Imperial Airdays are here again

Took a look at Alexandria airport and found much Imperial activity there at the crack of dawn:

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Volker is right that they usually left very early, taking advantage of daylight and cool air. All along these routes there were designated emergency landing places, mainly needed to avoid dust storms. In fact the next bit - probably the shortest leg - Alexandria to Cairo down the Nile Delta - was often done by train.

This seems a bit more stylish, however:


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The three-engined Short S-8 Calcutta, named after the capital of the British Raj for most of their 200 or so years in India. This particular one, despite having its type name in huge letters, was most appropriately called City of Alexandria. We left at 05.30:

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This was even more like driving a flying car, a convertible in fact, since the Captain and First Officer didn't have a roof. I maintained radio - sorry, wireless - contact all the way, sticking to an altitude of 3000 feet.

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Being on the outside, with them just behind you, you don't need a little window to keep an eye on the engines:


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The noise would have been something else, but they'd have been kept nice & cool (aircrew and motors):

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Most of the way you can see the Nile (which is, of course, our destination airport) below:

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The British relationship with Egypt was rather complicated. Technically it was supposed to be an 'Anglo-French Condominium', though the French never did much more than a bit of catering there, having bottled out of the original invasion in 1884. In theory Egypt was still part of the Ottoman Empire till WW1, but of course power lay with the British Governor-General, the Egyptian Khedive being a figurehead, like a British monarch. Just as today's superpower wants everybody in the world to be a democratic republic (it works for us, so it must be right), so the British set up constitutional monarchies everywhere. Who do you think decided that countries like Jordan and Saudi Arabia should be ruled by a 'king'?
 
The point was that the British government owned the Suez Canal - a private enterprise, actually built by the French, but they had a majority shareholding. Oh yes, the British Empire invented capitalism and free trade like we're all still supposed to enjoy today. The Khedive Ahmad Fuad was a good ruler who dealt very ably with the British - who kindly let him be called King of Egypt in 1922. Unfortunately he died very suddenly in 1936 and was succeeded by his 17-year old son Farouk (older readers may remember him from that nightmare airship trip I made down the Nile with Kapitainleutnant Bockholt and the Italians some years ago).

Farouk hated the British, but he didn't have the political cunning his father had had, and was too personally decadent ever to liberate the Egyptian people. When British power waned after WW2, it was inevitable that Farouk would be overthrown and a political leader of ability - Nasser - would emerge to create the modern nation state of Egypt.

Don't suppose Imperial Airways had any trouble getting overflying rights in those days...

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There you see our target 'airfield', Flying Boats Cairo. It is conveniently close to the Gezira (island) Sporting Club, where all the best people in the Empire were members.

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I was a bit worried that we started to go out beyond the city and deep into the desert, but eventually they did call us back and I was able to overfly and check out the destination:

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There's Gezira, the landing strip was down the far side, approaching from the south; careful not to collide with any bridges. Losing altitude and swinging round for the approach, we catch a glimpse of the pyramids:


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It's just over an hour from Alexandria to Cairo by this rather stylish mode of transport. There's the west bank of the Nile:


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And the Sporting Club on the island opposite:


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The door ingeniously opens up and doubles as steps so the passengers can descend into their launch:

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I was in a convenient place to glance down and make sure they had all left and hadn't forgotten anything:


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Very civilized.
 
Almaza to Gaza

Having reached Cairo you may reasonably be wondering whether we'll be going south towards Wadi Halfa and Khartoum into Africa, or eastwards to India? Well, it's the latter: we'll go at least as far as Delhi, crossing Arabia, Iraq and the Persian Gulf.

The 1930s airport for Cairo was Almaza (now an Egyptian Air Force base). The modern Cairo International (Gamal Abdel Nasser) wasn't developed till after WW2 when it had been a USAAF base. Of course it was originally called King Farouk I Airport - nice '50s scenery available from California Classics. In the Imperial days you got back into one of these:


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It's the 'Eastern' version of the HP-42, only real difference between this and the 'Western' being that it seated less passengers, a maximum of 24 rather than 38 which the European routes could in theory carry. No doubt they amply made up for that in mail; it would have been rare for any HP-42 to have more than a few passengers on any flight.


The usual dawn takeoff:


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Dawn takeoffs are a bit of a hassel when you're going east since the sun has a habit of coming up and shining right in your eyes...


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We soon sight the Suez Canal:


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This is near Ismailia, north of the Great Bitter Lake, about halfway down between Port Said on the Med and Suez (As Suways in Arabic) on the Gulf of Suez/Red Sea.

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The Handley Page rumbles along at a stately 120mph/193 km/h. It's nearly 2 hours to our first stop on the way to Baghdad, most of it over the Sinai Desert.

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We have been round here on other flights, like when the Carters came down to Egypt in that Jordanian de Havilland Dragon (with a group of German archaeologists, I seem to remember).

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A Lockheed Electra (the old kind, not a postwar L-188) zoomed by below. You swing out over the Mediterranean for approach into Imperial's first stop...


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Gaza makes its first recorded appearance in the Bible when the blinded Sampson managed to push the pillars of a Philistine temple down, killing himself and all his enemies. The British conquered it from the Ottoman Turkish Empire in WW1, making Gaza part of their Mandate of Palestine. Many Arab refugees moved there in 1948 when defeated in their first war with the new State of Israel. In 1949 Israel and Egypt agreed to let the so-called Gaza Strip be an autonymous region, though the Israelis occupied it in the 1967 Six Day War. At the end of the 20th Century it was run by the Palestinian Authority and in 1998 a shiny new International Airport was opened with peacemaker Bill Clinton as guest of honour. Since then Hamas, much more militant and unable to make peace, have been elected to run Gaza, so the Israelis found it necessary to destroy the airport (though it survives in fs9). I am not sure if Gaza (Yasser Arafat) International was on the same site as Imperial Airways Gaza, but surely near enough; it can be used here.


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It would have been pleasant to visit the Holy Land when British occupiers were firmly in charge there during the 1920s and '30s, with peace assured between the few Jewish settlers and majority Arab population. Unfortunately the British simply gave up after WW2, unable to provide enough security to ensure a smooth political transition and prevent much bloodshed (there was a similar - even worse - crisis in the India/Pakistan conflict which began at the same time, as Britain withdrew her armed forces, ending 200 years of Empire there).


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There wouldn't really have been any nice concrete runway (probably just a big windsock), but it is useful in the flightsim...

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...and I made a very good landing there, though I say so myself. Now the Handley Page can refuel ready for our next leg across Jordan to the legendary Iraqi airfield at Rutbah Wells...

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I personally think blame for the current mess in that region is at least equally shared if not a bit more with the hardliners in the Knesset ..... I do love this excursion into aviation history. Keep it coming ;) .. Stefan
 
Amos Oz, the Israeli writer, has made the good point that since the collapse of the Soviet Empire, a lot of Jews who grew up in nasty tough environments have moved to Israel. As he put it: 'these people don't sit round discussing a problem - they just reach for a gun' (to paraphrase slightly).

Europeans tend to support anyone perceived as a bullied underdog, so until about 1975 the 'victim' in the Mid East was always Israel, the Arabs were the bullies. Since then, and especially the Israeli invasion of Lebanon, the Arabs, particularly the Palestinians, have successfully reinvented themselves as 'the bullied', often helped by Israeli overreactions. Both sides in the conflict give far too much credence to extremes of political and religious belief, being bullied by their own bullies as much as they are by the enemy ones (the revolting concept of 'martyrdom' seems particularly negative).

If the British ever taught the world anything, it is that you do have to all sit down and discuss both points of view in any argument before coming to some sort of compromise and eventually achieving peace.

As for the role of the United States, a good bumper sticker you can get in Jewish stores there: USA: Don't worry, Israel is right behind you!
 
But, as you say Stefan, it's aviation history, not politics, that we're interested in.

The next important stop for Imperial in the '30s was Baghdad in Iraq. After the First World War Britain and France shared out the defeated Ottoman Empire, giving some independence to newly-appointed Arab kings in countries like Jordan and Saudi Arabia. This was in return for mineral-prospecting rights and provision of some security, including RAF bases. This map, showing the Gaza - Rutbah flight has areas of control marked, blue for the French, red for the British:


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The RAF found it difficult to navigate over the enormous featureless desert between Amman, capital of Jordan, and Baghdad. Since there wasn't even a railway to follow they actually got some tractors and ploughed the famous 'Furrow', a 300+ mile ditch to fly along. This was only possible because the desert there isn't windy - it would never blow away (and may still have partly survived 90 years later, who knows?). They also buried emergency fuel dumps along the route; it was relatively flat and easy to come down, especially if you saw bad weather - a sandstorm - approaching. Up to a point Imperial used the same route and methods, though of course aircraft and navigation technology improved year by year.

Had to wait for one of those AI Electras at Gaza:


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I left after lunch in a vain attempt to avoid being blinded by the sun; it's about 3 hours in a Handley Page.


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Had elaborate plans to reconstruct Rutbah Wells with a pretty little mosque and maybe a few camels... Then I discovered that it looked like this:


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A bit beyond my fs object placing abilities! (Note the enormous radio receivers/transmitters). There is, however, an airstrip in Iraq in fs9/GW3 called H3, which is fairly close to Rutbah and at the right height of about 2500 feet.

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If you do this flight you'll realise why they wanted that Furrow. The last landmark we passed was the Dead Sea:

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Apart from the large freshwater lakes (Buhayrats) in Iraq, next real sea will be the Persian Gulf...

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The Dead Sea also marks the border between Palestine/Israel to the west and Jordan to the east. Amman would have been on our left...

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...lots and lots of featureless desert for a long way now.


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It seemed reasonable to stick to about 10,000 feet. The HP has a ceiling of 12,000, but Imperial probably stayed as low as 3, simply for passenger comfort. These aircraft weren't designed to cross mountain ranges.

A slight heading change to go northeast and along the northern border of Saudi Arabia:


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Although it was difficult to make much out, even the horizon being very hazy, the fantastic stability of the aircraft was a definite advantage here.

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I mentioned that they buried fuel dumps along the route. These had to be sealed underground because the Bedouin used to pour away exposed fuel and steal the oil drums!

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From its co-ordinates that town may be Al Qurayyat, just inside Saudi. Will I be able to spot the airfield? Even with that huge fortress they sometimes missed it and had to turn round!

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Required reading for anyone interested in Imperial Airways is Alexander Frater's Beyond the Blue Horizon. He actually reconstructed this whole route, all the way from London to Brisbane on the far side of Australia, with as many of the original stops as possible, in 1984.


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Alexander Frater was Chief Travel Correspondent of the London Observer newspaper, and they kindly paid for what is thought to have been the fattest ticket in airline history! When he got to Iraq Sadaam was still firmly in charge, fighting his useless war against Iran.

The airfield is near here somewhere...


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Obviously Frater was keen to go and visit Rutbah Wells, but of course the Iraqi authorities wouldn't let him.

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Found it! Not quite such a perfect landing as at Gaza, but good enough.

Here's another aerial view of the fort, showing where the planes went. On one glorious occasion they landed while the Bedouin were actually attacking the place (Imperial kept a few Arab mercenaries, probably their cousins, to see them off):

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Apparently it was very cold at night, but you got a full English breakfast next morning to set you up for the next stretch to Baghdad!

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(Later I will reconstruct and fly one particularly interesting leg of Mr Frater's journey).
 
MikeW/emfrat mentioned the DH-91 which fulfilled a government order for a mailplane, a few being built in 1937. Imperial did use them for a couple of years in Europe, though I don't think they ever got this far east (except maybe when requisitioned by the RAF in the War). The good old HP-42 will be back, but let's try this for Rutbah - Baghdad...

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Thanks to Coleridge's Rime of the Ancient Mariner, Albatross seems a bit of a 'bird of ill omen' to name an aircraft after, but still.

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Still rather like a train carriage inside:

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And another dawn takeoff:

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We've got those newfangled foldaway undercarriages now - and only two wings; however will we stay up?

They wanted another Atlantic-crosser and it could have just done it with a range of 3,230 miles/5,187 km. (The HP-42 could manage just 300 miles/480 km!)

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The other thing that you notice in the simulator is that navigation is much more sophisticated, with a good Heading Indicator and ADF, though you still have to watch your pitch all the time.

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And it goes without saying that it's much faster: cruises at 210 mph/338 km/hr at 11,000 feet/3,555m. De Havilland Gipsy XII/I engines, as seen by passengers, above.


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Plenty more desert and a nice blue sky here...
 
Shortly before Baghdad we see Lake Habaniyah on our left:

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This has the famous RAF Habaniyah base on its shores. More or less just a training establishment during the War, it saw off a Luftwaffe attack in an unbelievable better-than-fiction adventure!

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The Germans, with Ju-88s painted in Iraqi livery, were operating at their maximum range, flying out of Rhodes and refuelling in Vichy French Syria. They also had bad luck when their C-in-C was killed as they did a flypast over Baghdad and happy pro-Nazi Arabs let off their guns in salute - !

The Euphrates:

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Al Furat in Arabic.

If Hitler had bothered to make a serious attempt on the Gulf, Britain might have suffered a severe fuel shortage - but for oil he was more interested in Rumania and the Caucasus.

We did land at Baghdad International, though I believe that was only opened by Guess Who? in the 1970s, so Imperial must have used a different airfield (Baghdad West perhaps?).


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You can fly a pretty little flag - I mean ensign - from these once you've parked.


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We are near one of Willy's famous AI HP-42s with which you can enhance your Golden Wings enjoyment...

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And here's an amazing sight that could have been seen there in the '30s:


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The LOT DC-2 which worked the unbelievable Warsaw - Lvov - Cernauti - Bucharest - Sofia - Salonica - Athens - Lydda - Beirut - Baghdad route.

Here it is at Lydda, as the British called that airport, using the Arabic name. In Hebrew it is Lod, later renamed Tel Aviv, Ben Gurion:

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Ralf Roggeveen said:
...
We did land at Baghdad International, though I believe that was only opened by Guess Who? in the 1970s, so Imperial must have used a different airfield (Baghdad West perhaps?).
...
Click to expand...

Hi Ralf,

I believe that during Imperial days, the airport at Baghdad was what is now called 'Muthenna', a disused airport about 15 km away, bearing some 60 degrees.

Best regards,
Volker
 
Great photos and stories Ralf! :applause:


Someone had posted a flight mission at one of the sites, a few years ago, that had the Handley Page in it, one of two, and the HP was the last one in the flights. From the top of Africa to the very horn at the bottom. When I was at cruise altitude, I went to 4X on the sim. Would need to find a place to refuel continuously. That flight took me a week, to go from the top to the bottom of Africa. I was amazed at how huge that country is. Finally made it to that mountain range at the tip of Africa and put down.

Fun and also enlightening of the days of old in Airlines...



Bill
 
Hi Bill, yes, Africa is even bigger when your aeroplane's very slow and has an extremely short range! Terrain there might make it even worse for Handley Pages... This India route seems to have been carefully worked out to avoid high ground. I did once get the Italia airship from Bulgaria to Khartoum, so may still have the 'Slowest Into Africa' Record.

Have taken Volker's advice and we'll start the Baghdad - Basra leg from Muthenna, back in the old HP and leaving at dawn again:

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Found this interesting diagram showing the differences between the Western and Eastern HP-42 interiors:

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Note that luggage & mail storage was under the wings, therefore nearer the engines and the noisiest part of the aircraft. They boasted to passengers that it was as quiet 'as a Pulman' and that you didn't have to raise your voice to hold a conversation on board.

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The city is just beginning to stir as we rumble into the still cool sky:

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A heading change to fly SSE most of the way:


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We start by following the other great river of Iraq, the Tigris, or Nahr Dijlah in Arabic.

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For a while we're heading towards Kut, scene of much fighting between the British and their Commonwealth troops against the Turks in WW1. Australians who flew with QANTAS and Imperial in the '30s were particularly aware of their forces' great contribution.

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There were heavy casualties, including from disease, and large Commonwealth War Graves cemeteries exist in Iraq (and at Gaza), many of those graves being occupied by Indian soldiers.

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A particularly spiteful act of Sadaam was to have these beautifully-kept cemeteries vandalised by a paid mob at the time of Operation Desert Storm, though I believe they have been repaired and re-consecrated since.

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As the rivers narrow back together approaching the Gulf, we spot the Euphrates again. It's nice and green here with all that fresh water:

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Descending towards Basra...
 
By the early 21st Century the British were back in Basra, main port of Iraq, just above the Shatt al'Arab where the two rivers flow out into the Persian Gulf. It is the home of the famous Marsh Arabs who Sadaam hated and tried to destroy by daming the rivers to prevent their annual flooding, the buildup of silt and growth of reeds from which the people make everything, even their houses.

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This is where civilization began. When the floods came the earliest agriculturalists used to make big reed boats and put a pair of each of their livestock animals on board to ride out the flood, then start farming again after the waters had receeded...

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...now where have we heard that story before? Anyway, I'm very glad to say that Sadaam's dams have been smashed down and the marshes are regaining their ancient eco-system.

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(The above information may be useful to deal with 'Iraq War Deniers' who seem to imagine that getting rid of Sadaam and his grotesquely evil family was somehow a bad thing).
 
Hi,

the 30's era Basra airport was a Maqal, close to the river. An RAF seaplane base was close by, probably about 3 km downriver.

Best regards,
Volker
 
We now have the short Basra - Kuwait stretch, basically crossing the Shatt al'Arab where the Tigris, Euphrates and other rivers flow out into the Persian Gulf.

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Sometimes Imperial flew direct to Bushire in Iran on the eastern side of the Gulf, but we are going down its west coast Kuwait - Bahrain - Sharjah before crossing over to the British Empire on the Indian subcontinent.

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I was amazed that the 1930 book already said On this stage of your flight you pass that Island of Abadan on which are situated the great distilleries of the Anglo-Persian Oil Company. Many tankers are at the wharf sides, filling up, the crude oil coming down in vast quantities through pipelines from the oilfields away in the interior.

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A small town in the far south of Iraq just before we crossed the border into Kuwait.

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We already spotted a few ships in the Suez Canal, but will there be tankers here in the Gulf over 70 years ago?

As we leave the rivers behind, flying almost due south now, desert resumes...


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...but you soon spot the sea ahead. There is one large bay in Kuwait with the main settlement just the other side.

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Looks like tankers and freighters on the left, traditional dhows on the right!
 
We land at Kuwait...

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...already a busy airport in the late 1930s.

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Many of these aircraft would have been working for the oil companies.

The British ran what has been called 'an Informal Empire' in the Middle East. The place that really mattered was India, but they needed to protect routes to get there, especially to ensure that free trade could flourish. These Arab lands remained independent, but had agreements whereby the Imperial power provided security - originally in the form of the Royal Navy, by now supplemented by the RAF - and quite often an 'adviser' at the Sheik, Emir or King's court, keeping an eye on the local political situation. This is, of course, much cheaper than conquering the whole area and having to occupy it with military forces, build infrastructure, provide schools, hospitals and other public amenities. Just as long as the oil reached those tankers on the coast.

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The west coast of the Persian Gulf: Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and what is now the United Arab Emirates (Abu Dhabi, Dubai, Sharjah), Oman, etc. was generally safe, hence this Imperial Airways route. The big problem then, as now, was the great non-Arab country on the east coast: Iran. Britain had a lot of power and influence in Iran, sometimes deciding who was going to be Shah and occupying the country without much difficulty in WW2, but the Iranians have always maintained their own way of doing things...

Found out that the HP-42 would take about three hours to get to our next stopover, Bahrain. Decided to change history a little and use this aircraft for that stage:


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The Armstrong Whitworth AW-27 Ensign. These were developed specifically to replace the old but reliable Handley Pages, though they only started to appear in 1938, just before Britain went to war with Germany. Imperial actually complained to Armstrong Whitworth that they were concentrating on warplane orders for the RAF, rather than building their airliners!

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And of course the fourteen Ensigns that were built (2 prototypes and 12 for Imperial) were taken over by the RAF.

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This one was really G-ADTA Euryalus which was damaged by German fighters and scrapped in England in 1941, but here it is doing what it was intended for, with Indian registration, carrying passengers and mail to the Raj.

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It can easily manage 150 kias (the HP stays below 100) and will shorten this leg by a whole hour.

A few Ensigns did survive the war and were actually used by BOAC, but by then aircraft technology - and the world - had changed a lot.
 
We flew over the sea with the occasional tanker for company...

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That sea used to be called the Persian Gulf. The British between the wars were, for obvious reasons, keen to rename it the Arabian Gulf. Nowadays, let's face it, it's just The Gulf.

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Bahrain is an island off the Saudi Arabian mainland with Qatar (which we'll be flying over later) on a peninsular sticking out to its west. The airport is almost an island off the island, though both are now connected by causeways. Muharraq Airport (Bahrain International OBBI) is today the home of Gulf Air, but it was Imperial that chose the site.

A busy place in my GW3!

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It seems to quite a green and pleasant country, attractive even in flight simulators:

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The political problem is that Iran has a historical claim on it and the relatively liberal ruler is a Sunni (minority) Muslim, most of the people Shias - like those pesky Iranians. They made mischief there recently, cashing in on the 'Arab Spring'; though of course the Iranians are about as interested in saving oppressed Arabs as the Japanese were in 'liberating' Asians during WW2...

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Perhaps I made the 1930s Bahrain too busy, since I had to do a go-around caused by someone else (a Ryan) landing there at the same time. Anyway, got down in the end:

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Although it's fine to put lots of tankers into your prewar Golden Wings, and to fill the 1920s/'30s Suez Canal with shipping, those Natural Gas Container ships (as seen in Tower shot Bah7) are an anachronism, since it was always just burnt off prewar. Postwar countries with natural gas in their offshore oilfields, including the UK, simply pipe it straight to the land as very useful byproduct of the petrochemical industry.

Went and parked by one of the old HPs, plying these early airlanes as AI courtesy of Willy (no doubt MercAir did some kind of a deal with Imperial, but we'll draw a veil over that):

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