peter Lewis, Arundel The editor reserves the right to edit all letters. Please include your full name and address in correspondence.
AEROPLANE NOVEMBER 2020
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THE AIR FORCE SHOP Officially Licensed Royal Air Force Gifts
Wings O ver Ir a q A new historical novel by Eric B. Forsyth
A gripping story of RAF bomber pilots in Iraq during the period leading up to WWII. The country is wracked by rebellious Arab tribes, prompted by German intelligence posing as an archeological expedition. Newly qualified RAF pilot Allan Chadwick is posted to a squadron trying to maintain the flow of vital oil using obsolete Vickers Vimys. Set against the rise of fascism in Europe, the story follows Chadwick as he is exposed to the harsh realities of an undeclared war, as well as the pleasures awaiting a young man coming of age in a turbulent country. The author was an RAF pilot and is an award-winning sailor and retired engineer. Eric Forsyth’s previous book, An Inexplicable Attraction: My Fifty Years of Ocean Sailing, was among Kirkus’s 100 Best Memoirs of 2018.
Available in the UK through the YPD Bookshop
www.ypdbooks.com/948_eric-b-forsyth
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and worldwide wherever books are sold online
t: 01279 833215
Published by Yacht Fiona Books ISBN Paperback: 978-0-578-65299-3 • ISBN eBook: 978-0-578-68800-8
FALL OF THE LUFTWAFFE IN COLOUR - 1940
Meticulously researched over the course of 20 years, this colour rendition of the Luftwaffe’s Eagles in defeat accurately portrays the stark reality of the desperate days in 1940, when Britain stood alone. Using an extraordinary combination of stunning colourised images and factually rich text, this book gives a new and different perspective on the battle between ‘the few’ and Hitler’s vaunted Luftwaffe. It contains some 200 photographs of downed enemy aircraft, painstakingly colourised today, showing the rare spectacle of new colour from the Battle of Britain and the planes that RAF took down. 96 PAGES, SOFTBACK.
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Q&A
COMPILER: BARRY WHEELER WRITE TO: Aeroplane, Key Publishing Ltd, PO Box 100, Stamford, Lincolnshire PE9 1XQ, UK E-MAIL TO: [email protected], putting ‘Q&A’ in the header
Are you seeking the answer to a thorny aviation question, or trying to trace an old aviation friend? Our ‘questions and answers’ page might help
THIS MONTH’S QUESTIONS has heard about this ad hoc initiative by RAF engineers, and was it used or passed down from US Army Air Forces-flown P-47s?
Night work Whitley
Q
Thunderbolt IIs KJ140 and HD265 of No 30 Squadron, RAF, at Cox’s Bazar, India. CROWN COPYRIGHT
More power for RAF Thunderbolts?
Q
Prompted by the recent item on RAF Thunderbolt operations (Database, Aeroplane June 2020), Graham Wilburn recalls conversations with a former pilot who flew the type in Burma. He said, just before each sortie, pilots were issued with pieces of Perspex shaped to fit inside the throttle box, thereby increasing the
performance. Graham presumes that when the throttle was moved forward it caused the boost and/or rpm levers to move and maintain certain ratios, but if the engineers had produced something that allowed these to be overridden, surely this would have changed the fuel flow, which could conflict with air density/ temperature and humidity? He wonders whether anyone else
John Usher has e-mailed to seek an answer as to why the Armstrong Whitworth Whitley was designated ‘specifically’ to be a night bomber. He says, “Various sources indicate that it operated initially as part of No 4 Group, RAF Bomber Command, which
was the only group trained for night bombing at that point, but training alone does not fit an aircraft for purpose. The Wellington — originally designated a day bomber — went on for longer as a night bomber in many theatres and became the primary night bomber trainer, which is also anomalous”. John asks if there was a particular equipment fit, such as navigation and bombing aids, radio or cockpit lighting, which singled the Whitley out for the night role.
CORRECTIONS AND CLARIFICATIONS • It has been pointed out that the reference on page 49 of the October issue to Operation ‘Jericho’ as the codename for the Mosquito raid on Amiens prison in 1944 is a post-war invention. Remi Hodister writes that the mission “was coded Ramrod 564, designed to mislead the Germans into thinking they had indeed been harbouring a prisoner with knowledge of the site of the expected invasion. In 1947 the French government film unit produced the film entitled Operation Jericho with the intent of mythologising the role played by the RAF and the French Resistance. The myth has continued with the inclusion of Gp Capt Pickard’s death leading the raid, when, in actual fact, German fighter records show he was killed eight minutes before the raid started. He had been expressly excluded from taking part in the actual raid and was acting in a similar manner to the escorting filming Mosquito, although taking no part whatsoever in the proceedings.”
THIS MONTH’S ANSWERS Dakota doors
Q
Graham Wilburn questioned in July’s magazine why the Kbely museum’s newly refurbished DC-3 was fitted with freight doors when it never saw military service. Following Peter Marson’s response in the September issue in which he queries the US registration of the Kbely aircraft, Peter Hambrook has located a photograph which shows it to have been N143JR when operated by Rhoades Aviation. Later, FAA records show it re-registered as N143J
A
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prior to sale and before passing to the museum.
Fabricating history?
Q
In the October issue, Peter Claxton queried a fabrication by the late Sqn Ldr D. H. Clarke in his book What were they like to fly? Gerard Terry says the ‘unmentioned’ aircraft was the Westland Widgeon in chapter 21. Early on in the introduction on page 12, Clarke states his reason, namely his displeasure with “nit-pickers”, referring to them as “rivet-counters”.
A
Meteor men
Q
Christmas cards produced by RAF Gloster Meteor squadrons in the 1950s and accompanying comments appeared in the May and July 2019 editions, and more recently in the January and April 2020 issues. Audrey Harrington found the adjacent photograph of the Linton-on-Ouse-based No 66 Squadron pilots who posed for their original card. They were all part of the squadron’s aerobatic team, and — from left to right — comprise Fg Off John Patterson, Sgt Ian Laurie, Flt Lt Keith Hazelwood, Sqn Ldr Alistaire Lang, Flt Lt B. Hanafin, Sgt Alec Tarwid and Sgt Joe Harrington.
A
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STARS OF THE BIG SCREEN Battle of Britain pilot
Thrust into Battle For a dozen RAF flying instructors, it was the opportunity of a lifetime: to be seconded during the summer of 1968 to the Battle of Britain film unit, flying the then-huge assembly of Spitfires brought together for the movie. John Preece was among them — and took full advantage of the chance to sample the other aircraft types involved, too WORDS: BEN DUNNELL
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n those days you got a certain amount of kudos for being an RAF pilot, but being a Battle of Britain film pilot, everyone wanted to talk to you. We got a bit precious, probably…” It’s hard to believe that of John Preece, gentleman as he is, but you can understand the sentiment. In the summer of 1968 — the often cold, wet summer of 1968 — he found himself with an assignment like no other. The day job as a qualified flying instructor was put to one side, replaced by immersion in a different world. For fully four months John was among those who evoked the RAF-versus-Luftwaffe aerial combats of 1940 for the movie cameras, not then conscious of the impact Battle of Britain would have on a generation of aficionados, but well aware of just what a singular opportunity this was. John had joined the RAF in 1954 as a national serviceman. He was sent down the aircrew route, but half-way through training decided to join up with a permanent commission. This led to a decade of Hawker Hunter flying with Fighter Command, the Second Allied Tactical Air Force in West Germany and the Central Fighter Establishment. Having done the instructors’ course at the Central Flying School, a QFI posting beckoned, but where? Of the four possibilities, he elected to go down the multi-engine route. John volunteered to instruct on the Vickers Varsity with No 5 Flying Training School at Oakington, “because I thought it would be really nice to try something different”. Just how different he could never have guessed. “I was at Oakington when this signal came out. It went round all the stations, saying volunteers were required to fly Spitfires and Hurricanes in the making of the Battle of Britain film. Of course, every Tom, Dick and Harry put his name down, but they then came out with the specific requirements. You had to have 1,000 hours on fighters, you had to have had piston-engine experience, you had to be a current flying instructor — they thought that would be safer, for some reason — and you had to have tailwheel experience. I’d flown Chipmunks and piston Provosts, so I had all those things. The big question was, would they actually accept a Varsity instructor? But I managed to get in.” This was part of the Ministry of Defence’s immense contribution
MAIN PICTURE: With MkIX MH415 in the lead — note the ‘smoke pots’ under the exhausts — a vic of Battle of Britain film Spitfires proceeds across the English countryside on 12 June 1968. John Preece is in the aircraft coded CD‑F, MkIX MH434; the rest are MkIX MK297/CD-A, MkVb AB910/CD-K and two-seat MkIXT MJ772, all flying from Debden. VIA JOHN PREECE
INSET: Then-Flt Lt John Preece in the cockpit of a Spitfire on the Duxford apron. VIA JOHN PREECE
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STARS OF THE BIG SCREEN Battle of Britain pilot Hamish Mahaddie’s great collection of Spitfires. They were all being renovated at Henlow, and slowly they were adding to the number. Fortunately, right from the word go we had one of the two-seaters, so we were able to get a basic checkout from George Elliot, the wing commander in charge of the RAF unit. He had been chosen because he’d flown Spitfires post-war, and maybe during the war as well, but actually he wasn’t very current. At least he could say he’d done it in the past. He sat in the back with each of us going in the front. We did one little trip around, with maybe two or three landings. Then he hurriedly got out and left us to go solo.” Preece’s first Spitfire trip was an hour-long dual check with Elliot on 1 May 1968. Their mount was MkIX Trainer MJ772/G-AVAV, used for a lot of the conversion flying at this stage. Later that day, John went solo in MkIX MK297/G-ASSD. “It was quite an adventure starting off, taxiing and getting used to a big piston engine again. But once it was airborne I thought it was a delightful aircraft to fly. The Spitfire and the Hunter are the two aircraft I’ve flown that I would say are real thoroughbreds.”
This was very much a workingup phase. Since 13 March, filming had, of course, been taking place at Tablada near Seville with the fleet of CASA 2.111s and Hispano HA-1112 Buchóns provided by the Spanish Air Force. When first the ‘Psychedelic Monster’ B-25J Mitchell camera-ship, and then Spitfire IX MH415/G-AVDJ, joined them, aerial shooting of mass formation and combat sequences could begin. Back in Britain, John Preece followed his initial ‘Spit’ experiences with a general handling sortie and circuits aboard MkIX MH434/G-ASJV on 2 May. In that famous machine and MJ772, he then made a variety of formation flights and simulated quarter-attacks, these captured by the film’s helicopter camera platform, Alouette II G-AWAP. But the great Battle of Britain aerial armada would soon be coming. On 14 May, John was flying MH434 as part of a formation from Debden to North Weald, another location much-used for the filming. This meant he missed that day’s arrival at Duxford of most of the 16 airworthy Buchóns and two CASA 2.111Bs, B.2I-77/G-AWHA and
Pedro Santa Cruz took a pin out, ‘flew’ the CASA’s yoke over and said to me, ‘You fly’
ABOVE: The first page of John’s logbook to cover the filming period.
to making Battle of Britain. Largely with good public relations in mind, as opposed to pecuniary benefits, it put at the film-makers’ disposal aircraft, airfields and personnel without which Spitfire Productions would have struggled to commit a single scene to celluloid. Part of that input was a contingent of 12 RAF QFIs, on full-time detachment to the production company. “We went to Debden”, John recalls, “where they were assembling
RIGHT: Some of the RAF pilots, plus a couple of interlopers, relax between takes in front of one of Duxford’s hangars — not then, as can be seen, in the best condition. VIA JOHN PREECE
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B.2I‑37/G-AWHB, that had been bought by Spitfire Productions, along with MH415 and the Mitchell. One each of Buchón and 2.111 were briefly stuck in Jersey after taxiing mishaps, but made it soon enough. Now the Cambridgeshire airfield became the main focus of filming, both of ground and aerial scenes. Massed ranks of Spanish ‘Messerschmitts’, with the two ‘Heinkels’ mingling, shared apron space with the Hurricanes and Spitfires. Heading the contingent of Spanish Air Force pilots was Comandante Pedro Santa Cruz Barceló, combat veteran of both the civil war and World War Two, and test pilot for Hispano Aviación. His prowess as an aviator became legendary among those who flew with him on Battle of Britain, Preece included. “When the Spaniards arrived”, he says, “they wanted someone to go with them around the local area for a sector recce. As I was based just up the road at Oakington, George said, ‘You go and take them round’. I sat in the right-hand seat of the ‘Heinkel’, and Santa Cruz took off. It had this ‘flyover’ yoke, and after we got airborne he took a pin out, ‘flew’ the yoke over and said to me, ‘You fly’.” This memorable sortie took place on 22 May. “I took them round Ely Cathedral, up to St Ives and all around, showing them various airfields. There must have been about a dozen of them in the
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aircraft, and they hadn’t got seats or seatbelts. They were all hanging round the front, looking out of the glass, chatting away in Spanish. Half of them didn’t speak any English. “I called Oakington up on the radio and said, ‘I’m in this ‘Heinkel’ — can we come and do a flypast?’ They said yes, and obviously cleared all the Varsities out of the way. I said to Santa Cruz, ‘Can we do a beat-up?’ He took control and came down very, very low. I remember looking up at the first-floor window of the control tower…” And what was the Merlin-engined 2.111 like to fly? “It was very much like flying a Varsity, quite honestly. Not much difference.” All the while, Spitfire Productions’ maintenance facility at Henlow had been turning out overhauled airframes, and on 27 May John was dispatched to collect Spitfire Ia AR213/G-AIST for the short ferry flight to Duxford. It was, he says, “the most adventurous 20 minutes I can remember. It was the last of the aircraft coming off the ‘production line’, and I was sent over in a taxi to pick it up and fly it back. It was sitting there on the grass waiting to go, it was lunchtime, and there was nobody around apart from one guy who brought a power rig out to start it up. I had a look around, and the pneumatic brake pressure was zero. He said he’d top it up. They were
trying to close the ‘production line’ down, so he told me, ‘If you carry any snags, get it to Duxford and we’ll sort anything out there’. “The brake pressure was topped up, and I switched on the radio after start-up but couldn’t get any joy with the tower. I thought perhaps they were at lunch, so I looked at the windsock and took off. Very quickly, anything electrical went to zero, except the cylinder head temperature which was going rapidly towards the red line. The brake pressure fell to zero again, so it was starting to look like a rather tired aeroplane. But I thought, no brake pressure’s OK — I can land on the grass at Duxford and be quite safe. “I got there, I couldn’t talk to them on the radio, and when I looked down going up and down the grass runway was the grass-cutter. The windsock was across the runway. Meanwhile, the cylinder head temperature was about to reach the red line, so I thought I’d better get this thing down, whatever happens. I landed on the main runway and did a ‘wheeler’ landing, managing just to turn off at the end and shut down. “As I was breathing a sigh of relief, the groundcrew came out to meet me in a Land Rover. One of the guys got up in the cockpit and said, ‘Come and have a look at this’. I went back, and he got hold of the Sutton harness, which had been protecting me from disaster. He pulled on it and it came off in his hands. It
ABOVE: A memorable scene at Duxford, typical of some of the antics that went on there in 1968: a CASA 2.111B passes very low along the flightline full of Buchóns, smoke generator engaged on the port engine, starboard propeller feathered — and, seemingly, quite a large crew on board, dressed in ‘civvies’. John Preece’s trip in a 2.111 also involved a low-level moment, but at nearby Oakington. KEY COLLECTION
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STARS OF THE BIG SCREEN Battle of Britain pilot
TOP: Three airworthy Hurricanes at Duxford — the Canadian MkXII nearest the camera, with PZ865 and LF363. It was the MkXII that John flew, but only twice, the second time ending with a precautionary landing. VIA FRANÇOIS PRINS
ABOVE: Spitfire IIa P7350 was restored to flying condition for the movie, being registered G-AWIJ to Spitfire Productions. John Preece flew it regularly, not least in front of Lord Dowding and other distinguished guests on 26 June 1968. Only after the completion of filming was ‘P7’ presented to the RAF’s Battle of Britain Flight. PETER R. ARNOLD COLLECTION
ABOVE RIGHT: On 26 June 1968, Douglas Bader takes Lord Dowding, in the wheelchair, to meet actress Susannah York. Standing at right, cigarette in hand, is producer Benjamin Fisz. PETER R. ARNOLD COLLECTION
had been rotten all the way down the back, and you couldn’t see it.” One trip in two-seat MkIXT TE308/G-AWGB proved almost as troubled. “I got airborne and was climbing out when, suddenly, there was a check of the power and smoke started belching out of the exhaust. I quickly circled round and landed. The groundcrew ground-ran the aircraft and couldn’t find anything wrong with it, so Vivian Bellamy, who was there at the time, was asked to do a test flight. In his blazer, his flannels and his smart tie, he got in. We saw him take off, and he got to about 200ft when suddenly the same thing happened. He did the tightest circuit I’ve ever seen in a Spitfire and got it back on the ground. They’d thought, ‘Oh, inexperienced RAF guy, doesn’t understand these things, he’s done something wrong’, so when Bellamy came back saying, ‘There’s something wrong with that’, I was exonerated!” Soon the dozen RAF pilots settled into a regular routine, if flying Spitfires in a film could ever be routine. Their officers’ quarters were at Debden throughout, meaning, says John, “We used to drive up to Duxford each morning”. There they had the use of a singlestorey building in front of one of the
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hangars, which is still extant today, to relax between takes. Visitors to Duxford would often be taken for a look at the ‘French château’, that great temporary edifice erected in the south-western corner of the airfield, at a time when the aerodrome boundary extended further than it does today. “It had a marvellous façade, and round the back just bits of wood. We did some of the filming of the evacuation from France fairly early on, flying from the south side on a little grass strip, with the ‘Messerschmitts’ whistling in very low and fast.” John had his chance to sample the Buchón himself on 7 June, going up in the two-seat HA-1112-M4L for a half-hour dual check with Capt Fernando de Arteaga Danvilla. “There were things about it I thought were interesting, but less satisfactory. You wound the flaps down like a trim-wheel, and the tailwheel was lockable and less forgiving on the ground even than a Spitfire. You felt it was quite powerful in a straight line, but it didn’t handle quite as well. The Spitfire turned better and was generally more manoeuvrable. But 30 minutes is not enough to say”. A brief experience of sitting in the M1L version, however, is enough for him to opine, “The
To make the mass formation scene work we said we’d got to fly straight at the B-25
cockpit of the single-seat one was horrible — like a coffin.” Even so, the Buchón fleet performed outstandingly during the UK filming, remaining highly serviceable and being extremely well-flown. No-one knew the type better than Pedro Santa Cruz, who, as John says, “had got his own little formation aerobatic team”. They had displayed together back home at Tablada when events were held there, and were now reunited for one final performance. “The famous day” — 26 June — “when Lord Dowding, StanfordTuck, Lacey, Bader and Townsend all arrived to see the filming, we thought the sensible thing was to give them a flypast. Santa Cruz immediately had his four; I was leading the Spitfire four, but didn’t dare do aerobatics because we hadn’t practised or worked up or anything. We were slightly second-class on this, but we did a series of wingovers and formation changes. We would call ‘clear’, the ‘Messerschmitts’ would come in and do a roll or a loop or something, they’d clear and we came in and did something. It carried on for about 15 minutes”. Very appropriately, John’s mount that day was the sole Battle of Britain veteran Spitfire involved, newly restored MkIIa P7350/G-AWIJ, which was presented to the RAF post-filming. Come the month’s end, attention turned to securing shots over the great landmarks of the south coast.
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“For an exciting little jaunt, we went down to Hawkinge in Kent for nearly a week [on 30 June]. It was still in good ex-military condition. Apart from being almost circular, and all grass, it was sort of a bowl — you landed down a slight hill and slowed down uphill. Perfect for the Spitfire. From there I did several runs across the white cliffs on a very bumpy day, thinking how I hoped those old wings would stay on, because we were bouncing around in a formation of four.” Back at Duxford, John continues, “We were sent up to do quite a lot of little snippets. The assistant director, Derek Cracknell, would draw a picture of what he wanted and the aerial director would then get the two pilot leaders together and discuss how they could put this into some sort of shape, accompanied by a young pilot officer who was a Spanish-speaker as interpreter. The sort of thing might be two Spitfires flying along and then doing a break, which we’d do beside the helicopter, with Johnny Jordan filming out of the side. Some of them were from the back of the B-25, with ‘Skeets’ Kelly sitting there cross-legged in the rear.” Communication once airborne was with the aerial director, sitting in the Mitchell’s astrodome. Sometimes, inevitably, there were difficulties. “Once you’d briefed the Spanish in Spanish, and you’d taken off, you couldn’t change it. The interpreter didn’t go up on the B-25. This was one of the limitations of the filming of some of the combined shots when ‘Messerschmitts’ and Spitfires appeared together. The director would say, ‘Action!’ and you did what you were pre-briefed to do. If it didn’t work, you had to talk about it on the ground and try again. “The epic was when they wanted to get a mass formation shot. We said the best way of doing this was to get sections of four Spitfires, four ‘Messerschmitts’ and four Spitfires on one side, with the B-25 down in the middle, and on the other side ‘Messerschmitts’ and Spitfires, so you had the maximum number of aircraft available. Somehow I finished up as the lead Spitfire in the front four. “We had then, on the command from the aerial director, to turn in and fly as close as we could behind the B-25. When we came into camera shot, the director would call, ‘Break’, and we’d all go
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in different directions and get on each other’s tail. Meanwhile, sitting right underneath the B-25 was one Spitfire and one ‘Messerschmitt’. In the middle of all this melee going on behind, the Spitfire would start smoking, pop up right behind ‘Skeets’ Kelly and pull over. It was immensely expensive — there were probably about 20 fighters, plus the B-25. “Of course, the next day we’d see the rushes; they’d bring the film back and show us, in the old Duxford base cinema. Well, the first time we saw this, it was pathetic. There were little dots all over the place, like flies on a windscreen. We all went, ‘Well, that’s no good’. Of course, in the RAF I’d done quarterattacks with Hunters, closing to 200 yards and breaking away, but this had to be very much closer. We tried a second time, and got the whole shooting-match up the next day. Better, but still not really very good. “To make this work we said we’d actually got to fly straight at the B-25. We did it a third time, and now it worked. It really looked good. You see that in the film — all these aircraft whistling past at close quarters, and suddenly the two appear. It’s a great shot. There was a huge cheer and everyone clapped when we saw the rushes and we’d got it right.” It didn’t always go right on the ground, either. “In one of the other scenes, a brand-new pilot comes in with his wheels up and gets waved off, comes round and does a bumpy landing. The next thing you see is him taxiing in. Well, I did the taxiing-in bit. Because we couldn’t use our air force guys, it had to be a film extra playing an airman doing the marshalling. I was trying to taxi in and swing round as required by the director, and this guy kept getting lost behind the propeller. We had to do it three times before I said, ‘Look, if you can’t see me, I can’t see you!’ Then, of course, I had to get out and the young actor got in.” After ‘Connie’ Edwards forcelanded MJ772 at Little Staughton on 9 July following a major engine failure, TE308 was left as the film’s sole airworthy two-seater. Part of its function was as a camera-ship, and John flew it for the first time as such on 21 July. “I spent a lot of time flying it from the back seat. At some stage they decided to get some combat shots with a camera on the [front] seat and a mirror over the top, so it was filming into the mirror and
Kenneth More, as station commander Gp Capt Baker, and Susannah York, playing WAAF Section Officer Maggie Harvey, take cover in a shelter during the Duxford airfield attack scene. ALAMY
UNDER ATTACK
22 June 1968 was the day Duxford lost one of its then 50-year-old Belfast truss hangars in the name of moviemaking — without, insofar as surviving records show, official permission, but also subsequent recriminations. It was the result of much preparation on the airfield set. “There were quite a lot of rehearsals for the big bombing sequence”, John Preece recalls. “The start of the scene was the WAAFs doing a bit of parading — of course, they were a lot of extras dressed up in WAAF uniforms, with Susannah York in charge of them. We air force guys were sitting around, going, ‘They’ve got no idea!’ The director said, ‘OK, you teach them how to do it’. I think I must have been a bit of a big-mouth, because I finished up doing this. I taught them how to come to attention and right-turn, shouting at these girls. That was all they needed, just to be able to do that. Then, of course, they had to dive into the shelters.” John wasn’t there to witness the hangar’s destruction, but he was present the day before, when the first attempt failed. The Spitfires scrambled, the series of explosions simulating the Luftwaffe He 111 bombing raid went off… and the hangar, with half a ton of gelignite and three oil bowsers wired up to the explosives control panel, refused to go up. The film’s special effects co-ordinators Cliff Richardson and Glenn Robinson bravely went in to investigate. Whatever the problem was, they solved, but director Guy Hamilton elected to wait until the next day. The final scene involves the scramble and raid footage from 21 June, with the hangar explosion from the 22nd. Just one of the memorable behind-the-scenes moments.
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STARS OF THE BIG SCREEN Battle of Britain pilot
ABOVE: ‘Clear start’. The pilots of seven Spitfires, including a MkIXT, plus a solitary Hurricane, get ready to fire up their fighters prior to taxiing out. The Spitfire with the squadron leader’s rank pennant and nine victory markings was the mount of Sqn Ldr Skipper, played by Robert Shaw, during the film. PETER R. ARNOLD COLLECTION
out through a mock gunsight with all the symbols on it. The back seat had very rudimentary controls — you couldn’t start the engine, so the groundcrew did that for you and you took it on from there. Any time in the film there’s a shot where you can see a gunsight pointing at an aeroplane, I know I took that shot, because I think I did virtually all that flying.” Inevitably, though, there was plenty of down-time, and Duxford proved a good place to spend it. The atmosphere was, as Preece remembers, very sociable. “At one stage, somebody bought lots of
RIGHT: John Preece at his home in Cambridge this September. BEN DUNNELL
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model gliders for the pilots to make. We’d have competitions flying these things. There was a lot of sitting around chatting. We had a football match, Spain versus England, among the aircrew. Various people had special motor cars with them, and we’d go racing around the peri-track.” And there was the chance to get to know the Confederate Air Force pilots better, not least the ebullient ‘Connie’ Edwards. John recalls well one occasion when the Texan was standing with his four CAF colleagues. “In those days, a millionaire was fairly rare. I remember someone saying to ‘Connie’, ‘Are you a millionaire?’ He replied, ‘I’m not, but they are…’” What about fraternisation with the actors? “Some were extremely friendly and natural. Michael Caine was particularly good. He spent quite a bit of time talking to us RAF pilots, wanting to know whether he was doing it right, playing the
squadron leader. Kenneth More was, too. Others would rush off to their caravans and not speak to anybody.” When not rostered to fly a Spitfire, John took other opportunities to get airborne. “My aim was to try and have a go in everything”, he says. On 18 July, he achieved just that. A halfhour ‘jolly’ in the B-25, captained by Duane Egli, followed his first Hurricane flight. The RAF’s LF363 and Hawker Siddeley’s PZ865/G-AMAU had specific pilots allocated to them, but Canadian collector Bob Diemert’s MkXII, RCAF 5377/G-AWLW, “was the one that the rest of us could have a go in.” That John calls Diemert’s machine “the ‘gash’ Hurricane” tells its own tale. “It was an awful thing, it really was. I think they’d got the controls wrong somehow. You had to round out at about 50ft, otherwise it just smashed into the ground. Rumour had it he’d got the engine out of a Centurion tank or something,
One of the Battle of Britain veterans saw the rushes and said it was all very tame
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and that he’d made his own flying controls. But it flew, and it looked and sounded like a Hurricane. I did a check-out, and then I went off to do a filming sortie in it but something went unserviceable.” The loss of so much flying time to poor weather caused increasing concern as the months went on, costs mounted, and the filming schedule went out of the window. “On one occasion Freddie Young [director of photography] was watching for the weather, waiting for it to clear. It came unexpectedly, but quite a lot of the pilots were off-base doing other things, or whatever pilots do when they’re not flying. He got very angry that they weren’t there when they were wanted, and he made an edict at that stage that while filming was going on, nobody could leave the set. We all had to stay around. That was one of the slight tensions, but quite understandable.” More drastic action was necessary. “The producer Ben Fisz was on site, controlling the finances. He decided that if we wanted to get some fine weather, let’s fly off to the south of France”. So it was that the B-25, Buchóns G-AWHC, G-AWHH and G-AWHT, and nine Spitfires left Duxford on 10 August. John was again in two-seater TE308. Having cleared customs at Cambridge, they proceeded via night stops at Le Touquet and Dinard, and a refuelling halt at Bordeaux, to Montpellier, arriving on 12 August. In one sense, the idea proved successful. The weather indeed played along and the fighters were often able to notch up multiple sorties a day. John himself flew 15 times while in France, always in ’308. But all the effort, and extra expense, were barely worth it. “When we looked at the rushes, it just didn’t look right. It was totally wasted”. The southern French landscapes simply didn’t match their south-eastern English equivalents. The fleet returned on 22 August, John making an extra stop on the way home to accompany one of the RAF Battle of Britain Flight Spitfires into La Rochelle, where it conducted an emergency landing. Very little, if any, of the footage shot in France avoided the cutting-room floor. Not much time was left before most of the RAF pilots needed posting elsewhere, some of the Spaniards had to return home,
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and Spitfire Productions’ contract to use Duxford ran out. The rest of August progressed in something of a rush, John executing a flurry of take-offs, landings and combat sequences for the cameras. The last day of his assignment was 30 August, which saw him airborne three times in trusty TE308. One involved a simulated bail-out by parachute, using a dummy. By the time he touched down at Duxford that afternoon, John had amassed just over 80 hours of flying on Battle of Britain, the vast majority of it on eight different Spitfires. A small number of RAF men, among them Sqn Ldr Mike Vickers, Elliot’s number two, remained on the strength of the aerial unit. They stayed through its move from Duxford to Bovingdon, and the last location shots — again involving dummy bail-outs — at Netheravon in late October. As John Preece reflects, “It would have been very difficult to do it without the RAF.” For him, new adventures awaited. His next flight after the Spitfire, a couple of months later, would be in a Canadair CL-41 Tutor of the Royal Malaysian Air Force as he helped establish its front-line fighter force.
Today, via post-RAF spells with Marshalls of Cambridge and the Mission Aviation Fellowship, he’s still flying as a freelance instructor with Cambridge Aero Club. The day before our interview, he’d sent his latest student solo. Learn to fly at Cambridge, and you may do so with a Battle of Britain pilot. One reflection above all comes to John’s mind. “There was a bit of a battle between the pilots and the directing staff. They wanted to control very strictly what we did, but we said, ‘Look, give us a bit of freedom’. I told them what we could easily do was have a Spitfire following a ‘Messerschmitt’, supposedly trying to fire at it, and another Spitfire suddenly appears between them, but they wouldn’t let us do it. I suppose they were scared of accidents. At one stage, one of the Battle of Britain veterans saw the rushes and said it was all very tame, that we weren’t flying the aircraft anything like they did in the Battle of Britain. We had to explain we were doing what we were told, but we could have done more”. But what they did looked impressive enough, and still does more than 50 years on.
TOP: Members of the film unit at Duxford pose for a photograph, Buchóns providing the backdrop. John was absent for this occasion. VIA JOHN PREECE
ABOVE: At the back-seat controls of Spitfire IXT TE308, John gets airborne in a pairs take-off from Duxford. VIA JOHN PREECE
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STARS OF THE BIG SCREEN Tora! Tora! Tora!
TORA! TORA! TORA!
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It is now half a century since this Pearl Harbor war epic hit the screens. We take a look back at this ambitious motion picture, its aircraft and the legacy it helped create for the US warbird movement WORDS: SIMON BECK
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it needed? A total of 351 aeroplanes had attacked Pearl Harbor on 7 December 1941: of them, 79 were Mitsubishi A6M2 Zerosen fighters, 143 were Nakajima B5N2 ‘Kate’ torpedo and high-level bombers, and 129 were Aichi D3A1 ‘Val’ divebombers. No complete, original survivors were then known to exist. Fox Studios turned to Jack Canary, a highly experienced aviation technician and pilot who had worked for many years at North American Aviation on, among its other products, the T-6 Texan trainer. Canary had been involved with Fox’s 1966 film The Blue Max, engineering the Fokker Dr.I replicas, and so was offered the role of securing the aircraft for Tora. Hollywood had already been successful in employing the T-6 as a Zero stand-in, so Canary decided to use the Texan as a base airframe and modify the structure to more closely resemble the Zero and ‘Kate’. Vultee BT-13/15 Valiant trainers would be ideal for the less agile, boxier-looking ‘Val’ conversions. The film-makers also needed to acquire some increasingly rare US aircraft types. Examples of the P-40 Tomahawk, B-17 Flying Fortress and PBY Catalina were still available but would need extensive modification, maintenance and restoration to make them period-authentic. Steward-Davis Inc of Long Beach, California had been a Fox Studios ‘go-to’ company since the 1965 film The Flight of the Phoenix and had provided aviation logistics and transport on several subsequent Fox film and TV productions. Its president Herb Steward negotiated a substantial contract to convert nine BT-13s into ‘Vals’, refurbish several P-40s, provide a flyable PBY and five Catalina hulks to be destroyed on film, and build 400 dummy bombs and 100 torpedoes from a combination of fibreglass, plastic and cardboard. A second contractor was brought in, namely Cal-Volair, also of Long Beach. It undertook the conversion of 12 T-6s into Zeros and nine of the more complex ‘Kates’. As work got under way during 1968, tragedy struck. On 19
ALAM Y
T
here’s a saying in showbusiness that ‘timing is everything’. Well, the timing of Tora! Tora! Tora! could hardly have been worse, as far as box-office returns were concerned. A pessimistic, early-seventies America enduring a struggling economy, antiwar protestors and the quagmire of the Vietnam War simply wasn’t in the mindset for a motion picture depicting the defeat of its own military forces, not to mention the knock to national patriotism. Eight years earlier, a film about the D-Day invasion, The Longest Day, had been a huge hit — both financially and critically — for 20th Century Fox. Looking to draw on this success, the studios’ executive Daryl F. Zanuck then looked to produce, in previously unseen detail, the tale of the Japanese attack against Pearl Harbor on 7 December 1941. The film would be a co-production by the United States and Japan, each country filming its own side of the story with scenes later being intercut together, leading up to the fateful day in the last quarter of the running time. Pre-production work began in the early 1960s, led by producer Elmo Williams. The film’s angle and purpose were promoted as a warning to the US not to be complacent about possible future attacks by foreign aggressors. Zanuck’s son Richard, Fox’s production chief at the time, harboured some reservations as the narrative ultimately depicts America’s defeat — a reservation that would later prove correct. More than 30 years later, in Michael Bay’s Pearl Harbor, American audiences were provided with what producers might call a more commercially viable conclusion in the form of the Doolittle Raid. By the mid-1960s the screenplay was under way, the title Tora! Tora! Tora! being assigned to the project following American historian Gordon Prange’s 1963 publications in Reader’s Digest. Prange was hired as a technical advisor. The term is Japanese and translates into English as Tiger! Tiger! Tiger!, a radio code used to signal from the attack force to the Japanese fleet that complete surprise had been achieved in the Pearl Harbor attack. Credit was also given to the 1967 book The Broken Seal by Hungarian-born historian Ladislas Faragó as source material for the script. But where would the production obtain all the Japanese naval aircraft
MAIN PICTURE: A phalanx of T-6based Zeros dives in to attack the static replica P-40s at Wheeler AFB, formerly Wheeler Field. ALAMY
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STARS OF THE BIG SCREEN Tora! Tora! Tora!
TOP: B-25J N9754Z was dressed as an approximation of a Douglas A-20 and destroyed in the climactic kamikaze hangar crash scene.
AIR CLASSICS
ABOVE: A freshly completed ‘Val’ replica going aboard the USS Yorktown, with the USS Valley Forge in the background.
GARY R. BROWN COLLECTION
ABOVE RIGHT: One of the 12 Harvards undergoing Zero conversion by Cal-Volair during 1968. JAMES H. FARMER
August, Jack Canary was critically hurt in a crash while ferrying a BT-15, N355H, cross-country to California. During an attempt to land at Summit Station, Pennsylvania, in low visibility, the aircraft struck trees. Sustaining third-degree burns from a post-crash fire, Canary crawled to a nearby farmhouse for help, but died from his injuries four days later in Reading Hospital. Canary’s death was a setback. However, the design and conversion process was advanced enough, thanks to drawings by StewardDavis aircraft engineer Robert Burkhart, to enable work to proceed. Cal-Volair transformed 12 T-6s, mostly Harvard IVs obtained from the Royal Canadian Air Force, into Zeros. The first airframe was completed at Long Beach and the rest at Cal-Volair’s second location at Oxnard Airport, each costing $12,000 per unit. Modifications were relatively straightforward with the canopy being reshaped, fibreglass fittings added to the wingtips and tail sections, and various other items such as an arrestor hook, prop spinner and gun wells being provided. Some aircraft received a geared three-bladed propeller.
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The most complex conversions were the nine ‘Kates’. For $23,000 per aircraft, Cal-Volair completed three at Long Beach and six at Oxnard. The base airframe was a T-6, mated with a BT-13 tail section. Two fuselage extensions fore and aft of the main wings added 7ft 16in to the overall length of the fuselage. The canopy was altered to house three crew, the tailwheel was made retractable and fibreglass fittings finished off the shape. The first ‘Kate’ to be finished was N3239G. Steward-Davis delivered nine ‘Vals’ at $18,000 apiece, using the BT-13/15 as the basis. All had their Pratt & Whitney R-985 engine replaced by an R-1340, some being geared to spin a threebladed propeller. The fuselage was lengthened by 26in and major fibreglass modifications made to the wing fillets, dorsal fillet, tail section and the fixed undercarriage, the latter in the form of the ‘Val’s’ distinctive wheel spats. Fake cowl flaps, dive-brakes, a working bomb rack, arrestor hook and gunner’s position finished things off. The first BT-13 converted was N56336, which
served as a prototype. It obtained a certificate of airworthiness for flight tests on 8 September 1968. The Japanese production crew needed aircraft as well, for scripted carrier deck and bombing rehearsal scenes. A total of 18 Texans were acquired from Japan’s recently retired fleet: 13 were T-6Gs formerly operated by the Japan Air SelfDefense Force and five SNJ-5/6s came from the Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force. They were taken under the care of the USAF Military Assistance Advisory Group to Japan (listed as owners), on behalf of Fox Studios (listed as operators), and FAA-registered as N6520-6526 and N6529-6539. Five were converted and made flyable as ‘Kates’, although only three are seen at any one time in the finished film. Cal-Volair supplied a complete set of parts in kit form, including five BT-13 tail sections, to the C. Itoh Aircraft Maintenance & Engineering Co at Chofu Airport near Tokyo where conversions were carried out from October-December 1968. The ‘Kates’ were certified by American aircraft inspector Ray Raduziner and readied for filming in January 1969, based out of Oita Airport on
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the southern island of Kyushu. It is these machines that can be seen in the movie’s opening shot and subsequent Japanese home island practice bombing scenes. The remaining 13 Texans doubled as static Zeros or ‘Kates’. Although they were all flyable with US registrations, none were certified to fly in the film. Only one of the T-6s was converted to full Cal-Volair Zero standard for close-up work and featured folding wingtips. The rest were not modified except for a threebladed propeller and spinner, and were painted either as sea-grey Zeros or dark green ‘Kates’ for the Japanese carrier deck scenes. Their bulkier T-6 canopies are obvious in the background of the finished movie. This portion of the filming concluded in June 1969, whereupon all 18 aircraft were deregistered and disposed of through the US Army Depot Command in Japan. According to period accounts, the ‘Kates’ did appear at some Japanese airshows during late 1969-70, but were apparently scrapped at Atsugi sometime after that. The B-17 Flying Fortress had become a rare sight as the 1960s ended, except for those employed in the forestry industry as firebombers or almost anywhere in South America as cargo-haulers. Fox Studios hired Aircraft Specialties of Mesa, Arizona to provide, maintain and fly five B-17s for the film. Three — N17W, N9563Z and N3193G — were readily available in the off-peak fire season while two further examples, CP-620 and CP-621, were acquired from Lloyd Aéreo Boliviano in Bolivia as N620L and N621L respectively during December 1968. The veteran bombers were serviced, equipped with long-range oil tanks, retrofitted with gun turrets, painted in earlywar olive drab and ferried to Hawaii from Oakland, California. One studio-owned B-17 was used back in California for the on-board closeups. It had originally been acquired by Fox Studios in 1948 for Twelve O’Clock High. While located in Hawaii, Aircraft Specialties provided servicing and maintenance for the entire Tora fleet. Up to seven engine changes were performed and plug-fouling was a constant problem due to the lower power settings required for the aerial filming, which was mainly done from helicopters.
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Two P-40E Kittyhawks were hired to stand in for the earlier P-40B Tomahawk type in service at Pearl Harbor in 1941, but which was not available to the film-makers. Both were ex-RCAF Kittyhawk Is. N5672N, previously AK979 with the RAF and RCAF 1064, was owned by Gil Macy and film-marked as ‘20-15P’. Visible in the movie is the odd mounting of the sliding canopy, as this aircraft had been converted to a two-seater during its civilian life in the 1950s. N1207V, the former AL152 and RCAF 1082, had famously been in the ownership of Hollywood pilot Frank Tallman before being acquired by Al Woodson in May 1968. It was given codes ‘27-15P’ and was leased to the Pacific Airmotive Corporation after filming as an exhibition item to promote the movie. Both P-40s performed a spectacular take-off sequence filmed on Waiele Gulch Field adjacent to Wheeler AFB, Hawaii. A third P-40E, N94466, was hired but reclaimed by its owner John Paul once he found out it was being cannibalised for parts. Fortuitously, Steward-Davis had been a PBY-5A Catalina specialist with its Super Catalina conversions for civil operators, so the company’s yard was stocked with a good supply of PBY-5 hulls that could help re-create the aerial bombing of the Catalinas on Ford Island in the original 1941 attack. For this sacrifice, PBY-5As N5586V, N5587V, N5589V, N5592V and N5595V were shipped to Hawaii as engineless hulks. They had all been purchased by Steward-Davis in July 1964 from California businessman Thomas Kendall, who had envisioned converting Catalinas into luxurious ‘flying yachts’. The five amphibians were spectacularly destroyed on camera in what became the film’s final attack sequence. Boeing Canada-built Catalina N6108 was hired from StewardDavis as an on-screen flying aircraft, but it’s seen in only a couple of shots. Being a civil Model 28-5ACF conversion, it had to be retrofitted with waist blister turrets and painted in US Navy colours. After being used as a camera-ship to film some scenes in Hawaii, it was fitted with long-range fuel tanks and returned to Long Beach in July 1969. N6108 was well-known for
its role as a CIA communications aircraft during the 1962 Bay of Pigs invasion. It was lost in the midPacific on 16 January 1994 while on a ferry flight to New Zealand. Boeing-Stearman PT-13D/N2S‑5 Kaydet N6692C of Murrayair in Hawaii was hired to represent the civilian Meyers OTW-125 biplane that encountered the Japanese invasion on that fateful morning in 1941. It was marked with the Meyers’ original registration, NC34307. The trainer was built as a dual-service mount with two serials, 42-17334 for the Army Air Forces and BuNo 61375 for the US Navy. This Stearman was owned and operated by Murrayair from 1957 until 2013, but its subsequent history has not been traced. Steward-Davis acquired a very dilapidated Douglas A-24A Banshee, N9142H, which it rebuilt to flying condition and shipped to Hawaii, where it was finished in a US Navy livery. Don Dinoff flew the aircraft on one day of filming, but high oil consumption was reportedly an issue. The footage was not used in the eventual edit, but it did appear in the 1976 film Midway. The Banshee was retired to flyable museum status, eventually being acquired by the Erickson Aircraft Collection in Oregon where it resides today. A derelict B-25J Mitchell at Honolulu Airport, last known to be owned by L. Frederick Pack Associates Hawaii, was given a single-tail configuration, presumably to represent an A-20 Havoc. It is briefly seen in the kamikaze hangar crash scene at the end of the film. Once ready, Fox Studios’ Tora ‘air force’ consisted of 46 aircraft: 12 Zeros, nine ‘Kates’, nine ‘Vals’, five B-17s, two P-40s, six Catalinas, a Stearman, an A-24A and a B-25J. In Japan were five ‘Kates’ and 13 background Zeros, giving a total of 64 aeroplanes, excluding the camera-ship helicopters, spare parts airframes and additional BT-13 tail sections. The logistics behind this fleet were immense. Of course, the aircraft needed pilots, training, servicing and fuel. They also required transportation across the Pacific to Hawaii. Immeasurable assistance came from the US Department of
Plug-fouling was a problem due to the low power settings for aerial filming
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STARS OF THE BIG SCREEN Tora! Tora! Tora!
ABOVE: P-40E N1207V at Wheeler AFB during filming, together with some of the early B-17 ‘2D flats’ created by the art department for scenic backgrounds.
AIR CLASSICS
Defense, which supplied the aircraft carrier USS Yorktown for both filming and the Tora fleet’s transfer to Hawaii. The provision of Naval Station Pearl Harbor itself, Wheeler AFB and Ford Island gave that allimportant authentic touch. Hangar 79 on Ford Island was leased exclusively to the film-makers for aircraft finishing, and was where 30 P-40 mock-ups were built using moulds taken from P-40E N1207V. Some were motorised for taxiing shots, using original P-40 landing gear and other parts. A single fibreglass OS2U Kingfisher replica was constructed for dressing on the Battleship Row sets. NAS Barbers Point was the base for the 30 replica Japanese and other flying aircraft. Filming began not in Hawaii but off the coast of San Diego in early December 1968. After flight training at MCAS El Toro, the 30 Japanese replicas — and their US Navy and Marine Corps pilots, led by Rear Admiral Paul Gillcrist — were placed on the Yorktown, which was now doubling as the Japanese carrier Akagi complete with Japanese flags. Their pre-dawn takeoff has become a classic aviation film sequence, the blue exhaust flames from the replica Zeros, ‘Kates’ and ‘Vals’ and their roaring radials making for a great spectacle. Filmed in one take with multiple cameras, once airborne the aircraft formed up for camera passes over
the carrier before heading back to land at NAS North Island. Once again the replicas were loaded onto the Yorktown, along with the P-40s, Catalinas and other assorted aircraft. Now they were shipped to Hawaii, where filming got under way on 20 January 1969. A second group of 48 pilots, both military and civilian, was trained to fly the Japanese replicas, led by retired Lt Col Arthur P. Wildern. When painted in the US, they all had tail codes assigned, but these were removed once in Hawaii as continuity became an issue on daily operations. The B-17s were not given film markings for similar reasons. Due to the ambitious scale of the operation and the lengthy filming schedule, a number of accidents and mishaps occurred, one involving a loss of life. Before principal photography began, ‘Val’ N63227 crashed on 13 January killing pilot Guy T. Strong, who had been practising dive-bomber manoeuvres. In February, ‘Kate’ N2819G was lost in Pearl Harbor during filming, a fuel flow problem being to blame. This time the pilot, Frank A. Eger Jr, survived and was rescued by a US Air Force helicopter. During a major sequence shot at Wheeler AFB, one of the remote-controlled P-40 replicas went astray and ploughed into a line of other mock-ups, sending stuntmen scrambling and crawling
The pre-dawn take-off from the Yorktown has become a classic film sequence
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in all directions. The cameras kept rolling and the Zeros held their low passes. The resulting pyrotechnic explosions, the chaotic running of extras and flying debris gave the film-makers the most vivid imagery of the entire production. One shot captures a propeller coming off a mock-up at high speed and cartwheeling through the air. Another unplanned incident occurred in March 1969 when the crew of B-17 N620L radioed to say it was making an emergency landing with one wheel still retracted. Spotting an opportunity, the film crews quickly assembled a camera, capturing the crippled Fortress touching down and skidding along the runway. Actors playing the B-17 crew back in California had their lines changed to incorporate this candid piece of cinema into the story. P-40E N5672N suffered a ground-loop during shooting that required replacement of its landing gear, propeller and engine. Filming finished in Hawaii during May 1969, after 4,000 hours of flying time and consumption of an estimated 135,000 gallons of fuel. All the airworthy aeroplanes were shipped or ferried back to the US, while the derelict ones were scrapped in Hawaii. The remains of Catalina N5587V were noted derelict on Ford Island late in 1969. Combining the aerial action, US-based studio scenes and sequences from Japan took the editing department more than a year, trimming the film down to the final running time of 145 minutes. The premiere took place on 23 September 1970, but the result was a box-office disappointment and critical failure. The budget of around $30 million was a daunting figure in the early seventies, but the studio eventually made its money back as the movie did well overseas, especially in Japan where it was a blockbuster. The spectacular action scenes accounted for only 28 minutes, or roughly one-fifth, of the total running time. The remaining two hours are often described as slow-paced, boring, or lacking any real drama or characters an audience could identify with. Yet despite the negative aspects, Tora! Tora! Tora! did win favour, some praising the documentary style for its clarity and accuracy, others citing its contribution to World
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TORA! TORA! TORA! AIRCRAFT: THE COMPLETE LIST
Type Previous military Constructor’s Civil Fate/current location serial number registration during filming US FORCES A-24A Banshee
42-60817
2350
N15749
Erickson Aircraft Collection, Madras, Oregon (N5254L)
B-17F Flying Fortress
42-29782
4896
N17W
Museum of Flight, Seattle, Washington
B-17G Flying Fortress
44-83387
32028
n/a
California Air Heritage Foundation, Los Angeles, California, stored
B-17G Flying Fortress
44-83563
32204
N9563Z
Lyon Air Museum, Santa Ana, California
B-17G Flying Fortress
44-85774
17-8683
N621L
Written off, June 1975
B-17G Flying Fortress
44-85829
17-8738
N3193G
Yankee Air Museum, Willow Run, Michigan
B-17G Flying Fortress
44-85840
17-8749
N620L
Written off, 12 July 1973
B-25J Mitchell
44-30478
108-33753
N9754Z
Destroyed for film, 1969
Canso A (PBY-5A Catalina) RCAF 9793
22022
N6108
Written off, 16 January 1994
P-40E Kittyhawk
AK979
18723
N5672N
Pearl Harbor Aviation Museum, Hawaii
P-40E Kittyhawk
AL152
18796
N1207V
War Eagles Air Museum, Santa Teresa, New Mexico
PBY-5A Catalina
BuNo 48371
1733
N5589V
Destroyed for film, 1969
PBY-5A Catalina
BuNo 48402
1764
N5592V
Destroyed for film, 1969
PBY-5A Catalina
BuNo 46575
1939
N5586V
Destroyed for film, 1969
PBY-5A Catalina
BuNo 46591
1955/13
N5587V
Destroyed for film, 1969
PBY-5A Catalina
BuNo 46629
1993/51
N5595V
Destroyed for film, 1969
PT-13D/N2S-5 Kaydet
42-17334/BuNo 61375 75-5497
N6692C
Unknown. Last operated by Murrayair, Honolulu, during 2013
SNJ-5 Texan
BuNo 51698
88-14446
N7986C
Frasca Air Museum, Urbana, Illinois
Harvard IV
RCAF 20225
CCF4-16
N15796
Olympic Flight Museum, Olympia, Washington
Harvard IV
RCAF 20232
CCF4-23
N2048
Written off, 1994, hangar fire
Harvard IV
RCAF 20313
CCF4-104
N15795
Written off, 11 August 1991
Harvard IV
RCAF 20326
CCF4-117
N15799
CAF Tora Group
Harvard IV
RCAF 20362
CCF4-153
N15798
JR Consulting, Midland, Texas (N700JR)
Harvard IV
RCAF 20367
CCF4-158
N9097
CAF Tora Group
Harvard IV
RCAF 20380
CCF4-171
N7757
Lost Aviators of Pearl Harbor, Bellingham, Washington
Harvard IV
RCAF 20408
CCF4-199
N15797
CAF Tora Group
US-BUILT ZEROS
Harvard IV RCAF 20424 CCF4-215 N7754
Jason Hodge, on loan to Center for Freedom and Flight, Vacaville, California
Harvard IV
RCAF 20450
CCF4-241
N4447
CAF Tora Group
Harvard IV
RCAF 20473
CCF4-264
N296W
Proair Holding Co, Latham, New York (N60DJ)
JAPANESE-BUILT STATIC ZEROS AND ‘KATES’ SNJ-5 Texan
6163 (JMSDF)
88-16966
N6538
Scrapped
SNJ-5 Texan
6166 (JMSDF)
88-17281
N6537
Scrapped
SNJ-5 Texan
6176 (JMSDF)
88-18288
N6536
Scrapped
SNJ-5 Texan
6212 (JMSDF)
121-41730
N6539
Scrapped
SNJ-6 Texan
6183 (JMSDF)
121-43322
N6535
Scrapped
T-6G Texan
51-14431*
182-118
N6521
Scrapped
T-6G Texan
51-14594*
182-281
N6523
Scrapped
T-6G Texan
51-14641*
182-328
N6525
Scrapped
T-6G Texan
51-14776*
182-463
N6530
Scrapped
T-6G Texan
51-14831*
182-518
N6534
Scrapped
T-6G Texan
51-14852*
182-539
N6533
Scrapped
T-6G Texan
51-14874*
182-561
N6531
Scrapped
T-6G Texan
51-14967*
182-654
N6532
Scrapped
* JASDF serials 52-0028, 52-0030, 52-0035, 52-0058, 52-0117, 52-0137, 72-0158 and 72-0175; USAF serial tie-ups unknown US-BUILT ‘KATES’ SNJ-4 Texan
BuNo 27675
88-13171
N7062C
Japanese Bomber, Atlanta, Georgia
SNJ-5 Texan
BuNo 43766
88-15757
N3242G
CAF Tora Group
SNJ-5 Texan
BuNo 84875
88-16686
N3725G
CAF Tora Group
SNJ-5 Texan
BuNo 90654
88-17652
N6438D
Takai Hiroyasu, San Jose, California
SNJ-5 Texan
BuNo 90712
88-17780
N7130C
Absolute Investments, Midland, Texas
SNJ-5 Texan
BuNo 90950
121-41736
N3239G
Written off, 1982
Harvard IV
RCAF 20229
CCF4-20
N1264
Tango Squadron, Chiang Mai, Thailand
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STARS OF THE BIG SCREEN Tora! Tora! Tora! War Two aircraft restoration and preservation. The disappointing box-office results meant the expensively acquired flying and attack footage became a commodity, readily available to other productions. The 1976 Universal Pictures throw-together Midway made unashamedly extensive use of the pre-dawn carrier take-off and attack sequences. The Final Countdown and Australia featured various Tora! Tora! Tora! flying scenes, not to mention the now forgotten 1978 TV miniseries Pearl and 1979’s From Here to Eternity TV remake. The replicas have appeared in Black Sheep Squadron, War and Remembrance, Aces: Iron Eagle III, Pearl Harbor and Letters from Iwo Jima. During 1970 Fox Studios decided to ‘clear the attic’. It held an auction in February 1971 to sell off unwanted film props, among them the Japanese replica aircraft from Tora and many of the large-scale ship
models built for the film’s special effects unit. Warbird restorer Bruce Orriss recalls the event. “A couple of things come to mind from that day. I went to the top floor of the Century Plaza Hotel, overlooking the Fox lot, and photographed one of the last P-40 replicas from Tora. At the auction […] one of my main memories was seeing Frank Tallman there. That day Tallman bid on one each of the Tora airplanes: a Zero, N15796, ‘Val’ N56867 and a ‘Kate’, N3242G, [all of] which he won.” With the warbird movement gaining momentum, individuals like Memphis businessman Gerald Weeks decided to acquire a number of these aircraft in the knowledge an opportunity like this would never come round again. Weeks was able to secure six of the 12 aircraft at the auction: Zeros N4447, N9097, N15797 and N15799, ‘Kate’ N3239G and ‘Val’ N2200S. It soon became apparent to Weeks that maintaining this collection
The expensively acquired flying and attack footage was a commodity
required more time and resources than he could devote, so in 1972 he donated them all to the Confederate Air Force, then headquartered in Dallas, Texas. So was born the CAF Tora Group, which — as part of the modern Commemorative Air Force — endures to this day as an airshow demonstration team commemorating the attack on Pearl Harbor. Eventually, it came to own or operate 18 of the original 30 replicas. Present Tora Group lead pilot Mike Burke has a high regard for the Zero replicas. “They are lighter, fly a lot faster and are better-handling than a stock T-6 type. Flying these replica aircraft is a huge amount of fun. I have over 4,000 hours flying all three types of Tora aircraft.” Doug Derr describes the ‘Val’s’ flying characteristics. “The fixed gear exacts a speed penalty, but the airframe is considerably lighter than the Zeros and ‘Kates’. The result is the ‘Val’ runs the same crosscountry cruise power settings as the ‘Kates’ at the same speeds. The ‘Val’ will out-climb both [the] Zeros and the ‘Kates’ and will handily run
TORA! TORA! TORA! AIRCRAFT: THE COMPLETE LIST CONTINUED Type
Previous military serial
Constructor’s number
Civil Fate/current location registration during filming
US-BUILT ‘KATES’ continued Harvard IV
RCAF 20292
CCF4-83
N2047
CAF Tora Group
T-6G Texan
49-3009
168-113
N2819G
Written off during filming, 1969
T-6G Texan
51-14584 (JASDF serial 72-0151)
182-271
N6522
Scrapped
T-6G Texan
51-14620 182-307 (JASDF serial 72-0159)
N6524
Scrapped
T-6G Texan
51-14675
182-362
N6526
Scrapped
T-6G Texan
51-14679
182-366
N6529
Scrapped
T-6G Texan
51-14706
182-393
N6520
Scrapped
BT-13 Valiant
40-917
54A-308
N63163
Hubert Mars, La Ferté-Alais, France
BT-13A Valiant
41-1306
74-1414
N54865
March Field Air Museum, California
BT-13A Valiant
41-10502
74-2819
N65837
Written off, 1994, hangar fire
BT-13A Valiant
41-22578
74-6656
N56336
Written off during production of Pearl Harbor, 17 April 2000
BT-13A Valiant
41-22771
74-6991
N2200S
Written off, 22 August 1973
BT-13A Valiant
41-22926
74-7356
N56478
CAF Tora Group
BT-13B Valiant
42-90263
79-1220
N56867
Laird Aviation, Culpeper County Airport, Virginia
BT-13B Valiant
42-90626
79-1703
N63227
Written off during filming, 13 January 1969
BT-15 Valiant
42-42171
74A-11513
N67629
Planes of Fame, Chino, California
BT-15 Valiant
Unknown
74A-6711
N355H
Written off, 19 August 1968
P-40E Kittyhawk
AK933
15404
N94466
Warhawk Air Museum, Nampa, Idaho
SNJ-4 Texan
BuNo 27549
88-12945
-
Spare parts source
JAPANESE-BUILT ‘KATES’
US-BUILT ‘VALS’
ADDITIONAL AIRCRAFT
Plus 14 BT-13 Valiant tail sections for US and Japanese ‘Kate’ conversions
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away from either on the runway, but loses energy quicker in aggressive manoeuvring and accelerates slower than either in the air. The roll rate is also slower and the controls are heavier than the other types. It’s worth remembering the ‘Val’ has about double the side-plate area of a Zero but half the control authority, so operations in stiff crosswinds require focused attention. And, of course, she shakes like a dog shitting peach seeds and might as well be open-cockpit for all the draughts and leaks.” Alan Armstrong, owner and operator of ‘Kate’ replica N7062C, adds, “The pilot might not appreciate the differences from a stock AT-6/SNJ. The ‘Kate’ has more mass; it takes a bit more power to start rolling forward after engine start. The nose is lengthened about 3ft more than a standard T-6 — you cannot see over the nose while taxiing so S-turns are required to clear the area in front of you. With the increased wingspan, I have found the ‘Kate’ will actually outclimb a replica Zero. However, in cruise flight, the Zero is faster than the ‘Kate’. The ‘Kate’ has more lateral stability than a regular T-6 — the fuselage is 9ft longer, and the vertical fin and rudder have more chord. It is not quite as likely to ground-loop as a stock T-6, and can take a larger crosswind. Don’t horse around with the stick; feed in the amount of aileron you need, so don’t overdo it. Don’t shove the stick forward, or the nose veers to the left. Don’t pull it sharply back or the nose goes to the right. Do not allow your air speed to decay on final and then cram the throttle full forward — it has lots of torque and p [precession]-factor. “Remember the torpedo? You only have about 5 or 6in of ground clearance between the fins of the torpedo and the ground, so don’t land on undulating grass runways unless you want to damage your torpedo. The torpedo also has a pendulum effect when mounted on the belly of the aircraft — you can sense it is there. There is a penalty for flying around with a torpedo; expect about a 5kt penalty compared to the other T-6s, so don’t fall behind in formation flights. It is tough catching up with the other T-6s.” Several non-Tora replica conversions have been made in later years, based on the originals. Today 22 of the original 30 US Tora replicas
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remain, not a bad record for a group of aircraft that has been flying for 50 years. Mike Burke points out, “The Tora act has performed every year since 1972, making it the longest continuing civilian airshow act in the United States.” The test of time has been extremely kind for Tora! Tora! Tora! There are those who would state that, like Battle of Britain, it is required viewing for anyone with an interest in the evolution of warbird history. When compared to the CGIladen motion picture monstrosities of today, Tora is a leading example
of the vanished glory in film history when real aircraft were flown before the cameras at great peril to pilots and film crew. Thanks to this, 50 years on Tora! Tora! Tora! remains the definitive, most accurate, cinematic work concerning an infamous day in history. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS: The author thanks CAF lead Tora pilot Mike Burke, CAF Tora pilots Doug Derr and Bill Fier, ‘Kate’ owner/pilot Alan Armstrong, Geoff Goodall, Bruce Orriss, Scott Thompson and Nick Veronico for their assistance.
TOP: Film crews re-create the bombing of Ford Island using five Catalina wrecks from Steward-Davis. EARL HOLMQUIST VIA NICK VERONICO
ABOVE: A mixed CAF Tora Group formation up from Houston, Texas. It’s said that the Zero conversion handles better than a normal T-6! LUIGINO CALIARO
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STARS OF THE BIG SCREEN Catch-22
THE CATCH-22 AIR FORCE With 16 North American B-25 Mitchells, the aerial armada assembled for the movie adaptation of Joseph Heller’s seminal satire Catch-22 was among the most potent in cinematic history. Perhaps it was in keeping with the often absurdist black comedy that 1,500 flying hours ended up being edited down to 17 minutes… WORDS: SIMON BECK
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B
rooklyn-born Joseph Heller joined the US Army Air Forces in 1942, at the age of 19. By 1944 he was stationed in the Italian theatre with the 488th Bomb Squadron, part of the 340th Bomb Group, as a B-25 Mitchell bombardier, flying some 60 missions before the war ended. Returning to the United States, Heller became a writer, and in 1953 began what would become his defining literary work, Catch-22. First published in 1961, this antiwar satire still ranks as a classic. The story was, to a great extent, autobiographical — set mainly in the Mediterranean during World War Two, it follows Capt John Yossarian, a B-25 bombardier, as he and his fellow servicemen grapple with the absurdity, insanity and hypocrisy of war. The fascinatingly original, non-standard narrative caught the imagination of readers and the novel became a best-seller, especially among the younger generation for its anti-war sentiments, connecting with them on how they felt about the complexities of the worsening conflict in Vietnam. The film rights were purchased in 1962, and by 1967 Hollywood director Mike Nichols, along with talented screenwriter Buck Henry and producers John Calley and Martin Ransohoff, were ready to start pre-production under the auspices of Paramount Pictures. Catch-22 boasted a cast of such recognisable actors as Alan Arkin as Yossarian, Martin Balsam, Art Garfunkel, Bob Newhart, Anthony Perkins, Martin Sheen, Jon Voight and Orson Welles. But, as is usually the case for any film involving a significant aviation element, the main challenge was in where and how to acquire the aircraft. In this case, the moviemakers needed to re-create a World War Two B-25 squadron. During the 1960s and well into the ’70s, there was really only one company that could deal with a major Hollywood project like Catch-22: Tallmantz Aviation, based at Orange County Airport in California. This unique firm was founded in 1961 by famed film stunt pilot Paul Mantz and the equally talented Frank Tallman to
provide Hollywood with a ‘onestop shop’ for film aircraft hire, pilots, consultancy and aerial co-ordination. It also offered aerial cinematography with its two specially equipped B-25s, N1203 and N1042B, their nose sections modified to house even the bulkiest of film cameras, including those used on the ambitious Cinerama productions. However, 1965 would prove a bad year for the outfit. On 8 May, while playing on a go-kart with his son, Frank Tallman suffered an accident to his left leg. It resulted in a full amputation due to a post-injury infection. Paul Mantz then agreed to take over the project Tallman had been working on, to fly a scratchbuilt mock-up aeroplane for the James Stewart film The Flight of the Phoenix. Tragedy struck on 8 July when the Tallmantz Phoenix P-1 crashed during filming, killing Mantz. Tallman was racked with guilt over his friend’s death, made all the worse by the pain and recovery process associated with the amputation of a limb. The following couple of years were a turbulent time for Tallmantz as it was restructured, reorganised its assets and settled financial matters. Tallman himself, meanwhile, had to requalify as a pilot. When the Catch-22 project came along in 1968, it showed this veteran aviator could not be kept down. Tallmantz was contracted to locate, restore and fly up to 36 B-25s for the film, although that figure would be reduced to 17 flying aircraft once the scale of the production was realised. Frank Tallman would act as chief pilot and aerial co-ordinator once the cameras were set to roll, but in the meantime he had to find the vintage bombers. Even then, each airframe would need an inspection as to its suitability to restore and fly. The search was literally country-wide, from California to New York. As a rule, any
OPPOSITE PAGE: Preparing for the classic Catch-22 scene: 16 B-25 Mitchells lined up for take-off from the film’s specially constructed runway near Guaymas, Mexico. ALL ‘STONEY’ STONICH VIA SCOTT THOMPSON UNLESS OTHERWISE CREDITED
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ALAMY
The figure was reduced to 17 B-25s when the scale of the production was realised
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STARS OF THE BIG SCREEN Catch-22 B-25 airframe found to be gutted inside — minus its hydraulics and wiring — was turned down as the cost of restoring that sort of decay was beyond the production’s time and budget. The other concern to watch for was wing root corrosion, any Mitchell found with such a problem being rejected. Basically, externally derelict was OK, but internally sound was what Tallman looked for. With nonstructural corrosion, wiring and flight instruments good to go, the airframe was a winner. Eventually 14 Mitchells, mainly Hayes Aircraft Company-upgraded TB-25N advanced trainers, were rescued from a slow death and ferried to Orange County Airport for restoration and servicing. They were FAA-registered as N10564 and N7687C to Tallmantz, and N10V, N2849G, N3174G, N3507G, N3699G, N7681C, N8195H, N9115Z, N9451Z, N9452Z, N9494Z and N9856C to Filmways, a film and TV production company which was producing Catch-22 on behalf of Paramount Pictures. The final three were existing Tallmantz-owned Mitchells: N1203 and N1042B would act as camera-ships but also have an on-screen background role, and N9456Z, a TB-25N the company purchased back in 1961.
ABOVE: Scenes from around the Catch-22 set, including derelict Italian buildings used by the B-25 unit, and its temporary field accommodation.
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Tallmantz now had literally a B-25 squadron at its disposal. All the aircraft were serviced, refitted and repainted in wartime olive drab liveries. The civil N-numbers were painted on the tails, with the ‘N’ replaced by a ‘3’ once filming started — N9451Z became ‘39451Z’ on-screen, and so forth. This fulldress make-up was applied to the two Tallmantz camera aircraft in case either strayed into shot. One did just that during a runway lineup scene, its bulbous camera nose in full, but quite distant, view. The civilianised B-25s no longer had upper turrets, so these had to be fabricated and refitted with internal plywood mounts and dummy guns. Some were mounted on the rear fuselage to simulate the B-25D model, others behind the cockpit for the B-25J variant. The next task for Tallman was to crew each of the 17 bombers with a pilot, co-pilot and flight engineer, a total of 51 experienced fliers to locate and train. Tallmantz employee James Appleby supervised the pilot training, which
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was comparable to actual wartime B-25 training as the flying was to be very similar. All pilots were very senior, in their 40s or 50s, and needed previous multi-engine experience. Each received between five and 30 hours of B-25 flight time and were FAA-certified in the Mitchell prior to flying out to location. One of them was Len ‘Stoney’ Stonich, a seasoned multiengine flight instructor from Fullerton, California. He remembers well the shock of going from a 160hp Piper Apache to a 1,700hpper-engine medium bomber. The filming location, a full-scale airfield set with military equipment, was established near a beach
north-west of Guaymas, Mexico. The striking, barren mountain ridges, blue skies and calm ocean waters convincingly doubled as the Mediterranean islands of World War Two. A working runway, 6,000ft long by 200ft wide, was constructed with a control tower and buildings at a then eyepopping cost of US$1 million. Frank Tallman arrived on 1 January 1969 with seven other B-25s in tow. The other nine bombers followed a few days later. Stonich was on the three-and-a-half-hour second trip, which involved an intermediate stop at Hermosillo, Mexico to complete customs and immigration. Once at the location, ‘Stoney’ remembers
Frank Tallman arrived on 1 January 1969 with seven other B-25s in tow
CATCH-22 AIRCRAFT
Type Previous Constructor’s military number serial
being commissioned as a first lieutenant “by act of Paramount Studios”, and being issued a costume uniform and leather flying jacket. Also purchased and registered to Filmways was a Stinson L-5, N64669, which would have its own starring role in the movie. Support aircraft on location consisted of PBY-5A Catalina N5591V, Cessna 310B N5450A and Bell 47G-3B-1 N1399X. An 18th B-25, XB-HEY, was purchased in Mexico to be destroyed on camera in a crash scene. Tallmantz shipped a number of B-25 scrap parts and fuselage sections to Mexico for use as set dressing, these being the remains of airframes used to bring the flyable Mitchells up to scratch. Filming began on 11 January 1969, Tallman and his cohort of crewmen living the life of an actual World War Two bomber
Civil Film markings registration during filming
ABOVE LEFT: Mitchells galore at Orange County Airport, Tallmantz Aviation’s base, prior to conversion back to bomber standard. Most prominent is N9452Z, latterly a TB-25N model. JAMES H. FARMER
ABOVE: Tallmantz’s cameraship B-25H N1203 with its distinctive nose and replica gun turret.
Fate/current location
B-25H-5NA 43-4432 98-21433 N10V 6X/Berlin Express
EAA Aviation Museum, Oshkosh, Wisconsin
B-25H-5-NA
43-4643
98-21644
N1203
6A
Written off, Colombia, 1976
B-25J-10-NC *
43-28204
108-35217
N9856C
6G/Booby Trap
B-25 Mitchell LLC, Chino, California
B-25J-15-NC *
44-28925
108-32200
N7687C
6F/Superman
Cavanaugh Flight Museum, Addison, Texas
B-25J-20-NC *
44-29366
108-32641
N9115Z
6M/Hot Pants
RAF Museum London, Hendon, UK
TB-25J-20-NC *
44-29887
108-33162
N10564
6Y/Luscious LuLu
National Air and Space Museum, stored Dulles Airport
TB-25J-25-NC *
44-29939
108-33214
N9456Z
6C
Mid-Atlantic Air Museum, Reading, Pennsylvania
TB-25J-25-NC *
44-30077
108-33352
N2849G
6Q/The Denver Dumper
Pearl Harbor Aviation Museum, Hawaii
B-25J-25-NC *
44-30493
108-33768
N9451Z
6V/Dumbo
Malmstrom AFB, Montana
TB-25J-25-NC *
44-30649
108-33924
N9452Z
6V, 6W
Maxwell AFB, Alabama
B-25J-25-NC *
44-30748
108-34023
N8195H
6H/Miss Renee
Erickson Aircraft Collection, Madras, Oregon
TB-25J-25-NC **
44-30801
108-34076
N3699G
6K/Vestal Virgin
American Aeronautical Foundation, Camarillo, California
TB-25J-25-NC **
44-30823
108-34098
N1042B
6E
Mid-America Flight Museum, Mount Pleasant, Texas
TB-25J-30-NC * 44-30925 108-34200 N9494Z 6P/The Abombinable Belgian Aviation Preservation Association, Gembloux, Snow Man, Laden Maiden Belgium B-25J-30-NC *
44-31032
108-34307
N3174G
6D/Free, Fast, Ready
March Field Air Museum, Riverside, California
B-25J-30-NC *
44-86701
108-47455
N7681C
6J/Annzas
Written off, 1990, hangar fire at Le Bourget, France
TB-25J-30-NC *
44-86843
108-47597
N3507G
6B/Passionate Paulette
Grissom Air Museum, Indiana
B-25J-35-NC **
45-8843
108-47694
XB-HEY
6S
Destroyed for film, 1969
L-5-VW
42-98319
76-560
N64669
L
Sam Taber, East Troy, Wisconsin
* Converted post-war to TB-25N; ** converted post-war to VB-25N
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STARS OF THE BIG SCREEN Catch-22
ABOVE: During breaks in the filming schedule, pilot ‘Stoney’ Stonich captured some superb images of the different B-25 nose art designs.
squadron, only they weren’t being shot at. Stonich remembers each day for the flight crews starting with a briefing on filming requirements, weather conditions and jobs for anyone not assigned flying duties. If no duties were forthcoming, they could spend a day lounging on the nearby idyllic beach, then free of the large resorts that crowd the area today. Formation flying was the name of the game, much footage being shot of the B-25s in tight four-ship diamond formations. A lot of this was used as rear-screen projection back in Hollywood for the studio-based aircraft interior scenes depicting Yossarian’s manic bombing missions. Catch-22’s most famous scene is the mass take-off. Sixteen B-25s were employed in four groups of four, with wings overlapping, and no more than 100ft between each quartet. It was an incredibly dangerous sequence to shoot, yet it was repeated four times for the cameras.
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Each take needed almost a day to set up. Lining up the 16 aircraft, ensuring the best time for lighting, unforeseen delays, circling the field and landing all aircraft — from start to finish, the whole process was laborious. The afternoon winds could be up to 25kt, blowing across the runway, so every take-off required much rudder and nerve to hold a straight course within the formation and for the cameras to keep the 16 aircraft within the field of view. This is all clear in the film. Tallman observed that if any of the lead Mitchells had experienced a tyre blow-out or engine failure, there would have been a pile-up and fire so big it wouldn’t be out yet. Stonich recalls, “The first two times I was in B-25 number two, the
third time in number nine and the fourth time in number 16”. On the final take, ‘Stoney’ experienced a runaway propeller after retracting the undercarriage, later attributed to a prop governor failure. When he landed, he and the other pilot found you cannot taxi a B-25, with no nosewheel steering, on one engine. You can throttle up and turn into the dead engine, but not the other way. Later in the filming process, B-25 N10V was liveried as a VIP aircraft for Orson Welles’ character Brig Gen Dreedle, complete with white-wall tyres. Eight of the bombers were repainted to represent the fictional ‘M&M Air Force’, a comical plot development that saw Army Air Forces personnel exploiting the war
The mass takeoff was incredibly dangerous, yet it was repeated four times
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effort in order to make a private profit. Tallman used his Cessna 310 to commute daily to and from Hollywood, transporting the crew’s mail and having film stock processed and returned for the director to view. ‘Stoney’ enjoyed working with Tallman: “I liked him OK. He hired me to work for him after the movie, but I was only with him for two months as the contract he was working on fell through.” Like many major aviation motion pictures of this period, fatalities did occur. On 16 May 1969, while capturing continuity stills from the open-air tail gunner’s position on B-25 N1203, second unit aerial director John Jordan fell 4,000ft to his death after unclipping his safety harness to reposition himself. Jordan was a renowned, innovative aerial cameraman, having also worked on Battle of Britain and several James Bond films. After six months in Mexico, the ‘Catch-22 Air Force’ was stood down. It had logged more than 1,500 hours’ total flight time, capturing in excess of 14 hours of film footage. Astonishingly, though, only 17 minutes made it to the final edit. Paramount Studios premiered Catch-22 on 24 June 1970 to mostly negative reviews and audiences left confused by the multitude of muddled scenes that became more maniacal as the story progressed. The film’s exhibition run was relatively short before it quietly disappeared into the cinematic ether of the late-night TV broadcast or screenings at the odd midnight cinema. It seems there was enough of a spark in the Catch-22 concept for Paramount to film a TV pilot episode in 1973, with Richard Dreyfuss starring as Yossarian. Tallmantz provided B-25 N9451Z, renamed as Rumblin’ Rose, plus B-25 N1203, P-40E Warhawk N1207V and what appears to be L-5 N64669 in the background. Frank Tallman himself has a brief cameo at the end. The 28-minute drama used some of the masses of footage obtained for the movie, including never-before-seen angles of the take-off sequence, but it proved unpopular with audiences and was not developed into a series. Tallmantz continued to use B-25s N1203 and N1042B as cameraships on many other productions. It purchased TB-25N N9451Z
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B-25H N10V was repainted to represent the VIP aircraft used by Gen Dreedle, played by Orson Welles. Here, Frank Tallman stands in the cockpit top hatch.
In-flight filming took place over the Gulf of California. These two Mitchells are N9456Z and N9115Z.
The film company’s emergency crew putting out the fire on expendable B-25 XB-HEY. The remains were buried on site after filming.
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STARS OF THE BIG SCREEN Catch-22 RIGHT: B-25 flight crews in front of a dust-laden N3699G, with its high-mounted replica turret.
and later converted it to camera configuration as a replacement for N1203, which was sold in 1975. The other 14 Mitchells were stored pending clearance from Paramount Studios on their final disposition. Filmways retained one, N7681C, until 1978, presumably for use in other productions. Once clearance was given, Tallmantz acted as sales agents, with asking prices ranging from $7,000 to $10,000 per aircraft. N10V, N10564, N3174G, N7687C, N9115Z, N9456Z and N9494Z were sold relatively quickly to private buyers or museums. The remainder didn’t go so fast. At Paramount’s request, Tallmantz purchased
N2849G, N3507G, N3699G, N8195H, N9452Z and N9856C before selling them on at a later date. Subsequent notable work for the Catch-22 B-25 veterans saw N7681C, N9115Z and N9494Z appearing in 1979’s Hanover Street, N3699G in TV series Baa Baa Black Sheep, and N9856C in Pearl Harbor. And still Heller’s story attracts new attention. In 2019, Catch-22 was made into a six-episode mini-series broadcast on US network Hulu, produced and directed by George Clooney, and this time round proved quite popular with viewers. Location filming took place in and around Sardinia, with UK aerial cinematography company
Catch-22 has aged gracefully. Today it stands up quite well
RIGHT: A studio publicity shot of Alan Arkin as Capt John Yossarian. ALAMY
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Aces High and US warbird museum Planes of Fame providing the expertise. B-25Js 44-30423/N3575G and 45-8898/N898BW had the starring roles, supported by C-47A 42-100884/N147DC and the Salis collection’s CASA 352L F-AZJU. One big difference is in the use of CGI to create additional bombers — these days you can have as many Mitchells as you like. But there was still a nod to the original, as the fuselage of B-25J N9494Z, now owned by the Belgian Aviation Preservation Association, was employed for studio shots. Mike Nichols’ Catch-22 has aged gracefully. Today it stands up quite well in terms of its originality and the energetic performance of a finely tuned cast, one of its defining attributes. However, the steadily weakening narrative and darkening tone as the story develops, particularly in the second half, still leave one with a disappointing sense of an opportunity wasted. Its main redeeming feature is the brilliant work carried out by Frank Tallman and his team in resurrecting the B-25 fleet and capturing it so well on celluloid. The legacy of 1970’s Catch-22 is something of a paradox. ‘Stoney’ Stonich sums it up well. “Having read the book, I thought it sucked. I think the other pilots thought that too. But making the movie was a lot of fun.” ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS: The author thanks Catch-22 pilot ‘Stoney’ Stonich and aviation historian Scott Thompson for their generous photographic assistance.
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Hispano HA-1112-M1L Buchón ‘White 9’, owned by Anglia Aircraft Restorations and operated by Air Leasing, with Richard Grace at the controls. This aircraft, registered G-AWHH, was formerly serial C.4K-105 with the Spanish Air Force. RICHARD PAVER
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17
TH IN-DEPES G A P
In Service
HISPANO BUCHÓN
Technical Details
The colours and markings of a standard in-service HA-1112-M1L are depicted well in this profile of C.4K-104, on the strength of Ala Mixta 36 at Gando in the Canaries. The bulge beneath the rear fuselage denotes the installation of a radio compass. CHRIS SANDHAM-BAILEY
Development
DATABASE DATA
Insights
WORDS: GARY R. BROWN WITH CLIFF SPINK
A pair of Battle of Britain film Buchóns, ‘Yellow 9’ and ‘Yellow 11’, at altitude in the summer of 1968. ALAMY AEROPLANE NOVEMBER 2020
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DEVELOPMENT
How Spain came to fit a German fighter with a British engine
The very prominent underwing rocket rails, as well as the 20mm cannon and the deep ‘chin’ radiator so distinctive of the Buchón, are shown well in this view of a pre-delivery HA-1112-M1L. AHEA VIA KEY COLLECTION
T
he Buchón largely owes its existence to Germany’s involvement in the Spanish Civil War, supporting Franco’s Nationalist forces from July 1936. The Legion Condor comprised Wehrmacht troops, armoured vehicles and a fleet of Luftwaffe aircraft including early variants of the Junkers Jumo-powered Messerschmitt Bf 109. The German machine was quickly found far superior to the Soviet Polikarpov I-15 and I-16 fighters operated by the Republicans. The Luftwaffe saw the civil war as a way to test the Bf 109. Three pre-production Bf 109s were despatched to Spain for trials in combat conditions. Their stay was relatively short and they were quickly replaced by production Bf 109Bs and Cs, these Jumo-engined examples later being joined by the first Daimler-Benz-powered Bf 109D and E variants. With the close of hostilities on 29 March 1939, a number of 109s were transferred to the new Spanish Air Force, the Ejército del Aire (EdA). These airframes were, by now, very tired and many needed extensive work in order to return to operational status. Parts supply became fragmented as German industry was directed
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to keep pace with the Blitzkrieg that was soon sweeping through Europe. Just prior to the fall of France in 1940, the Spanish Air Ministry was looking to strengthen the EdA’s fighter force. The original plan was to purchase an updated version of the Dewoitine D520,
on the D600, powered by the uprated Hispano-Suiza 12Y-51 engine. It seems likely that the collaborative French/Spanish fighter would have been very similar, albeit with armament and radio equipment changes. The new fighter, designated HS-50, would be constructed
The Buchón largely owes its existence to German involvement in the Spanish Civil War to be constructed in Spain by Hispano-Suiza. Marc Birkigt was the connection, being the chief engineer at Hispano-Suiza and co-founder of Dewoitine. Dewoitine had already constructed 18 pre-production D551 fighters and was working
around the Hispano-Suiza 12Z-87 powerplant which had been under secret development in France since 1938. A fullscale wooden mock-up was constructed at the Hispano Aviación works in the Triana district of Seville.
An HA-1109-K1L operated by the Ejército del Aire test unit, the Escuadrón de Experimentacion en Vuelo. AHEA VIA KEY COLLECTION
The Nazi occupation of northern France precluded further development at Dewoitine. Progress on the HS-50, D551 and successors was brought to a halt by the enforced resumption of D520 production for the Vichy French air arm, the Armée de l’Air de l’Armistice. However, just prior to the French armistice, Hispano-Suiza transported vital machinery and tooling from its Paris factories to its plant at Tarbes, close to the French/Spanish border at the foot of the Pyrenees. As the Nazi occupation spread further south, the equipment was later moved to the Hispano-Suiza facility in Barcelona. With the HS-50 development option thwarted, a plan was devised to obtain a licence to construct the Bf 109. Improved Bf 109F and G variants were in production, and it was the later G-2 model which the Spanish air ministry gained authorisation to construct under licence. The Nationalists had taken over the Spanish arm of Hispano-Suiza in 1939. At the time it was constructing luxury cars, aero engines and various smaller components. A contract was signed between the air ministry and Hispano Aviación on 22 July 1943. Initially, it was proposed that 200 Bf 109s would
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DATABASE HISPANO BUCHÓN
The 12Z-17 engine enhanced performance, but was always hampered by overheating The first example finally took to the air on 2 March 1945. Its performance was disappointing and oil temperatures were far too high. For the first flight, a Hamilton Standard propeller was used as a stop-gap, it being hoped that a more efficient prop would increase the performance envelope. The Swiss-made Escher-Wyzz V7L1 unit did indeed make a small improvement. This propeller arrangement allowed for the HS‑404 cannon — of which three were to form the
intake added aerodynamic drag, its positioning being less than ideal due to the placement of essential engine ancillaries. Performance still proved inadequate when an alternative Turbomeca twostage supercharger was evaluated, despite running on 100/130-octane fuel. By now the type had been given the EdA designation C.4J, C standing for caza, meaning fighter. Only six airframes were taken on strength with the Hispano-Suiza engine installation, flying a very
Insights
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HA‑1109‑J’s primary armament — to fire through the spinner. Overheating dogged the flighttest programme, undertaken by the Instituto Nacional de Técnica Aeronáutica (INTA). HispanoSuiza attempted to ameliorate this with the use of fuel injection and modifications to the water jacket, but the cooling issue would always limit development and power output increases. A large, ungainly, chin-mounted radiator was trialled, yet despite being larger than the calculations thought necessary, the problem persisted. The
In Service
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6-119, an aircraft that had been part of Grupo 25 at Reus in Catalonia. Considerable work was expended on this prototype installation and the first flight did not take place until 19 April 1943. The aircraft performed well, with a slight increase in speed, climb to height and service ceiling, though the installation had a tendency to overheat. After only 16 test flights the programme was deemed a success. Work began on installing the 12Z-89 into the 25 Bf 109G-2 fuselages, now given the designation HA‑1109-J by Hispano.
Technical Details
be constructed for the EdA, becoming its primary fighter aircraft. The deal stipulated that all the airframes must be delivered within four years, 20 being completed in 1944 with 60 in each subsequent year. The air ministry was responsible for supplying the engines, propellers and armament. Messerschmitt sent 25 tail-less Bf 109G fuselages to assist Hispano in establishing production procedures and techniques. They were also used to form jigs and develop specific tooling by way of detailed examination and reverse-engineering. To aid the manufacturing, the air ministry acquired a number of specialist German-made machines, but it seems very likely that most of them never arrived in Spain. The consensus of opinion has shifted over the years, and it is now believed that the ministry never actually ordered the Daimler-Benz DB605A powerplant. This is backed up by the arrival of tail-less fuselages. It seems likely that a Spanishmade Hispano-Suiza engine was always destined to be the powerplant of choice. The engine intended for the HS-50 was the ideal candidate. During the final months of 1941, a 12Z-89 unit was trialfitted to a Bf 109E-1, serial
Development
An early film role for Spanish-built Bf 109s: HA-1112-K1Ls in 1957’s Der Stern von Afrika, about the exploits of top-scoring Luftwaffe ace Hans-Joachim Marseille. GARY R. BROWN COLLECTION
limited number of hours with the Escuadrón de Experimentación en Vuelo (Flight Test Squadron) at Torrejón de Ardoz and in evaluation with Grupo de Caza 23 at Reus during 1947. It was decided by July 1947 that the 12Z-89 engine would not be certified for front-line service in the HA-1109-J. To make matters worse, cracks were found in the wing mount castings on two of the operational aircraft, which then had to be changed on all 25 airframes in the first batch. Hispano renegotiated its build contract with the air ministry, taking into account the lack of German components and machinery that had been promised during the original drafting. Having to devise a manufacturing procedure seriously hampered the delivery schedule, and by 1950 Hispano was still constructing airframes and placing them straight into storage pending the supply of engines and propellers. Hispano now turned its attention to the French-built Hispano-Suiza 12Z-17, which had been extensively developed and tested with a view to gaining export orders. Some 100 such units were sent to Barcelona in kit form for final assembly. This single-stage supercharged engine produced 1,300hp, mated to a de Havilland PD63 propeller. With this engine/propeller arrangement, the cannon could not fire through the spinner, so the type was armed with two HS-404/804 cannon and eight Oerlikon unguided rocket projectiles. The HS-804, though of the same 20mm calibre, had a greater rate of fire and better belt feed than the HS-404. The HA-1109-K1L, as the aircraft was now designated, first flew in May 1951. The lighter engine did enhance overall performance, especially at altitude, but it was always hampered by overheating. Supply problems hindered production and only 40 were ever completed, 38 as single-seaters under the new HA‑1112‑K1L designation and two as unarmed twoseat trainers. The latter (c/n 40/1 and 40/2) had elongated cockpits beneath a purposebuilt sectional canopy. They retained the standard fin and
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DATABASE HISPANO BUCHÓN
A pair of factory-fresh HA-1112-M1Ls being fettled outside Hispano’s Seville plant. AHEA VIA GARY R. BROWN COLLECTION
rudder of the fighter and were given the Hispano designation of HA-1110-K1L. From available records, both suffered problems with the powerplant and relatively few hours were flown in this form. Around 19 aircraft powered by the 12Z-17 entered EdA service in 1952 for training and testing purposes: 14 with the Escuela de Caza (Fighter School) at Morón, one with Grupo 23 at Reus, and the remainder with the test centre at Torrejón. The HA-1112-K1L had a brief moment in the spotlight when five were used in the German film Der Stern von Afrika (The Star of Africa), shot in 1956 at Morón, Tablada, and at Gando on Gran Canaria. The variant was retired in 1956-57 as the HA‑1112-M1L entered service, and it was during this brief overlap that the HA-1112-K1L became known as the ‘Tripala’ for its three-blade propeller, compared to the four-blade prop on the Merlin-powered aircraft.
Spanish air ministry to order Two prototypes, c/n 197 and some 200 Merlin 500/45s for 198, flew extensively to prove both the 2.111 and the HA-1109. the reliability of the engine This finally solved Hispano’s and airframe combination. engine woes. A Merlin was Both airframes were eventually shoehorned into HA-1109 c/n transferred to the test unit 197 and fitted with a four-blade at Torrejón where they took Rotol constant-speed propeller. on serials XC.4K-1 (197) and In this revised form it flew for the XC.4K-2 (198). The former was first time on 29 December 1954. used for engine and propeller The distinctive testing and engine cowlings certification, required to while the Eventually the enclose the latter tested success of the test Merlin gave rise the armament programme led to the to the name options, as Buchón, after a HA-1112-M1L at the time deep-breasted it was not pigeon found in clear whether the Seville region. the type would have SpanishThe Merlin 500/45 was the built CETME machine guns or civilian version of an engine HS-404 cannon installed. Both designed for the Mosquito, and were damaged in accidents, was being used in transport 197 undertaking a dead-stick aircraft such as the Avro York. landing while 198 landed It had a single-stage, two-speed without its undercarriage. compressor and was rated at It is believed both were 1,650hp. The engine was some transferred thereafter to ground 34kg lighter than the HS 12Z-17. instructional schools.
Several HA-1109s were converted and successfully flown with Merlin engines. They had various armament configurations and were all given specific designations. Eventually the success of the test programme led to the HA-1112-M1L, the single-seat, Merlin-powered ground attack/fighter version. Along with the new engine, the airframes were fitted with comprehensive instrumentation sourced from Smiths in Great Britain and VHF radios, the Hispano-Suiza-powered airframes having been criticised by pilots as lacking in this regard. Only now could the stored airframes be completed, with wings modified to accept the 20mm HS-404 or 804 cannon. The wing spar was adapted and heavy reinforcing added to maintain internal strength. The HA‑1112‑M1L also carried eight unguided 80mm Oerlikon rockets, made in Spain by Metálicas Madrilenas. Some 172 HA-1112-M1Ls were constructed, though it is not known how many were previously fitted with HispanoSuiza engines as the records were lost. The first production HA-1112-M1Ls retained the asymmetric fin profile adopted for the Hispano-Suiza engines, which turned the propeller anti-clockwise as opposed to clockwise on the Merlin. It is believed around 65 airframes were waiting in storage for engines when HA-1112-M1L production began. Somewhat surprisingly, the fin profile was never changed during the conversion to Rolls-Royce power.
Enter the Merlin Fellow Spanish aircraft manufacturer CASA had been constructing licence-built versions of the Heinkel He 111, the CASA 2.111, for many years but faced problems in obtaining Junkers Jumo engines. It had representatives throughout Europe purchasing powerplants wherever they could find them, such was their scarcity. In 1949 CASA managed to buy a pair of Rolls-Royce Merlin 500/29s to test their suitability. The Spanish arms embargo was lifted during 1952, paving the way for the
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The prototype of what became the HA-1112-M1L, converted HA-1109 c/n 197, flew as such for the first time on 29 December 1954. It was unarmed and had no boundary-layer wing fences. AHEA VIA GARY R. BROWN COLLECTION
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TECHNICAL DETAILS
Key differences under the skin between the HA-1112-M1L and its forerunners Development
The Merlin 500/45 installation is depicted well in this view of a Buchón being run up on the apron at Duxford in 1968.
Technical Details In Service
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Insights
T
he Buchón’s fuselage consists of front and rear sections, riveted together. Manufactured in Duralumin with a skin thickness of 1.2mm, the cockpit section is flat-sided and attached by countersunk rivets for a flush finish. In service, EdA pilots placed great faith in its construction as it generally stood up well in accidents. The canopy is very heavy and opens to the right. It is jettisonable, as is the rear fixed section which is released via two springs. The engine cowlings were manufactured in four sections, all easily removable with simple fasteners. The lower section can be dropped down to facilitate quick maintenance jobs. The cowlings were made on unique formers rather than custommade, and strengthening plates had to be riveted onto the skin around the chin intake to stop it from splitting or tearing. The rear fuselage is again of monocoque construction, but
the gauge was thinned to 1mm. This monocoque consists of two sections joined together with top and bottom longerons, all flushriveted. The fuselage under the fin is asymmetric in an attempt to mitigate the propellor torque. The wings are of a cantilever design and consist of the main spar plus an auxiliary spar. The Buchón’s wing differs slightly
from the Bf 109’s as the spar had to be adapted to install the HS-404 cannon, extra strengthening being added. Three brackets per side, riveted to the upper and lower spar flanges, attach the wings to the fuselage. The rounded wingtips are detachable — for the Battle of Britain film they were replaced with cropped examples
SPECIFICATIONS: HA-1112-M1L
POWERPLANT One Rolls-Royce Merlin 500-45, 1,535hp DIMENSIONS Wingspan 9.92m (32.5ft) Length 9.13m (29.9ft) Height 2.6m (8.5ft) PERFORMANCE Maximum speed 665km/h (413mph) at 4,000m (13,123ft) Cruising speed 400km/h (249mph) Service ceiling 10,200m (33,465ft) WEIGHTS Maximum 3,180kg (7,011lb) Empty 2,656kg (5,855lb) ARMAMENT Two 20mm Hispano-Suiza HS-404 or HS-804 cannon; eight 80mm Oerlikon R80 unguided rockets
to resemble the Bf 109E. Leading-edge slats mounted between ribs eight and 13 deploy automatically, and quite violently as the wing approaches the stall. The flaps are operated by a large wheel in the cockpit and connected through chains and torque tubes. Because the tailplane is adjustable, no elevator trim tab is fitted. The fin is constructed from two Duralumin skins with a hinge section riveted onto each half and joined together with a hinge pin. The balanced rudder has a fabric covering. The undercarriage was sourced from Pilatus. It is common practice to over-charge the left oleo to compensate for the engine torque. The tailwheel is lockable for take-offs and landings. The propellor is a Rotol constant-speed unit, with four metal blades originally destined for Fairey Firefly Vs. In preservation, many Buchóns use Hamilton Standard threeblade props.
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DATABASE HISPANO BUCHÓN
With thanks to Ronnie Olsthoorn
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IN SERVICE
From front-line fighter to famed film flyer Development
An impressive seven-ship formation of cobalt blueliveried Buchóns belonging to 71 Escuadrón, the type’s first operational unit. AHEA VIA GARY R. BROWN COLLECTION
Technical Details In Service
handling of the type, which experience would hopefully filter formed a large part of the through to the novices, many syllabus. The pair of two-seat fresh from the training schools. trainers were initially unavailable Cockpit familiarisation and as they were being converted to taxiing practice would barely Merlin power, which involved prepare those inexperienced enlarging the fin and rudder, pilots for what was to come. instrument Handling the changes and a diminutive host of smaller airframe with The first group modifications. all its power of pilots had been On completion and torque specially chosen from a on take-off the twocore of flight leaders seaters were was difficult given the new enough, and designation getting down HA-1112-M4L. Thankfully, the safely was equally daunting. first group of Buchón pilots had Numerous accidents were been specially chosen from a recorded, and it’s rare to find core of seasoned flight leaders, a Buchón that hasn’t had a some of whom had flown the mishap of one type or another. Bf 109 during the civil war Just as 71 Escuadrón was and in later EdA service. This becoming fully operational
it was called, somewhat prematurely, into action in the Western Sahara. The French relinquished control of Morocco during 1956, granting the nation independence. The conflict began following a series of armed incursions by Moroccan insurgents supported by Sahrawi rebel forces. On 23 October 1957, the village of Bou Izargen, on the outskirts of Sidi Ifni, and the town of Guelmim to the south were taken and held by some 1,500 Moroccan Liberation Army troops. This led to an escalation of the conflict as Spanish forces formed a defensive line at Sidi Ifni, and in November to the mobilisation of Spanish Army and Air Force elements. The EdA had, until that point, mainly operated border patrols with
Insights
G
iven the military designation C.4K, the first six examples of the HA-1112-M1L were handed over to the EdA by Hispano Aviación on 31 December 1956. Some were used for type familiarisation by maintainers, while others were sent to the Torrejón-based Escuadrón de Experimentación en Vuelo for flying training. Arriving in a steady stream rather than en masse, some 60 Buchóns were eventually taken on charge. The type became operational with 71 Escuadrón on 15 February 1957. Based initially at Tablada, soon it moved the short distance to El Copero, which boasted rather more space. Having room to train was essential given the tricky ground
The much-pictured C.4K-9 was an early-production HA-1112-M1L. In use with 71 Escuadrón, it was latterly named MAPI, a shortened form of Maria del Pilar, the pilot’s wife. CHRIS SANDHAM-BAILEY
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Ala Mixta 36’s C.4K-113 on a rocky part of its Gando base, having left the runway while landing on 22 October 1963 — something of an occupational hazard for Buchón pilots. AHEA
Jumo-engined CASA 2.111s of Ala 25 from Villa Cisneros, now known as Dakhla. 71 Escuadrón was instructed to leave for El Aaiún in the Western Sahara. The Buchón did not have the endurance for flights of this duration, and after trying to
modify an underwing tank from an F-86 Sabre it was decided the only solution was to build jettisonable, 425-litre ventral drop tanks from scratch, out of 2mm-thick aluminium. The task was undertaken by Hispano Aviación in less than three days.
After completion a test drop was successfully carried out over El Copero, followed by endurance test flights of the requisite distance. This episode became known as Operation ‘Pepinos’ (cucumber), for obvious reasons! Fifteen tanks of this design were
constructed. A little while later, a smaller tank was made to increase endurance on patrols. Fifteen Buchóns were scheduled to leave for the Western Sahara on 29 January 1958. However, their El Copero base was prone to flooding due to its proximity to the Guadalquivir river and the ground conditions were very poor that day. It was quickly decided that a heavily laden aircraft had no chance of escaping the muddy airfield safely, so the Buchóns had to depart with a minimum fuel load to nearby San Pablo airport where their tanks were brimmed for the journey, most of which was over the sea or desert. The aircraft were unarmed to save weight, while navigation relied on radio beacons at specific points along the route. On arrival at Sidi Ifni, the Buchóns were hastily refuelled for the last leg of the journey to El Aaiún, the EdA’s main operating base during the conflict. The drop tanks were not used on tactical missions. One Buchón was damaged when C.4K-18 left the makeshift graded runway on landing at El Aaiún and struck a windsock pole, the pilot escaping serious injury.
DATAFILE
‘CONNIE’ EDWARDS AND THE BUCHÓN
W
G-AWHF which had been seriously damaged in a ithout a doubt, the Battle of Britain ground-loop at Duxford. film played a significant part in the Back home, ‘Connie’ continued to operate one survival of so many Buchóns into Buchón, C.4K-152/N4109G. It was occasionally preservation, but without a certain flown in a slightly revised Battle of Britain scheme Texan rancher and oil man, the numbers extant until around 1980-81, whilst the rest were stored in today would be far smaller. his hangars and in wooden shipping crates around The late Wilson Connell Edwards was one of his vast ranch. five Confederate Air Force pilots who flew in Battle Over the years ‘Connie’ fended off various of Britain, more often than not at the controls of attempts to buy the aircraft, adamant that the the Buchóns. At the close of filming ‘Connie’, like Buchóns would be sold as a package rather than many others, sensed that the finances of Spitfire singly, although some of the fleet did leave Big Productions were shaky. The filming had run Spring. They comprised C.4K-127, which went to massively over-budget and the prospect of getting the Experimental Aircraft Association museum at paid was very unlikely. Oshkosh, C.4K-130, traded to Jack Erickson, and Sensing there was an opportunity to be had, the C.4K-100, which flew briefly in private hands with astute ‘Connie’ successfully negotiated the ‘Connie’ Edwards in full Battle of Jack Flaherty before joining the Kalamazoo purchase of almost the entire Buchón fleet of 13 Britain garb. GARY R. BROWN COLLECTION Aviation History Museum. airframes, plus a vast array of spares, and Spitfire Only in 2015 did ‘Connie’ release his grasp. A IX MH415 in exchange for his eight months of deal brokered by California-based warbird sales experts Platinum work. The 13 Buchóns did not include the four purchased on behalf Fighter Sales finally satisfied the wily Texan. Dusty but completely of the CAF prior to filming. With the deal done, the aircraft were untouched Buchóns re-emerged into the sun, purchased by containerised and shipped to his ranch at Big Spring, Texas, arriving Boschung Global and then made available for sale. Four of them early in 1969. What is often overlooked is that ‘Connie’ also obtained have returned to the skies, restored by Air Leasing at Sywell in the the three aircraft used by the film company for spare parts recovery UK, and many more will follow. and for making the full-scale fibreglass models, together with
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DATABASE HISPANO BUCHÓN A four-ship ‘Schwarm’ of Buchóns belonging to the Battle of Britain film’s fictional 2./JG 418 on patrol, during shooting in Spain.
Development
The availability of the two-seat HA-1112-M4L trainers, both converted Hispano-Suizapowered HA-1110-K1Ls, proved a boon. The ‘blown’ two-piece canopy was very different to anything seen on a two-seat Bf 109 derivative before. AHEA
GARY R. BROWN COLLECTION
Technical Details
471 Escuadrón was the last Buchón operator in the Spanish Air Force, C.4K-158 among its charges. AHEA
In Service
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Its Buchóns all came from 72 Escuadrón, which had been set up alongside 71. The type was operated alongside T-6s between the end of 1963 and August 1964, based at Gando. It was employed over the Western Sahara in a policing role as before. As more jets joined the EdA, the Buchón disappeared, finally being retired by 471 Escuadrón on 6 October 1965. Appropriately, this event occurred at Tablada, where the first Bf 109 had arrived in November 1936.
Battle of Britain Around 50 Buchóns were retired to Tablada and placed in storage, mostly outdoors. The timing was ideal for Spitfire Productions, the company formed to make the Battle of Britain film, and especially for its aviation consultant Gp Capt Hamish Mahaddie. Tasked to acquire the necessary aircraft, the former Bomber Command Pathfinder pilot managed to obtain a large quantity of Buchóns at a public sealed-bid disposal auction — known as a ‘subasta’, not, as previously stated, a ‘sabasta’ — in March 1966. This was despite
the fact that a consortium of local scrap dealers had devised a plan to out-bid Mahaddie with a view to selling the Buchóns back to him at a massively inflated profit. Mahaddie secured their purchase on a technicality. On the morning of the auction, the consortium’s sealed bid was mysteriously found to be unsigned, and declared invalid. The Buchóns cost Mahaddie approximately £800 each, 28 eventually being used. These included the four airframes previously acquired by the Texas-based Confederate Air Force that were leased back to Spitfire Productions. They came complete with pilots in the form of Lloyd Nolen, ‘Lefty’ Gardner, ‘Connie’ Edwards, Gerald Martin and Milt Harradence. Eight Buchóns, the only ones stored in hangars, were fully intact and potentially airworthy. After careful inspection, it was found that 18 could be overhauled and flown relatively easily, while a further six were suitable for taxiing. The remainder, some of which had suffered from ground-loops and landing accidents, would be used for set-dressing, studio
Insights
The Buchóns flew in support El Copero, their role assumed by of the bombing missions and T-6 Texans. paratroop drops, some 30 CASA The conflict ended on 1 2.111s, 30 CASA 352s and 22 April 1958 with the Moroccans Douglas C-47s now being active and Spaniards signing the in the theatre. It was found that Treaty of Angra de Cintra, the aircraft was unsuited to the although Buchóns continued conditions at El Aaiún, with dust to be sent to Gando to carry ingestion affecting the engine out reconnaissance sorties in and armament. Serviceability a policing role. El Aaiún was quickly became a problem. still used to undertake live Furthermore, the Buchón lacked firing training and some night the radio equipment to talk to flying, which involved ordnance ground troops, delivery and seriously cannon-firing limiting its role at a range near Not one Buchón in strafing. On the desert strip. was lost to ground fire 8-9 February This would 1958, Buchóns but many fell victim to continue accidents provided through to cover for troop 1964. landings on the On 2 March beaches at El Aaiún, often flying 1959, 71 Escuadrón became part at very low level. of Ala de Caza-Bombardeo No Not one Buchón was lost to 7. By the mid-1960s Ala 7 was ground fire but many fell victim renumbered as Ala 47, part of to take-off and landing accidents, Tactical Air Command, with 471 due to poor visibility in the dusty Escuadrón (formerly 71) being conditions and the combination left as the sole operator of the of the aircraft’s tricky handling C.4K at Tablada. qualities with operations from Only one other unit flew the bumpy, rock-strewn airstrips. Buchón on the front line. This By mid-February the nine was 364 Escuadrón, part of remaining Buchóns had left for Ala Mixta 36, formed during Gando before heading back to a restructuring of the EdA.
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DATABASE HISPANO BUCHÓN back-projection and cockpit close-ups. The airworthy machines were all given four-blade Rotol propellers, while the taxiing and static examples received threeblade Hamilton Standard units. The rounded wingtip extensions, wing fences, cannon stubs and rocket rails were removed and dummy machine guns, radio masts and tailplane braces added. Some of the airworthy aircraft were fitted with strobe lights on the end of the wingmounted machine gun barrels and smoke canisters below the ejector exhaust ports. Following these modifications, the Buchóns were painted in generic Luftwaffe camouflage and fictional Jagdgeschwader markings. One pilot, Don Federico Eglesias Lanzos, was killed performing aerobatics in C.4K-159 on 20 January prior to the start of production in Spain. Thankfully, no such accident occurred during the shooting itself. The aerial filming started on 13 March 1968, with the Buchóns operating from Tablada and El Copero. The film crew concentrated on capturing large formations involving the CASA 2.111s, while the Buchóns weaved overhead as their escort
fighters. Extensive ground-based take-off sequences were shot too, although most of this footage failed to make the final cut. With the aerial unit’s work in Spain complete, 16 Buchóns were ferried to Britain, arriving at Duxford on 14 May 1968. The fighters were principally flown by 16 EdA pilots, led by the indomitable Comandante Pedro Santa Cruz, who was also a test pilot for Hispano. Towards the end of August, when the Spanish aviators had to return
The Buchóns on screen were assigned to two fictitious units, namely 6./JG 418, whose aircraft had yellow propeller spinners and numerals, led by Maj Falke (portrayed by Manfred Reddemann), and 2./ JG 418, with red spinners and numerals, commanded by Maj Föhn (played by Paul Neuhaus). There is also a glimpse of whitespinnered aircraft, belonging to 7./JG 418, in the famous scene near the start of the film when they strafe the French
The Buchóns’ high serviceability came as a pleasant surprise during filming at Duxford home to their regular postings, a handful of RAF qualified flying instructors were converted onto the Buchóns, completing two check flights in two-seater C.4K‑112/G‑AWHC before being let loose on the single-seaters. The EdA and RAF pilots were supplemented by ‘Connie’ Edwards, along with legendary historic aircraft restorer and flying instructor Viv Bellamy. He starkly summed up his experience with the aircraft thus: “There is no sentiment in the 109 — you either fly it, or it has you!”
aerodrome. This, of course, was all shot in the south-western corner of Duxford airfield. Four Buchóns were also painted as Hurricanes, with camouflaged fuselages and code letters MI-S, MI-T, MI-U and MI-V, supplementing the modest fleet of three airworthy Hurricanes for the Polish squadron sequences. The Buchóns’ high rate of serviceability came as a pleasant surprise throughout the filming at Duxford. The aircraft were superbly maintained by Spanish engineers, with occasional help
from Simpson’s Aeroservices. On most days the full fleet was available. Some 2,700 flying hours were accumulated across the Buchóns and 3,300 landings made by them in the course of shooting, the aerial element being completed by the end of September. On 21 May, C.4K-61/G-AWHF was damaged by a ground-loop during its landing roll-out at Duxford — it was not used again as time was too precious to undertake repairs. There were other mishaps, but these were mainly trivial in nature, involving a wing drop on landing and the like. In an attempt to counter the likelihood of a ground-loop, the Spanish pilots would generally land fast on the fighter’s main wheels, as they felt it gave them more control, especially in a crosswind. Careful attention was always paid to the undercarriage oleo pressures. The pilots and groundcrew had tremendous faith in the Merlin engine, which they had always found so dependable.
Buchóns on screen The Buchón may have had a short operational life, but its role in the movie world has been long and distinguished, mostly
Buchóns as Spitfires for the making of Eagles Over London. ALAMY
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In their less-than-convincing P-51B Mustang guise, Buchóns G-AWHS and ’HL made it as far as Madrid in 1969, only to be dropped from the production of Patton bar a far-off glimpse. GARY R. BROWN COLLECTION
Technical Details In Service Insights
Shots of all three Buchóns used for the making of Memphis Belle — the same three as were also engaged in Piece of Cake — are rare. Hans Dittes’ D-FEHD, at left, differed from the Old Flying Machine Company’s G-BOML and Charles Church’s G-HUNN by virtue of its four-blade Rotol propeller. ’HD was later modified to become a Bf 109G-10. ROD DEAN
In 2013, the Aircraft Restoration Company-operated Buchón — a machine of many guises for its work in front of the cameras — was briefly marked up to represent an Israeli Air Force Avia S-199 when flying scenes for the documentary film Above and Beyond were shot at Duxford. DAVID WHITWORTH
taking the role of its legendary ancestor, the Bf 109. Having survived in greater numbers than the German original, and boasting excellent reliability — so important in the film world — thanks to the Merlin powerplant, the reasons are clear. Following the use of the Buchón in Battle of Britain, the low-budget Italian movie Eagles Over London went into production, its subject matter and release date specifically targeted to capitalise on the blockbuster. Starring Frederick Stafford and Van Johnson, it was shot in Spain. Six Buchóns were painted in RAF camouflage with Eagle Squadron codes to portray Spitfires, a bizarre role reversal that saw the Luftwaffe depicted with model ‘Spits’. No Buchón was flown during the filming, but they were
resemble P-51B Mustangs for the film Patton. This involved the attachment of a large Mustangesque fibreglass air intake to the underside of the fuselage, which surprisingly did not affect the handling characteristics. C.4K‑75 suffered a take-off accident at Le Havre in February 1969 when it caught a gusting crosswind.
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taxied. This ‘macaroni’ war film has achieved a degree of cult status, largely due to a rerelease championed by Quentin Tarantino. Following the filming, the aircraft were transported to Earl Reinert’s Victory Air Museum, located on a farm near Mundelein close to Chicago. Some footage was also used in
The Buchón may have had a short operational life, but its role in movies has been long the George Peppard movie From Hell to Victory. Back in the UK, three of the Battle of Britain fleet — C.4K‑75/ G-AWHG, C.4K-122/G-AWHL and C.4K-170/G-AWHS — had been bought back by Hamish Mahaddie via ‘Connie’ Edwards, and were hastily modified to
The remaining pair made their way to Spain, only to be dropped from the production, reportedly following licensing issues with their pilots. They were subsequently offered for sale by Mahaddie for £7,500 each. C.4K-31/N109ME portrayed a Bf 109B in Legion Condor
markings for The Hindenburg, about the airship of that name. Filming began in August 1974 with George C. Scott in the leading role. The Buchón was at the time part of the Confederate Air Force Ghost Squadron. The spring and early summer of 1988 saw London Weekend Television making its adaptation of Derek Robinson’s book Piece of Cake, depicting life within the fictional RAF unit ‘Hornet Squadron’ during the ‘Phoney War’ right through to the Battle of Britain. Three Buchóns appeared: Charles Church’s C.4K-172/G-HUNN, flown by Reg Hallam; Nick Grace’s C.4K‑107/G-BOML, in the hands of its owner; and Hans Dittes’ C.4K-40/D-FEHD, with Walter Eichhorn at the controls. They were flown from Charlton Park, Duxford, Friston and
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DATABASE HISPANO BUCHÓN Headcorn. The series was released that August to critical shot in 35mm, which added acclaim and ending up with a considerably to the quality of the limited cinema release. finished product. Not a Battle With the start of the new of Britain ‘veteran’, D-FEHD century, the Planes of Fame had become the first Buchón to Air Museum dispatched its fly as such in Europe for some Buchón, C.4K-77/N700E, from years when it took to the air in Chino, California to Duxford August 1986. Fresh out of repair for the Eagle Squadron scenes following a ground-loop at in Pearl Harbor. Returning to Biggin Hill in 1982 while owned Lydd, Kent, after a filming sortie by Robs Lamplough, G-HUNN near the south coast, the aircraft was used for most of the early suffered a hydraulic problem stages of the production with and left the runway, causing Hallam at the controls. Nick an undercarriage collapse. Grace completed the restoration The pilot, Steve Hinton, was of C.4K-107 just in time for it uninjured. N700E returned to to appear and it flew on 6 May the US for repairs, and has not 1988, registered as G-BOML. flown since. Tragically, Grace was killed in a Having been obtained from road accident in October 1988, the Breighton-based Real after which the Buchón was sold Aeroplane Company, and to Ray and Mark Hanna’s Old now operated by the Aircraft Flying Machine Company at Restoration Company, Tom Duxford. Blair’s Buchón C.4K‑102/ The following summer saw G‑BWUE was flown by John David Puttnam and his Enigma Romain and Cliff Spink in the Films production team coming Tom Cruise film Valkyrie, shot to Duxford, and then Binbrook, in and near Berlin during the for Warner summer of Brothers’ 2007. The big-screen aircraft appears The ARC machine re-creation fleetingly was in demand when of Memphis alongside Christopher Nolan Belle. Filming the former made Dunkirk began on 30 C.4K-87, June 1989, reconfigured and Buchóns as a G-BOML, G-HUNN and Bf 109G‑6 and operated by the D-FEHD were again cast as Messerschmitt Foundation at Bf 109s, their role to attack the Manching, Bavaria, as D-FMBB. B-17 bomber stream. G-BOML By now owned by Historic was fitted with a large film Flying and still in ARC camera, attached to the fuselage operation, G-BWUE took part just behind the canopy. in a brief sequence filmed at LWT returned to the Battle of Duxford in June 2013 for Nancy Britain era for a six-part series Spielberg’s documentary in 1990. A Perfect Hero was Above and Beyond, about the loosely based on the story of birth of the Israeli Air Force. In Richard Hillary, who suffered so doing it played a different severe burns during the Battle Bf 109 derivative, a Czech-built of Britain. The OFMC supplied Avia S-199. Some ground shots Buchón G-BOML, flown by Mark also used the Planes of Fame Hanna. Sadly, the budget was Buchón. rather limited and aerial filming Again the ARC machine was was cut to a minimum. in demand when Christopher The HBO TV movie The Nolan made Dunkirk in 2016. Tuskegee Airmen brought Now painted as ‘Black 2’, the C.4K-172/N109GU back to the aeroplane — re-registered spotlight. Filming began at Fort G-AWHK, its Battle of BritainChaffey, Arkansas in January era identity — was flown by John 1995, the Buchón becoming the Romain over the Solent and sole ‘Messerschmitt’ taking on the English Channel, operating the ‘Red Tail’ P-51s of the 352nd from Lee-on-Solent. Originally Fighter Group. The aircraft was the Planes of Fame Buchón was flown by ‘Ladd’ Doctor. Location earmarked as well, but it wasn’t shooting was completed in just ready to fly, although it was three months, the movie being given the ‘Black 2’ livery.
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DATAFILE
BUCHÓNS IN PRESERVATION
A
round 36 Buchóns are thought to survive. A couple have proved rather reclusive over the years and their current condition and location are unknown. There is also the chance that one or two escaped the scrap-man and have survived with private collectors without their existence ever being recorded. Sadly, only four are preserved in EdA markings: C.4K-100 at the Kalamazoo Air Zoo in Michigan, C.4K-114 at the Canada Aviation and Space Museum in Ottawa, C.4K-156 in the Musée de l’Air at Le Bourget, France and C.4K-158 at the Spanish Air Force’s Museum of Aeronautics and Astronautics at Cuatro Vientos. A number of the examples to have been airworthy in civilian hands have suffered mishaps and accidents. There were two fatal crashes, involving the Confederate Air Force’s C.4K-144/N8575 in 1987 and the Old Flying Machine Company’s C.4K-107/G-BOML in 1999, with the loss of pilots Dick Baird and Mark Hanna respectively. In 2020 six Buchóns are airworthy with a Rolls-Royce Merlin. Another, Jack Erickson’s C.4K-130, has an Allison V-1710, while a number of airworthy
Bf 109Gs have used Buchón airframes to a greater or lesser degree in their restorations. There is no problem with this, as long as it remains clear that these airframes are of Spanish origin and not some undiscovered relic from Augsburg.
C.4K-112/G-AWHC Sole surviving two-seat HA‑1112‑M4L, originally powered by Hispano-Suiza engine as HA-1110-K1L; served in EdA with Ala 7 and 471 Escuadrón before type’s retirement in 1965; part of Battle of Britain film fleet, used in part as camera-ship and publicity tool; acquired by ‘Connie’ Edwards and stored Big Spring, Texas, for 47 years; sold 2015 to Boschung Global and later purchased by an Australian group, Warbirds Flight Club; restored by Air Leasing at Sywell, Northamptonshire in film colours as ‘Red 11’, flying again 24 November 2017; operated since on passenger rides by Ultimate Warbird Flights.
C.4K-99/G-AWHM Built 1958, served with Ala 7; apparently among last examples in service, retired November 1965; used in Battle of Britain;
Planes of Fame’s Buchón, N700E, only made three flights in this scheme shortly after it was rebuilt in May 1989. The cowling was modified to better represent a DB605-powered Bf 109. FRANK B. MORMILLO
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Built 1958, served with Ala 7 and latterly 471 Escuadrón; records also suggest a period with INTA, March 1961-November 1963; flew in Battle of Britain; then to storage with ‘Connie’ Edwards, registered N6036; reported 1999 as sold to Richard Hansen of Batavia, New York, but never left Big Spring; acquired 2015 by Boschung Global and shipped to Airmotive Specialities at Salinas, California, along with three other ex-Edwards Buchóns; arrived Sywell with Air Leasing in 2017; sold to Anglia Aircraft Restorations and rebuilt by Air Leasing; flew again 28 June 2018; painted as Bf 109F-4 of Eastern Front ace Uffz Edmund Roßmann from III./JG 52.
C.4K-102/G-AWHK Into service April 1959, with Ala 7; retired late 1965; flew in Battle of Britain; sold to Confederate Air Force and shipped to Texas with rest of Buchón fleet; flew briefly as N9938 before being displayed statically at Harlingen and Detroit; fitted with wooden nose section to represent contours of Bf 109G;
sold 1996 to Old Flying Machine Company at Duxford, where initial restoration work carried out; acquired by Real Aeroplane Company at Breighton and flew there 19 May 2006 as G-BWUE; that November, returned to Duxford for operation by Aircraft Restoration Company on behalf of Tom Blair; acquired from him by Historic Flying, operated by ARC, and refinished 2010 in Battle of Britain markings as ‘Yellow 10’.
C.4K-169/D-FMGZ Into EdA service end of 1960; service history unknown, but flew with 471 Escuadrón; struck off charge December 1965; UKregistered G-AWHT for Battle of Britain; shipped to US and joined Confederate Air Force as N9939;
displayed regularly until CAF Airsho 76 when Don Whittington flew it so low the prop caught the ground and it slithered to a halt on the grass; sold 1988 to Harold Kindsvater and rebuilt, flying again 4 October 2000 as N109W; acquired 2009 by Air Fighter Academy at Heringsdorf, Germany; 2013 taxiing accident damaged engine and propeller; transformed by MeierMotors into Bf 109G-12 trainer with DB605 engine and reflown August 2016; latterly returned to Merlin power, and now a hybrid Buchón with second seat and G-12 extended canopy; ownership passed to Messerschmitt Foundation but operated by Air Fighter Academy.
Insights
C.4K-105/G-AWHH
re-emerged 2014 when Platinum Fighter Sales tasked with handling sale of Edwards’ aircraft collection — ground-run and performed undercarriage retractions to prove excellent condition of the fleet; restored by Air Leasing at Sywell for owner Boschung Global; flown again 1 July 2019 in hybrid colour scheme as tribute to Edwards.
In Service
part of ‘Connie’ Edwards’ stored inventory, sold on to Boschung Global and Warbirds Flight Club; restored at Sywell by Air Leasing, flying again 3 May 2018; operated in ‘Yellow 7’ film colours; left UK 16 September 2020 for undisclosed mainland European owner.
Technical Details
This four-ship Buchón formation at the 2018 Flying Legends show, provided by the Aircraft Restoration Company and Air Leasing, illustrated the type’s recent renaissance following the sale of the ‘Connie’ Edwards fleet. HARRY MEASURES
C.4K-152/G-AWHR Into EdA service end of 1959; served with Ala 7 and 471 Escuadrón; struck off charge October 1965; flown in Battle of Britain as personal mount of lead Spanish pilot, Comandante Pedro Santa Cruz; to Texas with ‘Connie’ Edwards and operated as N4109G until early 1980s;
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One of the Confederate Air Force aircraft, N9939 was flown in a rather weary version of its Battle of Britain scheme. This aircraft has since been transformed into a two-seat Bf 109G-12 for the Air Fighter Academy in Germany, but is again flying with a Merlin. GARY R. BROWN COLLECTION
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INSIGHTS
A warbird legend compares the Spanish-built Bf 109 with the German original WORDS: CLIFF SPINK
Cliff Spink flying Buchón G-BWUE during its ownership by Tom Blair. RICHARD PAVER
B
ecause of the recent influx of Buchóns to the UK scene, many more pilots have now had their skills challenged by this demanding aircraft — certainly more than the handful who flew it when the Old Flying Machine Company operated the single Buchón in Britain. As the experience base has widened, there will be many more views on how to tame the type. Mine is but one. I was sitting in my new office in London in August 1998 when I got a call from Mark Hanna. I had been flying with the OFMC at Duxford for some years in what spare time I had from my duties in the RAF, as well as displaying the RAF-owned Bf 109G-2 ‘Black 6’. “I know you have been flying ‘Black 6’”, Mark said, “so would you like to fly the Buchón?” Visions of a nice, sunny day at Duxford with the wind nicely down the strip sprung to mind, so I replied in the affirmative. I had just had a month between jobs, so had filled my boots flying the Spitfire, Mustang, Corsair and Fury and felt ready for this new
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challenge. “Good”, replied Mark. “Can you pick up our Buchón from Sion, Switzerland, and take it to Warsaw next week?” Simple! Luckily for Mark I had the time and was foolish enough to stick with my original agreement. So, my first solo in the Buchón was to be from Sion to Augsburg en route to Warsaw, but that trip is another story. The 109 is testament to Willy Messerschmitt’s credo
advantage in manoeuvre where they delay the chance of tip-stalling at higher g. The splayed undercarriage and canted wheels are an unusual feature and are a reminder of handling challenges to come. The undercarriage is actually no narrower than the Spitfire, but any canted wheel is prone to divergence. Because of the inherent directional stability challenge on the ground, it is
Despite a fearsome reputation the Buchón always looked after me of getting the biggest engine into the smallest airframe. The wingspan is just over 32ft, compared to nearly 37ft for the Spitfire. This gives the 109 the higher wing loading and hence poorer turning performance in the horizontal plane. Therefore, when walking around the Buchón you can see the quite large flaps and the leading-edge slats, all designed to improve slow-speed handling. The slats, of course, are an added
vital to check that the oleo legs are inflated to their correct pressures, particularly the lefthand one — a soft left oleo can lead to a heap of trouble. First impressions as you sit in the cockpit are that the Buchón is slightly less ‘busy’ than the 109G, this mainly down to the controls and instrumentation needed to manage the DB605. That said, it is still pretty crowded. The sitting position is the same, with your knees high and very
tight on the shoulders with the cockpit wall. Rudders cannot be adjusted for length, so your ankles are awkwardly bent — for one of my height, 5ft 11in — to prevent riding the toe brakes. The seat pan can only be adjusted for height on the ground. The cockpit canopy is the same heavy ‘greenhouse’ structure as the G-2. The cockpit is locked by a lever on the left-hand side, which when rotated forward pushes two locking chute bolts into housings. The view forward on the ground is pretty average in the G-2 but appalling in the Buchón, largely due to the coaming covering the camshaft housings on the Merlin. To my mind, the better view was one of the few advantages — in the display rather than the combat arena — afforded by the DB605 over the Merlin. Going from left to right in the cockpit, the first of the two large wheels by your left thigh is for the flaps, which can be wound to multiple positions, unlike the two-position up or down in the Spitfire. The other wheel is the pitch trim. There are no moveable trim tabs on the 109
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is a single stick hinged at the cockpit floor. The gun selector at the top of the stick is now used for RT. Starting ‘Black 6’ was quite a complicated affair, not least because a trusty groundcrew member had to get up on the wing and, with a handle, wind up the heavy inertia wheel — and then leap to safety before the enthusiastic pilot engaged the inertia wheel and, with hands flashing around the cockpit,
turned switches on and coaxed the DB605 into life. I found the Buchón simple in comparison. The main fuel cock is below the main instrument panel in the right footwell. It not only controls fuel but oil as well, and the lever hits your right shin when it is off, so you have a painful physical reminder to turn the lever on! It is important to get the lever off after flight or else oil drains down into the bottom of the engine, which can cause engineers some
Insights
June 1996: Cliff after his first trip in Bf 109G-2 ‘Black 6’. HOWARD COOK
In Service
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VIA CLIFF SPINK
unnecessary work. Two shots on the large bore primer are more than enough, and then I lock the primer handle. I never found it necessary to keep the primer loaded with a shot as the Merlin 500 starts so well. Throttle set about a quarter to half-an-inch open (engines do vary), prop fully forward, brakes on, stick held back between the knees — a good habit for all taildraggers, but the 109/ Buchón is very tail-heavy on the ground — and then hit the start and booster coil buttons together, with your left hand poised over the ignition key or switches. As she fires, switches on, and she quickly settles down to that lovely, but noisy, Merlin growl. Check the oil pressure is rising and set the rpm initially to 800 until she is a bit warmer, when I can set 1,000rpm. The radiator flaps are hydraulic, and as I get pressure I can rotate the T handle to ensure they are fully open. There is an indicator light, but a quick glance left and right and you can see the large clamshell doors. Unlike the Spitfire, particularly the earlier marks, there is no rush to taxi as the radiator cooling on the Buchón is good despite the radiator intakes not being large and flush under the left and right mainplanes. The opposite was true of the 109G-2, which needed very careful temperature handling. Canopy is closed and locked — checked carefully, as I nearly lost my canopy in France a full 45 minutes into my flight — and flaps wound down to 20° and checked with a mark on the flap. There is an ingenious interlock between the flaps and the radiator flaps, such that the radiator flaps move with the wing flaps. Check the tailwheel is unlocked with the sliding lever on the port cockpit wall, and with a signal to the groundcrew I get the aircraft moving. It takes a good bit of power initially, and because it is tail-heavy quite a lot of momentum is needed to break out the large tailwheel to turn, despite it being unlocked. Taxiing has to be done with care because of the aforementioned appalling visibility. Once the oil temperature is up to 40° the run-up can be started. With stick hard back, the engine is pushed up to 1,800rpm, each magneto
Technical Details
AEROPLANE NOVEMBER 2020
August 2014: Cliff back at Duxford after a display weekend away with Buchón G-AWHE, then owned by Richard Lake.
Development
series, so when winding the pitch trim the whole tailplane datum moves. There is no rudder or aileron trim, a consideration for the flight to come. Down on the left-hand side is the large engine primer, pretty much identical to what you will find in Griffon-powered Spitfires and with much larger capacity than the normal Ki-Gass primers for Merlins. The throttle is a similar shape to that on the G-2, but where the G-2 had an electrical rocker switch at the inboard part of the throttle, which was a neat way of controlling the pitch of the constant-speed prop, most Buchóns I have flown have an RT button in this position. Therefore, the rest of the throttle box is occupied by the Merlin prop control lever. Over the years, instrument panels in Buchóns have varied depending on how they were brought back to flying status. At top left on the main instrument panel in the earlier Buchón I flew was the ignition switch, which was the same as the G-2 — a key in a slot which could be moved up or down to select either or both of the magnetos. The key was on a small chain for the inevitable ham-fisted pilot who was prone to dropping things in the bottom of the cockpit. Other Buchóns were fitted with normal dual ignition switches, similar to other Merlin-powered aircraft. Two gear selection buttons are similarly positioned at top left. It’s quite a simple arrangement: when pushed in to select either up or down, once the gear has travelled and locked in the desired position, the button pops out. Indication comes from the normal red/green lights but backed up by two mechanical vernier indicators. The instrument panel is fairly typical of that generation of aircraft, with engine instruments largely gathered on the right-hand side, although that can vary between different airframes. To the right on the panel are the two pushbuttons for start and boost coil, and at far right on the front panel is the T handle, which when rotated controls the position of the radiator exhaust flaps. On the right cockpit wall is a bank of switches for various functions — boost pumps, generator, radio and so on. The control column
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VIA CLIFF SPINK
KEY COLLECTION
DATABASE HISPANO BUCHÓN
Cockpits compared, namely those of ‘Black 6’ (left) and Buchón G-BOML (right): both “pretty crowded”, in the author’s words, and with the same problematic seating position.
checked in turn and the prop exercised twice, not letting the rpm decay below 1,500. Then it’s a last left-to-right pre-take-off check — flaps, tail setting, primer locked, throttle friction, prop fine, mags both on, instruments set, engine Ts and Ps, fuel on and contents, boost pumps on, hood closed and locked, harness tight and a final ‘full and free’ check of the controls. With ‘Black 6’ we only operated off grass. The brakes weren’t good and grass offered a more benign surface. That has changed with the later Buchóns, which have modern brakes, in many ways transforming the aircraft. I line up on the Duxford grass but initially with the nose just offset to make doubly sure there is no errant vehicle or aircraft hidden behind the nose, ready to give me a heart attack when the tail comes up. Lock the tailwheel and a final check around to see all is well. Buchón or Bf 109 pilots will attest to the fact that there is nothing ‘normal’ about a takeoff (or landing) in this aircraft. You can be right in the groove, having done a lot of flying in the machine, and then for no reason you can fathom she will give you the ride of a lifetime. I put the control column forward and right and then ease up the power.
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As she accelerates, I squeeze in more power. Excessive power too early and you risk lifting the right wing — I’ve got the T-shirt! This can also happen if you do not keep forward pressure on the stick, as you risk getting one slat out and, bingo… Many pilots have done this, and no doubt it will happen again, but with prudent use of power and not getting incidence on the wing too early, all should be well. As the
tail comes up, catch the swing with rudder and she accelerates quickly. She is not as quick off the ground as the Spitfire and you do need positive back pressure to get airborne. A relatively shallow climb gets speed in the bank — a slow-speed engine failure after take-off is not the place to be in a Buchón. Gear up, check the take-off boost and moderate the rpm to 2,400. Start winding in the take-off flap and close the
radiator flaps, which are highdrag when fully open. When new to the Buchón, there is a tendency to feel for the rudder trim as the speed and power change, but of course there isn’t one. It doesn’t take long to tune your feet to get the aircraft nicely balanced. The aircraft rolls beautifully, faster than the Spitfire, but is noticeably heavier to fly, particularly in pitch. Aerobatics are all flown with an entry speed faster than the Spitfire — more akin to the Mustang — and one has to beware of the inertia coming out of a vertical manoeuvre as the aircraft will ‘mush’ if you recover with your Spitfire head on. Hesitation rolls are a delight as the aircraft is crisp and the stop and start of the hesitation are easy to control. Overall, the Buchón is not so nicely balanced as the Spitfire and the heavier controls are harder work doing an aerobatic sequence. That said, the higher wing loading does ease the gust factor and the firm controls mean formation aerobatics are quite pleasant. It tends to damp down any tendency to over-control, but it is still a challenge to trim in pitch through the changing speed regime of, say, a formation loop. Some of the high points of the many hours spent in the Buchón have been rolling and looping in formation with the likes of John Romain, Lee Proudfoot and Steve
One of the relatively few times ‘Black 6’ and the OFMC Buchón flew in formation was at Duxford’s weatherbeaten September 1992 show. TOWPILOT
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DATABASE HISPANO BUCHÓN
Insights
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In Service
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downwind getting the aircraft configured, for which you need time, but this is not a Spitfire with a lovely big wing, and pulling the aircraft around a tight final is not to be recommended. As the aircraft slows on the break, as soon as speed allows, I hit the down undercarriage button and then start the long and laborious wind-down of the flap. This can take pretty much the whole of the downwind
Technical Details
Jones, to name but a few. The aircraft coolant does not get hot during a sequence, unlike some Merlin-powered types — perhaps this is down to a radiator system originally designed for the larger DB605. Fuel capacity is similar to the fuselage tank on the Spitfire, hence it has similar range/ endurance. That said, I was never comfortable running the fuel down to the levels I would have done in the Spitfire as the tank configuration is quite different. The fuel tank is L-shaped and sits below and behind the pilot, and I was never convinced I had the same usable fuel in the part of the tank below my backside as I could expect from the lower fuselage tank in the Spitfire. Returning to land, it is always worthwhile to square away the rejoining checks good and early. Getting the Buchón on the ground is not a drama — OK, perhaps sometimes it is — but you do need to give yourself thinking time. Despite the relatively cool running of the engine I get the radiator flaps open, tailwheel locked, and the boost pump ‘on’ as I check my fuel. I ease the rpm up to 2,400 as I run in for the break to land. A tight circuit is not where you want to be in the Buchón — not only are you quite busy
the wheels have a distinctly divergent effect, rocking the aircraft laterally. It is here that the modified brakes come into their own. Any slight swing can be caught quickly — and must be — with a dab of the appropriate brake. It is always wise to get any warbird down to slow walking pace before thinking of clearing the runway, particularly so in the Buchón. Sounds exciting? It is, but when caught out by unforecast winds, I have landed the Buchón in crosswinds that would have been unacceptable in other aircraft and she behaved impeccably. It is not something I would plan to do, however! I have been lucky to fly the Buchón throughout the UK and Europe, from Scandinavia in the north to Poland and the Czech Republic in the east and many destinations in between. Its limited range meant some of these journeys, of 600nmplus, would entail at least two en route stops. This led to some exciting approaches, but despite a fearsome reputation the aircraft always looked after me. In warbirds, after the Spitfire, I have probably flown more hours in the Buchón than any other similar type and I have just loved the experience. Idiosyncratic and challenging, the 109 series of aircraft were fine fighting aeroplanes, and I count myself privileged to have flown them.
Development
Shadowing John Romain’s every move as the ARC and Richard Lake Buchóns perform formation aeros at Flying Legends 2013. MARK HANDLEY
leg. Trimming in pitch is straightforward as the trimwheel is co-located with the flap wheel. The gear does the normal lowering cycle, with one leg completing its lock-down before the other. Greens indicate ‘locked down’, which the mechanical indicators confirm. At the end of downwind I am aiming for 1,000ft at 100kt with gear down and, hopefully, no more winding-down of the flap. Commencing the final turn, I push the prop to fully fine and begin the long, curving approach to the runway. The Buchón is very speed-stable around the final turn and if you have the power set correctly it comes round on rails. The slats start to move out as speed reduces to the over-the-hedge speed of 90kt. Never more was the curving approach more important as the view forward is appalling in the final stages of the approach, which is only slightly flatter than with other warbirds. The aircraft sits down nice and positively on three points, and one could be excused for wondering what all the fuss is about in relation to landing the Buchón. It’s not the landing — it’s the second or so later when the mainplane blanks the very small fin and rudder, which become mere decoration as speed decays. Directional control can be tricky, particularly on undulating surfaces where
The author is a picture of concentration as he gets airborne from the temporary grass runway at Shoreham, catching the swing as the tail comes up on a take-off requiring high power from the start on this tricky strip. BEN DUNNELL
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BRIEFING FILE
Under the skin of aviation technology and tactics
How thrust reversers work on the Panavia Tornado’s target system Reverser buckets
Engine nozzle Screw jack
1 3
2 1 During normal operation, the reaction to the exhaust gas escaping to the engines’ rear creates the thrust to propel the aircraft
4 5
2 During the landing run, a flexible drive operates screw jacks on each side of the nozzle 3 This rotates a pair of external reverser buckets from their position flush with the fuselage… 4 …to a position behind the nozzle 5 The buckets divert the exhaust forwards, helping braking
THRUST REVERSERS S topping a jet aircraft on landing isn’t easy. They usually have a large mass and, even with the various high-lift devices to lower approach speeds, still touch down at a significant velocity. The ground contact area of the wheels is normally small, meaning the use of wheel braking alone is not an efficient means of slowing the aircraft on the runway — the tyres and brakes are at risk of significant heat spikes due to the energy transfer. While jet aircraft tyres, wheels and brakes are designed to be able to slow and stop the aeroplane without other assistance under normal conditions, lessening the demand on the landing gear has significant advantages in terms of wear and re-use rates, and reliability. Directing the engine’s thrust part-forwards (anywhere past
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90°) uses the aircraft’s main power source to decelerate efficiently instead. The design of thrust reversers is usually relatively simple, of low weight penalty and economical, particularly in contrast to the requirements otherwise loaded onto the landing gear. By directing the energy from thrust
forward to a desired degree, as illustrated. This is most efficient for low-bypass or turbojet engines. Patents were filed by Boeing engineers for versions of this concept in 1954 and 1968. The clamshell type is a variation achieving a very similar effect, but with the structural elements placed within the
Lessening the demand on the landing gear has advantages in terms of wear and re-use rates, and reliability to braking, it is an efficient use of the power immediately available. Jet aircraft thrust reversers come in three types: the target, clamshell, and cold stream systems. The target type is essentially a pair of targets, or ‘buckets’, rotated from around the body of the engine area to redirect the engine thrust
nacelle. The jet flow is redirected by closing the normal efflux and opening doors further forward on the engine body, directing an effective flow partly forward. The cold stream is widely seen today on high-bypass jet engines on modern airliners. Either doors in the outer housing are opened and direct the airflow
partly forwards, or an element of the entire nacelle ring is moved, usually backwards, again redirecting the outer, cold flow partly forwards. As well as the illustrated jet thrust reversers, some turboprop aircraft use a reverse-pitch setting on the airscrews to reduce the ground run. This is commonly the case on single- or multiengine STOL types. Reverse-pitch airscrews have the advantage that the aircraft can then ‘back up’ away from a terminal building or manage manoeuvring better on airfields with tighter layouts. An ancestral variation as long ago as the First World War was employed by marine aircraft, where conventional braking was not an option. They were equipped with water drogues, like large canvas buckets that could be deployed from a strongpoint in the aircraft into the water on a line, and act as
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Using ‘buckets’ to slow down Clamshell door system
1 When unused, doors inside the engine form part of the engine nozzle 2 When needed, pneumatic actuators rotate the doors to block the normal exit 3
Clamshell doors
Vanes Duct
2
3 Rotation also opens ducts on either side of the engine
Thrust reversal in flight
Pneumatic actuator
1
Few aircraft use in-flight thrust reversers; the C-17 is an exception In-flight thrust reversal allows a steep tactical approach, minimising ground threat exposure without gaining speed
Cold stream reverser system
Engine cowl
e ach
2
4
Blocker doors
Bypass airflow 1
3
…
e Core airflow
Cascade vanes
1 On high-bypass ratio turbofans they exploit airflow through the bypass duct 2 To brake, part of the cowling slides back, exposing cascades open to the outside 3 Mechanisms linked to the cowling close blocker doors, preventing airflow progress rearwards and deflecting it forwards through the cascades 4 Vanes direct the exhaust forward through the ducts
WORDS: JAMES KIGHTLY ARTWORK: IAN BOTT a brake. Using these drogues, particularly on large aircraft, was a skilled job for a well-coordinated crew. From World War Two onward, certain marine aircraft also had pairs of engines fitted with reversible-pitch airscrews to assist in waterborne manoeuvring. There are alternatives. Some military jets use drogue drag ’chutes for aerodynamic braking, but these are, of course, for ‘oneshot’ use and require collection and repacking before being employed again. High-angle of attack roll-outs, holding the nose high to make the wing into an aerodynamic drag brake, represent another method. A number of types can use inflight thrust reversal, from certain 1970s’ airliners to the Boeing C-17 military transport illustrated here. This was usually to achieve
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Returning from the Operation ‘Shader’ commitment for the last time in February 2019, an RAF Tornado GR4 deploys its reverse thrust ‘buckets’ on landing at Marham. CROWN COPYRIGHT
a higher rate of descent, but without exceeding speed limits in civil use, or to make a tactical approach to minimise the threat of ground fire when employed by the military. On commercial types such as the Douglas DC-8 or Hawker Siddeley Trident, use on passenger flights was discouraged due to the cabin buffeting causing passenger
discomfort, but freight-only sectors were a different matter. Concorde and the Lockheed C-5 Galaxy both had thrust reversers on the inboard engines, available for in-flight retardation. The Saab Viggen (see Database, Aeroplane October 2020) used thrust reversal on approach and after landing to enable operations from temporary road strips.
However, uncommanded or asymmetric use of thrust reversers, particularly in flight, has caused serious accidents. Like many other aspects of aviation technology, the concept is innovative yet simple and comprehensible, while being demanding in engineering terms to ensure it is robust, reliable and safe.
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AIRLINER HISTORY Brabazon Committee
BRAVE NEW WORLD? PART ONE
Subject to hesitation, repetition and deviation from the outset, even the most generous soul would shy from claiming that the Brabazon Committee — experts tasked to recommend the best way forward for the development of British commercial aircraft after World War Two — had proven a success. On the 75th anniversary of its final report, we examine the reasons why WORDS: RALPH PEGRAM
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I
t may appear surprising that MPs and Lords were prepared to spend time challenging the government on the need to address the UK’s inadequacy in transport and civil aircraft at a time when Britain and its allies were deeply embroiled in the war, but exactly that happened during 1942. This was why the government established the Transport Aircraft Committee, referred to as the Brabazon Committee, in the closing days of the year following a sustained campaign in Parliament and the press. Britain’s weakness regarding these aircraft types had been exposed — not for the first time — and action was most definitely required, even with the outcome of the war far from certain and military design and production taking absolute priority. Britain found itself in this situation largely as a consequence of events during 1934. In that year Imperial Airways, Britain’s national airline, made the decision to expand and modernise its fleet by the addition of a substantial number of medium-range flying boats and a smaller quantity of airliners to service routes throughout the Empire, in part a response to the government’s policy to establish the heavily subsidised Empire Air Mail Scheme. Imperial’s major commitment to these Empire routes saw it focusing less on Europe and it failed to respond to the introduction of the latest high-speed monoplane airliners, such as those from Boeing and Douglas, which were attracting the attention of its continental rivals. The British aircraft constructors also took their eye off the ball following the collapse of the Geneva Disarmament Conference when Japan and Germany withdrew. The resultant increase in martial tension around the world prompted the government to instigate the first RAF Expansion Scheme, which served to focus the industry’s attention on the substantial military contracts that would result, to the detriment of significant work on new civil designs. Consequently, when a number of smaller airlines amalgamated in 1936 to form British Airways with the aim to establish services to the continent,
they found British firms unable to provide any suitable aircraft and felt compelled to order Lockheed Model 10 and 14 monoplanes. Imperial’s new Short C-class flying boats were sophisticated for their era and their introduction to service in 1936 proved to be a major task. While this expansion was under way, the relationship between managers, pilots and cabin crew deteriorated and services on European routes were in decline. In November 1937 questions were raised in Parliament. Serious allegations were made against Imperial, including the standard of its older aircraft, and the government agreed to hold an inquiry under the chairmanship of Lord Cadman. Cadman reported back in February 1938. He was highly critical of Imperial’s management, but neither the aircraft industry nor government escaped unscathed as he identified a raft of issues that conspired to place commercial aviation in the doldrums. Although somewhat reticent to accept all the issues raised, the government was quick to address the key conclusions of the report, replacing the chairman of Imperial, establishing a civil aviation directorate within the Air Ministry, and issuing specifications for two new airliners for BA and Imperial. Contracts were placed for the Fairey FC1 and Short S32, for medium and long-range routes respectively, for delivery in 1940. Shortly thereafter it was decided to introduce legislation to merge the two airlines, which became the British Overseas Airways Corporation in late 1939. Crucially, on the outbreak of war the contracts for both airliners were cancelled abruptly by the Chamberlain government, leaving BOAC unable to modernise its fleet. This, then, was the situation in the early phase of the war. BOAC had yet to establish itself after the merger when its aircraft fell under the control of the Air Ministry, routes were disrupted and the carrier’s bases in Britain moved. A trans-Atlantic service due to commence with Short G-class flying boats was put on hold as they were impressed into RAF service. The Short Empire boats were providing
Britain’s weakness regarding transport and civil aircraft had been exposed
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a good service, but the counterpart Armstrong Whitworth Ensign airliner, much-delayed, had proven underpowered and unreliable. The government’s focus on military contracts was reinforced in mid-1940 by the establishment of the Ministry of Aircraft Production (MAP). It oversaw the allocation of manpower, raw materials, tooling, workspace and all other aspects of aircraft construction, and gave absolute priority to a relatively small number of military types. No serious work on new designs of any sort could be undertaken without its approval and only one transport aircraft was sanctioned, when in 1941 it was agreed to allow construction of the Avro York. To meet the escalating demand for transports — also notably overlooked in pre-war planning — the RAF had no option other than to acquire Douglas C-47s under Lend-Lease, and later the C-54, while Coastal Command used the Lockheed Hudson, derived from the Model 14 airliner. As a consequence, a rumour began to circulate that an agreement had been reached between the British and US governments whereby Britain would concentrate on bombers and not build transports, misconstrued as meaning that Britain was prevented from developing transports. This myth was repeated in several
ABOVE: John MooreBrabazon, otherwise known as Lord Brabazon of Tara, was appointed to head the committees. PICTORIAL PRESS/ALAMY
OPPOSITE PAGE: The first indication of Bristol’s Type 167 design, dating from January 1944. VIA RALPH PEGRAM
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AIRLINER HISTORY Brabazon Committee
ABOVE: The Halifax-based Handley Page HP64 project, the precursor to the Hermes. VIA RALPH PEGRAM
ABOVE RIGHT: This Saunders-Roe advertisement from October 1945 featured the SR45 Princess. VIA RALPH PEGRAM
reputable publications post-war, and continues today. Yet it was actually no more than a recognition of reality, a fait accompli to address Britain’s immediate need for transport aircraft. Britain was quite free to develop such machines should it choose to do so. So, by mid-1942 the situation Britain would face when the conflict ended was all too apparent. With no passenger aircraft under construction or even on the drawing board, other than the York, the country would be entirely dependent on American aircraft to run commercial services. The government was urged to make a commitment to future civil aviation needs, to address the position of BOAC as a monopoly operator, to establish a Ministry of Civil Aviation, to engage with other countries on the post-war operation and legal framework for international air routes, and above all to formulate a programme for the design and development of civil aircraft. The Transport Aircraft Committee was set up to consider this final point. It would report to the Secretary of State for Air, Sir Archibald Sinclair,
and the Minister for Aircraft Production, Sir Stafford Cripps. The committee was chaired by Lord Brabazon of Tara, otherwise known as John Moore-Brabazon. He had been elevated to the House of Lords in early 1942, having previously acted as Minister of Transport and subsequently Minister for Aircraft Production within the wartime government. He had been a member of parliament for more than 20 years and served as president of the Royal Aeronautical Society for a period in the mid-1930s. Moore-Brabazon was also the first Briton to have flown in the British Isles and held aviators’ certificate number 1, issued in 1910. His credentials were without question. The committee drew its six other members from within the senior ranks of the Air Ministry and MAP.
Initial drafts often strayed some way beyond their remit, especially when challenging the lack of government policy, but much was omitted or diluted for the final issue. For immediate post-war use — referred to as “converted types” — Brabazon endorsed production of the York, the prototype of which had flown the previous year, and advocated the conversion to civil standards of ex-RAF Short Sunderlands. At that time, six were being fitted with seating for BOAC. A simple civil derivative of the Handley Page Halifax was also recommended, in the style of the Lancaster-to-York transformation, along with a civil version of the Short Shetland flying boat, then under construction but no longer required for military service. The report then recommended that design work should commence immediately on five new types, numbered in priority order, of which three were a straightforward continuation of pre-war thinking.
Cripps indicated they should report within one month and present a plan that would support Sinclair and him recommending to Cabinet a public declaration that the government would be willing to place an order for 2,500 civil aircraft. However, their formal terms of reference were more generalised: to consider which current aircraft types could best be adapted for civil use, to draw up indicative specifications for new types, and to advise which companies could engage in the design of these machines. Their role was purely advisory — all decisions would be made by the two ministers and by Cabinet. The committee convened on 23 December 1942. It solicited opinions from a small number of government advisors, aircraft and engine constructors and BOAC, considered pre-war traffic data, reviewed current aircraft and engines, and issued its report on 9 February 1943.
• Type 2, an unpressurised, twinengine aircraft to carry 20 passengers on routes into Europe (“DC-3 type”) • Type 3, a four-engine mediumrange aircraft, pressurised or unpressurised, for Empire routes (“York replacement”) • Type 5, a small, twin-engine, 12seat feeder-liner for UK and colonial use (“Lockheed 14 type”) The other two were more ambitious. • Type 1, a large, pressurised airliner with six or eight engines for a direct London-New York route • Type 4, an experimental jetpropelled mail-plane, also for transAtlantic service The committee stressed this was a list of minimum requirements and other types should be added
‘IMAGINATIVE’ CIVIL AIRCRAFT PRODUCTION PLAN FOR POST-WAR INDUSTRY York
Q1
Q2
Q3
Q4
Q5
Q6
Q7
Q8
Q9 Q10 Q11 Q12 Q13 Q14 Q15 Q16 Q17 Q18 Q19 Q20 Totals
8
24
40
56
85
115
120
110
106
101
100
1
4
7
11
15
15
53
5
9
15
15
15
15
77
Civil Halifax Shetland
1
2
865
Design and construction of prototype
London-New York Express DC-3 type
2
5
9
13
18
18
65
5
9
13
18
18
1,249
York replacement Jet mail-plane Cheap 12-seater 8
24
40
57
87
121
133
132
2
5
9
3
9
21
32
36
36
36
135
140
151
32
38
41
47
Note: Q refers to quarter years. The start date is not specified, but it can be assumed that the period begins in mid-1943
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when circumstances permitted: freighters, air taxis and helicopters. Research should also be initiated into advanced types, particularly flying wings. It was mindful of the opportunities gas turbines offered, but saw this means of propulsion as some way in the future for passenger types. Although the committee had been asked to suggest which companies could be considered for each type — and had done so in its early drafts — these were omitted in the final report until the specifications had been refined. There had been insufficient time to flesh these out. Advice from MAP estimated the production capacity of the post-war industry to be about 20 per cent of wartime levels and a broad assumption was that 50 per cent of this could be used for civil aircraft. There was a desire, notably from Cripps, that production should not fall too far in order to protect jobs. On that basis a rudimentary plan — described by the committee as “Imaginative” — sketched out a development and production schedule for the projects, in quarters for five years, if work commenced immediately. However, it questioned whether there would be a market for such numbers. There was general agreement that, for the larger aircraft, it would take up to five years until the first production examples flew, but estimates of the design man-years required varied considerably. A total of 3,100 design department staff were working in the industry
and this level was expected to continue. Of this number, 41 per cent were working on current aircraft, 50 per cent on new designs and nine per cent on research. The issue for the government was what percentage of these designers could be diverted onto civil projects while the war carried on. The Cabinet accepted the report’s recommendations, but with clear reservations. Although Cripps was unable to gain approval for his proposed declaration, he did announce he was confident that, a short time after the war, the country would be in a position to provide aircraft which it was expected would be better than those from the USA. This was a tall order given that the Douglas DC-4 and Lockheed Constellation had entered service recently. Winston Churchill counselled caution regarding the scale of production that would result from a civil aircraft programme in the immediate post-war period, believing a total output of 1,000 aircraft was more than ample. A second committee was required to further develop the proposals plus a government committee to enact their recommendations, chaired by the Lord Privy Seal, Lord Beaverbrook. Sir Archibald Sinclair announced in March that preliminary work would be permitted on a limited number of designs, in association with the government, as and when it could be arranged without interfering with work required
The government was urged to make a commitment to future civil aviation needs
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for the war. On 1 June Clement Attlee, the Deputy Prime Minister, named four companies that had been selected to prepare designs: Bristol, Avro, Handley Page and a consortium of Short Brothers and Saunders-Roe. Although he did not mention what aircraft were involved, these would mature as, respectively, the Bristol Brabazon for Type 1, the Avro Tudor with Lancaster IV/Lincoln wings for Type 3, the Handley Page Hermes, initially the civil derivative of the Halifax III, and the civil Short Shetland. By midyear rumours began to circulate regarding the ‘Bristol giant’, some not far from the truth, and Bristol advertisements featured concept artwork of its project. The Civil Air Transport Committee, also chaired by Brabazon, started work in May with an expanded membership that included Geoffrey de Havilland and BOAC’s Alan Campbell-Orde, representatives from the aircraft and airline industries. In November it increased the number of types, a sign that uncertainty and lobbying were beginning to cloud the process. The first committee had stressed that development of the airliner for Type 1 would take at least five years and it was thus agreed that a stop-gap aircraft should be built, championed vociferously by Beaverbrook. Type 3 was split into 3A for trans-Atlantic service, with intermediate stops, and 3B for medium-range routes. Type 5 was also split with the small feederliner as 5B and a larger four-engine aircraft as 5A. Beaverbrook confirmed in January 1944 that work had begun on the Bristol 167, now named Brabazon, for Type 1 and the interim Avro Tudor I for Type 3A. This was
ABOVE: The Vickers Viking proved a useful, if utilitarian, gap-filler. G-AGOK was the initial prototype. KEY COLLECTION
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AIRLINER HISTORY Brabazon Committee
ABOVE RIGHT: The Avro projects from December 1943 — the origin of the Tudor I and II. VIA RALPH PEGRAM
BELOW: The unmarked first prototype Avro 688 Tudor I, which subsequently became G-AGPF. KEY COLLECTION
followed by a somewhat vaguely phrased statement from Sinclair in mid-March outlining the seven types that had been recommended. By May it was known that de Havilland had been selected to build the Type 5B feeder-liner, the Dove, but no official announcement had yet been made that Airspeed would produce the Type 2, the Ambassador, and Miles Aircraft the Type 5A, the Marathon. During the tenure of the committees MAP held a vice-like grip on the aircraft industry and production for military contracts was paramount. Output rose month on month until it peaked at around 4,500 aircraft in July 1944. Companies perceived to be inefficient or uncooperative were dealt with ruthlessly. In early 1943 both General Aircraft and Shorts were judged as falling short on both counts and MAP appointed a controller to their boards to ensure the situation improved. While General Aircraft responded, Shorts did not do so to the satisfaction of MAP. Cripps stepped in and issued an order under the Defence (General) Regulations Act to purchase the company’s entire share capital, a nationalisation in all but name that stunned politicians and business leaders alike. Time and again in Parliamentary speeches and answers, it was stressed that work on civil aviation matters would only be countenanced provided there was no impact on the war effort. Serious progress on civil projects remained at a low level and delays were inevitable. Part of the debate concerned the privileged status of BOAC as a government-subsidised airline
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and the near-monopoly this created. However, whatever form government policy took BOAC was going to be the major customer for the aircraft taking shape under the committee’s guidance, and its views were crucial in defining the detailed specifications. BOAC had presented a paper to the first Brabazon Committee outlining the five groups of routes it would operate post-war and the aircraft required for the initial five years. This was at some variance with the committee’s recommendations, being distinctly conservative, and had to be addressed.
In March 1943 BOAC struggled to find a satisfactory working relationship with RAF Transport Command. When clarification was not forthcoming from the government the board resigned, which did nothing to strengthen the carrier’s role in the initial work of the committee. Rapid advances in technology and engine development had a huge impact on the committee’s recommendations, some of which, to be fair, it could not have
been expected to foresee at the outset. The initial assumption that all the new aircraft, other than Type 4, would be powered by some form of piston engine was thrown into doubt during 1944 as early jet performance exceeded expectations and made the use of such powerplants in civil aircraft appear increasingly viable. Of particular interest was the potential of propeller turbines, which held out the prospect of higher cruising speeds at acceptable rates of fuel consumption. Both forms of jet, it appeared, could be the key to leap-frog US aircraft and gain a lead in the post-war market. All the projects approved for Types 1, 2 and 3 were now subject to critical review. However, it was inevitable that the process to design, build, test and gain certification of a totally new class of engine would take time and push aircraft delivery dates back even further, and progress was not to prove as smooth as hoped. The interim aircraft types were now crucial to bridge the gap. New faces on the committee, the introduction of competitive tendering and a desire to incorporate nascent technology combined to nudge many of the original recommendations in different directions. The committee considered the Type 1 large trans-Atlantic airliner to be the more crucial and declared work should start immediately. The task was assigned to Bristol, without competitive tender. It was the only type not subject to major specification change. Bristol was reasonably well-advanced in the conceptual design of a “100-ton” bomber, which it considered an ideal basis from which to evolve an
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AIRCRAFT OPERATED BY BOAC: JANUARY 1944 Type Quantity Armstrong Whitworth Ensign
9
Boeing 314A
3
Consolidated Catalina
1
Consolidated Liberator
9
de Havilland Flamingo
5 5
de Havilland Mosquito Douglas Dakota
20
Lockheed Electra
2
Lockheed Hudson
2
Lockheed Lodestar
25
Lockheed Super Electra
1
Short C-class
14
Short Sunderland
11
airliner, yet this was an approach the committee had specifically cautioned against based on advice received from many quarters. Company artwork of the aircraft in January 1944 showed it with pusher engines and either a butterfly or conventional tail, but by the year’s end the familiar design with conventional tail and tractor engines had been adopted. In November 1945, just as the committee was completing its work, it was agreed that the second prototype should be powered by Bristol Proteus turboprops to boost performance. Type 2 underwent extensive revision. Airspeed’s initial concept for the Ambassador had been permitted to grow from a 30,000lb aircraft to one of more than 50,000lb and a change from two Bristol Hercules to two Bristol Centaurus, which gave well in excess of 50 per cent more power. Sound as these changes were, the intention for it to be a DC-3 replacement had been
lost along the way and that market still needed to be addressed. Vickers had neither been consulted by the committee nor assigned a project, but suggested civil derivatives of the Wellington, Warwick and Windsor bombers, all under the company’s generic designation Type 453. Unofficially these became known as the Wellington Continental, Warwick Continental and Windsor Empire, and through 1944 brochures were submitted to the committee. The smallest, powered by two Bristol Hercules, attracted its interest as a viable interim solution to fill the DC-3 niche. It was adopted as the VC1 Viking, although it was never officially attached to Type 2. With flying surfaces derived from the Wellington and Warwick and a new fuselage, the prototype made its maiden flight just prior to the end of the war. New ideas for airliners, no longer derived from bombers, continued to emerge from Vickers until one
The assumption that the new aircraft would be pistonpowered was thrown into doubt
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powered by four Rolls-Royce Dart or Armstrong Siddeley Mamba turboprops began to head the field. The committee took this project on board in the spring of 1945 and Type 2 was split, the Vickers design, eventually named as the VC2 Viscount, becoming Type 2B and the Ambassador meeting the Type 2A requirement. Progress on the Ambassador was painfully slow and what could have been a useful interim aircraft did not fly until mid1947, only one year ahead of the more advanced Viscount. Somewhat unnecessarily, Armstrong Whitworth was also granted a contract under Type 2B for the AW55 Apollo, powered by Mambas as a Viscount/Dart back-up. Type 3, the medium/long-range aircraft for Empire routes, had been assigned to Avro and underwent even more substantial change. The type had first been split and priority then given to interim designs, both variants of the Tudor. The longrange Tudor I flew in mid-1945, six months sooner than the MAP had anticipated. Unfortunately, the detail design appears to have been rushed. It suffered from unexpected poor stability and high drag, which delayed production. BOAC
ABOVE: BOAC’s fleet in 1944 was dominated by US aircraft, such as this Dakota, silhouetted by searchlights at Gibraltar. CROWN COPYRIGHT
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AIRLINER HISTORY Brabazon Committee
ABOVE: DH104 Dove prototype G-AGPK with the tail fin design adopted at the outset. KEY COLLECTION
concluded, controversially, that it was not acceptable for service on the Atlantic route. Progress on the medium-range Tudor II, which featured a longer and wider fuselage, was inevitably somewhat slower and its first flight followed nine months later. It proved equally disappointing. Handley Page’s Halifax III-based civil project was intended as a counterpart to the York, carrying a greater passenger load over shorter routes. As a simple adaptation of the bomber it was expected to be flying within a year, but that was soon held up. Handley Page was allowed to revise the design completely, as the Hermes, until it virtually duplicated the Tudor II. The prototype did not fly until the end of 1945 and was destroyed in a fatal crash on its maiden flight. Accepting that technical advances had overtaken its definition of Type 3, the committee paused it in late 1944, before the Tudor or Hermes had flown. Work began on revised specifications for larger, more advanced aircraft and it
was becoming apparent that transAtlantic range was possible. Tenders were invited but no decisions taken until long after the committee had completed its work. The failure of Avro and Handley Page to deliver interim aircraft meant BOAC’s important medium/long-range requirements in the immediate post-war years were not met. An early contender for the experimental jet mail-plane was submitted by Armstrong Whitworth, one of a number of tail-less concepts on which it had worked since mid-1942. The AW52 project was adopted by the newly formed Tailless Aircraft Advisory Committee, itself established on the advice of the committee, and approved for development. Ostensibly it was still a mail-plane, but in truth it was a pure research aircraft with laminar-flow aerofoils, boundary layer suction and innovative control surfaces. There had been doubts from the outset as to whether a mail-plane was an appropriate way to develop jet transport technology, so thoughts turned to an airliner for mediumrange routes. de Havilland appears to have been the front-runner from the start on the strength of its jet development programme — the DH100 fighter powered by the Halford H1, later the DH Goblin, flew in September 1943 and work was under way on the larger Ghost engine. Over the three years the committee was in session the company’s DH106 evolved and grew from a Vampire-like twin-boom
The game was still in play and had a long way to run
BILL ZUK
DEVELOPMENT OF THE DH106
1944
1945
1946
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1947
mail-plane to a six-passenger canard, a 24-passenger tail-less aircraft and then a 32-passenger version with a swept tailplane. It was well on the way to becoming the definitive Comet when the committee was disbanded. As it increased in size and capability it began to overlap and compete with both the Type 2 and Type 3 specifications. In 1943 de Havilland presented a design for the DH104 Dove, an eight-seat feeder-liner to replace its Dragon Rapide. Although a little small for Type 5, it was technically advanced and gained Air Ministry support. As a consequence, Type 5 was split into 5B for the Dove and 5A for a larger four-engine aircraft, eventually assigned to Miles as the Marathon. While the Dove went ahead without change, the Marathon suffered a little from changing requirements and a lack of clarity on its role. Bristol saw a need for a dedicated freight aircraft for both civil and military markets and submitted the Type 170, which was to use a wing design modified from its Bombay military transport. This was supported by MAP both as the Freighter and as the passengercarrying Wayfarer. In parallel with work on the York and Tudors, Avro gained approval in 1944 for production of the Lancastrian, a demilitarised Lancaster, following the successful conversion of Lancaster Xs by Victory Aircraft in Canada. Somewhat bizarrely it was now developing no less than four different civil transport projects,
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all derived from the Lancaster and overlapping in capability. Also outside the committee’s recommendations were two large flying boat projects from Blackburn and Saunders-Roe that featured prominently on the covers of Flight and The Aeroplane in the second half of 1944. The former, the Clydesman, was not supported, but vociferous and persistent lobbying — if not from BOAC — saw the latter, the SR45 Princess, being approved for construction of three examples soon after the committee had disbanded. This was, of course, an act of folly. The most expensive civil project of that era, it was cancelled after the prototype had flown. When the committee disbanded in December 1945 the war was over and a Labour government in power. Much was about to change. The Ministry of Civil Aviation had been formed in late 1944 but kept a low profile. Now it had more authority. MAP was absorbed into the Ministry of Supply. A White Paper outlining civil aviation policy was in draft and included legislation to nationalise the airlines. A new company, British South American Airways, established by shipping firms, was caught in this net. BOAC was in the process of forming a British European Airways (BEA) division, which would become a
AUTHOR’S NOTE: The various types are referred to in this piece as 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5, as in Brabazon’s initial report. However, some time later — certainly before 1945 — Roman numerals were adopted and they became Types I, II, III, IV and V.
separate company in August 1946. There were now three national airlines with overlapping but differing requirements. These shifts in power and games of musical chairs did nothing to aid the decision-making process, and conflicting demands slowed already delayed projects. The first goal of the committee, to have transport aircraft ready for civil use at the end of the war, had been missed comprehensively, but the game was still in play and had a long way yet to run.
Brabazon Committees
1944 D
J
F M A M
1
J
J
KEY COLLECTION
NEXT MONTH… Part two of Ralph Pegram’s Brabazon Committee history covers the Bristol Brabazon itself and its rivals — some weird, all less-than-wonderful — for the trans-Atlantic requirement.
THE BRABAZON COMMITTEE AIRCRAFT
1943 J F M A M J J A S O N
ABOVE: Cyril Uwins flying the prototype Bristol 170, G-AGPV.
1945 A
S
O N D
J
F M A M
J
J
A
S
O N D
First In Flight Service
Second Brabazon Committee
Type 1 Bristol Brabazon
2/44
Sept 1949
n/a
Type IIA
July 1947
Sept 1951
Type IIB
July 1948
Apr 1953
2/44 II
Type II 25/43
Airspeed Ambassador Vickers Viscount Armstrong Whitworth Apollo Vickers Viking
17/44
Mar 1947
n/a
Jun 1945
Sept 1946
Type III Avro Tudor I
Type IIIA
Avro Tudor II
Type IIIB
Handley Page Hermes
29/43 12/44 15/43
15/43 II 16/44
Avro Lancastrian
Jun 1945
n/a
Mar 1946
n/a
Dec 1945
July 1950
1943
Apr 1945
July 1949
May 1952
Type IV de Havilland Comet Type V Miles Marathon
Type VA
de Havilland Dove Bristol Freighter Saunders-Roe Princess
Type VB
Design to first flight of prototype Issue of specification
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18/44 26/43
18/44 II 26/43 II 22/44
May 1946
Nov 1952
Sept 1945
Dec 1946
Dec 1945
June 1946
Aug 1952
n/a
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HIDDEN HISTORY Neptunes in Africa
INTO AFRICA
When the Portuguese Air Force wanted to use its Lockheed P2V-5 Neptunes on the front line in Africa, it was not a simple matter. But these venerable maritime patrollers proved their worth on offensive missions against separatist guerrillas — and some other very interesting operations WORDS: JOSÉ MATOS
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A
s Portugal’s overseas territories became the scene of uprisings against colonial rule, so the country’s armed forces found themselves engaged in places far from home. Guinea-Bissau was one such, and in 1961 the Força Aérea Portuguesa (FAP, or Portuguese Air Force) bolstered its commitment to the theatre with some of its latest assets. In so doing, it caused a controversy. The FAP’s initial batch of Lockheed P2V-5 Neptune maritime patrol aircraft was assigned to Esquadra 61 at Base Aérea 6 in Montijo, just west of Lisbon, which had previously operated the Lockheed PV-2 Harpoon. The US Military Assistance Advisory Group (MAAG) in Portugal arranged the transfer of these secondhand aeroplanes from the Royal Netherlands Navy, and deliveries began in April 1960, a dozen having arrived by the following year. The Neptune fleet’s main functions were to be maritime patrol and antisubmarine warfare, in support of NATO’s defensive strategy, but with the onset of Portugal’s colonial wars in Africa, they were dispatched to Lisbon’s overseas territories. This was where sensitivities occurred. Eight FAP F-86F Sabres were detached to Guinea-Bissau in 1961, augmenting two squadrons of ageing F-84G Thunderjets stationed in Angola. They too had been supplied as part of US military aid, which specified that they should only be used to defend NATO territory in Europe. Employing them in a colonial conflict was viewed as breaching this agreement. It was, therefore, decided that the Neptunes would officially be based at Montijo and make occasional detachments to Africa according to military needs. The first P2V-5 deployment on African soil was a temporary measure, with the establishment during 1961 of Detachment 61 in the FAP’s Zona Aérea de Cabo Verde e Guiné (ZACVG, Air Zone of Cape Verde and Guinea). Initially based at Bissau, Portuguese Guinea, the two aircraft, their crews and a maintenance team were later redeployed to the island of Sal in the
Cape Verde archipelago, where the air force maintained its Aeródromo de Trânsito 1 (AT1, the 1st Transit Aerodrome). The FAP took considerable precautions when transferring the Neptunes to and from Bissau, in order to avoid political conflicts with NATO allies. That, however, did not prevent the air force from maintaining a continuous detachment there of at least one aircraft and crew. Former P2V-5 pilot Gen Conceição e Silva recalls, “It was an easy-to fly machine when it weighed no more than 67,000lb, above which it did not fly well on just one engine. The aircraft’s maximum weight was 82,500lb. Controlling the fuel supply for long-haul flights was based on the fuel initially being consumed from the main tanks until the aircraft reached a weight of 67,000lb if you jettisoned the tip-tanks, meaning you could continue flying on just one engine. “We had a case of engine failure on the eight-hour route to Sal when the pilot had to detach the tiptanks and land at Gando, in the Canaries. Only the starboard tip-tank incorporated the searchlight, an extraordinarily expensive piece of equipment offering several million candle-power of illumination. Serial 4703 never had tip-tanks again. This incident led me to request that transits to Cape Verde should always stop at Gando, allowing the fuel load to be halved and to avoid any further loss of tiptanks. This was taken up.” In Guinea, the P2V-5s were used for maritime reconnaissance over the Bissagos (Bijagós) islands and ground reconnaissance throughout the territory, searching for possible guerrilla infiltration routes. There were also appearances by Soviet merchant ships, “detected in Guinean waters”, according to Conceição e Silva, “for the obvious purpose of providing support for the insurrection”. With the outbreak of open insurgent warfare in 1963, the FAP began employing the type on daytime offensive missions, using rockets and free-fall bombs. Later, it would be tasked with night bombing and attack missions.
Aircraft supplied as part of US military aid were only to be used to defend NATO territory
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LEFT: The magnificent view from within a threeaircraft formation of Portuguese Air Force P2V-5 Neptunes, flying along the coast near Sagres in the Algarve. ALL PHOTOS CONCEIÇÃO E SILVA UNLESS OTHERWISE CREDITED
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HIDDEN HISTORY Neptunes in Africa
A pair of Neptunes on the ground at Sal, along with two FAP F-86Fs. So controversial did the use in Portugal’s colonial conflicts of the US-supplied Sabres prove that they were withdrawn in late 1964. Meanwhile, in the foreground is Beech 18 CR-CAH.
SUB-HUNTING
B
ack home at Montijo, Neptune crews belonging to Esquadra 61 practised the type’s bread-andbutter anti-submarine mission, typical mission lengths being somewhere in the region of eight hours. Gen Conceição e Silva recalls that the type “was comfortable and the autopilot, although not first-rate, helped”. Such sorties, he adds, “required good control in the instrument flying regime, with the aircraft flying at 200ft over a rough sea, at night, with bad weather, ice formation and extremely limited visibility. These were the conditions we often encountered in NATO exercises with HMS Sea Eagle [the Joint Anti-Submarine Warfare School] in Londonderry when, at the end of the year, we joined other countries’ anti-submarine aircraft. “Flying at this altitude was necessary for the use of MAD (magnetic anomaly detection) equipment and for sonobuoy launches. It was already demanding enough, but the formation of ice forced us to activate the P2V-5’s anti-icing equipment. This was an electric system on the propellers, but the wing leading edges were heated by several torches, for want of a better word, which burned 115/145-octane fuel from the engines. We didn’t really like using them, although, as it turned out, we had no reason to distrust them.”
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The Neptune had 12 weapons hardpoints, which could carry bombs from 50 to 340kg (110 to 750lb), as well as anti-submarine weapons such as torpedoes, depth charges and sea mines. Underwing rocket launchers took up to sixteen 2.25, 2.75 or 5in rockets. However, the aircraft lacked a precision bomb-aiming system, limiting its use to area targets. When the war in Guinea started during 1963, the FAP had at Bissalanca a detachment of eight F-86Fs, the same number of T-6 Texans and four Auster D5/160s. They were soon augmented by seven Dornier Do 27s, a C-47 Skytrain and three Alouette II helicopters. All these types were engaged in a major operation on the island of Como, considered by the guerrillas to be a liberated area. Dubbed Operation ‘Trident’, this offensive took place in early 1964 and saw the first use of the P2V-5 in combat. The air force received the operations order on 10 January 1964. It defined the missions the FAP should carry out in support
of land and naval forces, ranging from close support during and after the disembarkation through reconnaissance, casualty evacuation and resupply to establishment of an advance command post. Several aerial assets were put into action, including a P2V-5 from Sal which was detached to Bissalanca. For the air force, ‘Trident’ started on 14 January. An Auster dropped leaflets over Como and Caiar to warn the population of the impending action, in order to try and avoid civilian casualties, but it was attacked several times by guerrillas in the village of Catabão Segundo on Como. FAP offensive operations then got under way, including the involvement of the P2V-5. It dropped two 50kg bombs on canoes and four more on Catabão Segundo, some houses being destroyed. The next day, ground forces disembarked, their advance supported by the T-6s. The first night bombing sortie by a Neptune took place against suspected guerrilla positions in the Cachil forest on 25 January,
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also using 50kg bombs. The same load was employed when a P2V-5 bombed the Cassaca forest and Catabão Segundo by night on 28 February, in an area where some fires had been detected. A Neptune returned to Como on 29 February, this time in daylight. March saw little guerrilla activity, and air operations decreased in tandem until the end of ‘Trident’ on the 24th. When in 1965 the PAIGC (Partido Africano para a Independência da Guiné e Cabo Verde, or African Party for the Independence of Guinea and Cape Verde) installed anti-aircraft defences in Cantanhez, FAP efforts were directed towards suppressing them. Two P2V-5s were sent from Sal to Bissalanca, and on 18 December attacks against guerrilla positions resumed. The strikes took place at night and began with a pass by a C-47 at 4,500ft, launching magnesium grenades to illuminate the night sky. Two minutes later, the initial P2V-5 dropped its 325kg bombs; after another two-minute interval, the second did likewise. These operations took place over two successive nights. On the first night they provoked a strong reaction from the guerrillas, but on the second the anti-aircraft fire fell silent. The operation was concluded on the 20th. By early 1963 the FAP’s P2V-5s had found themselves engaged in another African theatre of operations, after the 2ª Região Aérea (2nd Air Region) in Angola requested its own Neptune deployment. To accommodate this request, the FAP moved the maintenance team and related materiel from AT1 to BA9 in Luanda. Consequently, Detachment 61 on Sal was compelled to rely solely on BA6 at Montijo for maintenance support. This decision had serious repercussions for the detachment, whose operations became more costly and operationally inefficient. Without on-scene maintenance support at Sal, aircraft repairs entailed long periods of inactivity, either while parts were delivered from metropolitan Portugal or skilled personnel were dispatched from Montijo. Additionally, the detachment’s aircraft had to return to Montijo after 60 flight hours for their second periodic inspection. Given that these 60 hours included some 20 round-trip flight hours between Portugal and Sal, as well
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as 13 flying hours to and from Guinea, the effective operational availability of each Neptune was reduced to approximately 27 hours every two weeks — a period which corresponded to the time it took to dispatch a Neptune to BA6 and return it to theatre. As a result, the operational efficiency of the P2V-5 in the ZACVG plummeted. The transfer of the maintenance team to Luanda only worsened the situation, leading to the disbandment of Detachment 61 in late 1964. Thereafter, Neptunes supporting the ZACVG operated out of Montijo, where the FAP always maintained two aircraft and crews in a state of readiness to assist Portuguese forces in Cape Verde and Guinea. A new P2V-5 unit called Detachment 62 was established in
Angola during February 1963. BA9 hosted two Neptunes and their crews, in addition to a maintenance team and a spare parts warehouse. The detachment was initially limited to reconnaissance missions, both offshore and over land, taking advantage of the aircraft’s long range. However, in 1966 the Ministry of Defence decided also to deploy the type to BA10 in Beira, Mozambique, in response to the naval blockade imposed on Rhodesia by the international community. This crisis originated in the then-Rhodesian government’s unilateral declaration of independence in November 1965, which led Britain — with the backing of the UN Security Council — to immediately declare an oil embargo and sweeping economic sanctions against the self-declared nation the following April. The
FAP offensive operations got under way, including the involvement of the P2V-5
TOP: Serial 4706 in the cruise. With a large wingspan for its size, the Neptune was a very stable maritime patrol platform. ABOVE: Refuelling and servicing of an Esquadra 61 Neptune under way at Bissalanca.
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HIDDEN HISTORY Neptunes in Africa
A magnificent low flyby at Sal by P2V-5 4704. This variant was redesignated as the P-2E under the new US military designation system in 1962.
A
embargo involved a blockade of the port of Beira by a British naval force, raising tensions in the region. In this atmosphere the Portuguese government sent paratroops and six F-84Gs from Angola to Mozambique, as well as both Neptunes that had been deployed to BA9. These aircraft now formed Detachment 63 at BA10. The decision to transfer these aircraft, crews, support materiel and maintainers to Mozambique was not well-received by the FAP air commanders in Angola. They complained to the air force general staff about the negative consequences for the operational capacity of BA9 which the end of Detachment 62 precipitated. However, the minister’s decision proved irreversible. The Neptunes arrived in Mozambique during May 1966. They began performing maritime reconnaissance flights in an area bounded by the mouths of the
METEOR DOWN!
nother reason for keeping a P2V-5 at Sal airport was to perform search and rescue duties in an area within a 100nm radius. This led to one especially notable mission, recalled by then-Capt José Nolasco Martins. “We received a communication from the Sal control tower that a Meteor NF14 fighter, which had taken off from Faro and was due to stop in Sal, had already exceeded its estimated landing time by 30 minutes. The only information known about his position was a report made ‘abeam’ of the Canaries.” The background concerns the war in Biafra, the secessionist state that had declared itself independent of Nigeria on 30 May 1967, and thereafter been the scene of a blockade and armed conflict. Among numerous clandestine attempts to obtain arms for the Biafran cause were efforts to supply its fledgling air force with Gloster Meteors. Two ex-Swedish Meteor TT20 target tugs made it no further than Gosselies, Belgium. Another deal — at the centre of which was Tony Osborne, founder of the British Historic Aircraft Museum at Southend — involved a pair of NF14s, former Rolls-Royce ‘hack’ G-ASLW and ex-RAE Bedford example WS804, which became G-AXNE. The ruse by which the British authorities would be deceived into allowing their export, in contravention of the arms embargo against Biafra, was that the two Meteors were to participate in a film about the Korean War. G-ASLW left the Rolls-Royce factory airfield at Hucknall on 6 July 1969, making first for Bournemouth and then Bordeaux. From there it headed to Faro in Portugal the next day. G-AXNE joined it during September, both aircraft being prepared and armed ready for delivery to Biafra. They departed Faro on 21 September, ’NE reaching Bissau where it was grounded with engine trouble. The fate of ’LW was much worse. José Nolasco Martins says, “Having contacted Dakar, the coordinating centre for SAR missions, we set out to initiate the search in an area east of Sal. This was on the assumption that the jet, having a shortage of fuel, would attempt to land on the African coast. They
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replied, perhaps thinking the same, that they would investigate this area. We then chose an area north-west of Sal, which we started to scan at 09.05hrs, without any results. “The next day we spoke to Dakar again and we proposed to explore an area north-east of Sal. They informed us they had already planned a search of that area themselves. We agreed to conduct a search along an axis between Sal and the Canaries, starting on a ‘creeping line’ from Sal heading north. “At the end of the search of the assigned area, the on-board navigator informed me that we were going to start the final leg of the ‘creeping line’. Having reached the end of that last leg, on a flight that had already lasted more than 10 hours, I decided, out of conscience, to carry out a definitive last look to the east. I said to the navigator, ‘We’ll do one more leg and then return to Sal.’ “It was on that last leg, that, with great emotion from everyone on board, we heard the observer in the port side of the tail — I believe it was my crew’s flight engineer — shout, ‘I’ve seen smoke to our left!’ With a rapid, tight turn to the left I discovered the origin of this smoke: a small inflatable boat, with the missing pilot. There was immense joy on board, only surpassed by that of the castaway…” He was Dutch pilot Pieter Dezeeuw. Problems with the Meteor caused him first to land at Funchal, on Madeira. Then, as reported in Shadows, Michael Draper’s superb account of the Biafran air war and airlift (Hikoki Publications, 1999), Dezeeuw decided “to make up lost time” on 28 September by trying to get as far as possible in one hop. “Inevitably”, wrote Draper, “the aircraft ran short of fuel.” “As is usual in that area”, continues José Nolasco Martins, “there was a strong north-easterly wind. If we’d lost sight of the boat, we’d struggle to find it again. Therefore, it was necessary to mark it immediately, first with smoke and then with ink. The rescue operation would continue with the launch of a large airborne lifeboat — capacity 20 people — that we always carried on board for these missions, a delicate manoeuvre in the prevailing weather conditions.
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Save and Zambezi rivers, and extending 150 miles into the channel separating Madagascar from Mozambique. During the peak of the Rhodesian crisis their flight hours never exceeded the monthly limit of 95. P2V-5 activity decreased dramatically from October 1966, with maritime reconnaissance missions rarely surpassing one sortie a week per crew. This was mainly attributed to maintenance limitations in Mozambique, and delays in shipping spare parts from Portugal. In consequence, the two aircraft experienced long periods of inactivity and flew only 293 hours combined in 1967, indicating a very low level of operational efficiency that did not justify their continued presence in Mozambique. The FAP therefore proposed concentrating
all its Neptunes at Montijo, after creating an early warning system that would allow timely deployment to any of the African theatres. Thus, Detachment 63 came to an end in 1968, with the return to Montijo of the two P2V-5s from Beira. But other taskings continued. November 1970 saw Operation ‘Mar Verde’, in which the Portuguese military invaded Conakry, the capital of the Republic of Guinea, in an attempt to overthrow the PAIGCsupporting regime. Involving an amphibious assault mounted from Portuguese Navy ships, the undertaking was prepared in great secrecy. The Portuguese hoped to surprise Guinean forces and therefore could not be detected en route to Conakry. For this reason, a P2V-5 was deployed to accompany
A Neptune accompanied the force to Conakry
The rescued Meteor pilot, Pieter Dezeeuw, with the FAP Neptune crew that recovered him from the sea in late September 1969. JOSÉ NOLASCO MARTINS
These vessels self-inflated during their descent, touching down on the water completely full. A small error in calculating the wind direction, or in executing the drop, would most likely cause the castaway to fail to reach the boat. “Fortunately, everything went well. We launched more smoke markers, we determined with sufficient accuracy the wind direction, we flew low — at an altitude of about 100ft — and we dropped the lifeboat so the wind would drag it towards the survivor. It actually happened: we saw with emotion and satisfaction the pilot jumping into the boat and expressing his joy by leaping into the air. “There was now the problem of collecting the downed pilot. Contacting the Portuguese Navy, based in Cape Verde, we were informed it was impossible for them to satisfy our request, since they would have to go to refuel in Mindelo, on the island of São Vicente. We then decided to issue a distress call on the emergency frequency, giving the co-ordinates of the castaway. It happened that our transmission was picked up by a merchant ship sailing close to
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the naval force and ensure its safe passage. The six-vessel task force left Guinea on 20 November. The 120-mile journey took just over a day, the Neptune crew making it possible to avoid any potentially hostile boats that could give away the whole mission. Although the operation proved a partial failure, the P2V-5 played its part well. Neptunes continued to appear in the three Portuguese colonies, but on short-term contingency deployments rather than permanent detachments. At Montijo, the fleet flew about 1,500 hours a year, a monthly average of 10.5 hours per aircraft assigned, but even this very low rate of use was further degraded from 1971 by a lack of personnel and poor aircraft availability. Replacement of the P2V-5 became a priority, yet a lack of funds delayed it by many years. Not until 1978 were the last two examples retired, and not before time.
the area, which answered and immediately headed for the position provided. Coincidentally, that ship was also Dutch! “By then we really had to return to Sal to refuel — on that second day we amassed 12 hours five minutes’ flight time. We contacted Dakar, which had an aircraft exploring another search area at the time, informing them that we were flying over the pilot about 90nm north of Sal. We made a full situation report and asked them to take our place. Transmitting continuously, so they could home in on our location, we came to be replaced by a French aircraft, which later went to refuel at Sal. After the exchange, the merchant ship arrived in the area, picked up the pilot, transported him late at night to Sal and took our lifeboat on board. “The Meteor pilot, during the two or three days he spent in Sal recovering — almost always with a glass in his hand — described his odyssey. He took off, with fuel filled to the brim, from Faro bound for Sal, his first stage. The second would be from Sal to Bissau, and his destination was Biafra. His only navigational instrument was a radio compass, which broke down before arriving at Sal. He reported being abeam the Canaries and, when he calculated he was close to Sal, seeing a dark spot in the sea that seemed to him to be an island led him to descend. But it was just the shadow of a cloud, and he climbed again. This happened to him two or three times, the result being that he ended up running out of fuel and the engines stopped, because a jet consumes much more fuel at low altitude. Then, with one leg stuck next to his seat, he couldn’t get out of the cockpit — the aeroplane had no ejection seat. Finally, he managed to free himself and parachute into the water. “He also told us that what impressed him most that night at sea — admittedly with little hope of being found — had been the flying fish jumping over him. When, the next day, he heard our aircraft searching, his hope increased dramatically, and he decided to save the only smoke he had for when we passed as close as possible to him.” Biafra never got any of ‘its’ Meteors. Two were stranded in Belgium, G-ASLW had crashed, the Foreign Office stopped G-AXNE going any further than Bissau, and the potential sale of ex-Ferranti NF11/14 G-ARCX was blocked. Ben Dunnell and José Matos
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meets
LANG KIDBY England-to-Australia flights in both Vickers Vimy replica and original Avro Avian are among the greatest feats by this renowned adventurer
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t’s difficult nowadays to truly conjure the spirit of aviation’s pioneers. So many are the restrictions and requirements placed on the private pilot, no matter where in the world they might fly, that the carefree days of yore seem very far off — impossible, even, to re-create, especially in an historic aeroplane. But a select few have been successful in such endeavours, and Lang Kidby is a marvellous example. This humorous, no-nonsense Australian masterminded the first of the replica Vickers Vimy’s commemorative journeys, from England to Australia in 1994. A few years later he made the trip again, in an Avro Avian. For Lang these achievements are part and parcel of a fascination for machines and the relentless search for a new challenge. With his wife Bev, he’s organised and participated in countless intrepid endeavours on two and four wheels: re-creating the 1907 Peking to Paris race with cars of the correct make, driving a Fiat 500 around the world,
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WORDS: BEN DUNNELL and heading a 6,000km ride from Ukraine to Italy by 20 old Russian Army motorcycles and sidecars are but three of many. Just before our interview, they’d been leading their latest outback expedition. Lang grew up in Southport, on the Gold Coast in Queensland. “I was always interested as a kid, building model aeroplanes and reading all the classic aviation magazines of the ’50s, but I never really thought I was going to fly. When I was about 16 I convinced my father that I wanted to go on a helicopter ride, and it was on one of those atrocious Bristol Sycamores. I couldn’t believe that something could shake like that and still stay in the sky. That really got me interested in flying. After I finished school I went off and worked on oil rigs. I bought a semi trailer and drove interstate for about 18 months when I was 18. Then I finally decided I was going to join the army. “I would have been more than happy to be an infantry platoon commander, but I saw the aviation side of it as well and thought
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Lang and Peter McMillan flying Vickers Vimy replica NX71MY over the Saudi Arabian desert, between Al Wajh and Ha’il. JAMES L. STANFIELD/NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC
Young locals crowd around a PC-6B Turbo Porter of the Australian Army Aviation Corps, which Lang has just landed in Papua New Guinea. VIA LANG KIDBY
On the day of his first solo from RAAF Base Point Cook, Victoria, in 1967, his mount a CA-25 Winjeel. VIA LANG KIDBY
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AEROPLANE MEETS Lang Kidby RIGHT: With PC-6B A14-687 at Kiunga, Papua New Guinea, during 1973. Lang flew 3,000 hours in the “go-anywhere” Pilatus utility aircraft, and loved it.
VIA LANG KIDBY
BELOW RIGHT: Driving a GAF Nomad behind a DC-3 over Lae, during a memorable tour as ops officer and second-incharge of the Papua New Guinea Defence Force’s Air Transport Squadron.
VIA LANG KIDBY
I’d give it a go. By some miracle, because my educational standard wasn’t all that high, I was accepted. I went off to a recruit training platoon and became a platoon commander there for about six months. That was interesting, because it was during national service. I had a platoon of 60 guys, double the size of a normal platoon, and they were all 20 and I was 19. That was a learning curve, mate, dealing with all these characters, a lot of whom didn’t really want to be there. But then I went to Point Cook in Victoria to train on the Winjeel. Did a year or so there, and after that up to Amberley, the big base at Brisbane, where Australian Army Aviation was starting. “Half-way through the course [on 1 July 1968] they created the new Australian Army Aviation Corps. They said, ‘Give us all your hats and badges’, and handed us our new blue berets. It was very much following the British system. For the operational training course, the army had a lot of Cessna 180s, and then the Pilatus Turbo Porter. The Porter isn’t one of my favourite aeroplanes — it is my favourite aeroplane. It’s the most fantastic thing that’s ever flown. Airline pilots probably don’t like them, but real pilots do. Just the most wonderful, tough, strong, powerful, goanywhere, do-anything aircraft. And the Pratt & Whitney PT6 is the best engine that’s ever been built. “Army aviation started because the air force wasn’t providing the service the army wanted. If there wasn’t a four-star hotel they wouldn’t come and help you. We’d find a field, or a road, or wherever the army was. If it was long enough, we’d put the Porter in, or the Cessna 180 originally. You were nothing special, you were just another corps of the army — everyone was basically an infantry platoon commander, no matter what corps you went to, so you fully understood what the guys expected you to do. You were part of the system, not visitors doing a job for them. It was a lot of fun. “In those days we had No 183 Independent Reconnaissance Flight up in Lae, on the north coast of New Guinea, supporting the Pacific Islands Regiments. They had two battalions, one at Port Moresby and the other at Wewak. They were continually on patrol — the platoons would go out in a big circle for three weeks, just to make contact with the locals. While we were there, we ran
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into people who’d never, ever seen Europeans. We’d go and camp in the plantation with our aircraft, and every morning we’d take off and go and try and find the platoons, flying round and round in circles, because some of them couldn’t navigate very well in the jungle. You’d go to where you thought they were, flying in bigger and bigger circles, talking to them on the radio. “We’d drop their food to them, or any mail. In hilly country, if they’d run out of water, what we used to try and do was freeze plastic jerry cans solid. We’d run in, put the wheels into the grass or the tops of the trees, and chuck these things out. They’d bounce all over the place, which would probably break the jerry cans, but they’d still have the big block of ice. The boys would run up and put it in a groundsheet or something until it melted, so they’d get their water that way. We found if we chucked water out in a normal jerry can, they’d burst. That flying was really good fun, all seat-of-the-pants stuff. They wouldn’t do it now — I nearly died about a thousand times… “I was flying Beech Queen Airs as well. We had Queen Airs doing mapping, and we’d go off to
Indonesia, New Guinea or central Australia for a week, two weeks or up to three months of high-level photography. We spent three months doing all the maps for the Indonesian Army. Everyone wondered why the hell we were doing that. Somebody said, ‘If we ever have to fight ’em, we’ll have the original maps!’” When Papua New Guinea became independent in 1975, Lang was sent there to assist the newly formed PNG Defence Force. “We took three GAF Nomads, and they had three DC-3s to start with, though they ended up with five. It was a joint army/air force squadron — the air force guys had the DC-3s and the army guys had the Nomads, but everybody was crosstrained. The whole idea was to work ourselves out of a job, because we all had understudy Papua New Guinean guys. We did quite a lot of fisheries stuff, eight-hour trips looking for Taiwanese fishing vessels, working with patrol boats. We’d fly square patterns over the ocean, in beautiful weather, and it was delightful. There were two of us, and one guy would read a book while the pilot sat looking at the radar. “They had a little war in Vanuatu, or what was then called the New Hebrides, and sent us across there
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and dealing, and finding out who actually owned the aeroplanes — were right at the top level. Once the contract was signed, the negotiations started. I did that for a few years, but then it got to a point where it wasn’t fun any more — it was bloody hard work. I didn’t need that. So I decided to run the World Vintage Air Rally from England to Australia, just for something to do. “Off the top of my head, I said to Bev how it’d be good fun to jump in a little aeroplane and fly from England to Australia — to go over there, buy a cheap little Auster or Cessna or something, and fly it back. Well, people heard about it, and one thing led to another. It ended up as 23 aircraft, all built before 1947, which left from White Waltham.”
with two DC-3s and a Nomad. The British and French owned it jointly — can you imagine a worse partnership? The British had taken over the public service, as you would expect, and the French had taken over all the commercial side. The plantations on the New Hebrides were run by the French, and they didn’t want independence. There was quite a well-organised resistance group being fed weapons.” The day after Vanuatu’s independence ceremony on 30 July 1980, PNGDF transport aircraft ferried national troops to the country’s main island, Espiritu Santo. As Lang has written, “The PNG force immediately went into action against the rebels, resulting in a number of fierce firefights and casualties on both sides. Many prisoners were captured in the initial operation. These prisoners, both native people and French planters, were taken back to Vila in our aircraft for trial and imprisonment. “Some very nasty scenes occurred at the airport when the police settled old scores. The prisoners,
with their hands tied behind their backs, were thrown the two metres out of the DC-3 doors, then made to run a gauntlet of pounding truncheons to the paddy-wagons — all in front of the world press. I had a few worrying moments trying to convince the excited chief of police that they would not have our aircraft unless they chose to settle their scores in a more private place.” Back home, says Lang, “They said, ‘Here’s a desk’. I said, ‘No, thanks very much’, and resigned there and then”. He and another ex-army pilot bought a marine construction business, but Lang carried on flying with a Piper Cub, Austers, Cessnas and other light aeroplanes. “After about four years I got sick of being away so much, so I came back home. A guy gave me a job running a company, Transcorp, restoring vintage aircraft, but the main thing was going all over South-east Asia and Europe looking for second-hand World War Two aeroplanes, largely for American collectors. “That was a lot of fun, because the negotiations — the wheeling
I learned a lot about human nature on that trip, I can tell you!
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LEFT: With Peter McMillan in the Vimy’s cockpit. For some time, McMillan was the project’s sole major funder. NORMAN PEALING
Tales of the event would fill a book. Twelve of the aircraft that started on 25 March 1990 reached the finish at Caboolture near Brisbane, Lang and Bev having made the journey in the official support aeroplane, a Cessna 340. “Getting the clearances was unbelievably difficult”, he says. “More than half the participants were American, and the Americans had got great expectations. I learned a lot about human nature on that trip, I can tell you!” And he got to know a young American stockbroker called Peter McMillan, who’d entered a T-6 Texan and was among the dozen finishers. “Peter was a really nice guy, and we became very friendly during that trip. He came over to Australia about six months later, and I took him camping to some beautiful sand islands off Brisbane. We were sitting on top of a hill, having a beer, watching the bloody sun go down. I’d been thinking about the Vickers Vimy for a long time, but I didn’t know what to do. Maybe I could re-create Ross and Keith Smith’s England-Australia trip — who knows? Peter, being an American, knew nothing about the Vimy, so I talked to him and said, ‘Why don’t we do it?’ I reckoned I could build one, but it had got to be financed. He said he wanted to be in on it. Sixty weeks after that, the aircraft flew. “We were really lucky that a mate of mine, Bill Whitney, is an aeronautical engineer who’d been doing bits of work on some of my aeroplanes. He’d drawn the plans up for the [Fokker F.VIIb] Southern Cross replica, and I went to see
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AEROPLANE MEETS Lang Kidby
BELOW: It missed the odd beat along the way, but the Vimy reached Australia, allowing this photoshoot over Sydney. JAMES L. STANFIELD/ NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC
him. I asked where we were going to get Vickers Vimy plans, because there had to be some somewhere. He got up, pulled out his bottom drawer, and there he had a full set of the original Vimy plans. There was a stack of sheets about 4in thick. “I told him what we were going to do, and he said, ‘Right, I’ll give them to the boys, we’ll run all these through the CAD [computer-aided design program] and see what we can do with modern materials’. No, I told him: we didn’t want modern materials, we wanted it exactly as it was. Bill explained that it probably wouldn’t come up structurally to modern standards, and that we’d have to beef it up here and there. “After they’d put about 30 of these pages through the CAD, he rang me up and said he’d done all the engineering, all the structural side — bolt sizes, bolt strengths, wire strengths and all that sort of stuff — and absolutely nothing needed changing. They’d got it all right in 1919. It still met engineering standards. We were really happy. “We started building the aircraft in Australia, but we found CASA [the Civil Aviation Safety Authority] was bloody hopeless. We said the only way we were going to get this built was in America. We’d already had the fuselage built here, and
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all the metal parts, so we picked it all up and I went over with it in a FedEx 747 to San Francisco. We got a nice workshop there, and found some really good woodworking guys. The wood was the same as the original, the hand-stitched linen was the same as the original. The FAA was fantastic — their guys came out to see us, offering us advice and all sorts. They got right into it. That would never have happened in Britain or Australia.” After two years and somewhere in the region of 20,000 man-hours, the result was ready. Under the power of two Chevrolet V8 engines in place of the original’s Rolls-Royce Eagles, but delivering the same output, the Vimy made its maiden flight from Hamilton Army Airfield, California, on 30 July 1994. Lang and Peter Hoar (see Aeroplane July 2020) were at the controls. Getting that far was a remarkable achievement. Time was getting tight, for the aircraft — registered NX71MY — was due to embark on its flight to Australia, marking the 75th anniversary of the Smiths’ feat, from September’s Farnborough show. Transporting it in a US Air Force C-5 Galaxy seemed ideal, but how to make the arrangements?
“I rang the Pentagon and asked to talk to the person who owned all the Galaxies. I got put through to a secretary and said I wanted to talk to the general. She put me through to his office, but he wasn’t there. His office said they’d put me through to his chief of staff, a colonel. I told him, ‘I’ve been on to the general’s office and I was told you could help me’. He promised to make a few calls, and about three hours later he rang up and said Travis AFB near San Francisco had a Galaxy going on a navigation exercise to RAF Mildenhall on such-and-such a date. It wouldn’t have any cargo on it. If we could be there in three weeks’ time, we could use the aeroplane. “We were panicking, because we’d only done two test flights at that stage. We were supposed to do 50 hours in the air before the FAA would sign it off as an experimental aircraft, and I rang up their engineering guy and said we had a problem as we weren’t going to be able to do that. I’d done all the testflying, and I’d been really religious in doing the paperwork for it. He asked me, ‘What’s it fly like?’ I told him it flew really good. ‘Well’, he said, ‘you’ve got 26 hours on it. If it’s going to crash, it would have crashed by now. I’ll sign it off for you’.” Flying the Vimy in Britain always proved difficult, Lang says, because of CAA intransigence towards the US-registered replica. That situation never changed. But it made its date with destiny: 11 September 1994, and departure for Australia. As the Vimy lifted off Farnborough’s runway, so a Qantas Boeing 747-400 flew low overhead. It was the start of nothing less than a modern epic. Kidby and McMillan had only got as far as France when they were soaked through during a heavy storm. Departing Pisa, Italy on the fourth day, the headwinds were so strong there was no option but to turn back and wait for an improvement. Things got trickier still in the Middle East. A flight around the pyramids at Giza brought Egypt’s air defences to their toes, a situation only calmed with the help of Australian embassy staff. McMillan wrote in National Geographic, “Feelings were still tender about our brazen flyby for the next two days, however, during which fog and red tape kept us on the ground.” “The worst part we had was out of Cairo, bound for Saudi Arabia”, Lang recalls. “This thing flew like
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a dog and had no performance. It was built exactly from the original plans. We could have made it fly so much better if we’d changed things — Bill Whitney said we could have balanced ailerons, and slightly change the profile of the wings, and do this and do that, and I’d said no. When it was loaded, its performance was… pretty atrocious. The Egyptians were really giving us a hard time, and we had to get out of Egypt. We took off from Cairo, and I couldn’t see the end of the runway. It was a combination of dust and fog. We had basic instruments — we didn’t have an artificial horizon, let alone any panel. It only had a 50ft per minute rate of climb, and it was unbelievable. It was the hardest flight I’d ever done, trying to keep the thing climbing.” Bear in mind that the two pilots were communicating by means of handwritten notes passed between the two cockpits, so noisy were the Chevrolet V8s, and that the aircraft had to be physically flown all the time. There was not a moment of relaxation or respite. “After about an hour-and-a-half”, Lang
continues, “we got to about 2,000ft, and they kept screaming at us to go to 11,000 because otherwise we’d be intercepted. The next time they told us, I said, ‘Right-o, thanks very much…’ The whole way through Saudi Arabia, there was dust, and dry lightning too, from the friction of the sand.” Tensions on the border between India and Pakistan caused lengthy deliberations, and a change of route from Karachi to Delhi. Then the Vimy’s starboard engine began giving trouble, vibrating so badly an unscheduled landing was called for on the Malaysian island of Langkawi. A replacement spark plug provided only a shortterm fix, and over Lampung province, on the southern tip of Sumatra, there was no option but to force-land in a rice paddy. “It goes down at about 300ft a minute on one engine”, says Lang. “The good engine takes you to the scene of the crash. If it had been a modern aeroplane it would have been wrecked, but with the big bungee cords on the undercarriage it bounced and bounced, and it
When the Vimy was loaded, its performance was pretty atrocious
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only broke the tailwheel, which we managed to get fixed. Fortunately, it was the dry season…” The Vimy may have been down, but it was far from out. Lang calls the aftermath, “the best couple of days. I built an airstrip, which was fantastic fun. I really got a lot of achievement out of that. We brought our other engine out from Australia, where we had it waiting as a spare. Qantas flew it up to Jakarta, and the Australian Army Nomad we had with us for the National Geographic film crew brought it out to us. A hundred people lifted the engine in, and away we went.” Away, and on to Australia, for the replacement powerplant kept running all the way over the fearsome Timor Sea. On the afternoon of 22 October, the Vimy passed over Fannie Bay, where the Smiths and their two crew had alighted in December 1919, and landed at Darwin Airport. The modern journey had taken two weeks longer than the original, but speed wasn’t the point. In an incredibly short timescale from McMillan and Kidby having that original chat, due tribute to some of Australian aviation’s greatest pioneers had been paid. The trip didn’t end there, for Lang wanted to fly on to
ABOVE: Airborne out of Woodford during June 1998 in freshly restored Avro Avian VH-UFZ, at the time the oldest aircraft flying on the Australian register. PETER R. MARCH
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AEROPLANE MEETS Lang Kidby Adelaide, where the Smiths’ Vimy, G-EAOU, is preserved. “Australians all knew about it”, he says. “Right the way down, the welcome was really nice. On the last leg, all the water spewed out of one of the engines, so I had to land in a wheat field in New South Wales, which was a lot better than a rice paddy. I got a lift into town, where I got a blowtorch and a stick of solder, came back and fixed it all up. None of it ever went into the service records…” With the Vimy set for new adventures, Lang embarked on another trip of his own. This time he planned to celebrate the 70th anniversary of the first solo flight between England and Australia, undertaken during February 1928 by Bert Hinkler in Avro Avian G-EBOV. He acquired an Avian IV, VH‑UFZ, which had been under restoration in Brisbane after many years of inactivity. As G-AUFZ, Hinkler — then working for Avro — had carried out its initial test-flying at the end of 1927, just before his epoch-making journey. Moved to Lang’s base at Caboolture, work on the machine was completed in early 1998, and that April it made its first flight for more than 40 years. “It was the most delightful aeroplane to fly”, comments Lang. “A Tiger Moth is a dog compared to the Avian”. Air-freighted to Amsterdam in a Martinair 747, VH-UFZ flew from Schiphol to Manston on 30 May, and thence to the old Avro factory airfield at Woodford, whose own RAFA airshow a couple of weeks
later was the biplane’s postrestoration debut. Other appearances around the UK and Ireland followed, until on 7 July the Avian suffered a landing accident at Moat Farm in Suffolk, sustaining substantial damage. Says Lang, “It was bloody destroyed, mate. I was lucky not to be killed — all I did was put my teeth through my lip”. There followed an all-hands-to-the-pump rebuild involving many different companies, completed in time for — again — Farnborough. Only two days were left between the Avian’s arrival there and its departure for Australia, set for 13 September. Lang describes the flight as, “a no-bullshit one. We didn’t have a film crew, we didn’t have a support crew, we didn’t have anything. It was just me and Bev. She would travel on an airliner ahead of me, land somewhere and ’phone ahead to try and get the clearances, because you couldn’t get them more than about 24 hours before. I wouldn’t even know where she was — I’d land, ring my daughter in Australia and ask, ‘Where’s mum?’ ‘She’s in Nice’. ‘Well, I’m in Nice. Where’s she staying?’ Bev became quite expert at dealing with aviation clearance people in different countries. When I landed in Karachi, I was taxiing in and they said, ‘Call ground’. This woman’s voice came up and told me, ‘Take taxiway left, park in front of the tower’. Bev had gone up into the tower to tell them I was coming, and they’d given her the microphone!”
That was the worst day of the trip. I couldn’t see a quarter of a mile
BELOW: The Avian plus intrigued onlooker at Proa, a small homestead in the Queensland outback. KEY COLLECTION
BELOW RIGHT: Nearly home: VH-UFZ heads for Lang’s home base at Caboolture. As with the Vimy, one of the sponsors’ logos visible on the aircraft is that of this magazine. KEY COLLECTION
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One of the biggest problems was with the new fuel tanks, fitted after the Moat Farm accident. Lang wrote in this magazine, “Flying along the Riviera coast I smelt fuel and, by the time Genoa arrived, the split tank had soaked me to the knees and avgas was 100mm deep under my seat. Not two days later the main wing tank began to spray fuel over the windscreen and into the cockpit. As the fuel swirled into my eyes I furiously operated the hand pump, hoping I could keep fuel from the long-range tanks going into the main faster than it was running out. For over half an hour above the sea between Italy and Greece the expected explosion from the avgas pouring over the exhaust failed to materialise. I was quite pleased to land at Brindisi half-blinded and soaked to the waist in fuel”. It caused him to spend a day-and-a-half in hospital. “Luckily”, he adds, “my original Australian tank was still in the UK. They brought that out from England and refitted it.” There were yet more incessant instructions from Egyptian air traffic, seemingly endless headwinds, mountains of bureaucracy and a bird-strike with an eagle over India, but these were little compared with the experience of leaving Calcutta. “That was the worst day of the trip. Oh my God — special VFR [visual flight rules] in driving tropical rain, right down into the Ganges Delta with all these thousands of rivers among the mangroves. I couldn’t see a quarter of a mile”. So bad was the rain that the leading edge of the wooden propeller was significantly damaged. After six weeks, Lang landed the Avian in Darwin, again greeted by Bev. He spent the next month flying
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down Australia, Bev going by road to sell T-shirts at each stop, and thus pay for the fuel. Eventually VH-UFZ reached Bundaberg, Queensland, birthplace of Hinkler and a city where he remains a favourite son. The following year, Lang — having tried to find an Australian purchaser — sold the aircraft to the Golden Wings Flying Museum in Minneapolis. Meanwhile, the Vimy completed its great trio of commemorative flights: to South Africa in 1999, piloted by Mark Rebholz and John LaNoue, and in 2005 retracing Alcock and Brown’s transAtlantic voyage from St John’s, Newfoundland to Clifden, Ireland, in the hands of Rebholz and Steve Fossett. Donated to the Brooklands Museum, the aircraft carried on flying sporadically, and Lang sometimes did the honours. One of those occasions was the 2008 Farnborough show, the aircraft now fitted with Orenda OE600 engines. “Because we didn’t have access to any technicians for them”, says Lang, “the mixture control was about a quarter of an inch between full rich and idle shut-off. It was a
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really windy day, but it was a steady wind running straight down the runway, so I thought I’d give it a go. Off I went, but as I was about to lift off one of the bloody engines quit. It swung it and it headed towards the crowd, but I managed to save it. It nearly ground-looped and ran back across the runway to the other side. “The announcer said there’d been a giant gust of wind and it was a heroic save. I wasn’t going to say the engine quit, because the CAA would have jumped on it. I went up to the tower to say sorry for stuffing their programme up, and they said, ‘No, we saw the windsock just as you went past’. By the time the day had finished, you’d have thought I was going to get given the bloody Victoria Cross for being the greatest pilot who’d ever lived, when actually the f***ing engine had stopped and I couldn’t tell anyone!” When Peter McMillan based his Volpar tri-gear Beech 18 on these shores in the early 2010s, he asked Lang and Bev to come and look after it. Unsurprisingly, it proved “the most wonderful summer”,
flying all around Europe in what Lang calls “the best Beech 18 in the entire world”. But whether it’s cars, boats, bulldozers, military vehicles, motorcycles or a host of other modes of transport, Lang derives as much enjoyment from them as he does aircraft. “I like doing something different”, he reflects. “I’ve got the attention span of a five-year-old. I was thinking about the next thing half-way through the Vimy flight, sitting there droning along for hour after hour. “Funnily enough, I’ve never been a flying enthusiast. There has to be a reason to go somewhere to do something with an aeroplane. I’ve never, in my entire life, gone out and said, ‘What a beautiful day — I think I’ll go and bore some holes in the sky’. Even in the army I could have, because there were all these aeroplanes sitting on the line, and if you’d got a spare hour you could go and take one. You’d say you wanted to do a bit of training, some upper air work, short-field stuff or low-flying. The boss would go, ‘Right-o’, and sign you off. I walked past them. There was no point. But I just love the mastery of the machine.”
ABOVE LEFT: A hero’s welcome from the Avian flight at Caboolture on 6 November 1998. KEY COLLECTION
TOP: Bev and Lang in their 1942 Piper L-4, VH-LIV. Lang has had three ex-military Cubs and loved them all. VIA LANG KIDBY ABOVE: Displaying the Vimy, now with Orenda engines and in its Alcock and Brown commemorative flight configuration, at the 2008 Farnborough show. In November the following year, the machine made its final flight to Brooklands, where it is preserved. DENIS J. CALVERT
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Events Shuttleworth Drive-in Vintage Airshow
debut. This most ‘Rupert Bear’ of aeroplanes was in the hands of former RAF Harrier pilot, military and civilian test pilot and regular Spitfire display exponent Dan Griffith, who may have flown almost everything under the sun but was still to be seen beaming from ear to ear after landing the 1931-vintage lightplane. Dan flew the Coupe alongside Rob Millinship in the only other Armstrong Siddeley Genet Major I-powered aircraft currently flying, the Shuttleworth Southern Martlet, G-AAYX, which, with a total of three display slots, was airborne for longer in this show than it had been in entire seasons gone by. After Rob vacated the 1929-built aircraft — designed by F. G. Miles — it went up again with Si Davies at the controls for the barnstorming slot, after which the hardest-working aircraft of the day flew in a Miles tribute formation, leading the two based Magisters, Hawk Speed Six G-ADGP
and visiting Gemini G-AKHP, whose owner Stuart Blanchard went on to give a punchy solo in the elegant post-war twin. Another very welcome visitor was the ex-Richard Shuttleworth Spartan Arrow, G-ABWP, now owned by Richard Blain. In it, Paul Shakespeare joined a Shuttleworth salute alongside Richard’s first aeroplane, DH60X Moth G-EBWD — which, in two years’ time, will celebrate 90 years as an Old Warden resident — and Desoutter I G-AAPZ. The four-ship Stampe Formation Display Team from Headcorn — which includes the legendary Tiger Club veteran SV-4C G-AWEF, demonstrated by a Who’s Who of aerobatic pilots back in the day including Neil Williams — would ideally fly at every show in the UK, providing spellbinding formation and solo aerobatics. Leader Chris Jesson’s individual slot echoed the performances I just about remember Williams flying when I were a nipper. Heavier metal came in the amphibious form of Plane Sailing’s Catalina, with Derek Head at the helm, and the Battle of Britain Memorial Flight Spitfire Vb AB910, flown by Flt Lt Andy Preece. And I barely have room to mention Shuttleworth’s now trademark combinations of DH88 Comet and Mew Gull, Spitfire Vc and Hurricane I P3717, and Lysander and Po-2, to which could be added Kevin Hale in Auster AOP6 TW536 accompanied by Simon Tilling in his ex-Army Air Corps Chipmunk, WZ882. Proceedings were rounded off by three of the Edwardians, with the Bristol Boxkite displayed by chief engineer Jean-Michel Munn, the Avro Triplane being coaxed into the air by Paul Shakespeare, and ‘Dodge’ Bailey flying the exquisite Blackburn Monoplane, its ethereal translucence in the evening light making for a perfect end to another wonderful day out at Old Warden. Tony Harmsworth
If two light aircraft were to feature in a Rupert Bear book, surely they’d be these: Southern Martlet and Civilian Coupe. BEN DUNNELL
The magic of Miles, marvellously recalled by Martlet, two Magisters, Hawk Speed Six and Gemini. BEN DUNNELL
Three of Richard Shuttleworth’s pre-war aeroplanes back together in formation, 80 years after his death: DH60X, Spartan Arrow and Desoutter I. BEN DUNNELL
R
ound about the turn of the century, a very senior figure at the Shuttleworth Collection joked that Old Warden would still be hosting shows long after Duxford and other popular venues of the time had abandoned flying events. Such a comical notion would still have seemed ludicrous as the yellowing 2019 year planners were being pulled off the walls in favour of their pristine 2020 successors. But in midSeptember, following the IWM’s cancellation of the Duxford Battle of Britain show, that light-hearted, throw-away comment rebounded down the years to become stonecold reality, albeit for one season only. All that could be temporarily forgotten as the third Shuttleworth Drive-in Airshow of the COVID-19 era saw a slight loosening of regulations at the celestial Bedfordshire venue. Visitors were permitted to leave the confines of their parking bay box and designated ‘welfare hub’ of refreshment and toilet facilities to walk around the airfield and visit the hangars, house and Swiss Garden, so long as social distancing was observed and masks worn indoors. Attendees had to return to their parking slot for the duration of the actual flying display, and, as per, it was a show that would be considered a classic even during a ‘normal’ season. Star visitor was the Shipping and Airlinesowned, Biggin Hill-based Civilian Coupe II G-ABNT, making its Old Warden display
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6
SEPTEMBER
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A PORTRAIT OF ONE OF THE ROYAL NAVY’S MOST EFFECTIVE AIRCRAFT The Fairey Firefly two-seater strike-fighter emerged from a troubled gestation to become one of the most widely used and effective aircraft of the Royal Navy’s Fleet Air Arm. In this book, naval aviation historian Matthew Willis details the type’s varied career - from fighter, to subhunter, to pilotless target drone. With over 160 rare or unpublished photographs and a detailed commentary covering every aspect of the Firefly, this book pays the ultimate tribute to one of the Royal Navy’s most effective aircraft.
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Reviews
REVIEWS RATING ★★★★★ Outstanding ★★★★★ Excellent ★★★★★ Good ★★★★★ Flawed ★★★★★ Mediocre Enough said
The latest books and products for the discerning aviation enthusiast Super Snoopers
Joint, a type also operated by the RAF’s No 51 Squadron at by Bob Archer Waddington. published by Fonthill The photo selection, in With a catchy title perhaps black-and-white and colour inspired by Abba’s 1980 track and from a variety of sources, ‘Super Trouper’, here we have is comprehensive and decently a history of the reconnaissance reproduced. One wonderful — ‘snooping’ — activities illustration is of a sign erected undertaken by the USAF at Mildenhall by the 55th and, in particular, by the 55th Wing’s 95th Reconnaissance Strategic Reconnaissance Squadron one Christmas. It BOOK of the Wing (the 55th Wing from 1991) depicts Father Christmas’s sleigh MONTH being hauled by a red-nosed RC-135, using specialised variants of with the legend “We KNOW when Boeing’s C-135. This fascinating story is related by author Archer in a you’ve been naughty or nice!”, which sums hitherto unprecedented degree of detail, up well the wing’s furtive activities. This covering the aircraft involved — including volume, this tour de force, covers much individual histories of more than 100 new ground, and comes recommended. airframes — together with their sensors The proof-reader should, though, have and the bases from which they fly, such as picked up on the reference on page 9 to RAF Mildenhall. As to operational details, “RAF Greenham Command”. there are numerous accounts of missions Denis J. Calvert undertaken in the past, although much of ISBN 978-1-78155-769-3; 10.0 x 7.0in necessity remains classified, particularly hardback; 328 pages, illustrated; £40.00 as regards current activities. Backbone of the 55th’s fleet is the RC-135V/W Rivet ★★★★
Black Tulip by Erik Schmidt published by Casemate Here we have a biography of Erich Hartmann who, with 352 credited kills, is feted as the most successful fighter pilot of all time. Published 75 years after the end of World War Two, it is something of a reappraisal; this is Hartmann, warts and all. Without doubt, he was a great pilot, witness his claim in a postwar interview: “I was never shot down by an enemy plane”. His wartime victories and claims are critically reviewed, one slightly sceptical observer noting that, on certain dates, Hartmann’s kill claims exceeded the number of Soviet aircraft which were in the air at the time. Post-war, Hartmann’s career suffered several vicissitudes. Following 10 years’ imprisonment by the Soviets, he was
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integrated into the emergent West German air force, sent to the States to learn to fly jets and ended up commanding the Sabreequipped JG 71 ‘Richthofen’. His star faded, though, with his open criticism of the purchase of the F-104G Starfighter, which he considered ill-suited to West German operational needs, and he was relieved of his command of JG 71 on a technicality. Well-written, thought-provoking, minimally illustrated. DJC ISBN 978-1-61200-824-0; 9.3 x 6.2in hardback; 212 pages, illustrated; £25.00
★★★ Eagles over the Sea 1943-45 by Lawrence Paterson published by Seaforth This quite outstanding history forms the second part of a detailed review of Luftwaffe maritime operations during World War Two. It covers the actions of the anti-shipping bomber units, as well as the flying boats and landplanes deployed on long-range
reconnaissance. It also provides a window on the waste of life and resources as the Third Reich’s once powerful maritime air arm steadily headed towards its end. The force, which lost its only aircraft carrier — the Graf Zeppelin — to a decree from Hitler in February 1943, resulted in the rapid decline of its independence before it became subsumed into the Luftwaffe. Thanks to meticulous German records, the author brings a human touch to the final years by including crew names and their successes or otherwise on operations, alongside details of the ships attacked. Notable aspects include the air battles over Biscay between four-engine bombers (US Navy Liberators versus Focke-Wulf Condors), the desperate attempt by the Germans to protect the valuable blockaderunners bringing vital cargoes from Japan, and how Bletchley Park’s code-breaking skills saved numerous Allied ships from attack. However, first-hand accounts of the quite terrifying Henschel Hs 293 rocket bombs from eyewitnesses aboard vessels attacked were new to this reviewer and make for disturbing reading. Barry Wheeler ISBN 978-1-52677765-2; 9.7 x 6.7 hardback; 382 pages, illustrated; £30.00
★★★★
Secret Spitfires by Howman & Cetintas with Gavin Clarke published by The History Press Subtitled ‘Britain’s Hidden Civilian Army’, this is an account of the dispersed production, in ‘secret’ locations including bus depots, garages and small industrial premises, of several thousand Spitfires during World War Two. The authors cover the organisation of the dispersed operations under Beaverbrook’s Ministry of Aircraft Production as well as relating the human stories of the thousands of workers, many of them women, involved. The story is well-told and well-illustrated.
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Reviews images of aircraft in US Navy, USMC, Fleet Air Arm, French (Armée de l’Air, Aéronavale), Uruguayan and Japanese (!) markings. Sadly, a few typos are apparent, including an unfortunate reference on page 141 to the Royal Navy escort carrier ‘HMP Empress’. His Majesty’s Prison? Surely not. DJC ISBN 978-1-912932-11-5; 11.7 x 8.3in softback; 224 pages, illustrated; £22.95
★★★ That said, the book’s design has prioritised ‘artiness’ over functionality. Many pages, one of which is shown here, feature text printed over images of clouds, which makes for difficult reading. The reader should not, as a prerequisite, need to go to Specsavers. Page numbers feature only sporadically, with none appearing between pages 67 and 91. Just as well this volume has no index! Better proof-reading would — and should — have noted that ‘Mutt’ Summers, who made the first flight of prototype K5054, was a test pilot with the Aeroplane and Armament Experimental Establishment, not the Aircraft and Armaments Engineering Establishment, at Martlesham Heath, while Hermann Göring’s Christian name is consistently misspelled with just one ‘n’. DJC ISBN 978-0-7509-9199-5; 9.9 x 7.7in hardback; 192 pages, illustrated; £20.00
★★ Airframe & Miniature No 15: The Grumman F6F Hellcat by Richard A. Franks published by Valiant Wings The Airframe & Miniature series continues to grow, with No 15 dedicated to this carrierborne product of the Grumman ‘Iron Works’. The modeller, at whom this volume is squarely aimed, will find pretty much everything he/she seeks — a review of every Hellcat mark and variant, an assessment of each plastic kit of the type, colour profiles, a section on camouflage and markings, 45 pages of detail shots and a round-up of aftermarket accessories, detailing kits and decal sheets. Also offered is a pull-out with a set of 1:48-scale plans of the Hellcat. This, though, appears at the back rather than as the centrefold. The type’s evolution and production history are well covered in the preface and the first three chapters, with copious illustrations and drawings. There are well-reproduced
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RAF Search and Rescue by Paul E. Eden published by Adlard Coles As perceptively noted by Prince William in his foreword, the RAF provided a formal search and rescue capability from February 1941 (the establishment of the service, initially with a primary co-ordination/co-operation role) through to the force’s disbandment in February 2016. This volume reviews the whole period, starting with the frightening statistic that, in the last three weeks of 1940, 220 RAF aircrew went missing or were killed at sea. The Directorate of Air Sea Rescue Services — soon renamed the RAF Air Sea Rescue Service — was established at Northwood and squadrons allocated the role. Most were equipped with the Westland Lysander, although it was too small to carry Lindholme gear. The author covers well the development of the service, its aircraft, equipment and crews, and the extent of the coverage provided around the British Isles and further afield. Aircrew accounts of just some of the epic rescues carried out are backed by a great selection of images, all well-reproduced. How often do you see that accolade? The familiar ‘yellow SAR helicopter’ is no longer to be seen around the UK following the move to civilian operation. This volume is both a record of and a tribute to 75 years of service. DJC ISBN 978-1-4729-6090-0; 10.0 x 7.6in hardback; 184 pages, illustrated; £25.00
★★★ In Cold War Skies by Michael Napier published by Osprey When former RAF Tornado GR1 pilot and Hawk instructor Napier last penned a similar title for Osprey — large-format, hardback, ‘lavishly illustrated’, as the publicity blurb
probably put it — the result, 2018’s The Royal Air Force: A Centenary of Operations, was well worthwhile. Does In Cold War Skies match up? Again, it faces the same challenge: how to tackle an immense subject, in this case the evolution of air power within both NATO and the Warsaw Pact from 1949-89, in a single volume without skimming over events in insufficient detail. Many different aspects of this topic have, after all, been the subject of individual books, inevitably containing more depth than is possible here. Unfortunately, the result came across to this reviewer as somehow unsatisfying. The production values are high, the photo selection good, but the text has ended up being too general in nature. The most glaring omission concerns reconnaissance operations, such a crucial — and fascinating — aspect of Cold War military aviation, but which here are afforded little room. Napier repeats the notion that an RAF Canberra conducted an overflight of the Soviet missile base at Kapustin Yar in 1953, something recent research suggests is highly unlikely. Battlefield helicopters are but briefly dealt with, too. The opposing air orders of battle at various points make for useful appendices, and the book as a whole may serve as a good primer for those less well-versed in Cold War air power, but others will find its approach too ‘broad-brush’. Ben Dunnell ISBN 978-1-4728-3688-5; 11.4 x 9.8in hardback; 320 pages, illustrated; £30.00
★★
Wrecks and Relics: 27th Edition by Ken Ellis published by Crécy You know the drill with W&R: the enormously useful listing of the UK’s extant historic airframes, whether on public display or not, goes from strength to strength. One can only imagine the effort put in by tireless compiler Ellis, whose foreword offers a pertinent warning in relation to the sustainability of the post-COVID-19 preservation world. BD ISBN 978-1-91080-939-6; 8.5 x 6in hardback; 379 pages, illustrated; £18.95
★★★★
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SUBSC RIBER EXCLUS IVE
24/09/2020 15:33:52
News from 1940 Ben Dunnell looks back 80 years to see how The Aeroplane covered the momentous events of 1940
1 November 1940
RIGHT: Fiat CR42 pilots from the 18° Gruppo brief prior to a combat sortie from Ursel, Belgium, in late October 1940.
VIA GIORGIO APOSTOLO
“The 60th Week of The War in the Air” proclaimed the magazine’s regular feature, and it was, in its small way, a momentous one. For this was the week The Aeroplane confirmed the entry of Italy’s Regia Aeronautica into the Battle of Britain. The Italian elements came from the specially formed Corpo Aereo Italiano (CAI), comprising fighter and bomber units based in Belgium. Its establishment can be seen today as a political decision as opposed to a military one, as Benito Mussolini wishing to make a token contribution to Germany’s aerial campaign, but it was a case of far too little, far too late. The Aeroplane knew relatively little of the specifics — it said the aircraft involved were Savoia-Marchetti SM79s — but its dismissive report was accurate in tone. “The use of Italian aeroplanes is of little significance”, it said. “It does not imply that the Germans are short of aeroplanes, but rather that Mussolini hopes to throw a sop to Italian opinion growing restless under continued attack on North Italy by the RAF.” In truth, the deployment of the CAI’s front-line elements to Belgium at the end of September had been a disaster — four Fiat BR20M bombers and two Fiat G50 fighters being wrecked in various incidents en route — and its first mission was even worse. This was on the night of 24 October, the ports of Harwich and Felixstowe being the targets for a dozen BR20Ms from the 13° Stormo and four from the 43° Stormo. One crashed just after taking off from Melsbroek,
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and two others turned back with unserviceabilities. The rest dropped their bombs, but another two BR20Ms were lost in bad weather on the return leg. Never again would the Italian bombers venture out over England by night. Conversely, the column pointed out how the Luftwaffe had taken to attacking British industrial targets solely by night. “In the present reversal of tactics by the Luftwaffe we can begin to see evidence of the great victory gained by the RAF during the past three months”, it said. “It is a victory which is not proclaimed by retreating armies or sunk navies, but by the gradual abandonment of the daylight mass air assaults on which the Germans pinned their hopes of a successful invasion”. It wasn’t wrong.
8 November 1940 Now operating by day, the Italian aircraft involved in missions flown by the CAI over England could be better identified. “On one occasion”, it was reported, “the bombers were identified as Fiat BR20s and the fighters as Fiat CR42s”. It was hardly a formidable combination, a relatively lumbering bomber and a biplane fighter with the range for but a few minutes’ combat over a restricted area of operations. Even the more modern G50 fighter was little better in that respect. In fact,
both types — from the 56° Stormo — were involved in accompanying BR20s on a raid against the port of Ramsgate on 29 October. As news came in of Bomber Command ranging further afield — for instance, No 77 Squadron Whitleys managed to attack the Škoda works at Plzen (Pilsen), Czechoslovakia, for the first time on 27 October — The Aeroplane issued its prescription for the future of the RAF’s offensive capability. “If we can continue and intensify our air offensive throughout this Winter with our existing equipment”, it opined, “what we need to carry it on through the Spring is really highspeed day bombers carrying two or three men each and a fair load of bombs for approximately 1,200
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News from 1940 miles of outward range, cruising when necessary at little short of 400mph”. It would take longer to enter service, but little did the author know that an aircraft with such capabilities, the DH Mosquito, was nearing its maiden flight.
15 November 1940 “Better weather and a moon brought heavier raids on Great Britain at night”. The damage being wrought by the Blitz, in human and industrial terms, was mounting. But another German effort proved a failure. “Undismayed by its experience in the previous week, the Luftwaffe tried again last week to raid British shipping with Junkers Ju 87 dive bombers… one Hurricane squadron shot down 15 of the 25 dive-bombers in the raid before either they or their [Bf 109] escorts realised that the Hurricanes were at work.” As is to be expected, these figures were exaggerated. The ‘Stukas’ hailed from 1./Sturzkampfgeschwader 3, and their missions on 7-8 November are known to have seen two confirmed losses, plus
two damaged. But the type’s usefulness in the Channel theatre was much diminished. “In ordering the operation”, The Aeroplane speculated, “the Luftwaffe may have been seeking a final assurance that the Ju 87’s sun had finally set.”
22 November 1940 There were momentous events to report — air operations “on a scale bigger than at any time since the mass raids were defeated. On November 11 the Fleet Air Arm scored the greatest success ever achieved by aircraft against ships. Three battleships, two cruisers and
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two smaller ships of the Italian Navy were severely damaged by a torpedo-bombing attack. On the same day a big formation of some 75 Italian fighters and bombers was routed over the Thames Estuary and 13 of them shot down without loss to the Hurricane squadrons engaged. “On the night of November 14 the Germans made an indiscriminate and devastating attack on Coventry, where much destruction was done to dwellings and public buildings. On the next night London had an exceptionally heavy raid. Meanwhile, the RAF struck hard at Berlin, Hamburg and other important centres in Germany.” For the actions of the “compatively old and slow” Fleet Air Arm Swordfish and their crews from 813, 815, 819 and 824 Squadrons, flying from the new HMS Illustrious, in striking the Italian fleet in port at Taranto, there was deserved praise. “The action was boldly planned and boldly executed”, said The Aeroplane, “and its results upset the previous Italian naval supremacy in battleship strength in the Mediterranean”. The latest Corpo Aereo Italiano raids on Britain brought nothing but misery for Mussolini, either. The magazine’s report, saying the CAI squadrons “attempted a raid over the Thames” on 11 November and that they “put up a poor show perhaps chiefly because their crews appear to be fed up with the War” underplayed just how poorly the Italians had fared. It was to have been a complex attack undertaken in part alongside the Luftwaffe, a diversionary raid on the Thames estuary by the 172a Squadriglia’s Z1007s and Luftwaffe aircraft drawing the defences’ attentions away from the real target, the docks at Harwich, which were the target for 10 BR20Ms escorted by
40 CR42s.. It proved a disaster, three each of CR42s and BR20Ms being lost. “One British fighter pilot described it as ‘…the best party I have ever had in my life — a view shared by all who took part in it.” The aftermath of 14 November’s German raid on Coventry, involving in excess of 515 Luftwaffe bombers on a moonlit night, was no cause for jollity. Much of the city centre was laid waste by a combination of highexplosive and incendiary bombs, creating an immense firestorm, while the estimate was that twothirds of Coventry’s buildings saw some damage, and more than half its homes were wrecked. The official death toll was 554; in reality, it was surely far higher. If a single event brought home the horror of the Blitz, this was it.
ABOVE LEFT: The wreckage of Coventry Cathedral after the 14 November 1940 raid tells its own story.
29 November 1940 Much space was given over to Allied success in the Battle of Korytsa (spelled Koritza here), when, on 22 November, Greek forces captured this strategically important town in southern Albania. But thoughts inevitably turned to the winter ahead, and how Britain could hold the line at home. With little in the way of significant new equipment foreseen for the immediate future, The Aeroplane’s view was, “we must make the best compromise we can with existing material and steel ourselves to beat the attack while intensifying our own”. It was far from the last time such a compromise had to be made. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS: Thanks to Brian Cocks.
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