Speedbird follows the swallows

[Ralf Roggeveen]

Thoroughly fed up with the end of the first decade of the 21st Century, it's clearly time to go back to 1950-Something and take an old airliner on another trip. As you may remember, I used to do some work for BOAC in those days, and in this case they told me they needed someone who could manage the newfangled jets and speak Dutch.

We left very early in the morning when it was still dark. A few classics can be made out, but I don't think you can even see our aircraft in this Tower shot:

Round the other side - and there she is:

You won't be seeing any other jet types this time. (Everyone will also be pleased to learn that you won't be seeing any default Microsoft AI traffic either, as, by popular demand, I've gotten rid of them.)

Still, or rather, already plenty of Viscounts. My first officer was Tony Powell, a pretty typical level-headed Englishman. We had a laugh about being parked among the BEA turboprops with their unexotic destinations like Manchester and the Channel Islands! Obviously we were travelling somewhat further...

We soon leave the ground, tuck the gear away and we're off...

Here's London by night:

We are flying parallel to the River Thames. That landmark building beneath our nose is the Royal Naval College, Greenwich, so we really are on the Zero Meridian. (The aeroplane is hiding the nearby Millenium Dome which clearly would not have been there five decades before it was built!)

And we climb through the diminishing darkness. It will be noted by the eagle-eyed amongst you that we are now officially in the Eastern half of our planet.

I just had time to post this card to Granny Roggeveen back home in Alkmaar before leaving:

It's Saint Paul's Cathedral behind Oddjob here, though you can't see the famous dome. Never mind, we'll get plenty of dome at our first stopover. Note that he is a CITY Policeman, not a Metropolitan one, so he only works in the financial district, the famous 'Square Mile'. Those iconic busses were so well-made that they were still using them till only a few months ago!

Bye bye

 

[Ralf Roggeveen]

Dawn comes up over

After Lille and Beauvais we were tuned to Paris ATC for a while and heard them dealing with exotics like an Ercoupe (not in any of my books), lots of DC-3s, etc. As instructed, I made all announcements in English and Dutch. I asked our stewardess, Jackie, about the passengers.
'There are some AFRICAN lawyers,' she said.
'Afrikaaner? That's why they need Dutch. Those Boers can just about understand it.'
'No, these lawyers are COLOURED,' she explained, wide-eyed.
'Oh. If they're black they probably aren't so keen on Afrikaans,' I thought; but kept that thought to myself.

I love France dearly, but didn't take many pictures over it this time. Here are the Alps, so you may soon be able to work out where we're heading...

Yet I'm sure you all long ago knew that she's a pretty little Comet 1 (the airplane, not Jackie). What a nice simple, well-laid out instrument panel they came up with! It's like driving a car.

We get Geneva ATC, then mysteriously go back to Marseilles (must have briefly crossed back into France), Switzerland and soon afterwards, Milan. We are above

In fact, we fly right over Genoa:

Where Christopher Columbus came from, though most of his fellow-Italians arrived in the Americas some centuries after he got there. We all thought it was the Mediterranean, but the Atlas assures me that's the Ligurian Sea. These geography lessons are free you realise?

Let's check the map:

You can certainly tell our first stopover from that. But what will be our final destination?

 

[tgibson]

I think I know but I will remain silent, since it's not really fair for me to answer.

Tom Gibson
Classic Propliner Page
www.calclassic.com

 

[Ralf Roggeveen]

Honoured by your presence, O King of the CalClassics! (and I downloaded his C-46 only last night).

We fly over the Island of Elba:

This was where they exiled Napoleon first time he was beaten, maybe to give him a sporting chance of escaping and having another go at world domination? You could practically swim to Italy, it's so close (though I believe he used a boat). I looked out for the small airport they now have:

The Ligurian now turns into the Tyrrhenian Sea, well-known to Diplomacy players. We head down the Italian west coast:

Here's the 2D screen for those who are interested:

That big grey box is the autopilot, off there as we're beginning our turn and descent towards Rome. We're also slowing right down from the cruise speed of Mach 0.7; as with the Comet 4 you'll need a very low final approach speed - the Comet 1 doesn't even have the luxury of reverse thrust, so you almost glide in and brake, brake, brake - seems more like landing a WW1 biplane than a modern jet. And, as I found out the hard way, your angle of approach should be very shallow.

This analysis looks OK - it's our old friend LIRA, or Ciampino Airport. But I overshot the runway that time!

Oops! (as Avsim would say). Well, anyway, as you can see, we were still in one piece and I turned her round and headed for the terminal - or, rather, the collection of huts that they used as such there. Here's an old friend from home:

(I must say, the Italians have cut those little trees into some ingenious shapes.) So we Turn & park at our first stopover...

Here's the journey thus far:

Similar to last time (so far), but in the earlier Comet and without any Frankfurt stopover. Wherever next?

 

[Willy]

Glad to you back at it Ralf! veel bedankt. :ernae:

ETA: The only swallows I know of that go anywhere are the ones in California at San Juan Capistrano.

 

[Firebar]

Nice to see another adventure, after the RTW trip!

Oh Oh I've got it, you'e going round the world again but via the Poles

BTW: What is the airspeed velocity of an Unladen Swallow?

M

 

[Ralf Roggeveen]

A few hours free to visit the Vatican that afternoon and try to get the promised DOME postcard. Will it be this one?

...or this one?

St. Peter's. Took me a while to realise they were both shots of the same building. Just time to post one to Olanda and one to Inghilterra before a nice tagliatelli and a glass of Orvieto, then an early night as it's another dawn start tomorrow.

 

[Ralf Roggeveen]

@Firebar: African or Asian variety? :d

 

[Firebar]

What? How Should I know? Arghhhhhhhhhh.........

Here's to another Roggeveen Adventure

 

[Ralf Roggeveen]

Ha! But like I said, TG is King, I'm just a driver in this pixellated world...

Here are Tony Powell & I making that early morning Italian start:

(I'm the slim one on the left).

All the passengers have made it and are safely strapped in, so we manoever out of there.

Looks like those KLM kameraaden are having a similar picture taken!

Even at this early hour the place is already busy. Could that be a BEA Viscount 700?

A general view with at least one Connie in the background, though I haven't noticed any close-up yet.

Here we are lined up & pointing in just about the right direction...

Rotate!

And we're flying down that Italian coast again. I'm a bit apprehensive here as we're very near the 'Comet Graveyard' where two of these beauties exploded in midair. Unfortunately they didn't yet know enough about metal fatigue and the poor old British, ahead of everybody in technology at the time, also became world leaders in Air Accident investigation...

But Yoke Peter makes it safely through this time.

That really IS the Mediterranean beyond Sicily!

 

[Ralf Roggeveen]

I got excited when I thought you could be exactly halfway over Italy and see the Tyrrhenian Sea on one side and the Adriatic on the other...

Thought I'd done it! But of course at only 25000ft we're only over the thinnest bit of the 'toe' of Italy, the Catanzaro region of Calabria. It's the Tyrrhenian Sea behind, the Ionian in front.

For a while you can see the west coast of mainland Greece off on our port side:

Until passing just over the westernmost tip of KRITI, or Crete:

A truly fascinating place, the inhabitants of which claim that their island is equidistant from Europe, Africa and Asia, so it must be a continent in itself! Certainly the great Minoan civilization was once there, and it may even be the origin of the legend of the Lost City of Atlantis. But I'm also interested in their more modern history. In the 1860s Crete was still part of the Ottoman Turkish Empire, so the Christians there decided it was time to have an uprising & join Greece. They invited some Greek military officers over to check if this was a good idea and were told that, no, it was definitely not the right time. The Cretans ignored this wise advice and went ahead with the uprising with disastrous consequences, as thousands of men, women and children were massacred, despite putting up a heroic fight. Then, in a pattern more familiar from the 20th Century, three major powers - France, Britain and Russia - sent peacekeeping troops to Crete to protect the survivors until the Turks were finally persuaded to leave through diplomacy. Here's a postcard I once bought right there (which obviously never got sent in nearly 100 years):

It's the British putting on one of their nice parades for the locals - probably Queen Victoria's birthday or something. I think L'Hymne is Rethymnon, still a lovely place for a holiday - but avoid the east of Crete (which was the Russian zone), it remains the worst part, full of fat, sunburnt, drunken, tattooed Scandinavian, German, British & Dutch lager louts (& their boyfriends).

Then, of course, there is the wonderful story of Crete in WW2... but that's enough history lesson for now, let's head out across the widest, emptiest part of the Med...

...towards another continent.

 

[Ralf Roggeveen]

This map shows how we just clipped the edge of Crete:

About an hour out of Italy we got Athens Centre, then Paleochora (on Crete? Not sure) and eventually, at 08.00hrs, Cairo. First sight of Africa:

Here's an outside view of the Egyptian coast:

At this point on every flight the passengers get very excited and every little canal, nullah and watercourse is excitedly identified as 'the Nile'. I guess Tony & I should have i/d'ed the real Nile and pointed it out to them, but we were rather too busy! What happened was that we flew in right over the historic City of Alexandria (Al Iskandariyah to the locals):

Founded by the modest Alexander the Great, it still has a large Greek population 2,300 years later. One famous Greek who died there (a descendant of Alexander's general Ptolomey who had nabbed Egypt when his boss died) was Cleopatra. Most of the ancient city seems to be underwater now, its streets full of fish and marine archaeologists. Worth a closer look - from the safety of 25000 ft:

Interesting-looking airport there, too. Alex, as Tony called the place, is actually to the west of the Nile Delta, so we were flying parallel to one side of that inverted triangle. Even if I didn't announce the river, some famous landmarks popped up, needing no introduction:

Down to 5000 there on our final approach. That blue streak is the Nile, most of Cairo and the airport being the other side of it.

Map from the start of our approach. Cairo (Al Qahirah) is an Arab city, founded long after the pharoahs (who only left their pyramid tombs up there), Alexander, Cleopatra & the Romans. I was a bit nervous that my old 'friend' King Farouk (who you may remember from when Roggeveen navigated that Italian airship down the Nile) might be waiting for me, but luckily I believe he's been overthrown by now and Egypt has in fact become the LAST place we'll encounter him.

 

[Ralf Roggeveen]

The earliest Comet flights into Africa actually went from Rome to another old friend, Beirut in the Lebanon. This was probably due to Beirut having a bigger & better airport in the early '50s, rather than for political reasons. In 1956 the British (and French & Israelis) actually invaded Egypt, or at least captured the Suez Canal, so civil aviation must have been suspended for a while then! But Rome - Cairo was definitely the favoured and most direct route as long as the UK and Egypt weren't at war with each other.

I wasn't low enough on the final approach and came in too fast, but managed what Tony called 'a hairy landing', this time at least without overshooting the concrete.

As you can see, it's not one of the Art Deco lovelies, but a big, soulless airport (in truth built 10 years later in 1963). Never mind, at least some interesting aircraft were to be seen.

The Cairo Flying Club were on their way up once we'd landed:

A yellow Piper Cub (we've all got one of those!)...

...and a pretty little Waco (for some reason that made me think of Farouk - must have been word-association or something). There were also some exotic airlines present:

One for the spotters from Air Jordan and an Aramco DC-6 (= Arab American Oil Company, say no more)...

We parked near them.

Map of the whole of that leg:

 

[Ralf Roggeveen]

Heca - hsss

Just time to send a card from Cairo:

In Reality I have been to Egypt, but never to the capital. My sister was there a few years ago and told the story of getting into conversation with a friendly young Egyptian. He said, 'You Westerners think Egypt is very backward, but we are a modern, advanced country like your own.' Of course she was just about to politely agree with him when a cow, bleeding at the nose, galloped through the traffic of the busy street, pursued by a crowd of gesticulating, shouting Egyptians.

Anyway, let's go back to the airport:

There was some very interesting hardware around here, and it wasn't just flying machines. For example, an old 2CV parked beside a scruffy palm tree:

I peered inside and it was full of sand. Here's an Egyptian DC-3:

Their airline is now Egyptair, but at this time they put Misrair (Misr = Arabic for Egypt) on one side of their 'planes. For a while Egypt and Syria were supposed to be one political entity (Nasser's idea, to upset the Israelis) and they changed the name of both both countries' fleets to United Arab Airlines. My 1973 World Airline Insignia book has Egyptair with a fine collection of 707-320Cs, Comet 4s, Ilyushins, Yak-40s and Tupolevs; and of course in the '60s they bought their military toybox from the Russians too. In the 1950s, however, their airliners were all still from the USA and UK:

Several other exotic countries are represented at Cairo:

A Saudi and...

...a Convair from JAT (Jugoslovenski Aerotransport)! They (the CV-440s) were still going in '73, along with a couple of DC-3s, some DC-9s and Caravelles - Tito didn't buy Soviet! And here's something from a very unusual airline:

This is from the sanctions-busting Trek Airways which flew between Johannesburg and Luxembourg... and that's the entire fleet, naughty Luxembourgeoisie! But the jewel in the crown of our Cairo spots is just sneaking off in the far background there...

A Soviet Tupolev 104! I know I said you wouldn't see any other jets - the story was supposed to be set in about 1954. The AI is, however, from '57, and having spotted this it seemed a shame to remove it. When the British started flying Comets (in 1952) the Russians felt obliged to get some sort of passenger jet service going. By removing the bomb bays, machine guns, etc. and replacing them with armchairs and toilets, they managed to get these Tupolevs carrying Party Members (only!) to lovely places like Omsk and Irkutsk. And of course they went to foreign countries too (at an enormous loss), to impress the natives. We saw him just leaving ahead of us:

Apparently the navigator sometimes found the bomb-aimer's window, still there in the nose, quite useful for looking out and working out exactly where they were!

 

[Ralf Roggeveen]

Here we are just about to get our clearance:

You can see the Russian, Yugoslav and a local Cessna disappearing off to the north there.

Now it's our turn. That's three different aeroplanes coming in to land behind me - left quickly because I never heard Cairo Tower telling them to wait! So we were pointing north & had to swing round to follow the great river down into Africa (though obviously it's flowing the other way, if you see what I mean).

A view of the International airport by our tail & a military one (?) below us, once we had swung around...

...and there's the old Nile which we follow at an angle of 190 degrees for a couple of hours. Didn't see (or even hear) many aircraft; though early on there was this DC-4:

Yes, we saw him. I think he was an Egyptian with their SU registration. The Soviet Union was, of course, CCCP (Russian for SSSR, just to confuse everybody). Once at 29000 ft we made a beautiful contrail:

But it was just us, the desert, clouds and sky.

Here's the main landmark that I was looking out for, Lake Nasser:

This is above the modern High Aswan Dam, built by his Russian friends for Colonel Nasser. The British had already made a much smaller Aswan Dam in the 19th Century, but by the 1950s the Egyptians needed a new one. As you can see, a huge area was flooded, including ancient monuments, some of which had to be moved to new locations. This is the largest body of water we'll see for a while.

 

[Naki]

Great story..love the period AI :ernae:

 

[Ralf Roggeveen]

Here's a Reality picture of me at Lake Nasser in 1993:

I did not want to go there, but the Egyptians are so proud of it that they take you whether you admire Soviet engineering triumphs or not. As for the things that got flooded out...

...Abu Simbel (= Father of Fear in Arabic). All four of them are Rameses II - eat your hearts out Alexander T. Great and 'Colonel' Nasser! Here they are taking it all apart to move:

Incidentally, I believe it was the British & French (and maybe UNESCO) that did the engineering for that particular job.

Abu Simbel has it's own airport, just so tourists can visit the (moved) monument:

...and here we are flying over it (note the DC-3 which had just taken off):

Incidentally, Mrs RR & I were offered a flight down there in '93, but decided not to go. It was expensive and we'd seen enough of small Egyptian airports and internal flights (Airbuses of course). It was much more sensible to invest half an hour in bargaining, strike a deal and hire a taxi for the day. We travelled 100 miles up and down the Nile that way, visiting every site; paying the then equivalent of £12/$20/€15 a day.

At the 22nd Parallel you cross the border into Sudan. It doesn't look much different from Egypt, still lots of sand...

...lots of sky:

Most people, if they know anything at all about Sudan, will remember the rather good Charlton Heston movie Khartoum. Here's Heston as General Gordon:

And here's General Gordon as himself:

What had happened was that in the 19th Century Egypt claimed to rule Sudan. Then, as now, Sudan wasn't a very nice place, its main industry being slavery. In 1883 the Khedive of Egypt (my friend Farouk's grandfather) hired Gordon (who was only a Colonel on leave from the British army) to go to Khartoum and its Egyptian garrison, organise the place and abolish slavery. Easier said than done, especially as there was a full-scale Islamist revolt going on there, led by Muhammad Ahmad, the Mahdi (not very well portrayed in the film by Laurence Olivier). Gordon did manage to evacuate all foreigners from Khartoum, but got himself besieged there by an enormous Mahdist army. The British government felt obliged to send a relief force which, despite a heroic effort to get down the Nile quickly, didn't make it in time to prevent Gordon & his garrison being massacred. After that the British left the Sudan alone, ruled by the Mahdi's successor, the Khalifa, 'Abd Allahi, until the French started showing an unhealthy imperialist interest in the area in 1898. Then the British finally sent a huge Anglo-Egyptian army commanded by General Kitchener which in turn slaughtered the Mahdists at Omdurman (called Karari in Arabic), as seen in another movie, Young Winston.

This all goes to show that there is nothing new under the sun about militant Islamic political movements, though it was less likely in those days that the Mahdists would threaten Queen Victoria by going round blowing themselves up on London omnibuses...

 

[Ralf Roggeveen]

As you will have guessed, we are going to the capital of Sudan, Khartoum.

There it is at the confluence of the White (left) and Blue (right) Niles. Being there made it quite easy to defend for Charlton - I mean, Gordon - as he only really had to fortify the south. They kept me circling round there for an annoyingly long time - as you know, low and slow is difficult in any aeroplane, especially an early jet! Managed to get her down OK, though not exactly on the centreline:

I was particularly irritated at having been kept waiting by the fact that there were only TWO aeroplanes sitting around at Khartoum International at the time!

They told me to go park at what was rather grandiosely called 'Gate 4', i.e. a patch of concrete. I bet Tony that DC-3 would turn out to represent Air Sudan.

We were so busy staring at it that we drove right past, forgetting that we were expected to squeeze in BETWEEN the two airplanes!

Turned around and managed to get in there without hitting anything. That Viscount is, as you see, from the unromantically-named British operator Airwork...

...but I notice that they have the (Royal) Mail contract. Behind us was a small mosque:

Not as impressive as the Mahdi's Tomb in nearby Omdurman:

Kitchener put a couple of High Explosive shells through the dome during the 1898 Battle; but just to show there were no hard feelings, he did repair it all afterwards.

Map of the whole HECA - HSSS leg with the Red Sea making a guest appearance:

And that's that bit done. Where next? What's our final destination down here?

BTW, while it's topical, here's an entertaining website...www.urinal.net/khartoum_airport/

Not for the squeamish!

 

[hawkeye52]

Ralf, great to again have you as our aerial tour guide. Farouk, Nasser! Names we haven't heard for a loooong time -- they take us oldtimers back -- and hopefully may inspire some of the "young uns" to Google 'em and learn some of the lessons history can teach -- and which today's leaders have forgotten...or perhaps never learned.

Oh, and by the way, that "pic" of you and Tony at "Alex" -- there were no roll-ons back in the Fifties. LOL!!!
- Hawkeye52

 

[waco]

What a delightful travelogue, especially the narration. Thank you many, many, many times.