sixtiesrelic

May 30th 1942 Investigation committee of Mr Affleck and Mr Ellis is formed in Melbourne. Affleck knows both Cameron and W.T. Gray He was the first flying doctor pilot in the Gulf of Carpentaria and later New Guinea. He is a good man to put onto the committee as he knows how pilots think. Below is the airways museum’s description of Arthur. http://www.airwaysmuseum.com/ Arthur H Affleck (1903- ) Arthur Affleck was born in Melbourne in 1903 and educated at Wesley College, in that city. At the age of 17 he joined the staff of the National Bank of Australiasia but, after two years' service, enlisted as a clerk in the Royal Australian Air Force. Six months later he was selected as one of three Civil Aviation Cadets from hundreds of applicants throughout Australia, was trained to Air Force 'Wings' and Commercial Pilot Licence standard. Given a discharge from the RAAF, Affleck commenced work as a commercial pilot with Jimmy Larkin's Australian Aerial Services Ltd. to operate the Melbourne-Hay route. Following a dispute with Larkin over the airworthiness of the A.N.E.C. III, Arthur Affleck obtained a job with Q.A.N.T.A.S in April 1927. He was the original pilot of the Flying Doctor service, based in Cloncurry, and later flew in New Guinea and Western Australia. Arthur Affleck joined the Civil Aviation Branch of the Defence Department in 1936 as a Flying Inspector. In 1941 he was sent to Port Moresby to organise the evacuation of women and children in the face of the Japanese advance and was later seconded to the RAAF. Post war, he played an important part in, and contributed much to, the safe development of the Australian civil aviation industry. In 1963, at the age of 60, he retired from the position of Regional Director of Civil Aviation for Papua New Guinea. (Photo: CAHS collection) Arthur Affleck's autobiography The Wandering Years was published by Longmans, Green and Co. in 1964. I am reading the book at the present. If you spot it buy it and see what flying was like in the good old days. It is a very good read.

May 29th 1942 People wake in the night and start thinking. Questions go round and round inside their head. Was it a forced landing or a crash? Were they killed instantly or they lived? Were they badly injured and trapped in the wreckage or thrown out? Did it burn? It takes a surprisingly small quantity of fuel to produce an inferno. Did they drown in a lagoon or river… get eaten by crocodiles? Things that weren’t spoken out aloud, but most people involved, thought them privately. Did the aircraft ooze into the treetops and decelerate comfortably or did part of the aircraft come to a sudden halt against a thick tree trunk or ant nest. Ant nests are built to pretty substantial sizes. Many pioneers sawed them into large building blocks to make the walls of buildings. Anyone who has been to Betoota out Birdsville way may have seen the thickness of the pub walls… Ant nest. It’s a good material, as it is honeycombed with air pockets that give great insulation. I reckon whacking into a termite mound would make a serious dent in an aeroplane. It probably wouldn’t break off near the ground as the airways collapse like a shock absorber. Did the aircraft decelerate rapidly and come down onto a broken off tree trunk trunk or ant nest and get the belly ripped out. Think of the leg injuries … nasty. How would you be, with smashed up legs tangled in the wreckage. Can anyone who survives extricate you… no tools to cut you out. The pilots? First to cop it? The nose of Lockheeds wasn’t the aircraft’s strong point. How would the boys go if they were injured and the pilots dead? They have never been in this country before. (I thought for a long time that they were returning to Batchelor from the course but from Peter Dunn’s site and others, it looks like they were arriving from the east coast where they’d landed just weeks before). This was probably the first time they’d ever seen desert and top end country. They’d have no bush craft; no knowledge of ‘the natives’. What would they know of Australia? Even today we see the shocking lack of knowledge many Americans have of the rest of the world outside the great U S of A. and they have TV radio movies and internet that the people in the forties didn’t have. We’ve heard stories of Japanese motorbike tourists out in the backblocks, who have died of thirst beside waterholes and tanks, because they weren’t game to drink the muddy water. How fast did Cameron land? The stall speed would have been about fifty -five knots. How much above the stall did he approach? 1.3 times the stall speed, like we all do in a short field landing. Think how scarily slow that feels when you’re coming in… it doesn’t matter on the size of the aeroplane we all think it’s VERY slow. The Jumbo blokes reckon one hundred and sixty knots is as slow as they want to get down to… like fifty two knots is in a one seventy two is for its pilot. Airliners now do only short field landings… every landing! How about 1.1 times the stall speed, would you be game? The slower… the better chance you have when you start breaking trees. A stall speed of fifty- five is pretty slow. Convert it into kilometres per hour and think of the young road knights who collide with a pole or tree to-day. Their cars are a real mess… cut in half sometimes or wrapped right round the immovable object. Cars are made of steel. They’re made to be able to cop a fair impact. Aeroplanes aren’t! Where was the luggage stored ? http://hdl.handle.net/10070/11248 It wasn’t like today’s requirements for security. Imagine packs and rifles flying around the cabin in the darkness. People lay in bed in 1942 and thought some of these thoughts. They’d keep thinking them till they were told what happened by someone who had been there and knew for sure. Loved ones are always told, ‘He died peacefully’ Or ‘It was instant… he didn’t know a thing’ but there’s always the doubt, ‘Am I being saved terrible news?’ Lockheed fourteens were a treacherous little cow at slow speed. Nasty, vicious stallers. Lionel van Pragg, who was a champion speed way motorbike rider, was the chief pilot of Adastra after the war and he said that he would sack any pilot who approached at less than a hundred knots in a Lockheed 14. He didn’t trust them. The pre-war pilots knew their vices, so what did Cameron do, keep up the speed and really belt into the obstructions or take the chance of a wing drop while still above the treetops. He couldn’t just fly around and choose a nice large flat expanse… there are some, but they’re boggy. He didn’t have enough forward visibility to see much more than a hundred or so yards in front of him in the rain, so not too far past where he put her down was going to be completely unknown.

Sorry gang, the internet doesn't want to work today... took hours to get on. May 28th 1942 31 days since last bombing… repair or rebuild? Are the Japs being stalled in New Guinea and the tide is turning? The papers say they cop a pasting each time they raid Port Moresby for the just the odd wounding of one of our side? Insurance company starting to work out out how to get out of paying?

May 27th 1942 Doreen placed this telegram on Mr Johnstone’s desk today. Smith is one of Guinea Airway’s directors.

May 26th 1942 Nil Sighting of ADY Aviation was much smaller back in 1942. Most people in the industry knew each other. Edgar Johnstone knows Gordon Cameron. They were both in the Air Force, so the friendship could go back for years. Ed has to discover why Gordon got lost. He wouldn’t really enjoy searching through a friend’s dirty laundry. Crashes are mostly attributed to the pilot in command. I’m not sure if today’s pilot group has the same respect for ‘its betters’ as we older ones had. I suspect the majority does, after all, we want to excel and when we look at those who are real aces, we hope to emulate them or despair of ever becoming THAT good. People say they soar like eagles. I don’t like eagles… cruel hunters, patrolling for a kill. Flying like an eagle is how I view fighter pilots. They all can really fly as only the cream gets to that position, but their job is hunting. I admire the albatross for his flying ability…effortless and majestic. I’ve flown with pilots who fly like the albatross. They didn’t bully, berate or discount the fumbling student or first officer who is struggling to get on top of his flying. They pointed out how another way may be better. They were a joy to fly with and we would do our best to not stuff up. There was another type (in a great minority thank God) who flew perfectly but couldn’t understand another’s imperfection and made it hard the whole flight. They watched and judged. They treated the F O as a total idiot, not worth trusting and the F O in his nervousness stuffed up over and over proving the old bastard was right. There was one captain, in a hot country I’ve lived in, who no one enjoyed flying with. The saying went, when a First Officer emerged from an aeroplane with the back of his shirt sopping wet from sweat, “Been flying with Jones!” If he staggered from the steps with the front of his shirt wet as well… “Been checked by Jones.” The albatrosses who flew so perfectly, could show little lapses on back of the clock flights. Three or four in the morning when they were tired they lost their edge and sometimes made little mistakes. What about the pilots who had flown for months on end way above the safe maximum hours, they must have not been perfect all the time. Charlie flew 60:40 in the month of May 1942 and he had nineteen days off. Add the fact that Cameron and W.T. Gray had been operating for over twelve hours when the first hole in the cheese appeared and fifteen hours when they broke the wireless set. Looking at Cameron’s photo, I’m not sure about him. He has the look of stern management pilots I’ve known. They brook no mistakes… they have the reputation of the airline to uphold. He was a chief pilot. They have to be very good. They have to be tough too. Often they have enemies. Slack Jack doesn’t like a C P who sees his carelessness and perhaps tells him to ‘lift his game’. Slack Jack is happy just getting through and not striving too hard, he never gets very high up the ladder and is contented being out of sight. Management pilots sometimes suffer each other, because they don’t completely agree with all the other bloke’s ideas or methods. Both are right, they just go about things slightly differently. I wonder if this might not have been the case in GAL. Whatever people’s opinion was, everybody would all be feeling bad about and for the lost aircraft’s complement.

May 25th 1942 Old Mr Gray wasn’t happy with the calling off of the search, yet even the famous aviators weren’t searched for over an extra long period. I’d say he was getting no joy from the management of Guinea Airways, so he went over their heads and went straight to the Director General of The Department of Civil Aviation. I find it interesting that he refers to Nobby Buckley as just Buckley and no title like 'captain'. For those days it sounds rather disrespectful, especially when Nobby was on his side. Searches I have found:- Steve Fossett 17 days and his wife paid for more. Amy Johnston 5 Jan 1941 drowned. (A claim arose in 1996 by the bloke wot done it, that she was shot down by friendly fire and on it being discovered, the officers decided they had better keep it a secret). Hawaiian Clipper Jul 1938 8 days. Amelia Earhadt 16 days. Kingsford Smith 12 days coffee royal and not sure how long for the Lady Southern Cross. Keith Anderson in the Kookaburra 11 days. Obviously DCA wasn’t too tight with the money they would shell out even though Mr Corbett the DG, didn’t think the pilots were right in their guessing the forced landing site and it would be another wild goose chase.

'Little Ann' emailed me this:- Thursday morning Hello I do not know if you are aware of this On Nov. 10, 1942, the C-47 nicknamed The Flying Dutchman (S/N 41-18564) hit a strong down-draft over the Owen Stanley Range while carrying U.S. Army troops from Port Moresby to Pongani, New Guinea. It crashed into the side of Mount Obree, killing seven of the 23 onboard and destroying most of the food it carried. Of the 16 survivors, eight received serious injuries and burns. Some of the survivors were able to walk out, but they were unable to give advice for rescuers to find their way back to the site see http://www.nationalmuseum.af.mil/factsheets/factsheet.asp?id=15377 When TJ and David were little boys, Joe and I took them to that museum (National Museum of the U.S. Air Force, just east of Dayton Ohio) I shall never forget the horror I felt when I came to this particular part of the museum - have a look at the writing on the door in one of those photos, and the text of the writing. In the museum is that actual door. Aerial reconnaissance missions flew over the general crash area without success, but eighteen months later, in July 1944, the crash site was discovered. A rescue party went to the location, only to find the eight crash survivors dead. Ironically, searchers looking for another downed airplane rediscovered The Flying Dutchman in 1967, and they found this door. The notes written on it reveal the tragic hopes of those who had been waiting for a rescue that came too late. The last entry was made on Jan. 1, 1943, and what happened afterward and how long the last man lived will probably never be known.

May 24th 1942 Sunday.... No news! Have you noticed that Sizanudin was counting the days for quite some time and then stopped? That’s part of what happens to people waiting for news. Hope at some time is overpowered by practicality. We realize that the chances of survival have to be remote and we settle down to prepare for the worst. Deep down there is the feeling that we will let them down if ‘we give ‘em up for dead’. It’s sort of like being unfaithful… how will we feel if they turn up when we’ve gotten on with our lives? … GUILTY This is the emotion millions felt, seventy years ago. Those who got a telegram stating that the love one was ‘missing in action’ or ‘missing presumed killed’ had some direction to go… ‘get used to the idea’, but what about the Jews and people in remote villages in say, Russia, who were not going to ever get any word of their fighting men and women. They spent years in limbo ‘not knowing’. Those awaiting news seventy years ago, knew that King lasted two and a half months on the Cooper after Burke and Wills died. King was starving and buggered when he started that wait, but he lived to tell the tale. Lassiter of the golden quartz reef in the desert fame, lasted around sixty days in the desert after his camels bolted. ‘He was looked after by nomadic aborigines’. Glancing through the newspapers of 1942, I saw a piece on the killing of a white man in the top end by Aboriginals. It mentioned that there were still nomads not so far from Darwin. I went for a holiday to Darwin in 1958. We drove down the highway to Adelaide River one day. There were abandoned runways beside the road still in good repair… hardly a grass tuft growing or an ant hill poking up. At one airstrip we stopped and were walking around having a bit of a look around when a young Aboriginal man wearing dirty tattered shorts quietly emerged from the scrub. He carried a couple of spears and didn’t take any notice of us, he was looking in the trees for his dinner. Shortly after, when he’d gotten a hundred yards on, his wife appeared. She was wearing a pretty shapeless cotton dress, had a large bundle on her head and carefully made her way through the long grass keeping quiet and glancing around her, probably for ‘women’s tucker’. They were ‘on walkabout’. That was sixteen years after 1942. Stories abound of survivors who lasted impossibly long times. Sole survivors… why do they make it when everyone else perished? Is it because they don’t want to let the others down? They WILL survive, so they can tell people what happened to their companions who didn’t make it. There are plenty of stories of them just refusing to give up. Groups have the comfort of companionship. Each person can have a turn at being strong or dependent if they need it. The strong ones have a responsibility and job to do that keeps them going and not sitting down to mope away in the doldrums. The injured know they have someone to help them and can keep suffering the pain because they’re not alone.

May 23rd 1942 Charlie returned to work today. Funnily he crewed Adelaide, Maree, Ooodnadatta then passengered to Darwin…. To be an observer on the Katherine to Darwin leg? This page in the files is a bit of a mystery as it is over a month after ADY’s disappearance. The interesting thing is … That’s Charlie’s handwriting and it’s the aeroplane he was flying (from his log book). It looks like he still got to be the Morse code sender on the latter legs… bit untidy and some boxes not filled in. Another interesting thing is the number of messages that got “No reply” and the “Check sense” The DF doesn’t sound like a real dependable aid. Many years later I heard the following story from an old well respected TAA captain. “When I was a sproggy, wet behind the ears, junior, first officer, I was on a Channel Country DC-3 run. I’d made a hell of a mess of filling out the flight plan as we flew along. Mistakes written over and crossed out, etc. I said to the captain, “I’m gunna cop it for this when they see it back in Brisbane.” (We had to hand back all the aircraft’s paperwork back then; flight plans, load sheets, load summaries etc.) The captain said, “Give ‘s a look!” I handed it to him; he perused it and opened the sliding side window. There was a suction at that window when it was opened and the old boy releases his grip on the plan and spl’tt … she flew out and was gone. I bought him a beer on every overnight I ever saw him after that. Three months later, I signed on for a flight and Charlie, who was the senior regional captain, saw me and said, “Wanna see you in my office!” (He was known as the abominable NOman back then). I stood before him at attention with my cap under my arm as he went round and sat down behind his big wooden desk. He opened a drawer and withdrew a buff coloured envelope with the Australian coat of arms on it… a government envelope! He pulled a much crinkled, faded, flight plan out of it and said, “What’s the meaning of THIS?” It was THE plan. Some Ringer out on a station had noted something unusual amongst the shrubs, dismounted from his horse and retrieved it. ‘It looked pretty official’ so he folded it, put it in his button down shirt pocket and kept it till he went into town next and handed it into the police. They posted it to TAA.” I had seen and had the above radio log identified recently and asked the old pilot for his email address. I was going to email him a copy to show him his boss’s handiwork when HE had been a sproggy F.O. Being full of rum and coke when he told me his address I reckoned I’d remember it easy… Forgot his name didn’t I. Remembered it was a hotmail address though.

May 22nd 1942 In the office of Guinea Airways at Parafield, Eric Chaseling and senior pilots like Oben Dowie, John Chapman, Ken Steele, Nobby Buckley and first officers like Charles Gray and Eric Kreig probably had a conversation like… “How can a whopping great, shiny, silver, airliner disappear like this.” “Even if it broke up, there would be reflections from all the pieces, surely!” “Could it have landed in one of the larger lagoons and sunk? The water lilies and other surface plants could easily return to the area they were displaced from with all the rain disturbing the surface.” “There’d have to be something sticking out above the surface… Wheel, wing… tail.” “They could be covered in lilies they’d collectedwhild decelerating.” “More than forty gallons of engine oil would be pretty evident. It would have killed the lilies by now.” “What if DY flipped when the wheels dug in and she is upside down with the breathers in the mud. Maybe the oil wouldn’t rush out of the engine?” There’s enough coating the wheel well to produce the rainbow effect on the water surface and the hydraulic oil would have seeped out.” “I wonder if anyone HAS looked closely in the lagoons.” “OK Eric, Why do we think they didn’t go down in the sea?” “Landed by some lights! And they were over land except when they said we’ve come to the water.” “Could the lights be a lugger?” “There’d be a light trail from them, across the water.” “Would you see that trail in heavy rain?” “Yes and if they landed by a lugger, they’d have been picked up and word would have reached us by now.” “What’s got me is the last call was received clearly by Katherine… They’re closer to Katherine than Darwin I reckon.” “I would have turned north myself and tried for visual contact in that direction. East West bearings were doubtful… maybe north bearings would have been clearer. Bathurst and Melville islands are low so there’s no worry about hitting a hill and the water land contrast would give them a chance to find themselves along a coast line.” “The first bearing they were given was wrong! Gordon didn’t believe it because he reckoned they were twenty five minutes south of Batchelor at the time. It was only when he got the third bearing that he started doubting his idea of where they were. After that he had NO idea where he was and had to fly to the scientific information. At Prospect, Tess has ironed Charles' uniforms.

May 21st 1942 Telegrams and letters are arriving at DCA Melbourne. This one is collect, so Doreen had to take three shillings with her to be able to pick it up from the post office.

I wrote this in 2009. Doug died last year. He was a mate of me father’s….old Doug. He’s over ninety now, but still going strong…. preparing to go off camping for a couple’a days in the home made, canopy on the back of his ute when the weather cools down a bit. Funny… I’m in me mid sixties and lotsa young people think I’m old and yet, I still privately think of him as “Uncle Doug”. I tend to regard our aviation legends as wind blown coves, wearing crumpled suits and a tie, who extricated themselves, lighting up a fag as they did, from an oily collection of rags and sticks, while crowds mobbed them. While Doug Muir didn’t smoke, drink much, or wear suits and ties very often, he did make history however. At the age of sixteen he sailed alone on the Macduhi to Salamaua, New Guinea to start working for Stevenson Aviation. His old man, Frank, who was in the building game at Wau had gotten him the job working in the hangar he was building for “Stevo”. A bloody great timber framed thing with iron cladding. The one at the top of the Wau strip that the Japs flattened seven years later. Can you imagine a today’s mummy letting her darling sixteen year old travel fourteen days on a ship… alone. The shipboard companions were gold miners, tradesmen, explorers, patrol officers and indenture agents… probably heavy drinkers. Picture her “precious”, sleeping in a cabin down in the bowels of the ship, sharing it with strange, inebriated man. The Southeast trades blowing only marginally harder than the ship’s speed wouldn’t be providing much breeze as the temp and humidity increased. Young Doug didn’t notice the heat, he was on an adventure. Seeing Brisbane, Townsville, Cairns, Moresby, Samauri and Salamaua for the first time. Doug tells me the Macduhi was the height of genteelness with silver service, snow white linen and the passengers “dressing” for dinner. “very much the Somerset Maugham style of life”. Those of you who lived there and haven’t read some of that author’s stories of South East Asia and the Pacific… you should. You’ll see some of those stuffy older generation you thought were pompous old gits in the pages. Pre-war New Guinea was very much that way of life. Men wore solar topes and ties, didn’t befriend the Chinese, kept the Kanakas very much in their place. Solar topes worn by most men from the Administrator to Doug's mate Charlie Gray There was no apprenticeship in Wau, Doug just worked on airframes and engines and learned as he went. He’d loved mucking around with engines since he’d been a kid and happily dismantled and rebuilt ‘n modified motorbikes before ever sailing. He eagerly studied new knowledge and was quite happy spent his evenings swotting for hisA, B,C and D engineering licenses as he munched on his weakness…chocolates, that came in the tins, like Ardath cigarettes. They’re the size of a condensed milk can. For the first few years he worked in Wau then went to Butt near Wewak for a while (Pronounced like put, in “ PUT it down”) where he happily worked on Stevenson’s Dh 50 and 60 and the Waco 6 that mostly serviced gold prospectors in the Maprik area. During the evenings, he’d go over to Ray Parer’s donga and hear stories of the London to Sydney air race as well as discussions on aviation and the pursuit of gold. Back in Wau he got a girlfriend, but unfortunately she was up at Edie Creek, the richest of the gold fields where miners slept in their tens that had a wall of containers of gold dust and nuggets. Those containers were anything that could hold the product, like empty tins to legs of old trousers. Cut down shorts got fashionable on Edie Creek in the early days. Guinea Airways veranda could have tons of gold left on it by the end of the day’s flights in the thirties as the pilots dumped the cargo down there on their way into the office. Doug would rug up in his leather coat and gauntlets (which you’ll hear more of later) and tear up the ten thousand foot climb in seven miles, taking thirty minutes on his motorbike to see the lovely Shirley. There was a nice lookout on the way up at Blue Point, which was on a three thousand foot precipice where you could look thousands of feet down to the aircraft flying by. At the age of twenty he sailed to England to join the RAF who didn’t take him on … “What! a common old colonial?...”, so he got a job with Imperial Airways in the hangar in Croydon getting experience on modern aircraft and engines. After six months he returned to New Guinea and sat for his A and B engineering licenses which he got just before he was eligible. He had to lie about his age as you had to be twenty one to sit. He passed first go. He now was the only holder of all engineering licenses in New Guinea, which got up the nose of the older blokes, especially his bosses who didn't hold all the licenses. He did six months with Guinea Airways then returned to Stevenson shortly before the Japs hit Pearl Harbour. Doug had joined the New Guinea Volunteer Rifles when he returned to New Guinea from England and each weekend, the boys would do a bit of drill and then get into the interesting stuff… shootin’ guns. They practised with Lewis and Owen guns and .303s Stevo had bought Charles Ulm’s Avro 10, “The Faith in Australia” and had her shipped up to Salamaua. She’d been dismantled since 1940. Doug and a few “bios” got the job of putting her together using forty- four gallon drums, poles and ropes to jack her up and attach the undercarriage engines wings and tail feathers. There was a problem. The center engine wasn’t included and a few instruments were missing too. Duggie just went into Stevo’s hangar and selected a beaut 180 HP engine with a three bladed metal prop and bopped it in the mounts to replace the original one hundred and sixty HP, two bladed wooden prop one. The old DH fifty it had come from, was still in bits. Things were going swimmingly till it came time to fit the carby… Hmm Engine support’s in the way. Some hack-sawing and welding of a bit of new pipe overcame that little problem. The day came when Doug approached Stevo in the office and announced, “She’s ready”. “Beauty! Get the kanakas to load twenty bags of rice and well take her up to Wau before the cloud close in”. No second engineer to check the controls were rigged right and no quick circuit, just “jump in and lets go” BUT Stevo took the engineer with him. “Steve hadn’t flown “a ten” for quite a few years”. Doug was quite happy to go… the pilots let him have a fly, landing included. At the time Guinea Airways employed “Cadets” to give the captains a bit of a rest with the flying and start the engines by hand cranking a whopping big handle. Cadets generally didn’t have licenses. There is a couple of seconds of film clip of that first take off of “Faith” in the movie “a day in the life of a Junkers” in the Movie section of… pngair.com from time 0:47 to 0:50. Obviously Doug put her together properly because she flew hard for the next couple of weeks. The second flight started the carting of two hundred and thirty women and kid, evacuees from the north coast to Moresby. The second flight was after lunch, “Steve” took the Gannet while Arthur Collins and Doug took Faith across to Moresby Faith’d been camouflaged with house paint supplied by the father of that radio bloke, John Laws, who owned Greenwood and Laws store at Wau where young John had lived probably up to the evacuation. The cumulus were building and there’d be a fair bit of blind flying to get to Moresby. The “Old Faith” didn’t have any gyro instruments but the wrecked Dh 50 did, so before the flight, Doug shot over to the wreck and grabbed some instruments and a venturi then slipped into a hangar and found a twenty foot roll of hose. As they taxied out, Doug was screwing instruments into the dash and attaching hose to them. There was no time to fasten the venturi to the outside of the aircraft, so on a number of occasions, climbing and cruising at twelve thousand feet, Doug would don his motorbike gauntlet and hold the venturi our the window before they got to the next cloud. He reckons wet air at twelve grand is cold enough without the howling ninety knots of wind adding to the chill factor. Did it a number of times as they had to negotiate through cloud to get the gyros spinning The Administrator Sir Ian Mc Nicholl, was aboard and had tossed his beaut Dunlop foam mattress in the aircraft to cushion his and some of the dozen or so passenger’s bums … no seats. On arrival at Moresby, Sir Ian was picked up and driven off and Doug was left to check the plane. Doug decided that if Administrators were going to leave their property lying about for the kanakas to pinch, the mattress would be better on his bed, so he snaffled it. Doug went with “Steve” on all the subsequent flights between Wau and Moresby. Doug went on most flights as a second pilot and engineer. He got to do the starts as it was almost impossible for the pilot to do ‘em alone. Also he could make any repairs if problems arose. He carried a bit of a tool kit and some sensible small spares with him and on one flight from Moresby, Steve found one dead magneto. Within thirty minutes Doug had discovered the coil was cactus and whacked in the spare one he had with him and they trundled off to pick up more women and kids. When Singapore fell, the RAAF ordered all civil aircraft and personnel south. “Steve” and Doug took three engineers and the company accountant in Faith to Horn Island. That flight took six and a quarter hours and they were “pretty tired, so they remained there for two days and nights. “We scrounged some bloody old fuel and flew her down to Cairns. That took another six hours." Doug left the group there and bummed a ride to Sydney with Burt Ritchie in a Lockheed 14 belonging to Mandated Airlines. Faith got as far as Townsville where the RAAF decided she should be parked on Garbutt to look menacing to any Jap recognisance aircraft overflying. She wasn’t required for any more flying and became a shady place for soldiers to sit beneath and have a cuppa. That was the end of her, She just became a forlorn stack of flapping rag stuck to a framework of sticks. Doug got a gong for his efforts which got up the noses of the officer types in Qantas who got THEIRS for flying up to Mt Hagen ( quite a bit further away from 'the excitement' than Wau when doug and co were flying) in their four engined 'modern' DH86s. The 86 could be a bit of a caution though, according to a famous oldcaptain i flew with. Starting the third engine flattened the battery, so many pilots hooted down the runway and when they had enought speed used the airflow over the prop to help kick it oover for the starting of the fouth engine.

I have no idea and it will take an hour of reading to perhaps find the date of the crash of the Gipsy, them see if I can find a round engined aeroplane down at the same time. Sadly, the man who would have a glance at the photo and told us died last year. I'fll find the story I wrota about him and stick it up here some time.

May 20th 1942 Still no news of a sighting. on Johnstone's desk today:- The appendix tomorrrow. The wheels turned much slower then than now in the age of the internet.

No idea Siz. He was working with Ray Parer's Pacific Air Transport at the time. Ray had a Junkers W34 with an in line engine. He also had the single engine great thumping lumbering Fokker which had landed up in a swamp. Maybe that engine is the one he's working on. He could have been lending a hand to the blokes in Guinea Airways on one of their big round engines. He certainly was climbing the ladder, aiming for Guinea, via Strvenson's and Carpenters in quick jumps as he got more qualifications. Busy today. I'll look up Wings of Gold later and see if I can sus out when that photo was taken.

May 19th 1942 Tuesday. Reports arrive at Johnstone’s desk in Melbourne. The pilots won't give up till the aircraft is found.

Tin aeroplanes Kaye. Rag, bits of pipe and sticks were rebuilt all the time pre-war in New Guinea. Here's W.T. Gray working on an engine while the wings of the crashed Moth are being rebuilt ... that's one of them on the drums behind him. Fitters and turners were able to gain and engineers licence... I think it was a A license.

Yes I'd heard that. Anyone know her new name and where in Tassie?

Welcome Leonie. Oh to be able to paint like you and Ay Ess. Ask your dad if he knew Muriel Chen and if he knows where she is. I have a book she treasured and I'd like to return it to her. Sixties

May 18th 1942 Monday The Guinea Airways, Ansett and ANA pilots haven't given up as they fly over the area. Most pilots knew each other and none like lost airmen somewhere down there. It is difficult to believe that W.T. could be dead. He’d walked away from three forced landings. I suppose his luck can’t hold out forever, but you just never know. The first emergency, 11 November 1935. The no three con rod broke. Luckily he was within gliding distance of Salamaua beach and the tide was out. The aircraft was a Simmons Spartan. The most disliked aircraft to fly in New Guinea before the war and like all bad pennies it was the longest serving aircraft to fly there. It crashed often and got rebuilt. The main problem it had was double cambered wings, so one spare was required and could be put on any of the four attachment points. The Gipsy Moths needed four spares for a quick repair. The second was a bit more dangerous. He hit an eagle, which snapped the prop. He had to pancake in the treetops and fall the hundred or so feet to the ground. He was not too hurt and was able to high tail it away back to Sunshine before the Kuku kuku’s (pronounced cooka-cooka) could get to him. They would have killed him and taken his head and some fresh meat would be nice for dinner... he wasn’t having any of that! W.Ts flippant captions on the back of the photos like, ‘How to land a Moth’, ‘VH-ULE on Tyak Hill after I’d finished with it’ and ‘Moth VH-ULE ready to be carried to Sunshine, were disapproved of by old Mr. Gray who wrote on them, ‘Eagle smashed propeller’ just to make sure the viewer didn’t think HIS son was a careless or dangerous airman. The third was in a Fox Moth on the way to Streaky Bay. He was able to land and find the problem, repair it and continue. Have a look at just where Streaky Bay is. How would you like to fly there and back in an open cockpit aircraft that did about 83 knots. We have no photos of that episode, but I will post some of his great photos he took in New Guinea later while we wait for the discovery of where they are. It has been pointed out to me that I got one bit of info wrong yesterday... didn't read the article carefully or think about it. WE held Moresby. The Japs came over to bomb and attack our aircraft in forty eight zeros and bombers; it while our side was visiting Rabaul ginving THEM a pasting.

May 17th 1942 Sunday…. Church, no trams in Adelaide. Nineteen days since the Japs bombed Darwin. Everyone is expecting a raid around lunch time to mid afternoon like they have come so far. This week in the Advertiser and Argus :- Coal miners are still on strike … (What about the war effort?) If you are found diddling your petrol ration by driving your work vehicle to and from home ‘you can get six months or a hundred quid’. With the planning of clothes rationing maybe as soon as a week’s time there has been and unprecedented panic buying spree in the city stores. Some stores have had to have only one door open for entry and another at the back of the store to exit. Tickets have been issued to shoppers to keep them in order in other stores. No one has taken any notice of the entreaties to not hoard. One woman complained that she couldn’t buy sox for her boy in a prison camp and the authorities should take this into consideration that ladies wanting to buy clothes for prisoners should get a go. Shock horror… there is a move afoot to allow women to become taxi drivers and girls are joining the signal corps. Are the Yanks sending over their ‘best and fairest’ to Australia to fool us into thinking All Yanks are like them. The uniforms are certainly better fitting and quality than your average Aussie’s issue. An add advises that Hypol emulsion taken daily will enable you to work all day… there’s a big strapping iron worker in front of a furnace in the illustration to prove it. The Japs are blaming the weather for their poor showing in the Coral sea and are telling lies to the readers at home about our casualties … according to German media. Rabaul and Moresby are copping a pasting from our bombers. Look at this! No slap on the wrist back then!

May 16th 1942 Saturday Everyone in Adelaide now has accepted that no one has lived in the crash landing. The big questions are, did they suffer and how come no one can spot the aircraft? Nobby Clark and some pilots have thrashed out where they think the aircraft flew and are submitting the map of their theory to DCA next week.

Remain strong... like those who had to, in Adelaide and elsewhere. They all had questions.

Well! it's official.