Speedbird around the World

[Ralf Roggeveen]

It's 1960, best year EVER, and here's a 23,010 mile flight that BOAC used to make in twelve stages.

They used a Boeing 707-436, probably because it was more comfortable and took more passengers; but of course we'll be going in a de Havilland Comet 4. Here she is just setting out from her home airport, LHR, Heathrow of course:

Strange shadow, but what a Beauty!

 

[Ralf Roggeveen]

That seems to have posted alright, so let's get in the queue (that's English for your American line) and be away on our first leg.

Thought it would be fun to consider culture and relevant music at each place along the way. Obviously there are plenty of songs to do with London, the Kinks' Waterloo Sunset being a nice one - except that it hadn't yet been written in 1960 and would be better for a train journey, Waterloo being a major rail station in London.

Mad magazine once did a great gag about LP record sleeves not telling the entire truth about their contents. Some significant info was hidden in the small print; my favourite being:

JULIE Lipschitz at the
LONDON Airport​

Which gets us to exactly the right place, so Miss Julie Lipschitz it is!

Here we are waiting patiently behind a couple of other Brits, a Vanguard and a Viscount, both from BEA in their earlier and later liveries. (You will get sick of those Viscounts, I can tell you!)

The later paint-scheme is known as Red Square (nothing to do with the Kremlin of course). Now someone will write in and say it wasn't on Vanguards in 1960, but I must confess that you will see a few anachronisms along the way, including one or two aeroplanes that hadn't yet been invented, though most of the AI is pretty accurate.

We get our slot:

...and we're off. One of the first places we pass, heading towards Dover, is the immortal Battle of Britain airfield...

Biggin Hill - I think that's it. Still a busy GA 'port which I once visited to see what was left of the WW2 buildings and defences and reported on here a few years ago. Unbelievably the ATC still have a Comet 1 simulator there which I kick myself for not photographing!

 

[Cees Donker]

It's 1960, best year EVER

That's the year that you were born....



Cees

 

[Ralf Roggeveen]

It's only just over an hour, our shortest hop at 475 miles, to EDDF

Climbing to 25,000ft over the English Channel, most of the flight takes place over

There are two Frankfurts in Germany, am Main and an der Oder. This is the one on the Main, safely inside what was then West Germany or the Federal Republic. The other one is one of the first major cities the Russians took in 1945, well to the East in the so-called Democratic Republic. This is the height of the Cold War and we won't be going to any Communist countries!

Here's the Speedbird at rather boring Frankfurt, which I only photographed the following morning. They made us park by that Finnair Vanguard, miles away from the terminal building:

I suspect that some people were jealous of our beautiful jets, though they bought British turboprops, didn't they just?

Popular music is yet another thing they have a bit of a problem with in Germany. German classical and cabaret music are amongst the best; but they never managed real rock, unless you count Rammstein. At least they're named after an Airbase (!), but definitely weren't going in 1960, and neither were Kraftwerk. (We had a lot of good German theatre music on that flight down the Nile in a Zeppelin which you may recall, but that was in the right time, 1930s.) Don't know any songs about Frankfurt either. Our cultural link will just have to be the little Frankfurter sausage!

Some interesting aircraft, however, in the Frankfurt line-up:

(If it had been a triplane I'd've sworn that was Baron von Richthofen). Our first Connie just about to go there too, though I'm not sure which airline he's from.

Off we go, soon spotting...

...the Alps. Must admit, I was a bit disappointed by these mountains. We seem to have flown through something of a low point in them. Never mind, it'll be the Himalayas in a few days' time. Here's an outside view:

Making a bit of a turn towards ATC with their unusual square flag there. But we're soon beyond the disappointing Alps and passing over Lake Garda:

...and Verona:

We're still at 25,000, another disappointment as contrails don't really start till a bit higher. This baby has an operational ceiling of 40,000 ft, but will fly best below 30 (more's the pity). But the flight is young...

 

[Ralf Roggeveen]

That's the year that you were born....



Cees

Oh yes! That explains it.

 

[Ralf Roggeveen]

Mustn't forget to send a postcard from every stopover; here's rather a dull one from Frankfurt:

So there's the River Main and perhaps you could see that Cathedral tower in the Finnair shot?

Posted that just before we left Germany, but now we've reached

Not just any old city in Italy, but Rome itself. Here's the moment we got clearance for the old airport at Ciampino:

The skies were, as you might expect, infested with Alitalia Viscounts. It is, however, nice when all the traffic helps you to easily locate unfamiliar busy airports! I think that was an Italian DC-3 too, though later I heard one mentioned by ATC with a registration beginning TC. Is that Albania? We were quite close at the time.

Ciampino, wittily given the ICAO code LIRA, is also known as Giovanni Battista Pastine. It is very exciting for me as it was originally the Italian Airship base; indeed, Pastine was himself an airship pilot. He was actually shot down in his ship in WW1, the Italians have a strange habit of naming airports after fatalities; a WW2 military base on an island I once visited was named after the first pilot to die landing badly there! (Mind you, the Greek Air Force has an Icarus Flying School, so it could be worse). In fact the much better-known Rome Leonardo da Vinci International (LIRF) opened in 1961 and, when I found out how short the runway was at Ciampino, wished I'd waited for that.

Having slightly overshot, but not making contact with any trees, we go to the Gate at this surprisingly low-key, though not unattractive, airport:

It seemed to be evening with a lovely wistful pinkish light. I was so busy concentrating on flying that I never noticed the time, but usually start early in the morning...most peculiar.

You will notice a big default fs9 anachronism in the picture below, though the TWA Connie and BOAC Britannia together more than make up for it. Microsoft's Orbit always makes me think of toothpaste. I think Pacifica is another dreary airline that they've made up, but I leave them in there just to provide a delicious contrast with the cool downloads.

Banished to another obscure corner while the local turboprops hog all the best parking spaces

As usual we get the passenger exit open long before they bring the steps up too. Actually Ciampino in 1960 looks like Heathrow did in 1948, though rows of wooden huts aren't so bad under an Italian sun.

I like the yellow thing in this shot:

Where the H*ll is the lazy guy whose supposed to drive those steps over?!?

 

[Ralf Roggeveen]

Had to move G-APDA in the dark, but we're not actually flying by night and missing any of the scenery:

I was amazed to find a postcard with a picture of my car on it in Rome. Or a picture of my car in Rome on it. Or a postcard in Rome with... Oh never mind, here it is:

There in the bottom left...

Not the red Cinquecento! The green Karmann Ghia of course.

Here's the route to our next stopover in Lebanon - or should I say The Lebanon?

Maps usually give the impression that Italy sticks right down into the Mediterranean, North/South. But this flight shows that Italy is really much more of a West/East sort of a country. Travelling almost due east out of Rome we'll be over land for a long time before exiting at the Heel of Italy, around Brindisi. Learning geography, or what? Who says flightsims aren't educational?

And we're on our way again...

...climbing back up to 25,000 ft.

You can take your pick of an evocative Roman song, movie or foodstuff. A good film from around this time might be Audrey Hepburn & Gregory Peck in Roman Holiday. Then there are any number of Fellini pictures. Once, channel-hopping (yes, on the TV, not going across the English one), I caught a scene from a movie where Gina Lollabrigida arrived at an Italian airport around this time, late '50s, early '60s, and it was heaving with Connies! You wanted to shout at the photographers 'Don't take pictures of HER! Photograph those beauties on the tarmac behind!' But it was too late.

The approach to Beirut is quite easy, starting your run-in from over Larnaka in Cyprus...

Here's the map:

And yes, that is the correct airspeed for a Comet 4 approach - terrifying isn't it?

First view of Asia, the continent which will be the scene of our next six landings:

There you see the 2-D screen complete with Autopilot, top right, and Icons, bottom left. Not an entirely realistic way to fly, but I am doing the jobs of five people: Captain, First Officer, Navigator, Flight Engineer and Stewardess (getting my own coffee), so might as well make the computer do a bit of the work. Oh yes, that pretty blue light is the Below 10,000 Warning (not yet switched off there).

Thought I took a picture of the pretty modern buildings of Beirut before they all got blown up, but unfortunately it doesn't seem to have come out (moving your finger to 'Print Screen' during the final moments of an approach is, as you may know, somewhat nerve-wracking). Anyway today's song is easy: The Lebanon by the Human League. It's easy to laugh at his hair and those two girls from Sheffield, but it is a rather haunting melody and a bold attempt at something political in the otherwise vapid world of pop. You may also remember my depressing visit to Beirut International, one of my favourite airports, in december last year when we had the 40th anniversary of neighbouring Israel's un-neighbourly raid on the place.

All very civilized in The Paris of the Middle East in 1960:

Some nice 'planes parked there!

Here's a bit more of a close-up of us and the old terminal building:

And yet another trek to park in an obscure corner - my own fault for putting so much AI in, but the PC can just about handle it, so What the..?

There's a BEA Comet 4B there with the red wings. Believe I can count 17 aircraft in that particular picture. It must be the great coffee the Lebanese make.



Anyone know where we're flying to tomorrow?

 

[Wing_Z]

Keep going, you'll hit India sooner or later. Mumbai?

 

[Ralf Roggeveen]

We will be going to Delhi, but there is a stop before that...

A clue: It's a place that has been in the news a lot recently (June '09).

 

[Firebar]

A wonderful aircraft on an interesting flight.

I wish I had time for a world tour, perhaps over the summer.

 

[Desert Rat]

Great thread! Great Great plane and interesting facts and postcards, please keep it coming, I can see me following this to the end. Would make a great MP trip, a formation of classic tubes swarming across the globe. Wish I could find the time to do this to, BOAC would be my choice too, maybe use different planes for different legs. I sometimes wish BA would do a series of retro paints on their fleet to commemorate an aniversary or something, a BOAC Concorde woulda rocked!! She realy would have suited those colours.

Jamie

 

[Ralf Roggeveen]

Thanks guys! I'll try to keep going with regular postings, though you may get bigger chunks at weekends when there's more time to fly & write.

After that good start out of Europe, thought the next stage would be easy - how wrong I was!

Although it's essentially an Arab, therefore Muslim, country, a lot of aviation people in Lebanon are Christians. That may explain why the airport was fairly quiet on a Sunday morning.

Followed one of those Cessna Grand Caravans to our runway, passing a mildly interesting lineup...

The only thing in front of us was some millionaire's Learjet:

There's the Cessna, just leaving with his arty tail:

Then it was me. As you saw, Beirut is very easy to approach (from the west at least), but getting OUT is a bit more complicated. In 1960 they had Runways 18 and 36, South/North & North/South of course. So whichever one you leave by, you have to loop right round over the sea to head East. This is laborious, but gives the passengers nice views of the city:

By the way, I forgot to tell you: bought a great postcard at that Airport:

So I got my car in Rome and my 'plane in Beirut!

 

[Ralf Roggeveen]

We soon go to Damascus ATC and cross the whole of Syria. Do they have a Syrian flag in the big smily box? Yes!

(I had some flag fun yesterday & had included those of and , as well as - but they count as images and you're only allowed a total of 10 in a post, so I had to remove them in order to save the screenies! )

However. Leaving the fertile Mediterranean coast, there's now some real desert below:

If things go according to plan, you should come to this interesting place where the borders of three countries meet:

Syria at the top, Jordan to the south and Iraq to the east. Or for flag fans (vexicologists?): and ...

 

[Ralf Roggeveen]

That picture, taken from an earlier practice run, shows how it should happen. In the actual flight yesterday I blew it and accidentally went on going south, right across Jordan*! I think this was caused by missing a handover, probably while too busy worrying about altitude. In reality this would probably cause a major international crisis and have Air Forces scrambling all over the Middle East. What happened to me was that I flew all the way down to Saudi Arabia saudiarabia with Amman ATC constantly saying Speedbird Three Four Five please expedite your heading to One Four Five...

...But I knew that that would make things WORSE, as of course it would send me even further south. So once I got to Saudi, I turned onto a heading of 50 degrees and flew north-easterly back into Iraq, rejoining my correct course over a big lake to the northwest of Baghdad (the Buhayrat ath Thartar in the atlas, if that means anything to anybody). This took HOURS and I checked fuel at one point, being relieved to find the centre tank 18% full, with 69% in both wings. Phew! At last I hit the right ATC for this flight and was back on course.

(Annoyingly, I planned to make a most interesting screenie of the map with the missed direction and successful recovery on it, but the scenery completely reloaded just over the Iranian border, so of course the whole thing was lost! Drat & double Drat... )

After the Syrian desert, Iraq is much more fertile:

Here's that Buhayrat; boy was I glad to see it and hear a heading other than 145!

(By the way, the lake is between the Tigris and the Euphrates; I bet they use it for hydroelectric power.)

*Yes, that's right: the Hashemite Kingdom, not Katy Price or the basketballing one.

 

[Ralf Roggeveen]

Forgot to take pictures of the Tigris and/or Euphrates themselves, though this was near Baghdad:

They don't get much more boring than that... I thought there were a lot of aircraft in that picture, but maybe missed taking it while labels showed up? There was a lot of radio chatter too. The picture does, though, show that one reason this flight was difficult is that we were only given an altitude of 17,000. Comets really are much happier at 23,000+ (ceiling is 40). That view, too, is FAST - 332 knots - it will overspeed at about 335! I don't think the Machmeter (Machometer?) was working properly throughout the flight, 332 is definitely above 0.72, the correct cruising rate.

In fs9 you will still find Baghdad Saddam (sic, no Hussein) International, though something tells me it may not be called that any more. Back in 1960 Iraq still had a King. It is interesting to note that the British always tried to set up constitutional monarchies like their own when they were the World Superpower - just as the USA tries to establish republican democracies. Unfortunately democracy brings enormous responsibility and requires sharing, both of which experiences many people seem to find very difficult. The Ancient Greeks believed in democracy - well, they invented it - but they also knew that some (less fortunate?) nations seem to prefer to have a big boss pushing them round. Anyway.

You know when you are flying into Iran because you spot the Alborz Mountains way ahead:

They are between us and the Caspian Sea. Near Tehran you can see the greatest Iranian mountain of them all...

Damavand 18,406 ft (5,610m) - somewhat higher than this baby is flying!

Not being a complete fool it occured to me that Tehran itself might be quite high up. Sure enough, it is nearly 4,000ft above sea level, a fact which I'm glad to say I took into account when coming in to land there. It's not so easy as the approach to Beirut was, weaving around above the city to line up for Runway 29:

Needless to say the airport is now called Imam Khomeini International. Well at least the old horror USED the place. Oh yes, and no doubt the world, especially the Iranian People who have just so obviously been cheated in their "election", thanks Air France for so kindly bringing him back (First Class, helped down the steps by the Captain, no less)!

In 1960, of course, the Shah was firmly in power - or maybe it was the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company that was still firmly in power. Without going into politics too much, I sincerely hope that the brave Iranian People will prevail and that the latest unpopular dictator Ahmadinijad, the ignorant mullahs and Basiji thugs will get their just desserts...

Quite a pretty airport, which was just called Mehrabad, in 1960:

There's an Iran Air DC-7. The flag colours were the same, but I think the Shah had a sort of royal lion in the middle, whereas the Islamic Republic has ALLAH written in a decorative script. [Interestingly, Saddam put Allahu Akhbar ('God is Greater') on the Iraqi flag when he pretended to go through a religious phase while sucking up to his own mullahs & peasants.]

As usual we are sent off to the furthest corner, probably in revenge for propping that Shah up on his wobbly Peacock Throne:

Note how low the clouds are; or rather, how high the airport is.

FAR too interesting a flight! I hope the next leg will be thoroughly dull & ordinary. Sending a postcard of that fantastic mountain.

 

[Ralf Roggeveen]

Working from home today, so I realised that when not using the PC for writing, I might as well let George do some flying. So we managed Tehran - Delhi between 8.40 and about 11.50 (rather slow) today. There were a few nervous moments when the Autopilot seemed to forget to hold pitch properly, but luckily I noticed & managed to adjust things accordingly. And I did plenty of research & wrote my lecture notes at the same time! (As they will find out next month when I deliver it).

We got Gate 1 at Mehrabad:

There's the Shah's imperial lion. I noticed it on an Iranian flag held by a demonstrator outside an Iranian embassy in one of the papers yesterday (now in 2009) - either a Shah supporter, or someone offloaded a very out-of-date flag on the innocent fellow. Of course the late Shah was as 'Imperial & Royal' as you or me; it was just that his father was a tough army officer the British thought they could work with...

In 1960 you saw some really laid-back Iranians at the airport:

Not exactly Islamic dress (the man looks like poor old Jean Charles de Menezes who got shot by mistake on the London Underground. Unfortunately he also looks like the mad suicide bomber the Metropolitan Police were after). Another Vickers turboprop & one of those de Havilland Dash's (which somehow irritate me; actually they only came out later in the '60s, so I should really change them).

Something there from Air France:

Look out! It might be delivering an Ayatollah. That reminds me that a few days ago, again in 2009, the Iranian Ministry of Information said at a press conference that British Airways has been delivering special Jumbo Jetfuls of spies & subversives to Iran. One journalist remarked that that didn't say much for the Islamic Republic's customs & security organisations...

And here's an old friend from a sensible country:

(I call that the 'biscuit box livery' and always expect to see a picture of a little girl with red plaits just where it says KLM on the tail.) A Dutch Connie in the earlier paintscheme too.

We get to our place - note the height that the guy in front is starting at (!):

And here's my view just after clearance has been granted:

Again, my altimeter is already at nearly 4,000. You will see that we were leaving from 29R (I think we landed at 29L the day before), and it was a trip of 29s because, much to my delight, we got 29,000ft...

...And we made contrails, Yay!

Realised that I should show you the interesting stuff on the ground at these historic airports. Getting out of Tehran was quite tricky, though I - or rather G-APDA - did a very nice quick smooth climb up there. Clearly that altitude would clear even Mount Damarvand, but in fact we flew right over the rather flat, fertile south of Afghanistan, nowhere near any mountains. We started off with Birjand (Iran) ATC, crossing the border & getting the handover to Kabul (Afghanistan) after more than an hour of flight.

 

[Ralf Roggeveen]

When I was young I read lots of exciting books about the British fighting in Afghanistan in the 19th Century. Never in my wildest dreams imagined that they'd be back doing that in the 21st. Of course 150 years ago the enemy were called Ghazis. Now they are Taliban. We flew right over Helmand Province today - in 1960 I mean. No doubt the opium poppies (Papaver Somniferum) were flowering away then as always.

At 10.34 we crossed into Pakistan and were controlled by Lahore Centre for a while. Not sure why I took this rather boring shot of the map, except that Heading 111 is mildly amusing:

Nicely on course, but a bit slow at less than 300 knots. Here's a more interesting picture with those wonderful contrails again:

Flat and dry. That was taken earlier, still over Iran, but there's a better speed - around Mach 0.72.

After Pakistan you pick up Udhampur Centre in India . Here's the moment of crossing the border (hoping against hope that you won't find the Air Forces of both countries shooting behind & in front of you) :

There was a LOT of ATC chatter again, but at 11.38 I picked up Delhi. At this point I must confess a major anachronism coming up: we are going to the new Indira Gandhi International which didn't exist, or wasn't called that, in 1960. It should probably be Willingdon, now called Safdarjung, but the 1960s scenery isn't yet available & I was a bit worried about short runways and de Havilland Comets...

Found a whole load of historic Air India planes despite being at the modern airport:

Needless to say, they made me go and park amongst them:

When I downloaded this FRF Scenery (full credits & links to appear at the end, when we get back to London), found some very interesting Aeroflot aircraft there, but unfortunately we seem to have been parked at the other end of this enormous airport). Evidently they are still building it!

 

[Ralf Roggeveen]

Vidp - vtbd

As I left the airport to have a quick look round historic Delhi that afternoon, ran into a couple of Belgian visitors:

Tintin in Tibet was, indeed, first published in 1960. Tintin & Captain Haddock arrived in an Air India Connie - probably picked up by first going from Brussels to London? The book actually contains a massive insult to Indian navigational abilities, as it is impossible that Chang's DC-3 could have crashed anywhere in Tibet by going into bad weather on a flight between Patna and Kathmandu - look at the map! (Herge obviously didn't). However, it's a good yarn - many say the very greatest Tintin story - so I followed them that afternoon:

Why oh why has NOBODY done an Air India DC-3 repaint for fs9? [Rolf Olafsson seems to have made one for the mysterious Virtual Air India that flies out of Sweden (!), but it seems you have to join them to get the download. Would be interested to learn if I'm wrong, but have searched & searched and find NOTHING. Such a major airline & technology-minded country, too.]

Yesterday I mentioned that there were some Soviet aircraft in an obscure corner of the big Delhi Airport. Thought it might be interesting to look again and found this surreally parked among the ancient Afghans:

Wow! So they now have commercial jets too - though I could have sworn that last time I saw that particular Tupolev it was a bomber...

Nobody was about, so I sneaked inside and stole a glance at the flightdeck:

It's all in funny squiggly letters that I don't understand. I thought that embroidered curtain was rather quaint, so took a peek behind it.

Yes, you've guessed correctly. Empty vodka bottles.

It was time to get back to my dear G-APDA to make sure we didn't miss out 7.00 slot. There she is:

The airport is so huge I don't even know how they spotted us among this lot in the view from the Tower:

(I like the way that cheeky DC-3 has squeezed into the foreground with all the default AI horrors.)

In a not-brilliant piece of planning by whoever designed the place, everyone has to cross this runway before taking off for it. I watched an Air India Viscount:

Note that I'm not taking off immediately after him, I'm still trying to cross over to approach the start from t'other side. There he goes...

...that big bright blue thing will be before me.

Time for my now. More tomorrow, if anyone's reading this.

Have you worked out our next stopover yet?

 

[Willy]

Ralf, I've got an AI Air India DC-3, but no flyable one. It's part of the Cal Classics AI DC-3 set.

 

[Ralf Roggeveen]

Hi Chief! Yes, they are in there, but it's a flyable I'm after. I've got the nice Pakistani one & even an Iranair (both from their countries of origin), but no India! (Don't think there's a flyable Indian Connie either ).

Had to wait a while at that crossing while some of the Microsoft fleet went off on their mysterious travels:

Pacifica...and:

Orbit! (or The Toothpaste Tube, as I call it). Forgot to show you this monster that we passed at a freight gate on the way:

We finally got into the queue/line:

And who should pop up again...

...but the Red Baron! He must be following me - haven't seen him since his native Germany. Let's hope he's not with my old sparring partner Bockholt... Anyway, they'll never keep up in that thing, and surely Ludwig B. doesn't know that I'm working for BOAC in 1960?

AT LAST we get to leave Delhi: