by Gavin Young
*
With considerable help from providence, Cathay quickly recovered from this desperate situation. Jock now set his sights on a DC-6. If Walsh thought Holyman ‘wanted out’ – too bad. ‘A DC-6 is in fact the only answer today. We’ll get nowhere unless and until JS&S Ltd and CNCo take their courage in both hands and buy a DC-6, alone if necessary.’ Indefatigably, he took to the air with his old soft hat and his old suitcase tied with rope in an urgent search for new capital that led him once more to Australia, Hong Kong (where for a heady moment he thought the Governor might come across with a subsidy) and America. Luckily, he also stopped off in Canada. There, in Vancouver, he met Grant McConachie, the President of Canadian Pacific Airlines, and after a long talk noted joyfully: ‘This is a second Holyman and I like him a lot.’ Another diary entry gave a clue to his own character: ‘Grant, Ivan Holyman, Syd de Κ. are all in the same mould and definitely “adventurers”. I can’t think why, but we all fell for each other at first sight.’
He poured out his problems and McConachie, like Scott, said he was sure Jock would be wise to acquire a DC-6. ‘I think I have made a friend,’ Jock confided to Scott, and it was true. The ‘second Holyman’ was going to prove a godsend sooner than anyone could imagine.
Despite their warm relations McConachie declined Jock’s invitation to put capital into Cathay, but soon that problem was resolved anyway, for back in London P&O, the shipping giant which had turned down an approach from Jock Swire the previous week, changed its mind and decided to step into the breach. It paid HK$2.5 million for a 31.2% shareholding in the Company, and, coming in the nick of time, this decisive development acted like an explosive charge, ensuring Cathay an immediately viable future.
*
At this juncture two outstanding personalities in the development of the airline reported to the Cathay office in Hong Kong: Captain Kenneth Steele and a senior engineer called Jack Gething.
Steele had been seconded in 1953 from ANA to check and train crews and to draw up new flight manuals. Having reported the general standard of flying to be satisfactory, he had stayed to become a permanent fixture with the title of Flight Superintendent, remaining with the company until 1963.
Jack Gething was an outstanding engineer with considerable experience of flying in Australia and New Guinea. He now set about creating for Cathay a superb air maintenance service. Up to the fifties, two aircraft engineering companies had existed at Kai Tak: the Jardine Aircraft Maintenance Company (JAMCO), originally a BOAC associate to service their flying boats, and the Pacific Air Maintenance and Supply Company (PAMAS), associated with CPA. In 1950 the two amalgamated into one company called the Hong Kong Aircraft Engineering Company (HAECO). It was a very different set-up from Roy and Syd’s small aircraft maintenance store, kept running by ‘Hokum’ Harris, Neil Norquay and Jack Williams. These men were fine engineers operating on not much more than a shoestring – ‘a tin shed operation,’ Dave Smith called it – and coping with far too many engine failures.
Now things began to improve out at Kai Tak. Not that they became what you might call de luxe overnight. Everything was crammed into an office under the control tower, near the terminal shack. Steele’s office was there, and the teleprinter office, and a corner canteen consisting of a long cane table and a few chairs, and everything was periodically pungent with cooking smells from the flight kitchen. ‘Ma’ Sanders ran that. She was a formidable English character, now laughing, now scolding, telling Ken Steele and Captain Pat Moore, the Flight Operations Manager, to buzz off home to their wives while she lined up the Chinese ‘boys’ and gave them their worm pills or whatever she felt they needed. Cathay already had a lot of Chinese mechanics, and by then most of the air hostesses were orientals too. ‘Ma’ was a mother-figure to them – indeed to everybody. Her flight kitchen took over the whole office space in the end, and everybody else moved to a Nissen hut. Jack Gething’s Engineering Department was simply a lean-to against a hangar. But the important, unforgettable thing, Dave Smith thought, was a oneness; a family feeling. When Jock came out from London he’d know every expatriate by name and quite a few of the Chinese too.
Angus Macdonald had recently joined HAECO from the Royal Navy: ‘Work? The engineers would be up to their elbows in oil, and the Chief was really on their backs all the time, really riding them. You couldn’t have it now; you’d have all hell. But then we never had a walkout. A go-slow now and again, perhaps, but no strikes.’
At first HAECO’s staff included a number of Americans and Australians from JAMCO, but the Americans soon moved out. ‘The top engineers’ – Angus Macdonald again – ‘were two-thirds what Chinese call gweilos [white ghosts] and one-third Hong Kong Chinese, while the ordinary mechanics were Chinese.’ Nowadays most of HAECO’s qualified engineers are Hong Kong Chinese. Cathay’s apprenticeship schemes turned out Chinese engineers second to none – certainly the best in Asia, Macdonald thought. And Bob Smith thought they were the best sheet metal workers he’d ever seen.
‘Most impressive,’ Jock said when he saw how HAECO was getting on. In fact, Gething was in at the birth of a miracle child. By 1957 HAECO was providing engineering services to thirty-three aircraft operators of twenty-four nationalities; by 1959 to over seventy operators of thirty nationalities. Chic Eather, looking at HAECO from the viewpoint of today, calls it one of the great success stories of the aircraft engineering industry. The tin shed operation at old Kai Tak had grown into one of the largest organizations of its kind, not only in the Far East but in the world, thanks to the high technical standards achieved there by ‘Hokum’ Harris, Spencer Cooper and Tony Wakeford (both of whom came across from JAMCO when that folded), Jack Gething, Don Delaney and the rest of Cathay’s engineers down the years.
*
To return to 1954: Cathay’s skies were brightening after the infusion of P&O capital. The DC-4 (VR-HEU) was flying seventy-one hours a week, close as usual to her limits. There were two DC-3s in reserve – although Betsy, Roy Farrell’s ‘baby’, had been sold to Mandated Airlines at Lae in New Guinea in 1955. But the airline’s history was not, the reader may by now have realized, a smooth, unimpeded, upward-soaring flight to success.
That year VR-HEU was shot down, Captain Phil Blown achieved worldwide fame – and Cathay faced extinction once again.
CHAPTER 14
There was no radioed challenge; no warning shots. The Chinese fighters moved in on the Cathay Pacific Skymaster at 9,000 feet and opened up from both sides with cannon and machine-guns at about 150 yards range. They were cream-coloured, propeller-driven planes, each with a full red star on the side of the fuselage and a red nose. The Cathay co-pilot, Cedric Carlton, was the first to see the one on the starboard side. Captain Philip Blown glimpsed the second fighter immediately afterwards, just before the DC-4’s No. 1 engine burst into flames. After that the aircraft was full of flying 50-calibre bullets, and the Radio Officer, Stephen Wong, began to yell out an emergency signal – ‘Mayday! Mayday! Losing altitude, engine on fire!’ Then the No. 4 engine and the No. 4 main fuel tank were ablaze, the radio aerial was shot away too and no one could hear Wong any more, though he continued to clutch his mike and shout his message to the world until the plane hit the water.
VR-HEU was carrying six crew and twelve passengers from Singapore and Bangkok to Hong Kong, passing as usual eighty to ninety miles south of Hainan Island in the international air corridor regularly used by all civilian aircraft on that route. There was never any doubt that the Chinese fighters came from the military airfield on Hainan. Nor that they intended to destroy the aircraft and everybody in her. Phil Blown’s immediate concern was how to ditch a DC-4 from 9,000 feet with two engines and a wing in flames while all around him, as he told me many years later, the explosive heads of 50-calibre shells blew holes a foot and a half wide the length and breadth of the aircraft, with a deafening noise. Survivors said they had had no doubt that this was it. Mr Peter Thatcher, a Connecticut American, told reporters at Kai Tak how Leonard Parrish
, of Iowa Park, Texas, travelling from Singapore with his wife and three children, was sitting with him at the rear of the plane, and the first he knew was when he saw fire on one of the engines. Mr Parrish got up and went over to take a better look. ‘When he returned,’ said Thatcher, ‘I asked him what had happened and he replied: “We have had it. There is nothing to be done.” I got up from my seat and was immediately hit by something on the inside of my left thigh.’ The last he saw of Mr Parrish was him crouching over his son to protect the boy from the bullets that were streaming into the plane, cracking and roaring.
Phil Blown’s cool thinking in that mad outbreak of explosion, flame and disintegrating DC-4 strikes one as something miraculous. He began to take evasive action, swinging the plane from side to side. Each time he did so the fighter on the side opposite to the way he was heading fired bursts of heavy machine-gun bullets into the plane, which was going down at about 350mph. At 5,000 feet the aircraft’s rudder control was shot off; at 2,000 feet the right aileron went and Blown checked the plane’s automatic right turn by shutting off Nos 1 and 2 engines and fully opening No. 3. He yelled to Cedric Carlton, to his Engineer, George Cattanach, and to Stephen Wong to brace themselves ready to ditch.
Looking at it calmly all these years later, I could see that Phil Blown is the sort who would deal with what followed as well as, if not better than, the next man. That is, when I could find him; it was not easy. I had to drive out of Sydney to the fringes of what seemed like the outback. A sign on a tree actually said ‘Road Ends’ by a red mailbox, and it did end, running off to expire in a gully full of trees.
Phil Blown is still a stocky, square-shouldered man of medium height, neat and soft-spoken, not unlike James Cagney with glasses. ‘There are only two Blowns in the phone book here,’ he said, ‘myself and my son. I think the name must be German by origin, or Dutch.’ His father had been a Yangtze river pilot for Swires and Phil was born in Tientsin, so he grew up among the China Hands. He and his wife Bunty, like Sydney and Angela de Kantzow, married in the cathedral in Shanghai. Since he retired as Cathay’s Chief Pilot, Phil and Bunty have lived in the bungalow in which I found them on the edge of a far-flung township with a close-cut lawn and a dark red prunus tree and a small forest of blue gums that rise like a barrier between them and the open spaces of New South Wales. Phil had started flying with the RAAF, and after the Second World War got a job in the Deccan with a fleet of DC-3s belonging to the Nizam of Hyderabad. Then he answered a Cathay ad. With CPA he piloted the first DC-3 flight to Kuching in Sarawak where Syd (who was on board) ‘had fixed up this publicity thing with a bunch of Dayaks. They wore feathers and had plugged padlocks through their earlobes. Beautiful.’ A few years later VR-HEU was corkscrewing down the sky off Hainan, barely under control, and later still, here was Phil opposite me in an armchair holding a beer and chatting about it.
‘The angle was pretty steep. The quicker I could get her down onto something solid or semi-solid the better. I saw Stephen Wong lying on the floor braced against the bulkhead talking into the mike. Luckily I was able to level her out. But still we came to the water at about 260 knots and it was hard to wash out [reduce] that speed. We had no flaps, you see. We just had to wait patiently, bouncing on the rough water like ducks and drakes. Then the starboard wing hit. It clipped a wave and sheared off and we waited – the seconds seemed like hours – for the real impact. And that was a hell of an impact at 160 knots as our nose ploughed into a huge roller somewhere near the top of it. The port storm window was shattered and the starboard window by the second and final impact. Ced and I were thrown forward very hard against the rubber crash guards above the instrument panel, the safety harness snapped, a lot of green water poured in, and I scrambled out of the front window with Ced after me.’ Phil smiled. ‘I think a little angel was sitting on my shoulder. And Cedric’s.’
That corkscrew from 9,000 feet to sea level had taken about two minutes, and the Chinese only stopped shooting at 1,000 feet. One of the two Flight Hostesses, Rose Chen, was killed in the stream of fire on the way down; so was a Mrs Finlay; and Leonard Parrish, the son he had tried to protect, and one of his two little daughters. It was a stroke of luck, Phil Blown says, that only five months before he’d seen the Mae Wests all lying about on the luggage racks, looking pretty frayed. He’d suggested to Dick Hunt they should be put into a canister, and Hunt had agreed. ‘And when we hit the water and the tail broke off, the Mae Wests floated clear. And a life raft, a yellow thing, bobbed out too, near the wreckage, and Ced Carlton grabbed it.’
VR-HEU started to sink almost at once. Nose-down, she was soon gone.
‘I saw Mrs Parrish clinging to some wreckage with her daughter, and then Mr Thatcher in a Mae West swimming around about thirty yards away, supporting a woman with a deep gash in her throat. She was grey. Beyond I saw Ced Carlton and Mrs Thorburn [a Singapore passenger] clinging to something. Ced called to me that the Mae Wests were over where he was. I was hanging onto a mailbag and I swam over in his direction. I noticed the bodies of three more people and one was Mrs Finlay, another Rose Chen and the third was one of the Parrish children. I felt all three and found no sign of life. By this time the rubber dinghy was inflating and Ced was helping Mrs Thorburn and Esther Law [a Flight Hostess] into it, and I climbed in myself and dragged other survivors to safety.’
Ced Carlton had noticed, just before the ditching, Stephen Wong and George Cattanach lying side by side on the floor at the rear of the step leading into the cockpit, braced for the terrible shock to come. Neither of them was seen again. Carlton, too, was almost trapped in the cockpit, finding himself under water ‘like a goldfish in a bowl’. He spotted a vague glimmer of light in the nick of time and made for it. Surfacing, he grabbed a Mae West, found the life raft and inflated it. Then he and Blown began searching for the others. As the last survivor scrambled on board the raft, he happened to glance at his watch. It showed 9 a.m., which meant that thirteen minutes had elapsed from the time of ditching to the time the last of the living was hauled safely into the life raft.
It was lucky that the Chinese fighters left the scene once they had seen VR-HEU disappear under the water. It was also lucky that Stephen Wong’s prompt call on the high-frequency radio telephone – ‘Losing altitude engine on fire’ – was heard at Kai Tak. The position was calculated from the last report and a Search and Rescue operation got under way at once – an international effort of considerable scope. The first plane on the scene was an RAF Valetta, diverted from her Saigon–Hong Kong route, and her signals drew back two RAF Hornets which had previously missed the tiny life raft. They, in their turn, sent urgent signals. An hour later a British Sunderland flying boat arrived and was ordered to keep the raft in sight whatever happened. Wanting to do more, the Sunderland pilot looked around for a possible place to land, but seeing eight-to ten-foot waves below him decided not to risk his giant aircraft. Shortly after this, two amphibious Grumman Albatrosses of the US Navy from Clarke Air Base, north of Manila, reached the scene and were guided to the life raft by the ebullient captain of yet another aircraft, a French privateer from Tourane (later Da Nang), who clearly wanted to go after the Chinese but who restrained himself long enough to drop a marker flare with great accuracy near the raft.
What happened next is best told in the deadpan words of the American pilot of Grumman Albatross AF 1009, Captain Jack Woodyard, who now displayed a degree of airmanship that filled all who saw or heard of it with admiration and wonder.
The sea appeared fairly rough, being complicated by a ground swell system running 60 to 70 degrees to the main flow as we approached Hainan. I estimated eight to ten foot seas were running and the wind was southerly at twelve to fifteen knots. I prepared to land three miles north of the raft off the south-east coast at Tai Chou Island just off the Hainan coast, where the ground swell was dampened. A normal rough water landing was made without difficulty – the ground swells were barely touched before stalling on the swell crest. This eliminated any trouble fr
om the ground swell. The sea conditions were approximately as evaluated, and after clearing the protection of the island taxi-ing was slowed considerably and on occasions the wing floats and pedestals were completely submerged. During periods of extreme roll when the props hit the water it was necessary to use idle reserve position to avoid straining or killing the engines.
The French privateer guided me to the raft, and on approaching it the engineer was posted in the bow with a throw-line and the radio operator and medic were stationed at the rear hatch with a throw-line and boathook. The raft was circled to check the condition of the survivors and to see whether they were able to assist during the pick-up. The first approach was successful, a single-engine approach, cutting the port engine before reaching the raft so the prop would stop and be properly positioned. Nine survivors were taken aboard.
The Captain of the downed Skymaster was among them and immediately came forward to the flight deck where he stated: ‘We were shot down. Watch out for yourself. There may be other fighters in the area.’ I immediately called Captain Baker in ‘2 Dumbo 46’, told him of the number of survivors, and when he crossed to the rescue frequency I cautioned him to watch for ‘intruders’.
By this time I was taxi-ing back to the area where we had landed and Captain Arnold was being assisted by airman Rodrigues in an effort to hang the jato [jet-assisted take-off] units. After a great deal of exertion they managed to get the port jato bottle into position but couldn’t manage the bulky starboard one. Captain Arnold arrived at the flight deck and told me they were having trouble with the starboard bottle and would have to rest a while from their exertions. About this time our cover aircraft reported a formation of unidentified aeroplanes approaching; this seemed to stimulate Captain Arnold and with an oath he rushed back and swung that bottle into place unassisted.