Flying Boats

by Charles Woodley

  The control tower extension added to a building at the flying-boat base in Ireland. (Foynes Flying-Boat and Maritime Museum)

  When German paratroops invaded Crete in 1941 two BOAC C-class flying boats were camouflaged to resemble more warlike RAF Short Sunderlands and made thirteen round trips between Alexandria and the Greek island, evacuating Allied troops.

  In October 1940 the flying boats Clare and Clyde had been assigned to duties on the West African route. Clyde was at her moorings at Lisbon on the night of 14/15 February 1941 when the city was struck by a severe storm. The only occupant of the flying boat was a Portuguese watchman, who could not be evacuated by boat because of the sea state. After several hours of being battered by the elements the aircraft had its port float punctured by debris and a fierce gust lifted up the starboard wing. The aircraft capsized, with the loss of the unfortunate watchman. Clare maintained the services single-handedly until she was joined by a Catalina flying boat in March 1941. During the following two months two more C-class aircraft and another Catalina were assigned to the route, but there was still insufficient capacity to meet the demand. This led to the purchase of three Boeing 314A flying boats from Pan American Airways at a price of £259,250 each. In order to be able to fly non-stop from Poole to Takoradi if war conditions required they were fitted with enlarged fuel tankage, giving them a maximum cruising range of 4,500 miles. The aircraft were delivered to BOAC between May and July 1941, but facilities for the maintenance of this new type were not available in the UK, so the airline set up an engineering base for them in Baltimore. After each round trip to Africa the Boeings were ferried across the Atlantic for attention. BOAC went on to utilise these empty legs to set up a transatlantic service, flying to Baltimore via Foynes or Lisbon, Bathurst, Belem, Trinidad, and Bermuda. The winter frequency was once-weekly in each direction, increasing in the summer to four weekly trips over the shorter northerly routeing via Foynes and Botwood. In 1943 an agreement between the Canadian government and the Province of Newfoundland saw some of the wooden buildings used by the anti-aircraft battery at Botwood, and known as the Caledonia Camp, being handed over to BOAC for use as restaurant and rest facilities for transatlantic passengers during their one-and-a-half-hour refuelling stop. One prominent passenger carried across the Atlantic by the BOAC Boeings was the British Prime Minister Winston Churchill. On 16 January 1942 he flew from Virginia to Bermuda in G-AGCA Berwick. During the flight he took a turn at the controls and was so impressed by the aircraft that he would travel in it all the way to the UK instead of continuing his journey by warship as planned, thus saving him valuable time. After consultations with the flying boat crew a signal was sent to all en route radio stations, advising of an estimated arrival at Pembroke Dock at 0900hrs on 17 January after a journey time of seventeen and a half hours. As dawn broke the crew began their descent from 10,000ft, and fifty minutes later the aircraft was nearing Land’s End at 1,000ft. However, from there on the weather deteriorated, and with visibility at Pembroke Docks reported as being down to 500yd the crew changed course and headed for RAF Mount Batten at Plymouth. After one missed approach there a safe landing was accomplished, and Churchill went on to use another BOAC Bristol 314A Bristol for a trip to the USA in July 1942.

  The three G-class Empire flying boats ordered for Imperial Airways for transatlantic routes had not entered service by the time war broke out. They were impressed into the RAF, modified to incorporate gun turrets, radar equipment and a weapons bay, and were used on long-range North Atlantic patrol work until the end of 1941 when the two surviving examples were converted back to passenger configuration and used on services between Poole and Lagos. On 9 January 1943 G-AFCK Golden Horn caught fire during an air test and crashed into the River Tagus near Lisbon. In 1944 the sole survivor, G-AFCI Golden Hind, was completely rebuilt as a thirty-eight-seater and used on routes from Durban to Lourenço Marques, Beira and Mombasa, and from Kisumu in Kenya to the Seychelles. During September 1943 the BOAC Boeing 314As were additionally assigned to a Lisbon–Foynes–Poole–Foynes–Lisbon shuttle run, but on 29 April 1944 the type was withdrawn from the UK–West Africa route and was thereafter used exclusively on North Atlantic services.

  The C-class flying boats maintained their West Africa services throughout, and on 14 September 1942 Clare was operating the homeward leg of a journey to Lagos when it took off from Bathurst with thirteen passengers and six crew on board. An hour or so later a radio message reporting engine problems was transmitted and twenty-five minutes later this was followed by an SOS call advising of a fire. There was no further contact with the aircraft and no survivors were found. With the fall of Singapore in February 1942 and the Japanese capture of Palembang in Sumatra the link to the Far East was severed, and BOAC aircraft only operated the Horseshoe route as far as Calcutta before returning to Durban.

  Pan American Boeing 314 NC18603 Yankee Clipper moored at Foynes in Ireland. (Foynes Flying-Boat and Maritime Museum)

  On 19 July 1943 the BOAC C-class flying boat Cameronian was refuelling at Dar es Salaam whilst en route from Cairo to Durban with twenty-five passengers when the crew were asked to keep a lookout during their next leg for survivors or debris from a torpedoed British merchant ship. They spotted a lifeboat with about twenty men on board and tried dropping food and water to them in a mailbag, but the survivors were too weak to pull it into the boat. Despite being on a scheduled service with passengers aboard, the crew of the flying boat decided that they had no option but to set the aircraft down near the lifeboat and try to haul the occupants aboard using ropes. Only three of them were strong enough to successfully assist in their rescue in this way, so all the aircraft’s remaining food and water, plus blankets and signal rockets, were transferred across to the lifeboat before Cameronian took off and headed for Mozambique. By the next morning the remaining occupants of the lifeboat, plus others found adrift in rafts, had been picked up by ships, and so the flying boat crew and their passengers resumed their scheduled route to Durban.

  Once North Africa had been liberated in 1942 BOAC’s No. 4 Line operated converted Sunderlands from Poole through to Cairo, from where connections were available to Calcutta, Khartoum and Lagos. On occasions as many as five or six flying boats would be moored at Cairo at the same time.

  In August 1941 Pan American Airways signed a contract with the US War Department for the provision of air transport services between the USA and West Africa by a subsidiary called Pan American Airways (Africa), using both flying boats and landplanes. The contract also called for the establishment of bases along the route at San Juan, Port-au-Spain, Belem and Natal. On 7 December 1941, as the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor was in progress, the Pan American Boeing 314 NC18609 Pacific Clipper was in the air between Noumea and Auckland. As the airline’s Pacific route system was now out of bounds the aircraft returned to Noumea and then set off on an epic journey back to the USA via such unusual stopovers as Australia, the Trucial Oman, the Red Sea, the Nile and Congo rivers, Nigeria, and Brazil. The Pacific Clipper finally alighted at the La Guardia Marine Terminal in New York on 6 January 1942. Commercial services over Pan American’s Pacific route network were not to be resumed until June 1946.

  In 1942 Pan American’s three remaining Boeing 314s were impressed into military service, initially being taken over by the United States Army Air Force, and then passed on to the US Navy. The aircraft were still operated by Pan American crews, but the allocation of seats on passenger flights became the responsibility of the US War Department. The Pan American base at Treasure Island, San Francisco, was taken over by the US Navy, with the Boeing Clippers now using it under military control. One example, NC18612 Capetown Clipper, was transferred across from the Pacific Division for North Atlantic duties. On 11 January 1943 Boeing 314 NC18605 Dixie Clipper, accompanied by NC18604 Atlantic Clipper as a radio communications aircraft, conveyed US President Franklin D. Roosevelt and his advisors from Miami via Trinidad and Belem to Bathurst, where they transferred to C-54 landplanes and f
lew to Casablanca for a conference with Winston Churchill, the Free French leader Charles de Gaulle, and the Soviet Union’s Joseph Stalin.

  In September 1943 the Pan American flying boats were operating between the USA and Foynes in Ireland via a stop at Botwood in Newfoundland. Three round trips were carried out each week, with reservations on the legs between Botwood and Foynes and vice versa being limited to sixteen passengers to ensure that each of them had a guaranteed sleeper berth. However, Pan American was not the only US airline flying the Atlantic. Despite objections from Pan American, American Export Airlines had been granted approval for services linking the United States, France and Portugal. On 20 June 1942 the airline had operated its inaugural transatlantic service between Port Washington (New York), Botwood and Foynes, using a Vought-Sikorsky VS-44 flying boat. During that month its VS-44A NC41880 Excalibur 1, under the command of the company’s chief pilot Charles Blair, omitted the usual refuelling stop at Botwood and flew non-stop from Foynes to New York in twenty-five hours forty minutes, becoming the first commercial non-stop service from Europe to New York. From September 1943 the eastbound services continued onwards to Port Lyautey in Morocco, and the company had ambitious plans to increase its service frequency and to make Poole its European base, but in 1945 it was to be absorbed into American Airlines.

  BOAC Boeing 314A G-AGCB Bangor moored at Foynes. (Foynes Flying-Boat and Maritime Museum)

  During the period August 1942–July 1943 more than 1,400 flying boat movements, carrying around 1,500 passengers, passed through Foynes, and the facilities there were being expanded to cope with the volume of traffic. Between April 1942 and 1945 American Export Airlines alone completed 405 crossings from Foynes to New York on behalf of the US Navy Air Transport Service, and on 18 August 1945 Foynes handled a record number of passengers in a single day. The Pan American Boeing 314s NC18604 Atlantic Clipper and NC18605 Dixie Clipper both arrived from New York and returned there the same night, with a total of 101 passengers passing through the terminal on that date. However, this proved to be the swansong of the flying boat base. That autumn Pan American discontinued operations through Foynes, with the final service being operated by NC18609 Pacific Clipper under the command of Captain Wallace Cuthbertson. Since 1939 the Pan American fleet had made 2,097 Atlantic crossings via Foynes. BOAC was to continue transatlantic flying boat services for a few months longer. Its Boeing 314As maintained a weekly frequency to the USA until 7 March 1946, when G-AGCA Berwick with Captain B.C. Frost in command departed Poole for Baltimore. The airline’s three Boeings were then transferred to the Baltimore–Bermuda route. Bristol had completed 203 Atlantic crossings, Berwick 201, and Bangor 196.

  5

  RETURN TO PEACETIME OPERATIONS

  Shortly after the end of the Second World War Pan American lost Boeing 314 NC18601 Honolulu Clipper. The aircraft was operating a Honolulu–San Francisco leg with twelve passengers, all naval officers, aboard on 3 November 1945. Seven hours into the flight the starboard inner engine cut out. The crew decided to turn back to Honolulu, but one and a half hours later the starboard outer engine also failed. Fuel was dumped, and some cargo and mail was jettisoned, but they were still unable to maintain altitude. They managed to alight on the sea without further damage and the aircraft remained afloat. Prior to landing the crew had sent radio messages to Pan American in Honolulu and San Francisco, and also to sister fleet member California Clipper that was in the vicinity. Ships soon arrived and took on board the passengers, and the escort carrier USS Manila Bay took the flying boat in tow, but the line parted. Further attempts at towing were also unsuccessful and the aircraft sustained damage in the process, so the salvage operation was called off. The Honolulu Clipper was deemed to be a potential hazard to shipping, and on 7 November 1945 she was sunk by naval gunfire.

  The post-war era saw BOAC still convinced that, for the short-term at least, flying boats still provided the best option for passenger services to Africa and the Far East. They were, however, short of such machines. Of the forty-two Empire flying boats constructed only sixteen had survived the hostilities. As a stopgap measure the Short Sunderlands the airline had operated during the war with rudimentary bench-seat accommodation were re-engined with more powerful Pegasus 38 powerplants and had their interiors modified to carry twenty-two passengers, with sleeping berths for sixteen of them. The first example to be modified was G-AGJM, which was named Hythe. This was also used as the class name for all such conversions, eighteen of which were carried out by BOAC’s own engineers at Hythe, and a further four by Short Bros at Belfast. At the end of 1945 the sole surviving G-class machine, G-AFCI Golden Hind, also made the journey to Belfast, for extensive overhaul and refurbishing as a luxurious twenty-four-seater. The remaining C-class flying boats continued in service on the routes to Africa, where they were also used by the BOAC training school based on the Vaal River near Johannesburg. As well as aircraft, the airline was also short of aircrew and placed advertisements in the aviation press for fifty additional flying boat pilots.

  A BOAC Short Solent taxies past the Empire Medway ship in harbour. (via author)

  The Hythe-class Sunderland conversions had been earmarked for the reopening of schedules through to Australia and the Far East in 1946, but until then they were utilised on the routes from Poole to Karachi and Calcutta via Cairo and Bahrain. At Poole, the health, customs and immigration formalities were carried out in the borrowed premises of Carters Potteries, overlooking the quayside. During 1945 a total of 11,641 passengers arrived at Poole aboard 463 flights. Those requiring overnight accommodation were booked into the Harbour Heights Hotel and the Sandiacres Hotel. Within thirty minutes of the passengers going ashore at Poole their aircraft was flown to Hythe and brought out of the water for maintenance during the three-day turnaround time between flights. One passenger travelling home on the flying boat service in 1945 was Jeremy Cutler, a 12 year old returning from Africa with his mother and brother. They set off from Dar es Salaam on VE Day, and were scheduled to fly all the way to the UK by flying boat, along with their fellow passengers, who included the fabulously wealthy Aga Khan. They reached Khartoum via stops at Mombasa and Entebbe, but along the way their aircraft was plagued by technical problems, and at Khartoum they were transferred to a Dakota landplane for the rest of the journey.

  At the beginning of 1946 two services each week were still being operated over the Horseshoe route between Durban and Calcutta, a journey that took five weeks for the round trip and necessitated night stops along the way at Lourenço Marques, Beira, Kindi, Dar es Salaam, Mombasa, Kisumu, Port Bell, Laropi, Malakal, Khartoum, Wadi Halfa, Luxor, Cairo, Kallia, Habbaniyah, Basra, Bahrain, Dubai, Karachi, Rajsamand, Gwalior, and Allahabad. However, from 13 January 1947 the Horseshoe route out of Durban only operated as far as Cairo, and on 2 March that year the Durban–Cairo leg was also withdrawn. On 31 January 1946 BOAC reopened through services to Singapore using Hythe-class aircraft on a thrice-weekly basis, and the C-class flying boats were retired. On 12 March 1947 G-ADHM Caledonia, under the command of Captain Peter Horne, flew from Durban to Poole on the final C-class service out of Africa. The remainder of the fleet were then ferried to Poole for disposal, and most of them were scrapped at Hythe. One example was offered to the Science Museum for preservation, and another to Poole Council, but, sadly, both offers were declined. After G-ADHL Canopus was scrapped at Hythe in November 1946, part of the aircraft’s control yoke was presented to the Canopus Inn in Rochester, Kent, by Captain H.W. Alger, the Manager of BOAC’s No. 4 Line, who had regularly flown the aircraft in service.

  A postcard view of three BOAC Hythe-class Sunderlands (with G-AGIA Haslemere nearest camera) at their moorings. (via author)

  BOAC Short Solent 2 G-AHIN Southampton berthed at one of the pontoons at Berth 50 at Southampton. (via Poole Flying-Boat Celebration)

  BOAC had been considering extending the Singapore flying boat services through to Australasia, and during the period 17 February–2 April 1946 had sent the H
ythe-class G-AGJM on a 35,313-mile route survey trip out of Poole that took in Hong Kong, Shanghai, Tokyo, Australia and New Zealand. Among the party on board was the Chairman of BOAC, Lord Knollys. In the course of the tour the Hythe became the first British commercial flying boat to visit China and Japan, alighting on the Whang-Poo River in Shanghai and on the Bay of Tokyo. On 12 May 1946 BOAC, in association with Qantas, inaugurated the first post-war flying boat services between the UK and Australia. The twice-weekly service took five and a half days, with the eastbound journey routeing via Marseilles, Augusta (Sicily), Cairo, Basra, Bahrain, Karachi, Calcutta, Rangoon, Penang, Singapore (where Qantas took over responsibility for the rest of the journey), Surabaya, Darwin, and Bowen. Along the way BOAC made use of some unusual ground facilities such as a floating dock (the only one of its kind along the route) at Korangi, Karachi, and a houseboat that was used as a passenger reception lounge at Willingdon Bridge, Calcutta. Whilst flying over the city of Rangoon the passengers could obtain an aerial view of the Great Dagon Pagoda, one of the most important shrines for Buddhist pilgrims.