30 November 1948. Hotel Cecil, Alexandria
Tuesday evening ... Well! Since I finished the last page we’ve had quite an eventful time. We flew over the desert and circled Alex (Alexandria), and then landed neatly on the artificial lake. We had a very good lunch at BOAC HQ, and were allowed an hour for it. Then we returned to the plane, took off, and had just reached a good height when one of the engines conked out and another began to leak oil furiously! So we had to return and land again, having been airborne for about five minutes ... We were told that we would be night-stopping in Alex after all, which pleased us as we very much wanted to see something of it. The air hostess’s fiancée is here, so she was thrilled to bits, bless her. We had a beastly time with the Egyptian customs. They searched all our night cases and were very suspicious. Then we had a lovely bus ride into Alex itself, along the promenade. To our joy, we found this hotel (an enormous place) overlooks the beautiful bay, and we have a room on the 5th floor with a balcony overlooking it too. It has a lovely bathroom attached, and as the cost is £2 per day in piastres you can see that BOAC doesn’t stint us. No wonder they make losses ... The set-up is that if the plane isn’t ready we transfer to another, crew and all, and leave at 2pm for Khartoum. If the plane is OK we leave earlier than that, but not at another Godless hour, so we’re having breakfast in bed!
1 and 2 December. Wednesday 4 p.m., now on board Short Solent 2 G-AHIM Scarborough
We are now flying over the desert, a dreary but rather impressive prospect. The sun is tremendously hot. The men are all in open shirts and the crew have put on tropical uniform. We have crossed the Nile, which looked very dirty, and saw the pyramids outside Cairo, just like haystacks! The desert and the fertile belt are so clearly delineated that it seems as if a line has been ruled between them. Last night we had a look around Alex, but couldn’t see much in the dark, and everything was dreadfully expensive. It was a glorious, starry night, and the harbour is, I think, one of the most beautiful things I have seen, either by day or night. So symmetrical, with no piers to spoil its lines, and the stately tall buildings looking out over it. We had breakfast in bed at 8.30 as a change from early rising, and were thrilled to have about a month’s ration of bacon and two fried eggs each, as well as heaps of butter and lovely white rolls. So far I haven’t tired of white bread! And the idea of having sugar and butter ad lib hasn’t penetrated properly yet. There was an anti-British demonstration going on in town, and we were warned not to go out. I would have liked to have seen some agitators etc, but we couldn’t see a thing from our window. Most disappointing ... I forgot to tell you that we flew past Etna, veiled in mist, outside Augusta. Most of these geographical curiosities are rather disappointing, I think. I get far more of a kick out of seeing palm trees, banana bushes, natives in queer costumes, and sleeping under mosquito nets, watching the silly little houses and fields as we fly low, and drinking coffee in cafes and watching the life outside. We left Alex after lunch at 1pm in buses, and no stones were thrown! Customs again were a nuisance. We are in the other plane now... It’s exactly the same. We’re dropping down to Luxor now, so I’ll stop.
Thursday. We landed at sunset and Luxor looked very exotic, with palms, temple ruins and houses outlined against the beautiful sky. We walked to our night stop, the Luxor Hotel. We had a very bare but quite comfy room with two washbasins, and shared a bathroom with the Captain in the room beyond. We saw from our flight cards to our horror that we had to rise again at 5am. We went to bed at 9.30pm and crawled out again at five. We took off at 6.30am and touched down in Khartoum at 10.15 to refuel. We were outside of the town and saw nothing as we only stayed for about half an hour.
2 and 3 December
Thursday 4.15 p.m. It was glorious weather outside Khartoum, hot and cloudless with a strong warm wind blowing. We thought of you in England as far as weather goes, and wouldn’t swap for anything! We have excellent breakfasts on board. Today we had eggs, tomato and bacon. Another day we had ham and eggs. The lunches and teas are also marvellous. We followed the Nile for hundreds of miles. This has been our longest day’s flying. We thought we would never leave the desert, but now we have been over equatorial jungle for some time. I went fast asleep all afternoon. It’s cool in the plane as we’re flying high. We are nearly at Kampala now. The part I like least about flying is coming in to land. I always feel the plane will touch the ground before the water. And although our Captain brings us down very gently my tummy is inclined to remain aloft! Actually, he always makes beautiful landings, so I needn’t worry. My ears give me very little trouble, merely getting a little stuffy as we change height, but nothing that blowing won’t cure. We can see Lake Victoria now and we’re dropping fast, so I’ll stop.
Friday 9.30 a.m. Kampala was the most exotic of all our night stops. Almost on the equator, it was very warm and humid. We were divided into two parties, with some of us going to the Imperial Hotel, a large modern one, I gather. We were taken to Silver Springs. This was a little ‘village’ of bungalows with a main building for eating in. Rather ‘a la Butlins’, we were allotted two little rooms in one bungalow. Very clean and nicely furnished. We dressed in one and slept in the other. Both had stone wash basins. In due course we departed Kampala, and about ten minutes after getting airborne the Captain made the plane give a large lurch to signify that we had ‘crossed the line’ (the equator). Later we were each given a huge certificate, quite barmy, stating that as we’d ‘shot the biggest line in the world we were now qualified as members of the Winged Order of Line-Shooters, signed Phoebus Apollo, Empyrean Emperor’. Lake Victoria is colossal, like a sea. We passed Lake Tanganyika and are now over elephant country but too high to see without field glasses. We left a lot of people at Kampala. Amongst them was Lady Hall, wife of the Governor of Uganda, a charming lady whose company we were sorry to lose. She drove off in a government car, but waved heartily and looked sorry to leave us. We arrived at the Falls at about 2pm, I’m now going to concentrate on spotting an elephant!
(Mrs Adams, née Kirk, has since lost the final letter she sent home, but has kindly summarised the rest of her journey):
We parted company with the flying-boat and its crew to spend two nights at the posh Victoria Falls Hotel (where it was the rule men wear jacket and tie for dinner, despite the equatorial heat). I was enormously impressed with the Falls, but we never did see any elephants ... After the luxury of the Sunderland [actually a Solent] I was very much less than impressed when we boarded a tiny Dragon Rapide biplane. It appeared to have starched canvas wings, and no crew other than the pilot, who chatted to his passengers over his shoulder during the flight and told us a hair-raising tale about a baby being delivered on board the previous week. But he safely delivered us to Salisbury and the start of our new life ...
6
THE PRINCESS FLYING BOAT
In July 1945 the Ministry of Supply invited tenders from the major UK aircraft manufacturers for designs for a very large flying boat type to meet what it then perceived as the future needs of BOAC. It was hoped that by applying the latest technological advances to the flying boat concept Britain could build on the success of the pre-war Empire flying boats and produce a design that would place BOAC at the forefront of the world’s airlines. One of the companies submitting designs was Isle of Wight-based Saunders-Roe Ltd, which put forward a proposal for a gigantic machine with a ‘double-bubble’-shaped hull able to accommodate up to 200 passengers in pressurised comfort on stages of more than 3,000 miles (including UK–New York non-stop) at a cruising speed of 350mph. The passengers would occupy the upper lobe of the fuselage, which would contain sleeper berths, powder rooms and a bar. The powerplant was originally intended to be the proposed Rolls-Royce Tweed engine, but after this project was cancelled the aircraft design was amended to incorporate no fewer than ten 3,200shp Bristol Proteus 600 turboprop engines. Eight of these were to be coupled in pairs driving contra-rotating propellers of 18ft 6in diameter, and the remaining two were to be mounted individually in
the outermost of the three engine nacelles on each wing. Three examples of the aircraft were ordered by the Ministry of Supply on behalf of BOAC in May 1946 at a total contract price of £2.8 million. The flying boat type was originally going to be called the Dollar Princess, but this idea was soon dropped in favour of the designation SR.45 Princess.
At around the same time the Bristol Aeroplane Company was working on a rival design, the equally massive Brabazon landplane airliner. There would obviously be insufficient funding for both types in the BOAC fleet of the future, and in a letter published in Flight magazine in August 1947 Captain T. Neville Stack set out what he considered to be the advantages of the flying boat option. He thought that the Brabazon design was pushing against the upper size limit for useful and economical operation by a landplane airliner. The dimensions of the runways and airport buildings necessary for safe and efficient operation would make such facilities extremely costly to construct. There was also the question of weather diversions to consider. How many airfields in the world, let alone in the UK, would be capable of accepting such an aircraft in emergency? The giant flying boat was a much more practical alternative. There was no need for a technically difficult undercarriage to support the massive weight. The larger the hull was made the more seaworthy it would be. In the event of bad weather at its destination the flying boat had the whole ocean to alight upon. Rocket- or jet-powered assistance could be used to boost take-off performance, and in-flight refuelling could extend its range. In 1950 the Chairman of BOAC, Sir Miles Thomas, speaking about the future of the airline’s services to Johannesburg, said that Princesses might be placed onto two-class flights to South Africa in about eight years’ time. They should be capable of making the journey with just one stop at Lagos, and an extra stop at Lisbon could be incorporated if that proved commercially desirable. First-class sleeper berths could be provided on one deck, with the other given over to high-density seating.
The massive Saunders-Roe SR.45 Princess in flight. (GKN Aerospace)
The Saunders-Roe Princess in plan view, showing the six engine positions for the coupled turboprop powerplants. (GKN Aerospace)
An early view of the as-yet unpainted Saunders-Roe Princess above the clouds. (GKN Aerospace)
The first prototype, registered as G-ALUN, was launched on 20 August 1952 and made its first flight two days later under the command of Geoffrey Tyson. There followed a series of test flights accumulating the required number of flight hours for the Princess to be demonstrated at the 1952 Farnborough Air Show. Saunders-Roe was planning on an initial production batch of twelve aircraft, to be constructed in the company’s Columbine works. By that time the aircraft’s development costs had escalated to £10.8 million, about half of which had been caused by the complexity of its coupled Bristol Proteus engines. Flight testing continued until June 1954. More than ninety flight hours were logged, in the course of which serious problems with the propeller gearboxes came to light. Work on the second and third prototypes was suspended while the Ministry, Saunders-Roe, and Bristol tried to agree on the best way to install Bristol’s new Orion turboprop engine in place of the Proteus powerplants. However, by then the concept and technology of the Princess had become dated, and BOAC had already ceased flying boat operations. The airline did carry out a survey of its former flying boat engineering base at Hythe, in case the Princess’s powerplant problems could be solved, and agreed to reconsider the aircraft in that eventuality, but in truth it was no longer really interested.
During previous years, the British South American Airways Corporation (BSAAC) had examined the Princess design and had concluded that it would be able to operate the aircraft profitably on its two trunk routes to South America, using the natural marine locations along the way as flying boat bases. The airline had hopes of operating Princesses to Buenos Aires by 1953, but in July 1949 BSAAC was merged into BOAC and the scheme was subsequently dropped.
In late 1951 the government announced that ‘circumstances have compelled a change in the civil plans, and the (Princess) flying boats are now to be completed for the Royal Air Force’. It was estimated that in trooping configuration a single Princess could transport in one year as many service personnel as nine conventional seagoing troopships. However, this scheme did not come to fruition either, and in early 1952 the Ministry of Supply decreed that in view of the continuing powerplant problems the second and third airframes should be ‘cocooned’ until the situation improved. By February 1953 the work had been completed and the hulls were towed to Calshot for long-term storage. In 1954 it was announced that the entire Princess programme was to be terminated, and the only example to have made it into the air was also cocooned and stored at West Cowes. The three airframes were to remain cocooned and awaiting their uncertain future until the mid 1960s, when all three of them were finally broken up.
During their lifetime various alternative proposals for their use had been examined and eventually discarded. In 1952 Barry Aikman, chairman of the British independent flying boat operator Aquila Airways, had expressed his interest in acquiring all three examples for use on trooping contracts and had offered the Ministry of Supply more than £1 million for each of them, only to have his offer declined. Also in 1952, Saunders-Roe had put forward a proposal for a jet-powered development of the Princess, to be called the Duchess. This would have been propelled by six De Havilland Ghost turbojet engines, enabling it to transport up to seventy-four passengers in luxury at 40,000ft and 500mph, but the project did not proceed beyond the design stage. In the late 1950s the US Navy considered using the airframes for part of its airborne nuclear reactor trials, but this idea also never came to fruition. Neither did a 1958 proposal to operate the three Princesses on services between Southampton and Rio de Janeiro, and also to the Great Lakes in Canada. As late as November 1963 Aero Spacelines Inc., the successful operator of the Pregnant Guppy conversion of a Boeing Stratocruiser landplane airliner, was reported to be in discussions with the NASA space agency regarding a proposal to convert the first prototype Princess into a new ‘Super Guppy’ freighter for the transportation of the first stage of the USA’s Saturn 5 rocket. This monster aircraft would have been powered by eight turbojet engines, giving it non-stop transcontinental range whilst carrying a 200,000lb payload. Aero Spacelines was sufficiently confident in the project to acquire the other two airframes as well, and in July 1965 all three were de-cocooned at Calshot and dismantled in preparation for shipment to the USA. However, Aero Spacelines then had second thoughts and decided to convert more Boeing Stratocruisers instead. In April 1967 the only Princess flying boat to have taken wing was towed up Southampton Water to meet its fate at a scrapyard on the River Itchen.
Saunders-Roe Princess G-ALUN afloat off the Isle of Wight factory. In the foreground is the tail of another Princess under construction, and behind that the Saunders-Roe SR.A/1 jet fighter prototype. (GKN Aerospace)
A night-time launch of the only Saunders-Roe Princess aircraft to fly, G-ALUN. (GKN Aerospace)
7
AQUILA AIRWAYS
In 1948 Wing Commander Barry Aikman DFC decided to leave the RAF and use the expertise and experience gained during his time with No. 210 Flying Boat Squadron to set up his own flying boat airline. Aquila Airways was registered in May 1948 with a capital of £20,000 and the intention of operating the ageing Hythe-class Short Sunderlands that BOAC was in the process of retiring on ad hoc charter flights, round the world trips, and ‘aerial cruises’ to the Mediterranean. In July 1948 two Sunderlands were duly purchased from BOAC. One was intended for conversion to a freighter and the other was to retain its BOAC interior for the aerial cruise services. Southampton was selected as the airline’s operating base as Aquila would be able to rent part of the terminal facilities and floating pontoons constructed for BOAC, and a recruiting drive for crews and ground staff began. The maintenance of the aircraft was contracted out to Air Service Training at nearby Hamble, whose slipway had originally been built for the aircraft manufacturer A.V. Roe dur
ing the First World War.
A starting date of 1 August 1948 for services out of Southampton was scheduled, but world events were to provide Aquila with the opportunity to earn some valuable extra revenue before then. Tensions between the Soviet Union and the Western allies were running high in the aftermath of the Second World War, and a Soviet blockade of road, rail and canal routes into Berlin through communist-held territory led to the Berlin Airlift, the Allied operation to supply the Berliners with food, fuel, oil, coal and other necessities entirely by air. Every suitable civilian aircraft was needed to supplement the military transport flights, and in August 1948 the two Aquila Airways Sunderlands began flying from the River Elbe at Finkenwerder near Hamburg to Lake Havel in Berlin, carrying cargoes of meat, flour, and especially salt, for which the corrosion-proofed hulls of the flying boats proved ideal. The flights continued until December 1948, by which time the lake was expected to freeze over shortly, and so the Sunderlands were withdrawn from the airlift. By then the airline had acquired a third Sunderland from BOAC, and by late 1949 its fleet had grown to include twelve Sunderlands (some purchased for spares use only), and the Short Sandringham 5 G-AGKX. The company’s plans for this expanded collection of aircraft now included the reconfiguring of two machines as fifty- to sixty-seaters for use on tourist-class charters and on emigrant flights to Australia. Aquila also had ambitions to operate scheduled passenger services from Southampton to the island of Madeira, which at that time possessed no land airport. The state-owned airlines BOAC and BEA (British European Airways) had a monopoly on UK scheduled services, but frequently permitted the independent airlines to operate services on their behalf under associate agreements. Aquila successfully applied to BEA for year-round services to Madeira under such an agreement, and on 24 March 1949 its Sunderland G-AGEU Hampshire set off from Southampton on a combined route-proving/VIP inaugural flight to Madeira via Lisbon carrying seventeen invited guests, eight crew members and 110lb of mail. The airline had selected Funchal Bay as the alighting point for its scheduled services, but before landing there it flew the aircraft around the island to earmark possible alternative sites. When the Sunderland set down in Funchal Bay at 1402hrs on 25 March it became the first civilian airliner to land at Madeira, the island having been host to only a few military flying boats during the war years. The jetties and esplanades at Funchal were packed with curious residents, and when the crew later appeared in their uniforms for dinner at the Savoy Hotel they were applauded by the other diners as they entered. During the course of their two-day stay the crew were kept busy showing dignitaries over the aircraft and carrying some on sightseeing flights over Madeira and the neighbouring island of Porto Santo. At 1315hrs on 27 March the party departed for the journey back to Southampton via a fuel stop at Lisbon as Madeira possessed no refuelling facilities.
Flying Boats Page 9