sixtiesrelic

Not sure who sent me this many years ago. It is the wreckage back at the homestead being examined. The investigators drew this map. Nothing coming for the next two nights... visitors staying with us.

Remember the scene where the Japs decide to enter a flying machine in the great air race but don't have one designed yet? No bother... someone takes a model of some country's aircraft and pulls the wings off and bungs 'em on the body of another country's model and says... Japanese entrant! We all laughed. Well... Lookee here:- What two aeroplanes did the Poles use to make thissy?

A few people are getting the heat off themselves and their mates by suggesting other people are at fault... "That Gray bloke... Came down from New Guinea recently.... Morse not so good ... they're not as good as us down here, those New Guinea blokes... blah blah blah." You can't really blame them. They didn't think they were in the wrong yet questions are being asked . The fact that Cameron didn't read the Morse any better went over their heads. Afflek isn't fooled. He's thinking they were low and a long way off.

Late June The wheels are going to turn very slowly from now on as every avenue is examined and reported on. Some examples below. There are hand written witness reports months later while the three investigators travel over the N.T examining every little thing. I'll speed up the story more now.

The unusable fuel in the belly tank caught and melted some aluminium but I guess because of the heavy rain the grass didn't catch.

24th June It was after a fire had gone through the area that Hardy spotted the wreckage.

June 24 The object of this exercise was to feel the uncertainty and length of the wait for news of ADY. From now on I will compress the slow grinding of the wheels of the gathering of evidence to the report which came out on October 28th. The team of site investigators arrive today to begin their work. Constable Doyle of the NT police was charged with guarding the wreckage till the approved Department of Civil Aviation officers arrived to take charge of it. Doyle turned back US army people four miles away from the wreck who were en -route to take charge of their dead. They were stopped from touching anything before the investigators could note the position of components of the crash. Before the DCA blokes got there, a RAAF salvage officer arrived and informed Doyle HE was authorised to take over the wreckage. A uniform and self confident air convinced Doyle that his duties were no longer required and departed. I guess camping in the bush for a couple of nights with ADY wasn’t exactly something Doyle enjoyed. The salvage officer didn’t endear himself to Guinea Airways or DCA because he certainly interfered with the evidence, collecting personal effects, dog tags etc then got stuck into the wing with an axe and cold chisel looking for the mail locker and souveniring the aircraft’s ‘name plate’. There was no locker I the wing and it was no longer useful because of the damage he inflicted to the main spar. Souveniring may be a wrong word as he actually asked Nobby Buckley if he wanted it. Nobby said yes. Somehow it was nailed up on the wall of the Pine creek hotel for many years and is now in the safe hands of a historian. I have a colour photo of it somewhere in an old computer. It wasn’t too pristine… it had been in a crash after all. Tomorrowthe1942 photos mentioned in the telegram above.

Yet!

Bas, talk to the captains who have to fly with them!

June 23 Did Guinea Airways ring the families today or did they wait for more news. Did the occupants die on impact or were they trapped? Yesterday’s telegram wasn’t specific. There are lots of questions that are going to be asked. Guinea Airways won’t know any more than DCA till more news comes through.

Oh! there's MORE!

MONDAY 22 JUNE 1942 Long wait, but there it is!

AWAY from secondary airports where the people get together to work out how much they'll charge and you pay landing fees.

June 21 Adam’s letter I think thes was the console for the DF .... nice and complicated huh. Adams was a technician. He had his apparatus checked for accuracy and it was operating correctly for the various tests. IT worked, but the conditions the night ADY went missing weren't able to be simulated, so he had no reason to believe that ADY didn't just ignore the bearings. He probably knew Cameron's attitude to the bearings he was often given... he asked them to check the sense on a few occasions as did many other pilots. The equipment was complicated and a certain amount of educated guessing was required to give a bearing. Naturally Adams can see no problem with the equipment or operators, so has to look at the other input… the pilot. He was the failing. What really glares in Adam's letter is the similarity to Chaseling's letter especially the conclusions … word perfect!. They certainly look like they composed them together and as Sizanudin mentioned, Cameron gets the blame, seeing as the chances are next to none that he's alive and can defend himself..

The footage is taken. It seems my computer maybe slow or I've gotten more impatient as I've made more movies. Over the last two days off, I have spent about one hour of computer time per minute of finished movie. Every time I make an input, I wait about twenty five seconds to see if I got it right. Been yelling at the computer again. I complecate things by oodles of special effects like bunging music in and adjusting the clip lengths to fit the music if it isn't too hard. I'm getting the idea that the more messing about I do with the project the longer things take as the computer has to remember the whole project not only the last change. Maybe I need to make them in five minute lots and tack them together at the end.

Sat 20 June 1942 Unfortunately when I photographed the pages I sometimes was a bit quick and the camera didn’t fully auto focus. I couldn’t tell from the small screen on the camera. Page 2 was too out of focus but you get the idea of Mr Adam the Supervising Engineer of the Chief Electrical Engineer’s Branch’s opinion in this report to DCA.

19 June A few thoughts on Chaseling’s letter. Now there's an interesting thing. Even though there was sort of evidence that ADY wasn't flying over Darwin at all with the weak radio reception on HF and VHF, the sightings by two people the queries about how much rain Darwin was experiencing. Chaseling is really belting Cameron in this company investigation. Were they mates or was there friction? Is it company policy to get the heat off the company operations. GAL had suffered a number of frontline aircraft crashes over the past few years, perhaps DCA was looking at them and Chaseling was trying to put the blame away from them. In 1983 Ansett was at the inquest into a Beech King Air crash at Sydney. Controllers and other pilots were there too. At one stage the inquest discovered that an Ansett Boeing 727 had been told to go round as it landed ... to make way for the staggering, stricken Beech to get down anywhere on the airport. The 727 pilot refused to go round and things were starting to look bad for him at the hearing when it knocked off for lunch, part of the way through this line of thought. An Ansett manager spoke to the captain as they left the building and said that if he was blamed, the company wouldn't be doing anything to help him... it wouldn't look good for the company image, so ‘he would be on his own’ … thrown to the wolves. When they resumed, the question was asked why he hadn't gone around as 'commanded'. He said they had touched down and the automatic speed brakes had deployed and the operations manual states that aircraft aren't to try to take off again. The ops manual was produced and it was noted the instruction to not attempt a takeoff in this configuration was in bold type and the captain had done the correct thing. He was no longer of interest to the inquest. Ansett pilots knew they would be sacrificed if ever it suited the company image. Looks like Gordon got the same stabbing. I find the idea of trying Cloncurry and Groote’s bearings interesting. Cloncurry is around seven hundred miles from Darwin and Groote three hundred and fifty. Would you rely on bearings from so far away? Using a reasonable inaccuracy of five degrees you have forty five mile by a sixty mile oval of probability you’d be in. Groote’s bearings would be almost the same as Darwin’s as they were reasonably lined up on the track Darwin gave. The difference is twenty seven degrees between the two places from Darwin. We are told that bearings crossing less than forty five degrees are not particularly accurate for position fixing, yet here armchair theorists reckon twenty seven degrees should have been utilized. Those pilots were totally stuffed. The investigators wanted to know Cameron’s flying hours for the last ninety or so days at the beginning of their investigation… THEY knew! Cameron was being told of his bearings in a very sure tone … remembering that the information came through three people as Eric Chaseling mentions in his report. The last would have no doubts when he sent the message. Do you think they were going to put four Mercator charts on the cabin floor and get the boys to hold them steady while Gray drew a bearing line from Cloncurry? … they wouldn’t fit in the aisle. I have another type of chart from those days that looks like it covers four Mercator chart areas, but it looks like they may have needed two together to cover CCY to DN and DID they carry one with them or were they more a planning chart back at base? I also have another Mercator chart that fits beside Darwin’s. IT is 1: 1.3 million compared with Darwin’s 1 in a million. That could cause some problems at night to tired pilots who are used to ten miles being twenty millimetres. Most of you pilots can look at a WAC chart and guess a distance because your eye gages eighteen millimetres at ten miles. OK we have terminal charts en-route charts and RNCs etc but we become accustomed to the chart we use the most. I‘ve often wondered why Cloncurry or Groote didn’t try relaying for Darwin when it is obvious from the request to send each LETTER four times that ADY was experiencing almost impossible difficulties. Were they on different frequencies? Chaseling was thorough and many improvements would come from his observations and questions. He helped make Australia a safe place to fly.

What camera are you using Dex, Go Pro? Have a look on ebay for spycameras. I have four. Two are "remote car door opener on a keyring shaped ones that cost $20. Another with a better field of vision cost $50 from Oz. They take about 40 minutes. I haven't been game to use my go pro on an aeroplane yet. Aimed on a blob of blu tack and a bit of tape over them to hold them down and you have fixed cameras on a wing tip, engine cowl looking back, or any place you chose. You can make a video with many angles rather than from inside looking out or on the ground following the areoplane as it flies around. When I get a chance I'll make the movie of a Tiger Moth doing circuits using five cameras.

When I first read it and started stitching the photos together I named the pages GAL's Scathing letter 1, 2. etc. I didn't like it either More on that tonight.

I have to go away from home for almost ten hours a day Al, so they'll pay me. I have a bunch of Movies to make too. One has been waiting three weeks and my niece is wanting to know when she can see it. Haven't even started on it yet. It's a complecated one to make as there are three videos capturing the action. Got a beauty to make of the Tiger Moth doing some circuits at Luskintyre in which five video cameras were used for lots of angles. I haven't even looked at the footage from the main two cameras yet. I've been waiting ages to get the chance to do that videoing, so making it is itching at me.

I'm going to have a week's rest before telling about the amazing aircraft collection Roy has. Working and writing two stories at the same time is making sixties a bit tired. Yes Siz ... lucky man. I might just have to go back on my word about not setting foot in another international terminal and go to Wanaka or Ardmore when the show is on. My cousins went theis year and loved it.

Captain Chaseling’s report to DCA

After descending to the deck we went through the centre compartment with four side saddle seats which backed onto the left side (Who bothers using the word port these days) hull, and a stretcher on the right. There are portholes high up on the hull above and behind the passenger’s heads here, so it's a bit of a black hole and would be pretty boring sitting strapped in on a long flight. Climbing over another bulkhead step you’re in the blister compartment. Now here's a place to excite kids. There's a big black, machine gun complete with a strap of shiny bullets on one side while just the blister on the other. This area is light and roomy although you’d be slipping around if the deck was littered with bullet shells. There are shallow cones below the machine gunner positions to collect them but they must have bounced all over the place during violent evasive manoeuvers. There’s a further small-doored bulkhead that leads into the aft cone from the blister compartment. This is where one is really reminded of a tinny. I think I was told there is a flat pad on the floor of this tail cone where a machine gunner lay and operated an aft facing machine gun. Outside, when we walked around, the small distance from the keel to the ground is striking. You’d have to lie on your back to check if you’d rubbed the keel on a rock, yet the hull is quite deep. The wing, perched up on the pylon is a long way up. I’d hate to be the one who has to climb up on the wing to check the fuel caps or take the yellow exhaust cover off the exhaust stub. At least if they lost one of them overboard they could revert to the old farmer’s habit of bunging an empty can on the top of the tractor exhaust pipe we’ve all seen. There is a cup style step on the front of the pylon but it’s a long step up and I couldn’t see any hand holds to get past the leading edge. It’d be a bugger getting up there if there was any sort of a swell running and even if you fell off the wing when on the water it’d hurt when you hit. Even floating, that wing is a long way up. The wing is interesting. Apart from being a hell of a slab of a thing, the rear almost half is fabric. Later models had aluminium cladding instead of fabric. The tail with the tailplane and elevators half way up it, has a pleasing curve that many aircraft of the era were designed with. I would have liked to stay longer but I was on a time limit as I had to get to Bankstown by four PM and it was the Friday of a long weekend, so I left that hangar to look at the aircraft with Connie.

Wednesday June 17 No sighting of ADY. How long does it take to find a crashed aeroplane? You can see from yesterday’s instalment that aircraft were going down in droves. I wonder how many of those were circled by Guinea Airways, ANA, Qantas and Ansett pilots as they flew past wondering if ’THIS is ADY’. All the pilots knew each other back then and they would be on the lookout, much the same as people flying over the Barrington Tops still look for VH- MDX, a Cessna 210 that disappeared in 1981. Those who look, hope they might see a flash of wrong colour for the jungle (Anything that has lawyer cane growing everywhere to hook you, is jungle in my opinion). Perhaps a huge old branch will snap and drag some of the vine ridden canopy down to expose some of MDX. ADY wasn’t in jungle which makes it all the more puzzling as to why it is not standing out.