Flying Boats

by Charles Woodley

  BOAC Short Solent 2 G-AHIN Southampton at Berth 50, Southampton Docks. (via Poole Flying-Boat Celebration)

  During 1946 a magazine article recorded the impressions of Mrs Bridgman, a passenger on a Hythe-class service to Australia:

  BOAC Short Solent 2 G-AHIM Scarborough at her moorings. (via author)

  Unfortunately, the remainder of the pages from her journal have been lost and so her narrative has to end at this point.

  On 30 September 1946 the refurbished G-class Empire flying boat G-AFCI Golden Hind returned to BOAC service on a weekly schedule from Poole to Cairo via Marseilles and Augusta. The inaugural service was commanded by Captain Dudley Travers, but the aircraft’s time back in operation was to be brief. She was withdrawn from the route on 21 September 1947, as by then a new flying boat type had entered BOAC service. Back in 1945, before the Hythe class commenced operations, one of the original civilianised Sunderland 3s, G-AGKX, had been sent to Short Bros for remodelling as a commercial airliner. It retained its basic airframe, but the hull was reshaped and the original nose was replaced by a smoothly faired-over one similar to those on the Empire flying boats and a neat tailcone replaced the rear gun turret. Power was provided by four 1,030hp Bristol Pegasus 38 engines. On 28 November 1945 the remodelled aircraft emerged from the workshops as the first Short Sandringham 1. She was relaunched in a ceremony performed by the Minister of Civil Aviation Lord Winster, and during the week that followed many VIPs, including Mr Hudson Fysh, the managing director of Qantas, were carried aloft on short demonstration flights. Now bearing the name Himalaya, the aircraft participated in the Victory Air Pageant at Eastleigh Airport, Southampton, on 22 June 1946.

  The Sandringham 1 had accommodation for twenty-two seated passengers or sixteen in sleeper berths on its lower deck, which also contained dressing rooms and a promenade cabin. On the upper deck was the cocktail bar, buffet, and a galley with refrigerator and steam oven, and an eight-seat dining room whose settee-style seating could be converted into upper and lower bunks for four additional sleeper passengers. Short Bros was hopeful of persuading BOAC to adopt the Sandringham as its standard equipment on the Empire route network, but no immediate order was forthcoming as the airline had plans to switch to new landplane types in the near future. To tide the airline over until then the Hythe-class soldiered on. On 24 August 1946 they inaugurated weekly ‘Dragon’ services to Hong Kong, and on connecting flights to Bangkok, Singapore, Okinawa, and Iwakuni in Japan. By 1947 delivery delays with the airline’s hoped-for new landplane types forced BOAC to rethink its plans, and it requested the Ministry of Civil Aviation to order nine examples of the Sandringham 5 on its behalf as an interim measure. This was a conversion of the Short Sunderland 5, powered by 1,200hp Pratt & Whitney Twin Wasp engines conferring a cruising speed of 176mph and a range of 2,450 miles. Known in BOAC use as the Plymouth class, they entered service on 2 May 1947, replacing the Hythe class on weekly services from Poole to Bahrain and Kuwait and later operating through to Hong Kong.

  An aerial view of the Marine Air Terminal at Southampton. A Short Solent is on one of the pontoons, and a Hythe-class Sunderland is in mid-stream. The ocean liner Queen Elizabeth is berthed at the Ocean Terminal beyond. (Solent Sky Museum)

  A BOAC Short Solent overflies the Marine Air Terminal and Berth 50 at Southampton. (via author)

  On the night of 22/23 August 1947 BOAC suffered its first flying boat passenger fatalities since November 1943. The Sandringham 5 G-AHZB Portland was operating a Hong Kong–Poole schedule and was attempting a night landing at Bahrain Marine Air Base when it crashed with the loss of ten of its twenty-six occupants. One of the hazards faced by the flying boat crews during take-off was the fore-and-aft rocking effect known as ‘porpoising’. This occurred when the forces operating on the underside of the hull shifted from the rear to the front. The aircraft might then leave the water for a few seconds before touching down again heavily, often with such force that an engine might cut out. The pilots’ operating manual advised that at the first hint of porpoising a backward force should be applied to the control wheel and held there firmly. The workload of the UK-based pilots was a gruelling one. On the route to the Far East they could be away for up to thirty-eight days at a time, although this was compensated for by periods of home leave of thirty days or more.

  A map of part of the docks at Southampton, showing the locations of the Marine Air Terminal and the railway stations serving the docks. (via Poole Flying-Boat Celebration)

  One of the stopping points along the route to the Orient was Basra, situated at the confluence of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers. Here was sited an elegant passenger building with a landplane airfield on one side and on the other the Shatt al-Arab, where the flying boats alighted. Along the routes to Australia and the Far East BOAC had a fleet of around 200 marine support craft distributed between nearly thirty bases and manned by 700 trained staff. These were under the command of the Marine Superintendent Mr B. Smith and his deputy, both of whom had worked with marine craft since Imperial Airways introduced the Empire flying boats in 1936. Assisting them were some thirty coxwains, boatswains, and marine officers. Two of these possessed master’s certificates, and several more held first or second mate’s certificates. All of them had served tours of duty in distant and isolated overseas locations. It became the custom that as the launch carrying the passengers from the flying boats arrived or departed the shore the uniformed BOAC marine craft men would turn out on the quayside in parade ground order.

  By 1947 the cost of maintaining BOAC’s flying boat facilities at home and throughout the Empire had risen to more than £1 million per annum. The base at Poole was becoming too costly to operate, and the alighting areas there were too constricted and congested with pleasure craft. Also, the Southern Railway had announced that it was no longer financially viable for it to provide BOAC with a dedicated carriage on the appropriate London–Poole services and it was discontinuing the practice. To replace this facility BOAC switched to road transport and acquired four specially modified Leyland coaches for use on transfers that included a stop at Basingstoke in each direction.

  The Pakenham Committee had been set up to examine possible sites for a new permanent flying boat terminal in the UK, and by October 1947 it had come up with a shortlist of three potential locations. These were: Cliffe, Chichester Harbour, or the estuary of the Blackwater River. As it was likely to take some time to reach a decision and then construct the facilities at the chosen site it was decided that BOAC would as a temporary measure transfer its flying boat services back to Southampton. The final BOAC services in and out of Poole took place on 30 March 1948, and on the following day the airline’s flying boat base was officially transferred to Southampton. The first post-war service from there was operated to Australia by the Hythe-class aircraft G-AGEW Hanwell on 1 April. The BOAC terminal and offices at Salterns, Poole, were vacated by the airline and eventually taken over by the Poole Harbour Yacht Club. A site at Berth 50 in Southampton’s Eastern Docks had been selected for the interim terminal, which was intended to be a temporary structure with a projected life of five years, until a new National Marine Airport had become operational at whichever location had been selected. However, the facilities at Berth 50 were not ready when BOAC transferred operations, and so for the time being the airline used Berth 108, close to the ocean liner terminal. A new contender for the interim flying boat base had also emerged. Arguments for the use of Portsmouth instead of Southampton had centred on the premise that the Royal Beach Hotel at nearby Southsea could be leased by BOAC for its flying boat headquarters, thus saving the cost (estimated at £80,000) of erecting temporary buildings at Southampton. Other advantages put forward included the existence of fast electric train services between Portsmouth and London, plus an existing arterial road adjacent to the proposed flying boat terminal, and the presence of Portsmouth’s landplane airport, which could be used for feeder flights to and from other parts of the UK. In the event, none of the proposals for
alternative sites came to fruition, and BOAC was to remain at Southampton until the end of its flying boat operations.

  On 14 April 1948 the interim terminal at Berth 50 at Southampton was officially opened by the Minister of Civil Aviation, Lord Nathan, cutting a white ribbon stretched from the terminal building to one of the floating pontoons that had eliminated the need for launch transfers to and from the aircraft. In his speech, Lord Nathan referred to the difficulties encountered in finding suitable sites for marine aircraft bases along the Empire routes, as such locations needed to possess clear landing approaches and plenty of manoeuvring space, and had to be close to centres of population. He also wondered whether the passengers of the future would prefer to travel on the roomy but slow flying boats or on a new generation of speedy but less comfortable landplanes. The occasion was also used for the christening of BOAC’s new Short Solent flying boat as Southampton by the Mayoress of Southampton using a silver jug filled with Empire wine, and for the presentation of a ship’s chronometer to the aircraft. The new building had sufficient capacity to handle flying boat arrivals and departures simultaneously. On the ground floor was a reception lounge and customs facilities, and covered walkways to the pontoons and the railway station. Upstairs, a sixty-eight-seat restaurant and lounge bar ran the full length of the terminal’s façade and offered pleasant views over Southampton Water. Also on the first floor were the offices of the BOAC Station Superintendent and the local Ministry of Civil Aviation representative. The control tower was sited at one end of the terminal building, and the airline’s maintenance base was now only about half a mile away across the water at Hythe, so the costly ferry flights from Poole were eliminated. When an aircraft alighted at Southampton it was taxied up to a buoy, to which its radio officer secured the bow mooring rope. A launch was then positioned so that its crew could attach the aircraft’s stern release hook to two cables, which were then used to winch the flying boat tail-first into the fork of one of the floating pontoons. If it became likely that a departure from Southampton was going to be significantly delayed, a message was sent through to Airways House in London, and refreshments and sometimes entertainment of some kind would be provided for the passengers waiting there. On occasions a tea dance would even be laid on for them in the building’s art deco ballroom.

  In the meantime, the introduction of long-distance landplanes such as the Lockheed Constellation across the Atlantic had rendered the marine base at Foynes in Ireland almost redundant. The last BOAC flying boat to call there was the Hythe-class G-AGJC Humber on 24 March 1946, and on 5 April that year the airline announced that it was discontinuing the use of Foynes, but there was still the possibility of its flying boats staging through there again if the gigantic Saunders-Roe Princess aircraft then under development entered BOAC service.

  On the Baltimore–Bermuda route the BOAC Boeing 314As were supplemented by three examples of the improved Short Sandringham 7. These were fitted with thirty seats and known as the Bermuda class. However, this was to be a short-lived arrangement, as on 17 January 1948 G-AGBZ Bristol operated the last BOAC Boeing 314A service, from Bermuda to Baltimore. The aircraft were sold to the US carrier World Airways Inc., which had already acquired Pan American’s four remaining Boeing 314s. In BOAC service the three Boeing 314As had completed 596 transatlantic crossings and carried in the region of 42,000 passengers. The Bermuda-class Sandringhams were also withdrawn from the route, and the Darrell’s Island base at Bermuda was closed down, the services from the US mainland having been taken over by Lockheed Constellation landplanes.

  In March 1948 the World Airways fleet of Boeing 314s and 314As began operating irregular services on a New York–Baltimore–Puerto Rico routeing, carrying upwards of eighty passengers on each flight. In May 1948 one of these aircraft was en route from Puerto Rico to the USA with eighty-two passengers aboard when it encountered severe weather that ruled out a landing at either Baltimore or New York. A precautionary landing was safely accomplished at the head of the Chesapeake Bay, and the captain then elected to try to taxi the flying boat the 60 or so remaining miles to Baltimore. The aircraft ran aground on a sandbank and had to be pulled off by a tug. Undeterred, once the weather improved the captain took off and flew his passengers to their scheduled destinations. In February 1949 World Airways put its fleet of flying boats and their support equipment up for sale.

  Poster advertising the joint Qantas/BOAC Kangaroo service to London by flying-boat or landplane. (Qantas Heritage Collection)

  After the termination of BOAC services through Foynes, the flying boat base there had one final movement to handle. On 30 September 1947 the former Pan American Airways Boeing 314A NC18612, now operated by American International Airlines and renamed Bermuda Sky Queen, arrived from Poole with fifty-two passengers and a crew of seven. After a prolonged stay it departed for New York via Gander at 0145hrs on 13 October. During its Atlantic crossing the flying boat had to battle against strong headwinds, and it was still 600 miles from Gander when its crew transmitted an SOS reporting that they had insufficient fuel to reach land and were turning back in order to alight on the sea near to the US Coast Guard weather ship Bibb. A successful landing was made about 3 miles from the ship, and the Boeing was then taxied alongside it. All the passengers and crew were safely transferred to the Bibb, but the Bermuda Sky Queen had suffered serious damage and was eventually sunk by naval gunfire, having become a hazard to shipping.

  Meanwhile, back in the UK a replacement for BOAC’s elderly fleet of Hythe-class Sunderlands was under production. During the twelve months up to the end of March 1947 eleven of these aircraft had each clocked up more than 20,000 miles. Early in 1946 BOAC had been offered the opportunity to evaluate on loan the second production Short S.45 Seaford 1. This type was larger than the Sunderlands and had originally been intended for use in the war in the Pacific. With the abrupt ending of that war it was considered to have potential for civil use, and BOAC had placed an order for twelve modified examples for operation as the Short Solent 2. These aircraft were to be powered by four 1,680hp Bristol Hercules 637 engines. Up to thirty-four passengers were to be carried on two decks at a cruising speed of 244mph over a range of 1,800 miles. The first Solent for BOAC, G-AHIL Salisbury, was launched onto the River Medway at Rochester in Kent on 11 November 1946, and made its maiden flight on 1 December that year. Another of the BOAC Solents, G-AHIY Southsea, was later to become the very last aircraft to be constructed at the historic Short Bros works at Rochester.

  The February 1947 BOAC News Letter announced that the airline was to introduce Solents onto its ‘Springbok’ service to South Africa in place of the current Avro York landplanes. In the announcement the BOAC Chairman Sir Harold Hartley professed himself convinced that the flying boat journey to South Africa would be the most fascinating in the world for travellers, and would offer great possibilities for tourism with its blend of historical and scenic features. The Solent was the most powerful British flying boat type to enter BOAC service. On its lower deck were situated three passenger cabins, a promenade cabin, a library, wardrobes, dressing rooms and toilets. A spiral staircase provided access from the promenade cabin to the upstairs cocktail bar, stewards’ compartment and galley. The operating crew consisted of the captain, first officer, wireless operator, and flight engineer, and the passengers were looked after by the chief steward, galley steward, and stewardess. In April 1948 the Solent G-AHIN Southampton carried a party of journalists on a ‘pre-inaugural’ trip along the route to South Africa. The journey did not get off to the most auspicious of starts. After casting off from its berth at Southampton and taxiing past the moored Solents, Hythes and Sandringhams at the BOAC maintenance base at Hythe, the crew ran up the engines prior to take-off, whereupon one engine suffered a magneto drop and the aircraft had to return to its berth for attention. The journalists were obliged to disembark while the fault was rectified, and it was some seven hours later when they were able to reboard and take off. The route took them over the Normandy coastl
ine, Avignon and Marseilles before the aircraft made a night landing at Augusta in Sicily. The night was spent in the barrack-like accommodation rented by BOAC, and the next morning they flew over the ancient city of Syracuse prior to alighting at Cairo. Here, they attended a reception hosted by the local travel trade and press aboard the houseboat Puritan. Later that day they reboarded the flying boat for the next leg to Luxor, but before take-off was possible they were witnesses to an interesting hold-up. Two Arab feluccas were tacking down the waterway and refused to pull in to the bank and give right of way to the taxiing aircraft. The crew of the attendant fire launch then intervened and threatened to turn their hoses onto the boats. This threat had the desired effect and the flight was able to continue.

  The first stewardess employed to work on the BOAC flying boats post-war was Olive Carlisle. During the Second World War she had served a short stint in August 1943 on the shuttle flights between Poole and Foynes, and in the spring of 1948 she was posted to the Solent fleet at Southampton. She was on duty aboard G-AHIT Severn on the inaugural service to South Africa on 4 May that year. The BOAC flying boat flights were part of the joint BOAC/South African Airways ‘Springbok’ service, initially consisting of two Solent flights and one Avro York landplane service each week. For the southbound schedules she was required to report to BOAC’s Airways Terminal in Buckingham Palace Road, London, at 0630hrs to greet her passengers as they arrived to check in. By 0700hrs the formalities had been completed and she escorted them on the coach journey to Southampton via a stop at the Hog’s Back in Surrey for breakfast. Upon reaching Southampton the passengers were taken through to customs and emigration by BOAC traffic officers, while the cabin crew boarded the aircraft and had the cabin ready in time to show the passengers to their allotted seats. On departure it was normal practice for two engines to be started, and once these were running satisfactorily the wireless officer would cast off by operating a lever that released the wire restraining the aircraft. The remaining two engines would be started once the flying boat was taxiing. The first scheduled stop was at Augusta, where first-time flying boat passengers would sometimes be startled as the spray generated on touchdown completely obscured the windows on the lower deck. The night stop at Augusta was spent at the BOAC ‘air posting house’ called Canopus House, which boasted 126 rooms and a fine view over the bay. The following day was spent flying onward to Cairo and then Luxor. During their overnight stay at Luxor the passengers had the opportunity to take part in an excursion to visit the Valley of the Kings. The next day they flew to Khartoum and Port Bell, where the night stop was at Silver Springs, 5 five miles along the road to Kampala. The highlight of the following day’s travel was flying over the Victoria Falls after traversing the whole length of Lake Victoria. The roar of the falls could be heard over the noise from the engines while still several miles off. The Solents alighted on a wide stretch of the Zambesi River some 4½ miles upstream. The flying boat would receive some attention here while the passengers and crew went ashore to the Victoria Falls Hotel for their final overnight stay. The construction of the landing stage, terminal facilities, and a 6-mile road linking the falls to the hotel had all been financed by the government of Southern Rhodesia, thus relieving BOAC of the considerable expense of building and maintaining a base there. The Solents could only arrive and depart during daylight hours, as night operations would necessitate the use of a flarepath, which would have invited unwelcome attention from crocodiles and hippos. The night stop at Victoria Falls soon became the high spot of the journey to South Africa, as passengers had the opportunity to visit the falls by moonlight before turning in. After a short night’s sleep they were roused at 0630hrs, breakfasted with the crew, and were then taken by bus to the jetty and out to the aircraft by launch. As the Solents cruised at around 200mph at a civilised altitude of 7,000ft or so the passengers would congregate on the promenade deck to watch the wildlife and scenery passing by below. On some occasions too many people would gather there at the same time and the captain would send back a message requesting that some of them return to their seats as they were upsetting the balance of the aircraft. Flying over Africa was not always pleasant, however. Thermals could create turbulence that the unpressurised flying boats could not climb above, and airsickness was not uncommon.