The Flying Kangaroo

by Jim Eames

  Then, on 31 January 1981, a 747SP was on its way to Wellington, the first for a decade to bear the Qantas colours on a regular service, and New Zealand’s third-biggest city’s population turned out en masse to greet it.

  The only person not all that happy about it was the local airport manager, who watched as the SP came to a stop with only half the runway used, and later jokingly complained to a member of the crew: ‘Now look what you’ve done. I’ve been trying to get this runway extended for years!’

  But as another experienced Qantas captain, Cliff Viertal, would admit, despite the markers, Wellington remained an airport where absolute concentration was needed and one that certainly had its moments. Viertal was in command one day and, alerted that legendary American fighter ace and the first man to exceed the speed of sound, General Chuck Yeager, was a passenger, invited him up to the cockpit for the landing. Viertal noticed Yeager became very quiet as the plane descended through about 1500 feet and the airport came into view, then asked: ‘You’re not going to land on that, are you?’

  A modest Viertal claims he ‘lucked out’ that day, landed right on target and was taxiing the aircraft well before the end of the runway.

  As Yeager left the cockpit, he patted Viertal on the shoulder: ‘I wouldn’t have believed it.’ This from a pilot who had assisted Boeing in the high-altitude certification for the SP at La Paz in Bolivia.

  ‘The procedure worked very well. The pilots readily accepted the need to divert if the reported conditions were out of limits and operated without incident for many years but it did need special procedures, plus Qantas training and discipline,’ Viertal explained.

  During its service with Qantas, the SP crossed the Pacific nonstop numerous times and covered many of the other routes beyond Wellington. The aircraft ‘bought for the wrong reasons’ as Bob Walker put it, would be a favourite among aircrew with its powerful engines and large control surfaces making it an exciting aircraft to fly. That, combined with its lighter weight, made it something of a sports car version of its big brother, and as one former pilot commented years later: ‘It was a matter of hanging on and going for the ride.’

  The SP could also, under certain conditions, fly higher than its bigger brothers, at times reaching 45,000 feet, well above the normal cruising altitude of similar aircraft. Any Qantas pilot, flying at such an altitude, would normally have good reason for thinking he was alone at that height. That was until, after confirming his altitude one afternoon to air traffic control, one SP captain was surprised to hear another pilot call in from thousands of feet above him. He was relieved to hear it was a Lockheed U-2, the renowned American spy plane.

  With the arrival of the long range Boeing 747-400 into the Qantas fleet in 1989, an aircraft well capable of flying nonstop across the Pacific with a far greater passenger load, the SP’s appeal had diminished, although it would be the catalyst for one of the most bitter and long-running disputes in the airline’s troubled industrial history.

  In the years to come, the airline’s giant Airbus A-380s gradually superseded the 747-400 with a capability of not only flying nonstop between Sydney and Los Angeles, but capable of reaching from halfway across the United States from Dallas to Australia.

  EVER-PRESENT DANGER

  4

  TAIM BILONG BALUS

  Almost half a century has passed, and it’s probably safe to assume there would be few in the Qantas of today who even realise how deeply important Papua New Guinea (PNG) was in the more recent history of their airline. But, for anyone who has ever flown widely in PNG, particularly in its post-war developmental years and into the 1950s and 1960s, there remains a certain cachet to the experience.

  Long acknowledged as one of the world’s most difficult and dangerous flying environments, split by a cordillera of mountains, PNG’s terrain offers a striking contrast to Australia’s relatively open skies and benign weather, with peaks twice the height of Mount Kosciusko, often covered by cloud, forming barriers to its rich, highland valleys.

  PNG’s infrastructure had been shattered by the brutal campaigns of World War II, and the country had the added disadvantage of having a topography within which those productive highland regions existed without any road access at all. Such was the ruggedness of its terrain that there were numerous examples of tribes on one side of a mountain never having any contact with tribes living on the other side. Thus, opening up the country post-war could only be achieved one way—by air, or by the ‘balus’ as the aeroplane was known in pidgin.

  Maps and charts were often primitive, forcing pilots to fly visually or risk death against a mountainside hidden in cloud. Qantas veteran Hughie Birch recalls reaching for his charts one morning to check the altitude of a ridgeline he was approaching only to find it described simply as: ‘Very high.’ Such drawbacks provided a unique training ground for Qantas pilots, many of whom went on to hold senior aircrew and management positions within the airline in the Boeing 707 and 747 eras.

  The weather dictated the flying. If it was good, you enjoyed yourself, and if it was bad, you earned your money, as it wasn’t the place to be courageous. Over the years, PNG has been notorious for claiming the lives of many light aircraft pilots who had vast experience flying the country but, entering one cloud too many, would nevertheless die there. ‘Gap’ flying was the order of the day, which involved flying parallel to a range when approaching one of the gaps that would let you through to the valley on the other side, although it should be noted that valley itself may be 5000 feet above sea level. Once at the gap, you would peer through to see if it was clear enough on the other side to fly through. If not, you turned away.

  Qantas had taken its first steps into the ‘Territory’ as it was known, with the takeover of Carpenter Airways in 1945 but its role increased dramatically as the Australian government took on the task of opening up the country after the war. By the early 1950s, the airline had a fleet of fourteen aircraft operating there, including DH-84 Dragons, DC-3s, two Catalina flying boats, single-engine de Havilland Beavers and Otters and three-engine de Havilland Drovers.

  The majority of the scheduled passenger and freight services would fall to the DC-3s and even these operated under a dispensation from the Department of Civil Aviation, as many of the primitive highland airstrips they were required to operate from were not up to what would be classified as ‘normal’ by Australian standards. Thus, in some instances, the performance of the DC-3, should an engine fail on take-off, would be marginal to say the least.

  While pilots worried about clouds, mountains and their aircraft’s performance at high altitudes, their passengers could expect few comforts. Forward-facing seats were something of a luxury, the normal being wartime metal or webbing seats that folded down from the side of the cabin—and back up to the wall to allow for the aircraft’s freight role. They soon became known as ‘hard-arse’ seats and certainly lived up to their name in the bumpy flying conditions!

  With no such thing as air conditioning, aircraft became ovens sitting under the scorching tropical sun waiting for passengers to board, even more so once the door was shut and the pilots went through their pre-take-off procedures.

  By the time the aircraft was taxiing towards the end of the runway, passengers would be sweating profusely and, only after the aircraft reached a cruising altitude, would the temperature become tolerable. Then, if the weather required a climb to an even higher altitude, the interior of the cabin would drop to near freezing. In-flight catering came in cardboard boxes, usually a sandwich and some fruit, and a trip down to the rear toilet often meant navigating around sacks of potatoes or a trussed live piglet.

  Lae on the Huon Gulf became the operational and maintenance base for Qantas, but Australian authorities had chosen Madang, on the Territory’s north shore, as the primary hub for transferring freight to and from main Highland towns such as Goroka and Mount Hagen, taking in everything from construction materials, vehicles and household goods, and bringing the Highlands’ produce out to markets
on the coast. Such was the demand, and the fact that the flying had to be done before the clouds built up over the mountains towards late morning and early afternoon, Madang at times became busier than some of Australia’s main city airports as aircraft landed, loaded up and took off again.

  In the frenzy that was Madang, pilots competed with each other for the fun of it. Alan Terrell remembers another captain, Roger Wilson, returning one day to boast he had done six trips that day from Madang to Goroka in the Eastern Highlands.

  The next day Terrell did seven.

  ‘Then the day after that the bugger came back and said he’s just done eight. They used to call him Mr Hurry-Up because of his habit of standing over the natives as they loaded to make sure they were going as fast as they could because once the gaps in the mountains closed you couldn’t fly any more anyhow.’

  Achieving the most number of trips was not the only competition dreamt up by the pilots. The airstrip at Madang was comprised of soft bitumen and each time an aircraft landed it left a mark. As Alan Terrell explains: ‘The idea was to make sure, on landing, you left a mark on top of the previous mark and if you ever went in and noticed a mark off the centre you would point out such “evidence” in the crew room with the question: “Who was that?”

  ‘We’d always find out because the First Officer would always dob him in!’

  But the dangers were always there, not all due to the mountains and the weather. Terrell remembers coming back to Madang from Goroka one afternoon and parking the aircraft and heading off to the hotel for the night. During the evening, the traffic officer at the airport decided to load the next day’s cargo—heavy steel sheets measuring 2 metres by 3 metres and about 15 centimetres thick—so that the aircraft could get away without delay next morning.

  The next morning’s traffic officer, not realising the aircraft was already fully loaded, put more of the sheets on board.

  Terrell’s co-pilot that day was Larry Blackburn, a TAA captain who was training on DC-3s. As they took off, Terrell knew immediately that something was terribly wrong.

  ‘This thing isn’t going anywhere,’ said Terrell, as the DC-3 on full power was struggling to gain any altitude at all.

  Gingerly they turned the DC-3 around some trees at the end of the airfield and, still on maximum take-off power, literally staggered back around the airfield to land again, to be met by a very apologetic traffic officer.

  ‘He was as white as a sheet as he could see us trying to turn around not far above the ground and realised what was wrong. As we switched the engines off I remember saying to Larry: “I don’t know about you, but I’m going back to the pub to have a drink.”’

  Loading mishaps aside, crews also battled with grassed inland airfields that could quickly turn to mud in the rainy season, often requiring the use of leftover wartime Marsden matting to avoid bogging.

  Unable to fly in cloud and with high ground often on the fringe of coastal areas, pilots were challenged even by flights between coastal centres. No testimony to the skill required of Qantas pilots can be better expressed than by Gordon Power, who flew as a first officer with Qantas captain Mal Shannon on a DC-3 flight to Baimuru, 180 nautical miles (about 330 kilometres) west of Port Moresby in the Gulf of Papua.

  Power was in awe of the ability of pilots like Shannon to find their way around visually, demonstrated in the hour-and-a-quarter flight that day. With overcast conditions below 100 feet above sea level, they were obliged to remain visual for the entire flight as there were no ground aids to assist them to find Baimuru.

  The accepted procedure was for the first officer to open his side window so that he could visually check the height of the aircraft above the ocean and to ensure that the aircraft did not descend below 50 feet—into the water.

  Shannon, hunched over the instruments, flew on a compass heading for an hour in this atrocious weather before we started to pass over mangrove swamps. Visibility forward of the aircraft was minimal, in heavy rain. Mal somehow made a few very slight heading alterations as we passed over some swamps and mangroves.

  Personally, I had no idea where we were. Suddenly, while still at barely 50 to 100 feet, the Marsden matting strip at Baimuru passed directly underneath us. To me it was a masterpiece of navigation under appalling conditions and to this day I have no idea how he found it as there were no navigation aids and GPS had not been invented.

  One can only wonder at the level of concentration Shannon would have had to apply, flying on instruments, so close to the water for such a protracted length of time in a DC-3 being tossed about by the weather!

  Despite the occasional use of Marsden matting, bogged aircraft were commonplace, often requiring some innovative techniques to dislodge them.

  Roger Wilson’s DC-3, just loaded with 44-gallon drums of fuel, sank to the axles one day at Mount Hagen while taxiing for take-off. After around fifty local villagers had been gathered to unload the drums, they were then assembled under the aircraft in an attempt to lift it by hand. It wouldn’t budge.

  More villagers arrived and soon all were singing, laughing and dancing as they applied additional manpower to the task. Suddenly, the aircraft broke loose, an event which only increased their excitement and they began running along the airstrip, virtually carrying the DC-3, screaming with delight. They had carried it for some metres before Wilson regained control of his aircraft.

  Given the mountains, the weather and dodgy airstrips, Qantas would come through its Papua New Guinea phase with few serious accidents. Although lives were still lost. The worst accident was at Lae in July 1951, when a de Havilland Drover crashed into the sea off the Markham River, killing the pilot and six passengers.

  In September the same year Fred Barlogie died when his DH-84, carrying a load of timber, crashed into a ridgeline covered in heavy fog near the eastern end of Karanka airstrip. Suspicions were later raised that the aircraft had been overloaded by the contractor but, as much of the timber had been removed by the time crash investigators arrived, no proof could be obtained.

  Among the less serious incidents were a DC-3 that had its undercarriage torn off when it turned into a ditch after landing at Wau in the late 1950s and several DH-84s that ended in trees after flying into rising terrain.

  Perhaps in typical Papua New Guinea style for those days, accidents like these often had ‘back stories,’ sometimes serious, other times humorous, which added to their drama. John Simler was flying the DC-3 when it crashed at Wau, a notoriously steep airstrip with only one direction for take-offs and landings and a runway so steep the throttles had to be opened after landing to taxi to the parking area at the top of the strip.

  Simler landed fine but suddenly the aircraft began to aquaplane on the waterlogged strip, veering off towards the primitive passenger terminal. Concerned he would take out the building and anyone in it, Simler attempted to ground loop the aeroplane by turning it sharply to the left but in the middle of the turn the water on the airfield took charge and the DC-3 slid sideways into a ditch.

  No one was injured but getting the DC-3 back to Lae for repairs presented a range of typical New Guinea challenges. Since it couldn’t be flown out it had to be taken apart and carried, piece by piece, by road, back to Lae for repair. Some of the hairpin bends on the 140 kilometre road were so sharp the fuselage had to be manoeuvred by hand by the team of villagers assisting the recovery.

  Not that crashing an aeroplane dimmed a pilot’s light-hearted telling of the incident. One of the ever-present dangers was to be able to make the right decision when you came to a fork in the valley you were flying down.

  Ross Crabb chose the wrong fork one day and ran into a dead end. Unable to climb out, he was forced to crash his DH-84 into the trees. Telling the story later, he claimed the crash itself had been the least of his concerns. Unhurt he struggled out of the cockpit and began to climb down through the trees to the jungle floor, only to find that every time he shook a branch a batch of the tinned food he had been carrying came crashing down on
top of him.

  Gordon Power vividly remembers an experience while trying to fly from Mount Hagen to Madang via valleys alongside Papua New Guinea’s highest mountain, Mount Wilhelm, which rose to 14,793 feet.

  This particular day they were flying at about 6000 feet through a valley towards Mount Wilhelm when they came to a fork in the valley. Circling while they decided which valley might take them through to Madang on the coast, Power remembers clearly seeing native villages above them on either side of the valley.

  As they continued to search the valley sides for an opening, to their dismay they suddenly realised that clouds had now moved into the valley behind them. They were trapped and, with the knowledge that Mount Wilhelm was somewhere towering above them, they put on maximum power and climbed in a tight circle through the cloud, eventually breaking out at 12,000 feet, right alongside Wilhelm itself.

  ‘It was a most frightening experience,’ Power recalls.

  ***

  Those operating the Catalina flying boats faced their own challenges as they linked isolated coastal and inland lake communities that otherwise would have been impossible to serve.

  Flying boat flying was a demanding art as you had to carefully ‘read’ the wave patterns for take-offs and landings, and unfriendly open seas often called for a high degree of airmanship, something that became even more critical when called upon in an emergency.

  Qantas Captains Fred Fox and Ian Ralfe figured in a dramatic 1952 rescue of a Department of Civil Aviation crew when one of the propeller blades on their de Havilland Drover broke off, partly severing the foot of the pilot, Clarrie Hibbert. The Drover’s other two engines then failed, leaving Hibbert unable to control the aircraft. Tom Drury, one of the two other DCA officers on board, managed to ditch the aircraft in the Bismarck Sea off Madang.