1961: By Ladybird round Africa

That a Canadair C-4 or also known as a DC-4M. Canadair license built the DC-4 from Douglas but with Merlin engines instead of the radial engines and a pressurized cabin. Jens Kristensen (JBK) did one that's quite good although it didn't come with that paint when I installed it.
 
Hi Kelly

I have done paints of many of the aircraft that flew in Africa in that period. You can download them from my website (link in my signature) or from flightsim.

Regards
Andre

Thanks Ralf for giving taking us with on the trip, very interesting.
 
Hi Gentlemen,

Sorry, haven't been in here for a bit, so missed that. Yes, the flyables I've shown are Canadair C-4 Argonauts (DC-4 with Merlin 626 engines - called the North Star in North America as Willy pointed out). The DC-4s that have appeared are all from Tom's Cal Classic AI.



So here we are at the late '50s/early '60s Livingstone, FLLI in Zambia.



Another CAA C-47 in, but otherwise it's fairly quiet.



But why didn't we spot Victoria Falls? Determined to get to the bottom of this mystery, I borrow a Cessna:



Let's go up and take a good look at all that Smokin' Thunder...



I'm sure Dr Livingstone said it was round here somewhere.

 
@ Willy: I have Jens dc4, but the 2d panel looks different. The brake lever doesn't appear in my copies, for example, so I wondered if this was a different version.

@Andre: Nice work. I'm off to Boston for a few days, but when I'm back I'll go looking for paints.

Thanks one and all, as usual.
 
Kelly, it's won't be in Jens DC-4s. It's a separate aircraft listed as the Canadair C-4 Argonaut.

argo_v30.zip at FlightSim

Think of it as when is a DC-4 not a DC-4?
 
Well, I saw a large body of water some way in the distance and flew off to investigate, but something wasn't quite right 'cos I was going east, and Victoria Falls are definitely very near Livingstone, just to the south.

Then I realised! :icon_eek:

There is no default V Falls in fs9, you have to upload the Holger Sandman/Johan van Wyk addon...



This is beginning to look a bit better now...



It is pretty disgraceful that they didn't bother to put it into Microsoft Flight Simulator 2004, a Century of Flight. You can imagine what an outcry there would have been if they'd just not bothered with, say, the Niagara Falls (and how quickly everyone would have noticed).



So you must install the Sandman/van Wyk one if you fly anywhere near Livingstone. In the default the Zambezi just peters out beyond Lake Kariba.



It's all nicely compatible with the 1960s African airports package.



What happened at Microsoft? Did they get to Friday afternoon, all go down to the pub and forget about the Victoria Falls on Monday morning? This addon was created almost immediately (in 2004), so it's not as good as more recent scenery, but not bad for nearly 10 years old - and infinitely better than the boring default nothingness!



More info about African scenery improvements to follow as I've been checking some of them out.
 
In the book they now fly back to Salisbury before going down to the Big One, South Africa. I thought of being lazy and going straight to Pretoria from Livingstone, though not sure that the direct flight was even possible in 1961. I'm glad, however, that we did go back to Salisbury. After a slightly boring time in Central and East Africa (apert from finally discovering those Falls), the AI is about to kick in with impressive effect.

So we'll go from FLLI (Livingstone, Zambia) back to FVHA (Harare International, Zimbabwe since 1980/Salisbury, Rhodesia in 1961):



Back in the Central African Airways C-47:



According to the 1961 timetable, this was Flight CE669 which only went direct on a Sunday.



There's the (enhanced) Zambezi:



It didn't seem to be climbing very well and we flew right through this cloud/spray from the Falls...



...Too low, too slow! Worried about stalling till I realised that I hadn't set the Mixture to 'full rich', no wonder she wouldn't climb, it was only at 54%! [Memo: Do those preflight checks when flying on high realism].

So the tragedy of the Dakota in the Victoria Falls was averted and we cleared the town of Hwange:



That's its airport, FVWN, Hwange National Park:



We are due for a heading change to fly more or less due East from here.



And there it is mid-turn...

 
Due to my inability to climb very well, persuaded ATC to let the C-47 stick around 11,000. Thought this was a nice shot for showing the yellow tips of the propellor blades:



As mentioned before, this is Andre Reimers' texture for the Manfred Jahn C-47. And a view of the port side:



How many more boring pictures of that Dakota is he going to stick up there?!? I hear you wail in despair. But fear not, for a time of rich AI is upon us...



Classic CAA Viscount above. This looks like another Canadair C-4, though I didn't know Suidwes operated them (one book says they had a DC-4 in 1973, maybe that's it):



A bit scared that this Cessna might be the dreaded Girl in Orange flying ahead to intercept us:



Nice one (from World of AI I think), though it has the modern Zimbabwe flag and the Cessna 400 series began in 1964, so it's a bit ahead of its time.



An Alitalia DC-8, our first jet since the Comets. And here is a BOAC Speedbird:



Those sexy jets are too big for the screenshot! And an interesting little Swiss cargo friend which does fit the picture:



We have struck a rich seam of AI gold, oh yes. Thank you, Tom! :salute:
 
You are correct, Suidwes Lugdiens never flew a DC-6 with Suidwes Lugdiens titles. There was a DC-4 (ZS-IPR) purchased in 1972 and sold in 1980 and until 1978 when it's name changed to Namib Air flew as Suidwes Lugdiens - SouthWest Airways. http://www.dc-4.co.za/7488.htm
 
Thanks, Andre. The '73 book has them with the one Dc-4, 2 DC-3s, one Cessna 402 (like the Orange Girl), one 206, two 310s, three Piper Aztecs, five twin Comanches, one Comanche and one Beaver. HQ in Goering Street, Windhoek, South west Africa (as Namibia still was). I hope that neo-nazi German settlers there didn't manage to name the street after a major war criminal and it's just a horrible coincidence... Just realised :icon_eek: - it's named after his father who was briefly Governor of German South West Africa! Someone with a sense of humour may have seen to it that the airline got onto that particular street.

Thanks, too, for the link to your site with so much good stuff on it, more of which will be appearing here shortly.

We've just got to finish the return to Salisbury. There's the airport up ahead:



A lot of interesting radio chatter at this point.



This is a very boring default airport, apparently without buildings, as you can see above... Hoping that Harry & Co. will get round to giving it the glorious '60s treatment before long. Went and parked at the end of a nice row of AI:



Now that we've stopped and switched the engines off, let's take a look round. A British United Britannia:



Central African Viscount:



And this Hunting Clan ditto came in and parked there while I was taking those pictures:

 
But then the most exciting piece of AI came and joined us:



OMG! A South African Airways 707. :applause: Let's have a look at the other side of it:



I know it's only a silly game playing with cartoons, but this really is the closest we can now ever get to seeing these Golden Age jets of half a century ago doing that beautiful thing they used to do - !



And he goes and parks at the end of the line:



In 1973 SAA still had eight 707-344s (2 of which were 344Bs, four 344Cs), but I think this must be something a little earlier, maybe a 707-320?
 
That'll be 13 hours to London, England presumably? Thanks, Tom - more sexy early '60s jets to come (and we might even go in another one later...)

The Ladybird people didn't fly to the South African capital Pretoria as I thought; they flew to Johannesburg (FAJS, just south of Pretoria), and drove up to visit there.



In 1961 you could do Salisbury to Jo'burg in some style by catching SA257:



The slot was 14.45 and it took a couple of hours. Just had to wait for this chap to land in Rhodesia before we could go:







And as soon as he's safely out of the way, we move out onto the runway:



Climbing away:



I am glad to report that we have five different airports to visit in the Republic of South Africa, all of which have had beautiful '60s makeovers by Harry and Jaap, and are heaving with Cal Classic AI. South African scenery in general has also been enhanced by installing some of the Aeroworx downloads, so it should look quite pretty and populated from here on in...
 
Contrails at 20,000 feet:



Here's where we cross the border from Rhodesia into South Africa:



South Africa has four Provinces: Cape of Good Hope, Natal, Orange Free State (Oranje-Vrystaat in Dutch/Afrikaans) and the Transvaal. The latter two are the original Boer Republics which were fully united with the more British Cape and Natal by the Act of Union in 1910. We are entering Transvaal. As its name implies, it's the land across the Vaal River in the south, but the northern border with Zimbabwe/Rhodesia and Botswana is another great river...



...the Limpopo. Nigel (if he's still looking in here?) will know that this is, in fact the great, grey-green, greasy Limpopo. I was a bit confused by the Just So Stories as a child because I thought Kipling was always in India, not realising that they could be African elephants in one tale and that Yellow Dog Dingo (one of my earliest literary heroes) was in Australia. (Did realise that the Cat who walks by Himself was with cavemen, however.)



It's only about 4 o'clock in the afternoon, but dusk begins to fall. Time for our AI fix:



a Lufthansa 707 which must have come all the way from West Germany. It may have been carrying a few rich tourists going on safari in the early '60s, but it's more likely that most passengers were businessmen with dealings in South Africa's gold, diamonds and other valuable mining products; or they were heading on into South West Africa (today's independent Namibia, an ex-German colony which still has some white, German-speaking population).

One of the Comet 4 Speedbirds:



Like the German 707, heading back to Europe from Johannesburg, via Salisbury, Rhodesia and other stops on the way. Taking a look at the sunny side:



And there it is going down beyond the Kalahari Desert...



...Time to put my lights on!

 
That's better...



A large city is revealed by its lights shining in the darkness below:



Not being very experienced with the Connie (although I did take the cheese-eating Carters down to Spain in one once), concentrated on landing rather than taking lots of photos. This was relatively easy in the dark, however, with the runway nice and clear from a long way off.



We'll take a proper look round here once we're safely parked.



So what do they have here at FAJS this warm winter's evening?



A pair of DC-4s at the end of the row we parked in. And here's a DC-7 having a snooze at Gate 1:



We see from the main terminal entrance that Johannesburg International is named after the great South African statesman of the early 20th Century, Jan Christiaan Smuts. As a young man he had fought for the Boer Republics against the British, but perhaps realising how merciful they were to the Afrikaners after the 1899 - 1902 Boer War (when they taught the British army how to fight), he fought for Britain (conquering South West Africa from the Germans) in the First World War, then formed the South African Party in 1920. He was Prime Minister 1919 - 24 and 1939 -48.

This Viscount was off to Bloemfontein, capital of the Orange Free State (not on the Ladybird itinerary):



DC-3 below has just arrived from FAUL which will be the old Zulu capital, Ulundi, now called Prince Mangosuthu Buthelezi Airport, after their present leader:



Busy airport - this is what we came for, even if the Ladybird book has a somewhat different agenda.
 
We'll take a look round this exciting early '60s airport in the dark - it wasn't really that late (maybe about 5 o'clock in the evening?), but darkness comes early and falls rapidly here in August (as mentioned, their winter).



Couple of South African Viscounts, 707 on the left:




Here they are from the other side, with a Trek DC-4 in the distance. The aircraft coming in to land is from FBFT, Francistown in neighbouring Botswana, to the north:



Here's a view of him on final:



And there was another right behind them!



These were WENELA airliners bringing workers from neighbouring countries to dig in South Africa's mines. In the early '60s there were at least 400,000 miners, many of them migrants from outside. Remember that WENELA was the airline of the Witwatersrand Native Labour Association, i.e. the mining companies. Although cheap imported labour is always a good way to increase profits, note that black South Africans had no civil rights within their own country and even they had to carry 'passes' to travel to wherever the work was. In the late '50s the Nationalist party, led by Dr H.F. Verwoerd, were in power, setting up the notorious system of Apartheid: 'equal but separate development'.
 
A better view of that Trek DC-4:



Although the name was usually applied to the C-54 military transport version, these civil DC-4s were also referred to as Skymasters. (We will be going on a South African Airways one for the next leg of this journey.) Another DC-4 from the third South African airline, Suidwes...



...arriving from her base in Windhoek, capital of Namibia, which you'll recall was still being administered from Pretoria as 'South West Africa' at the time. Here's the Dakota from Ulundi coming to park (looks like a cargo transporter since there's no light in the passenger cabin - I always suspect these unregistered DC-3s of being run by a suspicious aviation outfit called Merc Air which one occasionally hears mysterious rumours about...)



South Africa at the start of the '60s is just the sort of place you'd find them operating. Looks like he's off to some obscure cargo bay in a corner of the airport while our Connie and the 707 sit beside one another in the limelight like a couple of jealous babes at a beauty contest:



Meanwhile, back in innocent Ladybirdland:



*You cannot see John's map opposite page 50 (yet), as it would spoil several surprises...



...you can, however, see this map of the route we'll be taking with them around South Africa:



From a German atlas of the time. NACHDRUCK VERBOTEN! Yeah, yeah, yeah...
 
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