Flying Boats

by Charles Woodley

  Passengers were also issued with annotated route maps, and there was certainly much of interest to be viewed through the promenade deck windows. The leg from Baghdad to Basra routed past the Great Arch of Ctesiphon at Babylon, and on across the areas of marshland between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers. After Iraq the route continued to India, calling at Karachi before night-stopping at Udaipur, where the flying boat alighted on the man-made lake at Rajsamand and a launch took the passengers ashore at the Baripal Dam. The establishment of the landing area here owed much to the support of the Maharana of Udaipur. The facilities there included a station superintendent’s office, a meteorological station, a passenger lounge, petrol and oil storage depots, a wireless station, and two residential bungalows. Nearby was a railway station for the 40-mile journey into Udaipur city. The flying boat route then continued onwards to Madho in Gwalior. After this a landing was made on the Parichha reservoir at Jhansi, then a flight onward to Allahabad, followed by a touchdown at the mouth of the River Hooghly at Calcutta. Continuing onwards, the aircraft alighted at Gelugor, about 6 miles from Penang, with the aid of a flarepath of kerosene lamps mounted on 4ft-high floats. These lamps were lit by matches and dropped into position from a fast pinnace travelling along the 1,200-yard alighting area, which also had searchlights stationed at each end. The pinnace carried red Very Light flares that were fired off if an obstruction was spotted on the water. The Imperial aircraft arrived there at around midnight. While it was being refuelled by a Shell launch the local agent, Mansfields, took the passengers ashore for a cup of tea. Departure was at 0300hrs, timed to deliver them in Singapore in time for breakfast. At Singapore the Imperial Airways flying boats made use of the Singapore Marine and Land Airport, which had been officially opened in June 1937. The marine section of the airport had an alighting area a mile long and 600ft wide, enclosed by a boom that kept out floating debris. There were two hangars, a passenger terminal, and a slipway where the C-class machines could be winched ashore for maintenance and repairs.

  Occasionally, the flying boat passengers could find themselves making an unscheduled stop. In mid June 1938 Ceres, under the command of Captain Gurney, encountered severe weather over India and a precautionary landing was made on Lake Dingari in the state of Tonk, about 50 miles south of Jaipur. In the course of the landing the aircraft ran aground and became stuck on a crocodile-infested mudbank. The crew were unable to contact base by wireless and the nearest telephone was 20 miles away, so someone set off on foot to get help. In the meantime the crew and passengers settled down for the night inside the security of the aircraft, and the stewards prepared dinner before they all tried to get some sleep. Help arrived in the morning and the passengers were transferred by boat to Gwalior, from where they gamely resumed their journey on the next Imperial service. With the aid of a multitude of local helpers, the flying boat was pulled free from the mudbank, but the crew then decided to wait for more favourable winds before attempting a take-off. They finally got airborne on 20 June, having been sustained in the meantime by food and water dropped to them by parachute.

  During the autumn of 1938 Short Bros introduced the improved Bristol Perseus-powered S.30 Empire flying boat. Nine examples were built to the order of Imperial Airways, with three of them actually being delivered to Tasman Empire Airways Ltd (TEAL) of New Zealand for operations across the Tasman Sea. As Christmas 1938 drew nearer the mail loads to the Empire increased dramatically. During the third week of December the Imperial fleet flew some 82,000 extra miles on additional services, with passengers being almost completely displaced in favour of heavy mail loads. The loading of the mail was carried out through the night hours in readiness for an early morning departure. When the crew came aboard they found the aircraft interior pre-warmed by an oil heater in the midships compartment, and a breakfast of porridge, bacon and tomato omelettes placed on board in vacuum flasks. All of this extra flying was not accomplished without cost. On 27 November 1938 Calpurnia was operating a Christmas mail service without passengers and the crew were preparing to alight at Habbaniyah, about 25 miles west of Baghdad, when they encountered a dust storm and hit the sea heavily. All the crew were lost and the aircraft was destroyed.

  The passing of the Southampton Harbour Act of 1939 confirmed the city’s status as a major flying boat terminus and gave the Southampton Harbour Board powers to regulate the use of seaplanes and flying boats there, with a ‘reserved area’ being established off Netley.

  On 14 March 1939 Corsair had to make a forced landing in the Belgian Congo, and so began a marathon salvage operation to recover it. The aircraft was operating a northbound service on the African route, and had taken off from Port Bell, Uganda, for Juba, some 350 miles away. Problems with the flying boat’s direction-finding equipment had been reported by the crews of previous services, but the fault had supposedly been rectified. The flight’s route should have taken Corsair along the path of the Nile until Juba was reached, but by the estimated time of arrival there the crew had still not seen any sign of the river. For two hours they flew around with no idea of their location until they only had enough fuel for another fifteen minutes and were then forced to alight on a waterway that turned out to be the River Dungu, near to a town called Faradje. During the landing the flying boat sustained damage to its hull and the crew ran it ashore on the riverbank. In due course the local provincial commissioner arrived at the scene and took charge of the thirteen passengers, the luggage and the mail, driving them initially to his house, then to a small hotel about 50 miles away, and eventually to Juba. A couple of days later Centurion arrived there on the next northbound schedule and took them home to Hythe. When Imperial Airways heard about the incident they contacted Short Bros, who sent a team of engineers out to the scene to assess the damage. They reported that the bottom of the hull had been torn out and initially estimated that it would take about six weeks to get the aircraft airworthy again. However, they would later revise this estimate to three months. Imperial Airways was already short of C-class machines, having lost several in accidents. The Second World War was looming, and Short Bros was heavily committed to priority production of Sunderland flying boats for the RAF, so the construction of a replacement aircraft would take a long time. Imperial needed to get Corsair back into service, so work began on the laborious on-site repair work. A slipway was built using local labour and the aircraft was hauled up onto the riverbank by May. The work was eventually completed and the flying boat was hauled back onto the water and made ready for flight. Early on the morning of 14 July the crew attempted a take-off, but the flying boat swung fiercely to starboard and the float on that side made contact with the riverbank. The engines were cut, but the nose swung into the bank, the hull struck a rock, and a new 11ft gash appeared. Imperial despatched a party of its own engineers to assist those already at the scene, but shortly afterwards war was declared and the Short Bros workforce was recalled to the UK, leaving the Imperial staff to carry on with the work, assisted by local labour. They designed and constructed a crude device for working underwater and with the aid of this they were able to attach a metal patch over the damaged portion of the hull and pump the water out. On 5 October 1939 they were able to get a message to head office advising that Corsair was again watertight. They then floated it across the river and hauled it up onto the slipway while they dammed the river downstream to raise the water level and make a second take-off attempt more likely to succeed. While this work was in progress Christmas came, and Imperial in London sent out half a dozen hampers containing seasonal fare so the work party could celebrate in the traditional manner. By the end of 1939 the dam was complete and the flying boat was hauled back onto the water. Imperial head office decreed that such a hazardous take-off should be entrusted to one of its most experienced pilots, and Captain Jack Kelly-Rogers was despatched to the site. Early on the morning of 6 January 1940 he successfully lifted Corsair off the river and flew it to Alexandria for a full overhaul and eventual return to service.

  On
6 June 1939 Imperial Airways had opened its new Airways House headquarters in London’s Buckingham Palace Road. At that time this was the only building of its size devoted entirely to air travel, and contained, among other passenger facilities, a buffet and a women passengers’ retiring room. From that date the connecting train services to Southampton switched their departure point from Waterloo to Imperial’s private Platform 17 at Victoria Station, adjacent to the new terminal building. Imperial’s passengers departed Victoria at 2005hrs, with dinner being served on the train en route. During that year the twin pontoons at Southampton were used for eight flight arrivals and eight departures each week. In the summer of 1939 an article by one of the airline’s commanders appeared in the Imperial Airways Gazette. Titled ‘We Leave At Dawn’, it described in detail the procedures involved in operating the first leg of an Australia service, from Southampton to Marseilles:

  Looking out of the window at 3am one is pleasantly surprised to see no trace of the wind and rain that was blustering outside overnight ... Stars are out and the night is clear. We are the third ‘boat’ away this morning. ‘Corialanus’ is already well over the Channel, and ‘Carpentaria’ is just now leaving the raft (pontoon), cabin windows alight, a red glow on the port wingtip as it turns south soon replaced by the white tail light as it makes its way down the buoyed channel. The crane is loading mails fast into our own craft ‘Canopus’ while the engineers who start up the engines this morning and the traffic staff are in and out of the narrow beam of light from the lower forward hold and the control cabin above ... The First Officer is already aboard and has checked the fuel carried, the equipment and maps, the drift sight and log books, also primed the exactor mixture and throttle controls (if not already done by the engineers), the proper lighting of the cockpit and instruments, plugged in the Aldis Lamp, and tried the flap motor. The Radio Officer has tested receiver and transmitter and is now below at the bow-hatch wearing his electric torch strapped around his head to leave his hands free. While the steward sees the last of the passengers to their seats and explains that the sound of the flap motor and the flames that will come out of the engine exhausts are perfectly normal happenings the Flight Clerk fastens each hatch in turn and reports when the last of the engineers has left the machine. On receipt of the ‘all-clear for starting’ the flying-boat is warped forward ten or fifteen feet and the engines started ... The tail line is released from the control cabin and immediately the ‘Sydney Eastbound’ service eases forward out of the raft under its own power. It joins the ebb tide down the fairway and becomes a member of the fraternity of shipping which use this waterway ... a launch goes ahead, on watch for obstructions ... No. 2 launch has taken up station at the far end of the flarepath, and a steady white light in answer to our Aldis signal ‘OKTO’ gives us permission to take off and affirms the area has been found clear of flotsam ... A final check is made, then the engines are opened up fully and the flying-boat is rapidly up on its ‘step’ and into its proper medium ... As we square away onto course the trip-clock is started. The Shell wharves and Calshot are soon left to starboard, Hamble and Lee-on-Solent and Gosport to port. All of these are left behind and in under six minutes ‘Canopus’ is over the Isle of Wight.

  The romantic aura of flying boat travel captured the imagination of the public, and versions of the plastic scale models displayed in the windows of travel agencies were produced for sale in toyshops, in kit form for 15s or fully assembled for 52s 6d.

  The Imperial Airways timetable for April 1939 included twice-weekly services to South Africa, with a once-weekly stop at Lake Naivasha in Kenya’s Great Rift Valley, subject to ‘circumstances permitting and inducement offered’. However, the C-class flying boats had proven to be vulnerable to damage on the demanding routes they operated, and by mid 1939, within two years of the first delivery, nine examples had been written off in accidents. In the summer of 1939 Major Mayo, the Technical Advisor to Imperial Airways, summarised in a lecture some of the type’s other shortfalls. Paraphrased, these were:

  • The type was deficient in payload, mainly because of the way it was operated. Although carrying only a small number of passengers, its performance was impaired by the substantial weight of luxurious fittings and plush furnishings it had to carry.

  • The original timetables had been based on the performance of landplanes, but the lack of night-flying aids and inadequate weather forecasting facilities meant that hardly any night flying was scheduled, making overall journey times far longer than anticipated.

  • Costings had been based on the assumption that fuel prices at coastal or waterway locations would be lower than those at land airports. To some extent this might have been so, but the expense of establishing water-borne refuelling points far outweighed any fuel price savings.

  • The aircraft’s engines had a short service life. Many of the staging posts along the routes had no facilities for beaching aircraft, so engine changes had to be carried out on the water. If the conditions were too rough the engineers had to wait for better weather before they could proceed.

  Designs for improved flying boats were under development, but before they could be produced and the other issues addressed the Second World War intervened.

  2

  PAN AMERICAN ACROSS THE PACIFIC

  In the USA at the beginning of the 1930s Pan American Airways was starting to establish a route system to Latin America and South America using flying boats. The airline’s founder, Juan Trippe, was trying to attract passengers who normally patronised the ocean liners, and in 1931 he registered the trademark name Clipper for use on his aircraft and publicity literature to convey some of the aura and heritage of the clipper sailing ships. The first Pan American marine aircraft to carry the Clipper branding was the Sikorsky S-40. This was not a pure flying boat as it also had a wheeled undercarriage for land operations. It was powered by four Pratt & Whitney Hornet piston engines and was capable of carrying up to forty passengers seated four-abreast in railway-style compartments. The chairs were fashioned in Queen Anne style and upholstered in blue and orange, and the floor of the passenger accommodation was covered in blue carpeting. A smoking lounge was provided, and to further while away the time the passengers had access to playing cards, jigsaw puzzles, and chess and backgammon sets. In the lounge, life preservers were prominently attached to the walls. Pan American’s three S-40s, named America Clipper, Caribbean Clipper and Southern Clipper, entered service in 1931 and operated successfully to Santiago (Chile), Buenos Aires, Rio de Janeiro, Bogota and Lima, but the type was not equipped for night flying and lacked the range to operate across the Pacific Ocean to Asia. Pan American issued a specification for a modern long-range oceanic flying boat and invited tenders from the major aircraft manufacturers. The Sikorsky company responded with its S-42 design. This featured a full-length, two-step, all-metal hull with a strut-braced wing mounted above it on a shallow superstructure. Wire-braced wingtip floats were carried on two struts, and a structure on the rear of the hull supported a semi-braced tailplane, above which were mounted twin fins and rudders. The aircraft was to be powered by four 700hp Pratt & Whitney Hornet piston engines bestowing a cruising speed of 150–160mph and a cruising range of 1,200 miles, reduced to 750 miles if a full payload was carried. It would be crewed by two pilots, an engineer, a radio operator and a steward, and the price fully equipped was quoted as US$242,000. Pan American viewed the aircraft as the next logical step for the expansion of its flying boat services, and placed an order for three examples on 1 October 1932. The S-42 made its maiden flight on 30 March 1934, and on 1 August that year Pan American conducted its own evaluation flight, with a crew that included the airline’s chief test pilot, Captain Edwin Musick, and its technical advisor, the renowned transatlantic aviator Charles Lindbergh, taking it around a 1,242-mile course with a representative load of thirty-two passengers plus cargo and mail. On 16 August 1934 the S-42 entered Pan American service from Miami to Buenos Aires and Rio de Janeiro, cutting the travel time from ei
ght days to five. On arrival in Rio the S-42, registered NC822M, was named Brazilian Clipper by the wife of the Brazilian president. The three original S-42s were later joined by four improved S-42As, and also from 1937 by three twenty-four-seat S-42Bs, and the family of aircraft saw extensive service on routes to the Caribbean, Latin America and South America.

  A Pan American Airways Sikorsky S-42 in flight over Miami. (Pan American Historical Foundation)