by Jim Eames
The flights involved would cover 3091 kilometres from Honolulu to Canton Island, 3057 kilometres from Canton Island to Nouméa and 1989 kilometres from Nouméa to Sydney. For Tapp’s crews, who until now had never flown a sector longer than 1448 kilometres, it was an ideal opportunity to gain experience in long-distance flying, experience which would have far-reaching effects on the company’s future.
Even though the distances the aircraft were to cover on the Honolulu to Sydney flights were already exceptionally long, the Qantas crews began to test the nonstop capabilities of the Catalinas by adopting their own fuel-saving techniques, with one delivery flight out of Canton Island under Tapp’s command overflying Nouméa and Fiji to log a flight time of 26 hours to Sydney. Such efforts were to become the operational pillars upon which the future Double Sunrise service between Perth and Colombo would be built.
Finally, in March 1943, a little over a year after Crowther had slipped out of Singapore and with pressure coming from the British end, the two governments agreed to the re-establishment of ‘reliable air services’ between England and Australia. Two months later Qantas formed the Western Operations Division, with Crowther in charge.
This division faced daunting challenges, not the least because the Australian government forbade the use of Cocos Island as a refuelling point due to it being within range of Japanese airfields. This would mean the flight from Perth to Ceylon would cover a distance of 5653 kilometres, with no refuelling facility and without the use of Cocos as a navigational aid. The various components of the group, along with the five twin-engine Catalinas allocated to the service, began to converge on Perth in June 1943. The aircraft would be separate from those delivered to the RAAF and would come from the Royal Air Force in the United Kingdom under its own arrangement with the US Lend Lease Program. Appropriately, since the flying they would be doing would involve operating by the stars at night, each aircraft was to be named after a star—Altair Star, Vega Star, Rigel Star, Antares Star and Spica Star.
To suggest that Crowther’s crew had to start from scratch is something of an understatement. The responsibility for establishing the chosen base site, on the Swan River at Nedlands near Fremantle, fell to Engineering Officer Norm Roberts, whose crew would be tasked with keeping the Catalinas flying. Roberts, like Crowther, had also seen the sharp end of the war. Based in Darwin in 1942 he’d dodged bombs on Darwin harbour in the first Japanese attacks on 19 February that year. When Roberts arrived in Perth to set up the Catalina engineering facility at Nedlands in June 1943 it was not so much a question of what he had as of what he didn’t have. His total parts inventory amounted to 50 spark plugs that he’d managed to scrounge in Adelaide on his way to Perth. He didn’t even have a spanner with which to fit them. He had no servicing equipment, no launching ramp, no hangar as cover for servicing, no fuelling facilities and, as it transpired, no outside help from the DCA. It seemed Corbett’s initial attitude to the establishment of the service may have filtered down to his Perth staff.
In what turned out to be of massive advantage to the Qantas service, Roberts gradually managed to develop a relationship with the US Navy’s Patrol Wing 10, a Catalina unit at nearby Crawley Bay that was engaged in flying shipping protection in the Indian Ocean. One of his earliest requirements was to borrow a plug spanner from the American crew chief—provided the Americans weren’t using it at the time. After months of borrowing, Roberts was able to present the crew chief with several ivory elephants he’d brought back from Ceylon, which so delighted the crew chief he presented Roberts with permanent use of the spanner.
To overcome his initial lack of servicing facilities for a procedure like an engine change, Roberts also arranged with the Americans to have his aircraft towed to their hangar where the engine could be removed using their facilities and returned to his own primitive workshop for service, while the Catalina was towed back to the Qantas base. When the engine was ready to be reinstalled the cumbersome process would be repeated.
There would be actually two Qantas ‘inaugural’ services on the route. The first was on 28 June, three days after the delivery of the first Catalina, taking the RAF crew which had delivered it back to Ceylon. This flight—with Tapp as pilot, First Officer Rex Senior, Radio Officer Glen Mumford and Second Officer Frank Furniss—went into the records as ‘Indian Ocean Air Mail’, the first officially recognised service in the airline’s books, making its return flight from Koggala Lake, Ceylon, to Perth on 10 July 1943, again with Tapp and Senior at the controls and now with Bill Crowther acting as navigation officer.
Only diplomatic and military mail was carried, but this first flight would be remembered for other reasons. Some hours out of Koggala all members of the crew, with the exception of Tapp and Crowther, were gradually struck down with severe food poisoning. Even though later company legend would have it that Tapp and Crowther were forced to operate all the positions between them, Rex Senior would later dispute this:
Despite our severe diarrhoea each of us continued to perform our duties to the best of our limited abilities. As well as some hours on duty as pilot my log book shows that I spent seven hours and fifteen minutes as navigator on the trip.
With one small toilet at the back of the aircraft, it must have been a long journey for those suffering from the complaint. Senior recalled once appealing to Glen Mumford: ‘Get off that thing or I’ll sit on your lap.’
With the passage of so many years it is sometimes difficult to grasp what a ground-breaking operation the Double Sunrise service was to be. The flight to Koggala covered a distance of 5653 kilometres. Due to the prevailing westerly winds the westbound service needed to be operated at a relatively low level—around 1500 to 2000 feet—as a higher altitude would have encountered stronger headwinds and any attempt to climb above these would have had drastic effects on the amount of fuel burned.
Operating at such a low altitude, however, presented crews with considerable navigational challenges as it meant cloud cover often obscured the star shots critical for accurate navigation. Therefore every cloud break opportunity had to be utilised. By contrast, availability of the westerly airstream on the return journey to Perth meant the flights could be operated at much higher altitudes, often around ten thousand feet, thus improving star-shot opportunities.
Since Cocos Island had been ruled out as a navigational or refuelling point the Catalinas were forced to take off from Nedlands with around seven tonnes of fuel, an overload of more than four tonnes, thanks largely to additional tanks which had been installed inside the fuselage of the aircraft. While these extra tanks certainly provided the additional range necessary for the Catalinas, the aircraft were so heavily loaded it was estimated they would need to fly for eleven hours before sufficient fuel was burned to enable them to operate on one engine, a situation that must have been constantly on the minds of the crew. The simple fact was when they were first delivered the aircraft had not been fitted with fuel-dump valves, considered an absolute necessity if the aircraft was to be able to return to its safe landing weight should an engine fail early in the flight. The prospect of successfully landing an aircraft with such a fuel overload still on board hardly bore thinking about. Never one prone to overstatement, even Russell Tapp would later describe such an eventuality as ‘hazardous in the extreme’.
It is a tribute to the work of Norm Roberts and his engineers, and the reliability of the Catalinas, that no such situation occurred before dump valves became available late in 1943 and their progressive installation began. It was just as well. As luck would have it, six such emergency landings requiring the use of the valves would occur before the Catalinas were finally replaced by B-24 Liberators.
The second problem for the Catalinas related to the placement of the inboard tanks, initially installed so far back in the fuselage that they presented a centre-of-gravity problem, causing the aircraft to ride in a tail-down fashion. Thus pilots were forced to maintain forward pressure on the controls to keep the aircraft level enough to reduce drag
and achieve its most efficient fuel-burning profile.
With the addition of heavy fuel loads, taking off could be a protracted and, for some, an extremely uncomfortable experience. For a flying boat to become airborne it must reach sufficient speed over the surface of the water to allow the hull of the aircraft to rise onto what is termed ‘the step’, or the point at which the hull has lifted enough to overcome the drag created by the water. With such a fuel overload the Catalinas required an excessively long take-off run, during which water would cascade over the front of the aircraft, obliterating the pilot’s vision and forcing him to maintain his heading by concentrating on his gyro compass.
Early in the service it was worse for any passenger since centre-of-gravity requirements meant they had to sit or crouch in the normal bomb-aimer’s position, low down and forward of the aircraft cockpit. They were therefore issued with a canvas sheet to cover themselves, which at least saved them from a complete drenching. With VIPs being the only passengers on the flights, rank obviously carried limited privileges on take-off.
Later, after the tanks had been moved further forward, passengers had a much more comfortable take-off experience further back in the aircraft. Three seats were provided for passengers, with the second officer responsible for all feeding arrangements. Catering was functional, with salads, chicken and cheese, biscuits, cake and chocolate; a two-element electric stove allowed tea or coffee to be brewed and soup to be heated. Passengers were also issued with a flying suit and fur-lined flying boots. Draughts and chess, along with magazines, helped while away the hours.
As for the crews themselves, with flights of more than 28, and occasionally exceeding 30, hours over a vast ocean, mostly at night through enemy territory, precise navigation meant the difference between success and failure. Due to a lack of radio aids, navigation was carried out via dead reckoning and the stars, using two sextants and a watch chronometer. Accurate positional ‘fixes’ had to be achieved just after dark and before dawn, and flares would be used to calculate wind drift. Radio silence was maintained and the only time the radio was turned on was midway through the flight when a scheduled weather report would be broadcast from the destination point—either Perth or Ceylon.
Despite the long hours in the air, for the crews there was little boredom as they constantly monitored engine performance and fuel burn, made navigational checks and relieved each other of their various roles to allow breaks to be taken.
Whereas they might outwardly have appeared calm, they were well aware of the dangers the flights presented. Even the taciturn Bill Crowther would later record his feelings before his first flight:
I must say, the first time I took off for a nonstop, which I knew had to take me 24 hours, I was fairly careful to make sure all my bills were paid and most of my friends had been given a farewell handshake!
All crews would pay tribute to the Catalinas and their two Pratt & Whitney Wasp engines, which, despite the demands made on them, rarely let them down. There were, however, some close calls, including one courtesy of the Japanese. In February 1944 a Catalina commanded by Tapp was required to pick up a naval officer who had been deposited on Cocos Island by warship. After a fourteen-hour flight from Perth, Tapp and his crew arrived at the island shortly after eight in the morning, planning to depart for Ceylon at dusk and to operate in darkness.
Even though Cocos had been earlier shelled by a Japanese warship, the enemy generally showed little interest in the islands and only conducted the occasional reconnaissance flight. Although Tapp was naturally nervous to have his aircraft so exposed for so long, the locals assured him that these Japanese patrols occurred at predictable times—roughly every ten days—and since the latest had been two days previously, they were confident the next ‘visit’ was some days away. Much to Tapp’s horror the Japanese hadn’t kept to schedule this time.
Tapp had finished breakfast ashore and was walking back towards the jetty to check on the refuelling process when a Japanese Betty bomber came around the corner of the island at a height of around fifteen hundred feet. Along with the rest of the surprised locals around him, he dived for cover.
Stripped off on the wing of the Catalina supervising the fuelling, Rex Senior was a little more exposed, surrounded by fifteen-litre drums of fuel stretching from wing tip to wing tip. Realising that the only other aircraft out here would have to be Japanese, Senior and his team dived for the tiny tender boat moored alongside to get as far away from the Catalina as they could. Next came the sound of bombs dropping and Senior, thinking they would be safer in the water, tipped the dinghy over, much to the chagrin of his second officer.
But the bombs missed and to the surprise of all the Betty continued on its course and disappeared. There followed a tense period when everyone felt the Japanese pilot might be calling up some of his friends, but no further attacks occurred and Tapp took off on schedule late in the afternoon. Rex Senior later reasoned that perhaps the Japanese pilot was as surprised to see the Catalina there as they were to see him.
As it turned out, the pairing of Tapp and Senior would have another interesting experience, fortunately for them after the fuel-dump valves had been fitted to their Catalina. Only minutes after take-off from Nedlands, one engine started to overheat and at the same time fuel began leaking into the cabin, giving Tapp no option but to dump and attempt to return the aircraft to a weight that was safe enough to land. Immediately turning off the electrics to reduce the risk of a spark blowing the aircraft apart, Tapp began to fly in wide, flat circles, a manoeuvre designed to take the exiting fuel as far away from the aircraft as possible. Straight and level flight would court disaster with the possibility of a spark from an engine igniting the dumping-fuel stream. During the tense 30 minutes the procedure took, Senior stood poised in the aircraft’s blister with a small extinguisher at the ready.
It was a terrifying experience while I watched hundreds of gallons of aviation fuel pour from beneath the wings, expecting any moment to be engulfed in a fireball as the engine exhaust ignited the fuel.
Meanwhile, back at Nedlands, Norm Roberts continued his struggle with bureaucracy. Still without a slipway and being forced to use American facilities for engine changes, Roberts was finally relieved one day when several trucks arrived and deposited loads of blue metal on his crude ramp. At last, he thought. Unfortunately it would be another four or five weeks of pleading phone calls before DCA and the Department of Works finally came to the party and completed the sealing of a respectable slipway.
Such obstacles, however, could not diminish the continuing success of the service which had now increased from once weekly to three per fortnight. As time progressed and the war moved further north, Cocos Island became available for use as a navigational point on the route, a welcome supplement to the astro-navigation requirement. Thankfully, too, it had begun to play an important role in providing additional weather-forecasting information for the crews.
Although they would receive little acknowledgement from the authorities, the small band of meteorological experts would be among the unsung heroes of the Indian Ocean service. Since the launch of the service experienced forecasters had been positioned at both ends of the route to provide terminal forecasts during that one short radio transmission to the aircraft during flight. Because there had been no aviation activity in that part of the world before the war, Indian Ocean en route weather was little more than a ‘dead zone’ for the Qantas crews. However, as soon as the Japanese retreat allowed for Cocos to be factored in, plans were put in hand for two meteorological forecasters to be based on the island to fill the mid-flight gap. Due to the lack of navigation aids to assist, the forecasters’ delivery to the island would turn out to be a traumatic experience for both men.
Since none of the Qantas Catalinas was radar-equipped it was decided that a US Navy Catalina from Perth had the best chance of ‘finding’ the tiny dot that Cocos represented in the middle of the Indian Ocean. Unfortunately the venture turned out to be something of a shamb
les when the US Catalina crew not only failed to locate Cocos after a long search, and thus had to abort their mission, but committed the cardinal sin of breaking radio silence, which succeeded in bringing down Japanese aircraft on Cocos. Worse was to come.
Lacking the long-range tanks of the Qantas aircraft, the US Navy Catalina began to run out of fuel as it headed for Learmonth, the nearest landfall on the north-west coast of Western Australia. In a desperate attempt to make it, all guns, ammunition and anything moveable—including, as it turned out, the luggage of the two meteorological officers—was jettisoned into the sea. Even then they barely made it, running out of fuel within sight of land and crash-landing on the sea where they were picked up by a small coastal steamer and delivered to Learmonth.
It now fell to Qantas to do the job and Lew Ambrose volunteered, provided he could do it his way. Ambrose knew he would have to locate his target by dead reckoning. He also knew he dare not risk breaking radio silence a second time as this could place the whole Qantas operation in jeopardy.
Ambrose faced two other challenges. If he used the outbound service from Perth for delivery of the two officers, his time of arrival would risk the possibility of coinciding with a daylight visit by Japanese aircraft over the islands. He decided, therefore, to fly his precious cargo with him all the way to Koggala and deliver them on the returning eastbound leg. He would plan to leave Koggala towards sunset, putting him in a position to take an accurate star fix just before dawn and execute what was known as ‘flying down the sunline’ to his tiny objective. Ambrose remembers: