by Jim Eames
For his part, Alan Stretton would later be highly critical of the Darwin-based army personnel. In his book, The Furious Days, on Tracy’s aftermath, published in 1976, Stretton claims several days after the cyclone the army had done little outside the boundary of its own barracks.
They had shown little initiative of their own and it had been necessary for me to give direct orders about the provision of radio sets, the use of their vehicles . . . and assistance to the police in guarding vital points.
Stretton recounts how two days after the cyclone he received a visit from an army major who requested authority for his vehicles to draw petrol.
I could not believe that the army had a full platoon of some sixteen 2½ ton vehicles which for the past two days had been engaged in camp duties when they were urgently needed in the town to help with the distribution of food and relief supplies to the population of Darwin.
Stretton immediately requisitioned fourteen of the vehicles, leaving two for the army’s use. Later, on a visit to the barracks he found a number of idle vehicles and other equipment, along with thousands of edible rations in damaged containers.
Despite the initial shortage of food after Cyclone Tracy, enquiries revealed that no effort had been made to distribute these rations to the homeless and hungry outside the boundaries of the barracks.
On that morning I came close to being ashamed of the Service I loved so much.
Qantas’s Burns-Woods, for his part, is much more sanguine in his judgement of the initial reactions of some in the immediate aftermath of Tracy. He says despite the constant warnings, the actual severity of the cyclone and its subsequent devastation would have had a traumatic effect on everyone located in its path.
Most of us were overcome with a feeling of relief followed by helplessness, inadequacy and even hopelessness. These feelings lasted longer with some than with others. While the initial reaction of the RAAF might have been tardy, ultimately it was very effective, as was the army which performed magnificently in the restoration of essential services and clean-up.’
As the uplift continued, many of the RAAF Hercules crews flew impossible hours, then spent further hours loading and unloading before returning to Richmond where they rested briefly then prepared to crew the next available Hercules back to Darwin, often overcoming unscheduled, and unusual, occurrences along the way.
The fact that crews had been directed not to remain unnecessarily on the ground at Darwin meant crew duty limitations went out the window, with some crews working up to 48 hours at a stretch. Flight Lieutenant Allen Edwards and his crew were so fatigued by the long hours on duty that, towards the end of the uplift, on 31 December they opted to fly the short, final leg from Mascot to Richmond with the landing gear down and 50 degrees of flap, concerned they would forget to let the wheels down and choose the correct flap settings for the landing.
Even when Flight Lieutenant Bill Mattes’ Hercules lost an engine on approach to Darwin, which might require him to remain for an engine change, he was told by Hitchins to get the aircraft off the airfield. Mattes called his squadron headquarters to try to explain his predicament, but they suggested he abide by the direction. Mattes declared a Pan alert over his radio on take-off to warn others if something went wrong. Sure enough as they climbed away on three engines and headed for the Tindal air base near Katherine, a second engine began to overheat.
‘There was probably a case for shutting it down, but we decided to keep it going anyway,’ he recalls.
After the engine change and as he prepared to return to Darwin, Tindal asked if he could call again on the way back as there were about 30 evacuees there who needed to be taken further south. So, while loading at Darwin he asked if enough room could be left for the Tindal 30, but Darwin put 120 passengers on the normally 90-passenger Hercules anyway. Back at Tindal the number there had grown with the addition of children from an orphanage and a hippie colony so they finally left for Adelaide with a total of 186 on board an aircraft normally fully loaded at 92, including crew. Mattes remembers counting 17 people on the flight deck at one stage, sitting on the floor holding on to tie down straps, lying down by the chin windows or standing behind the crew. It was a world record for a C-130, although soon to be surpassed by another RAAF Hercules in Vietnam.
Other crews also reported odd experiences. No 37 Squadron’s flight engineer, Bill Moore’s C-130 suffered a gas turbine compressor failure, which meant a ground support air supply was required to start up if all the engines were shut down. Despite assurances that such support was available at Rockhampton, they arrived there in the middle of the night to find none and, contrary to normal procedure, would now be forced to keep one engine running while they refuelled.
When they asked the local airport fire authority to stand by while they refuelled just in case they were needed, Moore says the firefighters were reluctant to do so and took their truck back to the station, leaving the RAAF to their own resources.
But such events were exceptions and, in retrospect, despite some understandable reservations on the part of people like Group Captain Hitchins, it is difficult to imagine things being much different under the circumstances which existed in the days immediately following Tracy’s onslaught.
An emotional Major General Stretton handed back his command to civilian authorities at 1 p.m. on 31 December, although the airlift would continue to gradually wind down until Australia’s domestic airlines resumed their regular scheduled services on 3 January. By then more than 23 000 people had been moved out of Darwin by air, more than 9000 by military aircraft and almost 5000 of them by Qantas alone. It remains unequalled as Australia’s greatest airborne humanitarian achievement.
As for two of the main players—Hitchins and Stretton—there is little doubt that Alan Stretton left a lasting impression on those he was charged to help after Tracy hit and it is against that background that any criticisms of him must be measured. Certainly by evoking memories of such figures as Douglas MacArthur when referring to himself as ‘Supreme Commander’ he would have raised eyebrows, as he did when he pointed out his ‘red phone to the prime minister’ when Qantas’ Bert Ritchie called to visit, but he needs to be judged by the results of his efforts. Along with keeping morale high among a shattered population, he had to walk a delicate line between various Canberra-based ministers, some of whom made his task even more difficult by descending on Darwin on the slimmest of pretexts.
After his death at Batemans Bay in October 2012 he was buried with full military honours at the Royal Military College, Duntroon. He was 90. Although named Australian of the Year in 1975 for his efforts after Cyclone Tracy, several sections of the media would be critical of the fact that his passing did not even rate a mention in Parliament, with speculation that this may have been a result of his trenchant criticism of Australia’s involvement in the war in Iraq.
The RAAF’s David Hitchins AM AFC retired with the rank of air commodore in early 1978. He died in January 2011.
19
Aeroplanes and animals—often not a good mix
Most long-term airline cargo people will tell you they often felt they operated as something of a poor relation to the main passenger-carrying role of their airline. While many airlines, including Qantas, operated their own dedicated freighter aircraft through the propeller-driven Lockheed Constellation and into the Boeing 707 jet era, for years freight as air cargo was often tossed into the hold beneath the passengers as something of an afterthought, provided there was still some room for it alongside the suitcases.
Gradually, however, particularly with the large cargo capacity which came with wide-bodied aircraft like the 747, more and more airlines began to recognise the value of the area below the passenger cabin as icing on the cake, so to speak. These days there appears to be a place for just about everything in air freight, but that’s not to say it hasn’t had its moments, particularly where animals are concerned. For instance, it’s hard to imagine Alan Terrell’s experience with the cat in the cockpit happen
ing today.
Before joining Qantas to eventually become the airline’s director of operations, Terrell was working for Australian National Airways as a first officer on DC-3s in Queensland, on this particular day flying out of Julia Creek bound for Brisbane with a captain called Ron Campbell, who was known to have a relatively short fuse.
They had opened the throttles for take-off and the DC-3 was surging down the runway when at about the same time as the tail wheel lifted into the air, a cat which had been in the cargo compartment immediately behind the cockpit, broke free, jumped onto Campbell’s shoulder, and after painfully digging its claws into Campbell’s skin, leaped onto the shield under the cockpit window.
Now halfway down the runway and with the DC-3 about to take to the air, Campbell issued a series of expletives and opened his side window, whereupon, albeit with a little help from Campbell, the cat used what remained of its nine lives and exited. With the propeller of a Pratt & Whitney engine at full revs within a few feet of the window it doesn’t take much imagination to deduce the feline’s fate. Terrell says:
Ron’s problem then became what to tell the lady who owned the cat, a problem which, as rank has its privileges, soon became mine! He also made it clear I wasn’t to dob him in.
When we got back to Townsville that night I rang the lady owner who lived on a local station and told her the cat had escaped while we were loading. We had chased it but it had beaten us. I also pointed out that, as cats were wont to do, it would very likely find its way home and we could try again.
I saw her occasionally on subsequent flights after that and was always told the cat had never returned, to which I duly offered my sympathy.
Terrell’s experience was not particularly unusual, often leading to the conclusion that aeroplanes and animals do not mix and there are scores of stories told by pilots, cabin crew and cargo handlers which lead to the conclusion that, for some animals at least, flying can be a dangerous pastime, particularly, it seems, for dogs.
Long-time Qantas marketing and cargo manager Norman Leek still dines out on the story about the well-bred dogs which were destined for Singapore a year or so after the Second World War, at least in part to help replace the large number of local animals there which had not survived the war. During the transit stop at Darwin a well-intentioned Qantas cargo handler decided the dogs needed some relief from their cramped cage, but when he opened the cage door he was horrified to see them scatter to all four corners of the airport and beyond.
The story goes that the cargo man and his colleagues quickly came to the conclusion that instead of facing the consequences of a total loss, they would find substitutes, so they set off rounding up all the stray dogs they could find in Darwin. Leek suggests this answers the question as to why a large number of the dogs which could be seen around Singapore in later years were of the mongrel variety.
Darwin also appears to have been a transit problem for cats. There’s another story of a prize cat en route to its new London owner which also slipped past the cargo man when he went to give it some milk during the Darwin stopover. A ‘substitute’ was quickly found, but it didn’t take the new owner long to tell the difference, at substantial subsequent cost to the airline.
Not that you needed to be at a remote airline destination to experience animal cargo problems. However, it probably falls to 40-year Qantas cargo veteran Bill Easton to recount the cat story to end all cat stories. It concerns a cat which arrived at Sydney cargo for despatch to its owner in New Zealand. But when they went to prepare the paperwork to match the consignment, they found the cat was dead. Once again thinking ‘outside the square’ an innovative cargo handler found an appropriate replacement feline and off went the package to New Zealand. One can imagine the reaction of the Qantas cargo man at Auckland when the owner arrived to collect the animal and announced:
‘That’s not my cat.’
‘How do you know it’s not your cat?’ asked the cargo man, hoping to retrieve something from the situation.
‘Because my cat was dead. I was bringing it home for burial!’
The rest of the conversation is not recorded.
Old hands at Qantas’ Sydney cargo terminal will always remember a German shepherd named Bogart who broke free from his box, raced through the car park, across the Princes Highway, on through Suttons Motors and disappeared. When an extensive search by the cargo team failed to find any trace of Bogart someone had the bright idea to place an advertisement in the local newspaper. To their surprise the cargo office received a phone call a few days later from a local resident who’d had Bogart turn up on his doorstep.
It appears, though, that some dogs didn’t need to escape to have an unsettling experience with Qantas cargo. Leek says one of the luckiest was the dog which went missing while an aircraft was being unloaded at the airline’s old cargo terminal on the eastern fringe of the Qantas Jet Base. Somehow the dog had disappeared in the short distance between the aircraft and the terminal itself and no amount of searching could locate him.
Then someone remembered that part of the cargo unloaded that morning had been meat destined for the terminal’s cold room and sure enough a check revealed the dog had been placed on the same trolley as the meat while the handlers unloaded the remainder of the cargo. So when the meat went into the cool room, the dog went with it. When someone finally put two and two together it took half an hour wrapped in blankets for the grateful animal to recover.
Not that it was the only dog ever to grace that same cool room. One enterprising cargo officer, asked to store several dogs during their transit to another flight, decided that since they were of the husky breed, the best place for them would be in the cool room. Fortunately they were recovered in time.
Still, given that over its lifetime Australia’s international airline has carried everything from whales and baby elephants, to live eels and cockatoos, it’s probably not a bad record, although those with the most experience will remain convinced that among the most difficult missions to handle were those known as the ‘monkey charters’.
The carriage of monkeys dates back to the 1950s when loads of Rhesus monkeys were flown in from the Indian subcontinent and Asia to be used in the development of the polio vaccine. Anyone involved in the carriage of the monkeys will tell you that of all the animals they have had anything to do with carrying over the years, the monkeys were among the most challenging. Carried in cages of three or four at a time there could be hundreds lining the inside of a Constellation freighter and they took every opportunity to make things uncomfortable for the crews and their handlers.
Apart from the incessant noise, they had such a reputation for throwing anything in their cages at any unfortunate human forced to pass through them that even the pilots were issued with special blue-coloured overalls before each flight. Even then, a trip to the toilet at the rear of the aeroplane meant you had to run the gauntlet of monkey excreta, unused food and anything else they could lay their hands on as you passed. Once the crews arrived in Sydney the overalls were taken away and burned.
20
Humour in the air and the thoughts of Chairman Hugh
Anyone with any knowledge of it will tell you flying is a serious business, an endeavour which, if taken lightly even for the briefest of moments, can end in disaster. Hijinks in the air can quickly lead to death on the ground, a fear which in itself is probably partly responsible for the rich tradition of humour which exists in Australian aviation. Bizarrely, it seems, the very fact of staring death in the face can enhance the subsequent telling of the story.
I once listened as a dear friend of mine, Roy ‘Nugget’ Hibben, recounted a frightening experience he had while flying a Mustang fighter with the RAAF’s 77 Squadron in Korea in the early 1950s. ‘Nug’, as his nickname suggests, was of fairly short stature and was returning to the squadron’s base at Kimpo, near Seoul, from a mission when he elected to give the lads on the ground a thrill by beating up the runway at low level. And just to add an extra level of exc
itement for the gallery below he decided to do it inverted.
So, with the throttle open and at a hundred feet, he lined up the Mustang on the runway’s centreline and flipped the aircraft on its back, which immediately presented him with a serious problem. He had forgotten to tighten his safety harness and instantly found himself hanging upside down, his short legs now unable to reach the rudder pedals.
To hear him tell the story of the next few seconds, as he sat there, upside down and suspended in the cockpit with the concrete runway rushing past a few feet below his head, and furiously pushing forward on the joystick to gain height, was to hear someone recounting not the sheer terror of those few seconds, but the hilarity of it all, doubtless transformed by both the passing of the years and the fact that he’d got away with it.
There have been thousands of such stories in Australian aviation, of danger, bad luck, unforeseen circumstances and humour coalescing to make the serious business of flying such a fascinating occupation. Even the sheer terror of having to endure hour after hour of sitting in a cramped Lancaster bomber over Europe in the Second World War was often reduced to a self-deprecating anecdote which attempted to diminish the horror of it all.
I remember how difficult it had been to entice an old Department of Civil Aviation colleague, Ian ‘Curly’ Richardson, to transport me into the world of Royal Air Force Bomber Command in 1943. It was easy to learn he’d won a Distinguished Flying Medal and a Distinguished Flying Cross after completing two tours as a navigator, when the chances of surviving even one tour was marginal, to say the least. When he finally gave in, the only story he would tell was of that night towards the end of his first tour when his Lancaster was on its way to bomb Frankfurt.