Speedbird around the World

[Shessi]

What about the 1A at RAF Museum Cosford?

Also saw last month that they are gradually doing up their ex-Air France Comet (a loooong long way to go though!) at the Mosquito Museum.

Cheers Shessi

 

[Ralf Roggeveen]

You are right about the Cosford Mk 1. Got a couple of pictures off the net, but might try to visit it soon as I'm sometimes in the Oxfordshire/Gloucestershire area:

They seem to have moved it indoors, which is just as well:

Of course the Comet 1s with their De Havilland Ghost engines were much smaller, carrying only 36 passengers. Obviously a very, very important aircraft which is a must-have at Cosford.

 

[Ralf Roggeveen]

We've got this:

for our (reality) weather here in Nottingham tomorrow. Luckily it's my day off, so won't have to drive in it. In the morning I'll post the flight from Hong Kong to Tokyo which was made yesterday.

It's good to hear from people while doing a flight like this, do keep writing in. Holland, UK and USA are all well-represented. I wonder if anyone is reading it in any other countries?

No doubt you are all disappointed that I haven't told you much about the rest of the crew. One good thing about these big postwar jets is that you don't have to get so intimately involved with the passengers as one always was in the slow, crowded propliner days. Some readers may remember that it was even worse in airships, like that time I was stuck with all those Italians and Germans (and King Farouk) going down the Nile.

I suppose the strangest adventure (encounter?) I had with the crew of G-APDA involved our Stewardess, I believe the daughter of a British Army officer from Aldershot:

Miss Joan Hunter-Dunn. Here she is in a BOAC publicity shot, holding a cute little chinchilla. Like all women at the time, she's wondering how many will be required to make a coat for her, and where's the man who'll pay for it.

She talked in a very strange way which I found quite difficult to understand. It sometimes led to embarrassing incidents. Perhaps I should have been suspicious when, between Rome & Beirut I think it was, she calmly enquired, 'Captain Roggeveen, are the Dutch a PESH-ONATE race?'

'Peshonate? I don't think I learnt this English word yet, Joan. What does it mean?'

'Oh, you know. Keen on romance and the, um, affairs of the HAT...'

'The hat? Like on your head?'

Then I realised it was her way of saying heart and that the first word was passionate [= hartstochtelijk]. Well, of course I laughed and said, 'Oh no! Why, Joan, the Dutch are even less peshonate than you British. we are good with cheese, ships, painting and skating, not noted lovers. Er, you need a Spanish, French or Italian pilot for that!'

Here's a picture of her with our Chief Steward, Tony:

Incidentally that is the interior of a Comet 4, but it was a special one-off for Prince Phillip. (I shall think of that dining area next time I'm trying to eat plastic **** out of a tube in an Airbus).

Naturally I had an entirely professional relationship with Miss Hunter-Dunn; indeed, she wasn't really my type at all, being quite sporty and what the British so nicely define as 'Jolly Hockey Sticks'.

As we travelled further and further east, poor Joan seemed to behave more and more oddly. I put it down to the heat and perhaps a touch of home-sickness. Once she asked me if I had ever seen a movie called, I think, Brief Encounter.

'No. It sounds short. What's it about?'

'Oh, Captain Roggeveen, it's about this cappel, this cappel who could have been so heppy together, but they've, um, merried someone else. You know, they've merried wrong...'

'This couple, are they British?'

'Oh yes! AWfully British!'

'Well, maybe that explains it.'

She looked a bit bemused, but seemed glad to be talking to me, although obviously I was busy with things like altitude, Mach speed and heading at the time...

 

[PilatusTurbo]

Good stuff, Ralf! I must say, I hadn't seen this yet, but have just finished catching up until this post. :d Very entertaining, and quite interesting to see someone actually go a flight like this, all the way.

I'd love those AI Traffic files for some airports in the US, if there are some for here. Where can I find them? I would search Avsim, but their library is still down.

Keep flying away, good sir! I'm loving each new post. :ernae:

 

[Ralf Roggeveen]

Well the upshot was that I guess she had what would nowadays be called 'a mini nervous breakdown'. I saw no harm in being friendly and trying to make a bit of smalltalk, so during a break in preflight checks at Delhi I politely enquired if she had a boyfriend (the good-looking stewardesses ALWAYS had boyfriends of course).

'Oh Captain Roggeveen, I hed two. Both of them let me down!'

I realised at once that I had 'put my foot in it' and this might explain her peculiar behaviour. 'Oh dear, I'm sorry to hear that...' I blurted.

'One was a Subaltern...'

'Ah yes, a junior army officer. We have this word too, and we say he is ondergeschikt too.'

'I was engaged to him, but we broke it orf. My other sweetheart was a poet.'

'A poet! Well, he must have been very pesh-onate.'

'Oh yes, he was; but only about horrid things like railway engines and beastly Victorian buildings. He was hopeless at tennis and bridge. It could never, ever work between us.'

'I am very sorry to hear that. Anyway, I had better get on with my work now...'

I thought no more about it, but then the terrible incident took place, possibly over Laos while the First Officer, Engineer and Navigator were all off on a toilet or cigarette break (or both), I'm not sure. This wasn't really supposed ever to happen, but very occasionally I might just be left entirely alone for a few moments.

First I knew of it was her SMELL, Chanel #5 I believe. I looked round from the position you will all know so well from all the pictures posted above, and saw Joan, her lipstick even redder, her translucent skin even whiter, than usual.

'Oh Captain Roggeveen...' she breathed in a strange, hoarse voice, quite different from her usual highly clipped tones.

'Are you alright, my dear young lady?' I asked.

'Oh Captain Roggeveen, it's THE UNIFORM! It makes me feel such PESH-on!'

Well I thought I knew how to get out of this one, having often been importuned (is that the word?) by silly girls who fell for smartly-creased trousers and a bit of gold braid before. 'Oh no, you mustn't be taken in merely by a uniform. I have known many men who looked like fine fellows in a well-made uniform, but they were complete scoundrels underneath.'

'Not your uniform, you Dutch fool!' she screeched, now completely out of character, 'MINE!'

'It is very neat and respectable, especially that nice long skirt.'

'It's not the OUTSIDE of the DEMMED uniform, it's what we HEF to wear underneath!'

And amazingly, there at 23,000 feet, she whipped off that demure dress to reveal:

Obviously this was a somewhat more interesting sight than the endless Laotian jungle and Mekong River stretching below, but there is a time and a place for everything. They didn't call me Onbeschaamdhand Ralf for nothing back at KLM. You have to act professionally at all times, whether it is bringing 146 souls safely to the ground during a pounding tropical rainstorm, or fending off the advances of a frustrated young lady (even if she did have those magnificent legs).

'You had better put that skirt back on, Miss H-D. Tom, Dick and Peter will be back any moment. Besides, it's time for you to serve the passengers' jam and scones.'

 

[Ralf Roggeveen]

I am very glad - or maybe I should say heppy? - to report that Miss Joan Hunter-Dunn made a complete recovery during our two day stopover in Hong Kong. She (just) pulled the skirt back on in time, went off and prepared those scones and acted very demurely for the rest of the flight. In Hong Kong she stayed with some army buddies of her father's and seems to have played tennis all day and bridge all night, which obviously did wonders for her as she came back completely recovered, as if nothing had ever happened.

Anyway I know none of you are interested in looking at some silly girl's legs; it is aeroplanes you are wanting to see, so I'll get on with our journey from Hong Kong to Tokyo.

Must admit, I was disgusted by their idea of Gate 1 and I hate to imagine what the passengers thought:

Presumably the British wanted to give their aircraft a thorough going-over while it was on their territory, but that hangar seemed rather shabby. You can see us right in the middle of this Tower shot:

It also shows how the tiny airport is/was surrounded by hills. We start to move off...

...those Cathay Pacifics again. We were watched only by this grinning Chinese fellow in overalls - either their brilliant Chief Engineer, or Hong Kong Phooey who mops the floors, I never found out:

Mind you, they had so many snazzy aeroplanes there in that tiny airport that I'm not surprised they didn't take much notice of G-APDA. Just taxying out of there we saw: A BOAC 707-436...

A Pan Am DC-8...

And another Comet!

Our slot was for 14:45, obviously a busy time there.

 

[Ralf Roggeveen]

You have to manouever carefully around that harbour:

Here we are just waiting for clearance beside the (very short) strip:

At this point I was having a good think about those hills up ahead...

...here's what they look like from the flightdeck...

...and we were off out of there!

 

[Ralf Roggeveen]

It will be recalled that we went off in the wrong direction once before; but I managed to turn her round and get back on course, intending to learn from my mistake and never do such a foolish thing again. Getting out of HK was, it goes without saying, quite difficult. You've got two potential enemies: those hills and the Red Chinese - who would not hesitate to shoot down a Capitalist-Imperialist-Running-Dog-Bourgeois-Paper-Tiger jetliner if it strayed, even momentarily, into their airspace.

At least I got given 27,000 ft by Hong Kong Centre, so, having carefully steered round the Kowloon hills, I sat back and enjoyed the climb. When we were told to go for Two Seven I heppily - sorry, happily - took this picture:

After a short time we were cruising at the desired altitude (our highest so far) and thought I'd better check the map. It was just as well I did so!

Missed a heading change somewhere there! (And, no, I was NOT thinking about Joan's suspender-belt, even if you still are.)

At this point there was a reality choice between aborting the whole flight & simply starting again; or trying to make a realistic recovery so that we'd be heading NE, towards Taiwan, rather than SW back the way we came. I took the latter option and hoiked her round to 60, then eventually 35 degrees:

There was a constant Speedbird 345 please expedite your heading to Two Oh Five from Hong Kong Centre. How I hate that word 'expedite' whenever it's heard (which is only in flightsims). Sure enough, eventually we were handed over to Taipei Centre; though, annoyingly, even they went on saying that for a while. Finally I got the nice Zero Five Five you see above.

We come to Taiwan. In 1960 Chiang Kai-Shek still had 15 years of ruling that island (that looks smaller than Hainan on the map) to go. His fourth wife, Soong May-ling the famous 'Madame Chiang', lived from 1897 till 2003 (!), which is worth thinking about. I believe she had affairs with people like President Roosevelt (both Teddy and Franklin), Winston Churchill, General MacArthur, the Dragon Empress, Lawrence of Arabia, etc.

Saw this little airport way below when we hit the Taiwanese coast:

Later I checked the map and found out it was Hsinchu:

Seem to have enjoyed photographing the place, perhaps with a sense of recovery at being back on our correct course:

But soon we were passing Taipei International itself...

...no prizes for guessing who that particular airport is named after. It was 16:30.

Then we were over the East China Sea, known locally as Dong Hai:

No contrails, even at that height - Must be the atmospheric conditions or something.

 

[Ralf Roggeveen]

All this time we were already flying parallel to Japanese territory in the form of the Ryukyu Islands, way off on our starboard side somewhere. We knew it would be a long time, but were keeping our eyes peeled for the Japanese 'mainland' in the form of the southernmost of the three big isles which comprise that country, Kyūshū.

At about 5 o'clock we were picked up by Naha AFB Centre and controlled for the first time by Americans on Okinawa, occupied since WW2 - which conflict the Japanese, with no sense of irony or oxymoronicness, call the Great Pacific War. There is a very embarrassing movie from 1956 in which Marlon Brando plays a really irritating Japanese, or rather Okinawan, being all ingratiating to the kindly American conquerors:

Tea House of the August Moon - cross the road to avoid it. Better-known and even more cringe-worthy was when Sean Connery was also supposed to pass for a Japanese in You Only Live Twice:

His haircut makes Dwayne Dibley look cool. Anyhow, that's what I start thinking of whenever Okinawa is mentioned, although James Bond was on Baddy-Volcanic-Rocket-Launcher-Bikini-Clad-Girl Island of course...

 

[Ralf Roggeveen]

Another slight diversion there, but there was plenty of time to think of such things then - and there will be even more when we head out on the next leg of the Pacific, after Japan.

Naha talked to a DC-3 way below us, but at 5.35 we were handed over to Tokyo Centre. I was keeping up a good Mach 0.7+ all the way, making up for any time lost in the initial mistaken heading (but being careful not to overspeed). We finally spotted our first Japanese landfall, actually the island of Yakushima, just off Kyushu:

Here's the map:

You can see that we're going to fly along the Japanese coast to the south of the large islands of Kyushu, Shikoku and our destination, the biggest one, Honshu.

Dusk was beginning to fall...

...so I switched the lights on...

...and we flew on through the gathering darkness.

 

[Ralf Roggeveen]

Here's the plan:

At some stage we were bound to spot the famous Mount Fuji and I was determined to get a photo. (I have flown over it in reality and never saw it! I was on the wrong side of the aircraft and didn't want to bother the people who were busy oohing and ahhing over it on the right side).

Could that be Fuji?

Many readers will remember Microsoft Flight Simulator 98, As Real As It Gets (ha, ha, it was then). Like me, you may have had your first flightsim lessons in a Cessna at Meigs Field, Chicago, wobbling round over Lake Michigan, doing circuits with a rather bad-tempered guy who, from his voice, I imagined as Archie Bunker, complete with cigar. 'You're goin' the WRONG WAY,' was his catchphrase - maybe navigation never was my forte?

The reason I am taking this nostalgia trip is that back in those un-dumbed-down days when you bought fs6 you got a Pilot's Handbook (yes, a real BOOK) included in the (big) box the disks came in. This contained useful maps of most of the major US airports & a few foreign ones (but not Schiphol!?!). One flight they had set up for young Ralf - young everyone in those days - was 'Tokyo Sightseeing', so you could fly over all those temples & castles and things that were built in the '50s after the originals had been obliterated in WW2. ANYWAY, though the disks have long since become coasters, I've still got that book and now it came in extremely useful with this (which hasn't scanned very well, sorry):

And this:

(Incidentally for fs6 you could also buy a very good Inside Moves book by a chap called Ben Chiu which, if read properly, taught you a lot about flightsimming, closely based on real flying. The latest FSX Official Guide is completely & utterly useless by comparison). So there you have it.

Here we are just about to embark on our final approach to Tokyo Haneda (the 1960s version of that old airport):

Japan was unbelievably dark, like they had a power cut (is the American word outage?) down there. Makes it easier to spot airport lights though.

I managed quite a good one on RW33; though, as shown below, we made contact with the ground at the very earliest possible spot:

You'll want another shot of that AI line-up waiting to leave...

(No Pacificas, World Travels or Orbits there. Good.) And, Oh look...

That's definitely what we were looking for !

 

[Ralf Roggeveen]

Although we are two thirds of the way through our stops (8/12), we are probably still less than halfway in terms of distance covered, as there's very nearly 13,000 miles to go, including crossing the whole Pacific Ocean. All that remains in Tokyo is to go and park...

There was a kind of tragic beauty to even the gloomy factory chimneys, so representative of the Japanese industrial miracle which was just taking off at that time.

I cut fuel flow, switch off the engines and the landing lights:

Another symptom of the Japanese economic boom was that Haneda proves by far the busiest airport since Frankfurt. You saw them queuing up to leave; but there's also a constant stream of arrivals, seen from afar twinkling in the night sky:

I can't stop staring at Fuji - but it'll still be there in the morning:

The map showing our final approach and landing:

And as I walk away from the lovely G-APDA, one final shot of that poignant evening. Even with the reek of rubber and aviation fuel and continual roar, whine and throb of myriad engines all around, I could still clearly hear the cicadas chirping as if they were trying to drown man-made sounds out, and still smell the lovely warm scents of that ancient land after another hot, hot summer's day.

The Japanese have a practically untranslatable single word for exactly that sense of depression, loneliness, beauty and melancholy that is so delicious: awaré...

 

[Desert Rat]

....I'm still here....

just a

enjoying the thread, bar one thing, where's the VC10s, David's pack comes with some handy AI models. I remember standing under the whale tail of one of these as a child, the height of it made it seem absolutely huge, gave the impression it was bigger than it really was, maybe it was my age. It's my fav tube, JUST sneaks it from the Comet.

:ernae:
Jamie

 

[Ralf Roggeveen]

Midway

The next leg is by far the biggest at 4,317 miles (4043.2 nautical) taking about nine and a half hours. That's Tokyo - Honolulu. Now my problem is that, as mentioned right at the start of this thread, BOAC in reality used a Boeing 707 for their Round the World service. The 707-320 of 1959 had a range of 4,630 miles, so it could just make it in one go. The Comet 4 had a range of 3,225 miles...do the maths (or just the math if you're American (or the mathematics if you're somewhat verbose)).

It would be nice to get the Comet all the way round. I might even tell those Virtual BOAC fellows. They might even give me a medal. On the other hand, it would be embarrassing to do an Amelia and run out of fuel over the Pacific.

Thought about deliberately arranging the flight via Midway Atoll, the most famous place in the middle of nowhere with a great big airport. Decided to go and have a look at it (with due acknowledgement to BWSim who made this well-enhanced scenery):

It's a lovely long airstrip, no problem for G-APDA. And there's a decent airport where the passengers could stretch their legs while we're filling up:

Don't know what N.A.F. stands for (Navy/Naval Air Field?); it's actually named Henderson Field. Tourists do seem to get there as this Aloha confirms:

Nice Army Beechcraft & nice palm tree there too. Presumably if you have really upset someone higher up in US Navy ATC you find yourself posted to this place. There is also a rather weird abandoned WW2 strip on a nearby, apparently uninhabited part of the atoll:

Mind you, even the active runway could do, in places, with a bit of weeding:

Though at least there aren't any of those little bushes on the actual airstrip, as there are at nearby Kure!

Anyway, checked the flight direct - without stopping deliberately at Midway - and the computer seems to think that we can make it. It gives High Altitude Airways (29,000!) and an IFR route in the right amount of time, just under 10 hours. Going to Midway still would take about 8 hours, and no IFR is available which would make the flight even more boring than it's already threatening to be. After that it's still a couple of hours to Hawaii (and still no IFR).

So here's the plan: I will try to fly the whole thing in one go, as postulated by the Create A Flight setup. We will still be passing quite close to Midway, doubtless our AT Control for much of the time, therefore if gas does look dodgy, then we can make an emergency fuelstop. No leeway for going in the wrong direction or not managing the engines properly this time - it will have to be perfect cruise speed all the way.

A few people do seem to be reading this; apologies if you look in and there's nothing new, but I do have to go to work most days, including Saturday this week. My wife has plans and some sort of two-for-one offer from the National Trust for Sunday, so that's out for flying too. (I'd better go before she starts forgetting what I look like).

Good news is, I'm taking next Tuesday off, so hope to make the flight then. If anything bad happens, can always save or start again; but, as I said, intend to try to make it in one go...

Do post any comments/thoughts!

 

[Ralf Roggeveen]

....I'm still here....

just a

enjoying the thread, bar one thing, where's the VC10s, David's pack comes with some handy AI models. I remember standing under the whale tail of one of these as a child, the height of it made it seem absolutely huge, gave the impression it was bigger than it really was, maybe it was my age. It's my fav tube, JUST sneaks it from the Comet.

:ernae:
Jamie

Ah yes, JDT - reasonable question, but remember this is roughly 1960 - I KNOW you've seen default 73s, 74s, DHCs, etc., but as far as AI is concerned, the VC-10s haven't quite made it. I think they kicked in around '64 or '65.

Might yet show you some nice flyable ones before Tuesday, however...

 

[edmoore235]

Midway - Naval Air Facility (NAF). I think. Neat flight!. Enjoy reading each entry. Thanks.

Ed Moore

 

[jhefner]

I am enjoying it, too. I am in the midst of a much less ambitious flight -- A recreation of the Braniff DC-6 flights from Lima, Peru to Rio. I made it over the Andes, and find myself currently flying at night over the Amazon. (I could not get my flaps up while over the Andes, so I am probably running several hours behind schedule.)

-James

 

[Ralf Roggeveen]

VC-10 Interlude

JDT has inspired me to take a look at some flyable VC-10s...

This is also a chance to see a bit more of the early '60s Heathrow, which I regret not having pictured properly when we began the Comet epic. This Tower shot shows how BIG VC-10s were:

The general theory is that it was designed too much to fit in with a British government specification & therefore didn't sell well enough to foreign airlines. It seems to me remarkably large considering how short haul a lot of its scheduled flights were.

I went in one Heathrow - Paris (pre-Charles de Gaulle, probably Orly) around '67 or '68. My mother says we used to take Air Inter down to Avignon after that, probably turboprops?). Our VC-10 must have been BEA; here's a 1970s British Airways one:

You can get some other good airlines, like this Air Malawi (it probably cost them about a decade's GNP!):

Anybody recognise the airport? It became a bit notorious in the late 70s...there's a good clue written in this picture as to where it is (quite apart from the exact Lat & Longitudes!):

Very smart United Arab Airlines livery at our old friend, Beirut International:

And a somewhat scruffy Brit at Manchester:

Probably their CEO Freddie Laker himself driving this one! (and it was probably Dr Hastings Banda in the Malawi one).

I am getting ready for the big flight over the Pacific on Tuesday - taken a day off work specially. Bitterly regret not having downloaded the Ocean Stations yet. Tom Gibson of CalClassics has created them, but most unfortunately they only seem to be available through still-down Avsim Could anybody send me a link to a download before Tuesday???? It would certainly enhance the flight.

Do write in, either here or by PM!

 

[hawkeye52]

EdMoore235 is correct: NAF = Naval Air Facility. Per Wikipedia, "A slightly lower level of airbase in the U.S. Navy is the Naval Air Facility".
Here is a link » http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naval_Air_Station

Enjoying the adventure; too bad you didn't draw "13" for your Kai Tak arrival.
- H52

 

[Firebar]

Thanks for the VC-10 pics! gotta love those clean lines and the graceful wings. Even the C1K version looks graceful, even while dwarfing everything around it. I was lucky enough to spend some time at Boscombe Down recently and the VC-10 there dwarfs everything there (and is made more sleek looking by being parked next to the Open Skies Andover [sans engines] - a paint for that is around somewhere - and the UKs oldest C-130 Hercules)