Beyond Lion Rock

by Gavin Young

  Captains Phil Blown and Pat Armstrong flew the Cathay Electras to Burbank, where Don Delaney was waiting to supervise the modification. Chic Eather, who flew one of the duly modified Electras back to Hong Kong, had this to say about them: ‘Pilots considered the Electra a wonderful aeroplane. The modifications had returned the type to its full speed potential and they were a credit to the family name of Lockheed. The Electra rebuilt its somewhat tarnished reputation to one of maximum reliability.’ Laurie King, flying an Electra out of Sydney for Hong Kong, had the unnerving experience of a severe lightning strike on the nose radome. The electrical charge hit just in front of the co-pilot and left the aircraft near No. 2 engine. The radar antenna jammed, and on the descent to Darwin the radome collapsed completely. King simply reduced speed and landed safely. His views of the sky worthiness of the Electras match those of Chic Eather.

  Naturally the Electra affair had been a bad moment for Cathay, and one made still grimmer with the discovery by Gething, Delaney and HAECO’s engineers of serious corrosion – a growth of ‘green slime’ – in the inboard fuel tanks of both Electras. Don Delaney explains: ‘It was a sort of fungus on the tank floor, an algae not unlike seaweed – it was caused by a chemical reaction between the fuel and the aluminium metal in the structure. If left it would have eaten its way through the tank and the wing skins. Luckily for the survival of Cathay the corrosion was discovered before and not after a disaster. Lockheed dealt with it: during the modification operation at Burbank they put an additive into the fuel to prevent algae.

  *

  The Cathay Electras had returned from Burbank with new lettering – the two words CATHAY PACIFIC in bold, clean capitals replaced for ever the old-fashioned sprawl of ‘Cathay Pacific Airways’. But should the planes themselves be renamed? Duncan Bluck had been disturbed by the adverse reaction to the Electra, particularly in the eastern United States while he was there: ‘Our agents made it very clear to me that although they appreciated the merits of the modified Electra they had great difficulty in selling it to the public.’ Should the modified Electras be called something new – like ‘Electra Mark III’ or ‘Electra 400’? At least two American airlines did follow this course. But Bill Knowles decided that Cathay’s ads would contain, for a while, the reassuring words ‘fully modified to FAA requirements’, and that was all. In fact, in Asia the flying public’s aversion to the Electras had been relatively mild throughout the restriction. In any case, even in America, after a few months passengers were boarding them as confidently as they had before the disasters.

  *

  Duncan Bluck’s report from America also carried an urgent message. Faster aircraft were coming in on many routes, he said. Let there be no beating about the bush, the jet age had arrived. However much one admired the Electras, one had to admit that their carrying capacity was definitely on the low side. In a series of notes entitled ‘Planning’, Bluck took cautious but convincing issue with Jock on future policy:

  ‘It has been suggested that it is possible that there would be a future for CPA if they were to concentrate on their secondary routes on which they could operate second class equipment, and withdraw from the highly competitive primary routes. In my opinion no such future exists, as the secondary routes will progressively disappear.’ Cathay would then be left with slower, cramped and outdated aircraft trying to combat competition on secondary routes that had become primary routes with several airlines operating modern aircraft on them. Qantas’s 707s had driven Cathay’s Electras off the Golden Road to Australia. Let Jock banish his doubts – Bluck believed Cathay could find a way to finance a more up-to-date fleet – and would soon positively need to do so.

  His views were heeded. At this point in his diaries and memos one notices Jock beginning to muse much more positively on the subject of jet engines, if not yet on territorial expansion. Boeing 720s, Convair 880s and British VC-10s and Comet 4s become a gleam in Jock Swire’s eye, rather as Betsy and CPA had been a gleam in Roy Farrell’s and Sydney de Kantzow’s eyes twenty years before.

  PART THREE

  DREAMS FULFILLED

  CHAPTER 17

  The 1960s represented a change of life for Jock Swire’s airline. The Jet Age had inescapably arrived, and there was to be no more time-wasting debate in London or Hong Kong about Cathay’s future direction.

  An announcement from Cathay’s Chairman, Bill Knowles, made no bones about it. ‘Our traffic has been sliding towards our jet competitors,’ he glumly told his Board in January 1962 – revenue had fallen well below any previous reasonable estimate, only partly owing to the absence of the two Electras flown to Burbank for modification. The chartered BOAC Britannia that stood in for them had meant a reduction in the number of Cathay’s flights, and although, when the Electras rejoined the fleet, they settled down very well, they were already dépassés.

  The Company needed a jet – but which? The Boeing 707 and the Douglas DC-8s were too large for Cathay; the British Comet 4 had had a bad press. But an American firm, General Dynamics Corporation of San Diego, California, had developed an aircraft with a passenger-carrying capacity somewhere between the DC-8 and the Comet: the Convair 880 Jetliner. It was a good-looking jet with high, sweeping wings and a good turn of speed. Japan Air Lines had bought quite a few, and so had Civil Air Transport (CAT) of Taiwan, and the plane was popular with pilots, who called it a ‘hot ship’. General Dynamics, being nevertheless somewhat worried about their ability to sell enough Convairs when worldwide demand was for larger and larger planes, were willing to make Cathay a generous offer: immediate delivery and quarterly payments over four years. Engines were offered over a five-year payment period; spares were available in Japan; and HAECO was equipped to service the aircraft. So the Convair it was to be, and seven captains, six first officers and five flight engineers were dispatched to San Diego for the necessary training. When they returned they would fly the new jet between Tokyo–Osaka–Taipei–Hong Kong–Bangkok and Singapore, and on the Hong Kong to Manila run.

  The Company’s first 880 was flown into Kai Tak from California on 2 April 1962 by Dave Smith, accompanied by Bob Smith, the ‘hero’ of the Moulmein pagoda incident, Jack Gething’s Assistant Chief Engineer, Don Delaney, and Captain Norman Marsh who in time would succeed Dave Smith as Director of Flight Operations.

  The Convair’s inaugural arrival created great excitement. ‘We are proud to have brought the Convair 880-22M Jet Service into being,’ a half-page Cathay ad proclaimed in the South China Morning Post, signing off with the triumphant words ‘Cathay Pacific – Hong Kong’s Own Airline’. The Post ran a special ‘Jet Age Supplement’ full of expensive expressions of support and affection from Hong Kong-based companies. Rothman’s King Size said: ‘Congratulations to Cathay Pacific on the Inauguration of their Convair Jet Service.’ Caltex announced their pride in being associated with Cathay Pacific and the inaugural flight of its Convair. Other pats on the back came from Shell, Pan Am, SAS (the Scandinavian airline), Nina Ricci, Haig whisky and Beefeater gin. The Post’s own headlines in the Supplement were equally gratifying – ‘Cathay Pacific’s New Fast Jet Makes Big Impact’ – ‘Exhaustive Testing of Convair Proves Stamina’ – ‘The Men Behind the CPA Aircraft’. One admiring article in particular drew attention to the new ‘on-top-of-the-clouds’ comfort, the tinted glass of the windows, the blue carpeting, the single-stroke chime that summoned the air hostesses – and the jet-age cuisine: kangaroo-tail soup, shark’s fin, smorgasbord and the pièce de résistance of Cathay’s ‘flight-kitchen wizard’ M. Matti: ‘Omelette Surprise Alaska’.

  A year later Jack Gething and Captain Ken Steele, architects of Cathay’s transformation into an organization that could match flying and maintenance standards with any major airline, retired, to be succeeded by Don Delaney and Dave Smith as Engineering Director and Flight Operations Manager respectively. The rest of Cathay’s senior echelon out at Kai Tak is shown in the chart opposite. Cathay’s Chief Flight Engineer was W. B. Holyman, a nephew of Jock Swir
e’s collaborator Ivan Holyman.

  With the Company ‘going jet’ the first non-jet redundancy soon followed – Nikki, CPA’s second DC-3 bought sixteen years before by Roy Farrell and Syd de Kantzow, was sold to Royal Air Laos for £22,320. The remaining senior citizens of the Cathay fleet – the DC-6, the DC-6B and the last DC-4 – were soon wheeled away into oblivion. By January 1963 the Cathay fleet consisted of one Convair 880 and the two modified Electras, with the Convair covering over 50 per cent of the Company’s total passenger miles. A second Convair arrived in November 1964 in part exchange for an Electra. Still a third, bought from VIASA (Venezolana Internacionale de Aviacion SA) for £1,348,000, followed in November 1965. Things moved fast. The remaining Electra was phased out: five more Convair 880s swelled the Cathay jet family in the next three years, and so within a mere five years – to Duncan Bluck’s especial delight – the Company had suddenly become a single-type, all-jet airline. The passenger appeal of the sleek 880s was obvious. They would last into the 1970s.

  Though the pilots loved the Convair, the technicians’ view of the new aircraft was not, at first, solidly favourable. ‘In fact, the 880 had the best airframe ever built,’ Don Delaney remembers. ‘But we had to make all sorts of changes elsewhere. For example, the 880 engine was initially the source of lots of trouble. It was a light engine that couldn’t stand much punishment in the Far Eastern climate. But with the help of General Dynamics, TWA and Delta – they had Convairs, too – we modified it out of sight. And we changed the seats and the interior to accommodate 119 rather than 101 passengers.’

  For a few Cathay pilots the Convairs’ arrival meant the end of the road. Laurie King says, ‘I loved the Convair – and I flew 7,000 hours in it. It was strong and stable. Of course we all had to get used to the swept wings of the jet. But once you got used to it you could cope with its temperament.’ If indeed you could get used to it. For the truth was that some Cathay pilots of great experience in propeller-driven aircraft simply could not learn how to handle the swept-wing jets. ‘The trouble lay,’ King told me, ‘in the extremely high nose-up attitude jets have to adopt on approach. Older pilots couldn’t hack it.’

  ‘Like silent film stars unable to adapt to the talkies?’

  ‘Exactly.’ Cathay’s ex-Navy pilots, used to high-nosed attitudes when landing on carriers, made the transition to Convairs quicker than anybody else.

  The only thing Laurie King had against the Convair was its high rate of fuel consumption. And, he says, they were noisy and smoky, trailing black fumes as if they were on fire. But that was nothing special – most jets did that in those early days.

  One Convair chose to show an unaccustomed flash of temperament. The South China Morning Post on 7 July 1964 carried the following front-page headline:

  FORCED LAN DING AT KAI TAK

  Nose Wheel Of C.P.A. Airliner Jams

  No Casualties

  In an accompanying picture ‘Captain Lawrence King who brought the CPA jetliner to a safe landing’ was to be seen walking away from it with a sombre expression through a crowd of admiring Chinese onlookers. Another showed Chic Eather, King’s co-pilot, being embraced by his attractive Chinese wife.

  Hundreds of people in the Airport Terminal Building [the newspaper said] watched tensely when the skipper of the aircraft, Capt. Lawrence King, radioed the Control Tower that he would attempt to land.

  ‘The nose wheel mechanism jammed,’ Laurie King said later. ‘We dived and pulled G [trying to use gravity to free it]. We even tried to open the inspection window and ram in a crowbar to unjam the damn thing. No good, though. The cabin staff were briefed to go through their emergency landing procedures and I made a personal announcement informing the passengers of the exact situation. I emphasized that the touch-down would be normal until the speed reduced to about 80 knots and the nose contacted the runway, when they could expect some sensation of impact. I also told them to stay in their seats until the doors were opened and the emergency chutes were in position. All the passengers were strapped in and shown how to brace for impact.’ Like an officer encouraging his men by strolling along the exposed parapet of a front-line trench, Chic Eather walked calmly through the cabin immediately before the landing to check the emergency procedures, and this in King’s opinion did much to keep up the passengers’ morale.

  His conclusion was that it is of extreme importance to kill panic by preparing passengers for the imminent sequence of events – the odd noises and frightening motions during the various stages of impact. He avoided braking to soften the ‘nose-down’ contact with the runway, and so reduced the sparks. ‘I daresay there were a few passengers praying. We were forty-five minutes up there, which is a pretty long time to wait for a tricky landing. Well, in the end I suppose it was pretty straightforward, really. The book tells you what to do. It was a thing that could happen to anybody.’

  King’s skill earned him a letter from Bill Knowles.

  Our very best congratulations and most grateful thanks for extricating your aircraft so successfully from her grave and dangerous position last night. It was a magnificent piece of piloting, and it is evident that you and your crew’s handling of the passengers before as well as during the actual landing won their complete confidence, and prevented any behaviour which might have added to the danger. The Board of Directors and Management all wish me to express their admiration and gratitude for the way you and your crew responded to the prolonged strain and the final climax.

  At this time of major transition, the Company’s leadership too faced changes. First, on 30 September 1964, Bill Knowles, who had been Cathay Pacific’s Chairman since 1957, and a non-executive Chairman of the Hongkong and Shanghai Bank, had retired to become Vice-Chancellor of Hong Kong University, an unusual honour. When Knowles died in 1969, Jock, who had known him all his working life and was devoted to him, delivered a moving Address at a memorial service at All Hallows-by-the-Tower in London. He could hardly do justice, he said, to the memory of a man for whom he had had such a high regard for more than thirty years, for the last fifteen of which the two of them had hardly ever been out of touch. ‘Although 10,000 miles apart,’ Jock recalled sorrowfully, ‘we might have been sitting in the same room.’

  If in this story Bill Knowles has lurked rather in the shadows, his own diffidence is partly to blame. Even during his lifetime his important role as Swires’ Taipan in Cathay’s struggle for survival between 1957 and 1964 was a good deal masked by that extraordinary modesty. Knowles, Jock said, had always seemed a little puzzled by his own success. Yet he was a distinguished mathematician – a First at Cambridge – and an imposing presence. Photographs show a wide, substantial figure, feet set solidly on the ground, a fleshy face with eyebrows like black caterpillars and illuminated by a small but benevolent smile. Jock had come to think of Knowles as wise, kind and a rock of reliability, almost a second self.

  The first duty of Knowles’s successor, H. J. C. (John) Browne, was a happy one – he could announce to his Board at the beginning of 1965 that a dangerous corner had been safely turned. The increase in air traffic, he said, was already ‘very pronounced’. During 1963–64 there had been a 26 per cent increase in the number of tourists visiting the Colony by air, and Cathay alone had carried well over half a million passengers in and out of Kai Tak – an increase of 14 per cent. Singapore and Bangkok were now served daily by jet. Most significantly of all, Browne announced the opening of three more Cathay offices in Japan which, with Taiwan, now accounted for 90 per cent of the Convairs’ capacity with a service bumped up to fifteen flights a week. The Big Boom, the Japanese economic miracle long predicted by Duncan Bluck (and Browne himself), had materialized. The phoenix had risen from its ashes.

  CHAPTER 18

  At this satisfactory juncture a second retirement was announced: that of Jock Swire. It was as if a beloved monarch had abdicated, and the shock of the announcement was only slightly relieved by another that said he would stay on as Honorary President of Cathay Pacific Airways.
His place on the Cathay Board was to be taken by his second son, Adrian, a doubly appropriate appointment since Adrian was an enthusiastic pilot in his own right, and his elder son, John, succeeded as Chairman of John Swire & Sons in London. Yet this was not the end of Jock. The soldierly figure with the trilby and the baggy suit, the battered briefcase and the suitcase held together with fraying rope would not disappear from the airports of the Far East. Far from it. As a sprightly septuagenarian, he had visited Bill Knowles in Hong Kong to take a look at the new Convair, pronouncing it ‘a lovely aircraft and very quiet’. After a prolonged globetrot that included Australia and a call on General Dynamics at San Diego, he had noted in his diary:

  Reached London Airport as early as 4 p.m. and found a strike of porters and had to handle our own baggage, so got through very quick. Met by Adrian and home by 6 p.m. 35,000 miles in 18 different aeroplanes and slept in 26 different beds…. A very successful trip. I have put on 7lbs. and feel ten years younger.

  Jock would continue to bound about the world until he was nearly ninety. Still, his retirement closed an era. To everyone in Swires and Cathay, even to Jock himself, it seemed a very long time since the day in 1914 when he had sailed into Hong Kong’s wonderful harbour and first glimpsed from the deck of the Blue Funnel steamer the Peak and the sunlit, green hills of the New Territories rising into China. A long time, too, since his return from the Western Front to take Swire’s staff under his wing and pen in his diary, ‘The reason why B&S lack esprit de corps is because London are not sufficiently human or sufficiently acquainted with local colour….’ It had almost amounted to a manifesto.