Today I want to conclude the three-part series that I started a week or so ago. Planes, of course, are the most expensive means of travel of the three so it stands to reason that my involvement with them will probably be more academic than practical. Nevertheless, it is still an interesting subject so fasten your seat belt and please pay close attention to the following safety announcement. 🙂
As you know, I was born in the first half of the last century. I came into the world just 4 years after the end of WWII in Europe and less than 4 years after the end of the war in the Pacific. Due to our family’s financial situation (and due to the fact that there were TWO of us), buying Christmas and birthday presents was always a challenge for mum and dad. Also due to their well-developed Protestant work ethic, they both believed that presents should be practical as well as fun so, along with some toys each celebration time, we accrued more than the average kid’s collection of books, a situation for which I have always been grateful. It’s only been in the last move that I finally dispensed with the last of the kids books that I was given over the years and some of them are now the property of my grandsons.
The vast majority of the books I was given were non-fiction books rather than novels and this was something that I preferred. I had a thirst for knowledge and devoured these books voraciously, reading them over and over again. By the time I was 10 or so, my room was crammed with books and I read and re-read them often. There was no TV, nothing on the radio that interested me and, as well as playing outside a lot of the time, books were my primary source of entertainment and knowledge. And the majority of books seemed to be books about WWII. Given that it was still only 14 years since it ended, books about the war and the stories that it produced were still hugely popular. I loved the large number of prison camp stories that were being produced, like “The Wooden Horse”, “The Great Escape” and Pat Reid’s classic, “The Colditz Story.” Since some of these stories took some time to be discovered and recorded after the war, so many of them were still relatively unknown.
As well I loved the stories of naval escapades and developed an almost encyclopaedic knowledge of the great naval yarns of WWII. The sinking of the Bismark, the scuttling of the Graf Spee and the destruction of the Tirpitz as well as tales of the Cockleshell Heroes and events closer to home like the midget submarine attack on Sydney Harbour.
But it was the WWII stories that involved flying that captured my imagination the most. As my dad had taught my brother and I how to identify all the cars we saw on the road, so he taught us what each of the planes that we saw flying overhead were. I guess that might have had something to do with the fact that, during the war, civilians were encouraged to know and identify all the planes flying overhead and to know if they were friend or foe. Dad passed on this valuable knowledge to his boys who proved to be avid students of the subject. While staying at Tanilba, on Port Stephens when I was 5 we refined the craft by having a ready source of planes from the nearby Williamtown Air Force base nearby which flew over the house all the time. Old WWII Hudson bombers were converted to troop transports and parachute drills took place almost every day.
But it wasn’t just that, it seemed that the whole of my life was conspiring to feed my interest in planes. I well remember my Kindergarten teacher at East Hills Public School taking the whole class out into the playground so that they could see the amazing sight of the Comet IV airliner, the first commercial jet flight into Australia, flying overhead on its final approach to Mascot. Later that same teacher did the same thing when the Avro Vulcan bomber flew over (that must have been a very early flight out of Britain because it was taken into service by the RAF in 1956)
Commercial airliners were all propeller driven at that time and the switch to turbo prop engines took place during the late 1950’s. When we returned from Adelaide in 1959, we flew, even though it was hideously expensive. The doctors advised it as they didn’t think dad would survive a 1000 mile road trip to Sydney just after having suffered a massive coronary. The plane was a Douglas DC6B and it was the first time that I had flown, I was 10.
It was a handsome plane but we were very concerned about the vibration. Dad did survive the journey and we settled in Caringbah, a plane-spotter’s delight, right on the flight path for Kingsford Smith airport. Here we refined our plane identification skills and watched the transition to new technology. The Lockheed Electra, the Viscount and the Super Viscount, all came along at that time and short haul trips were taken care of by a fleet of Fokker Friendships. And it was while here that my passion for aviation and WWII aviation exploded. The school library was crammed with books about WWII and I read and re-read, “Reach for the Sky”, “The Dambusters” and the story of the de Haviland Mosquito, “The Wooden Wonder.” Nearly ever WWII “ace” published a biography after the war so you could read the personal stories of Johnny Johnson and the heroes of the Battle of Britain. This led to a retrospective look at WWI and the “aces” that started it all, McCubbin, Ball, Mannock, von Richthofen and others.
Plastic construction kits, mostly made by Airfix, were cheap and plentiful so it wasn’t long before our bedroom looked like an airport with every surface crammed with WWII aircraft models with still more of them hanging from the ceiling, suspended on cotton. I should add that this era also saw the phasing out of the beautiful planes and the phasing in of utilitarian planes, planes that were devised and built under the direction of accountants rather than engineers. And so it was that the achingly beautiful Constellation and Super Constellation (seen at the top of the page) flew often over our house as the era of turbo-prop took over from piston. I am so lucky to live just a few kilometres away from our regional airfield which is the home of HARS (Historic Aircraft Restoration Society) and the home of the only Constellation still flying anywhere in the world. “Connie” (above) flies over my house regularly, how lucky am I?
There WAS a family tie to WWII aircraft as well as my uncle Pete (he of the train excursions fame) had worked in the Spares division of Hawker de Havilland at Bankstown aerodrome during the war and helped keep the flow of vital parts flowing for the “Mozzies” that were doing sterling duty for the RAAF in the Pacific War.
While living at Caringbah I got to fly again, in a Cessna that belonged to a friend. Somewhat incautiously he offered to take Paul and I for a joy flight that ended up being out over the Shire, flying quite low over our house where we saw mum and dad standing in the front yard waving tea towels at us, then over the ocean at Cronulla then a loop back to Bankstown. That sure was a buzz.
And that, apart from a few commercial flights (Sydney to Melbourne, Sydney to Brisbane, Sydney to Coolangatta, Sydney to Cebu in the Philippines (twice) and Sydney to Norfolk Island, pretty much sums up my flying experiences. Of course we flew to America to visit the family in 2015 and, while there, I flew from San Diego to San Francisco and also to Dallas on side trips.
But there is one more which still amazes me. Not long after we moved back to Wollongong to live, early 2004, we saw an advertisement for a joy flight being arranged by the Kiama Rotary Club in support of a cancer research fundraiser. For $400 they were offering a bus trip to Mascot and flight of two hours in a chartered 747, flying over Sydney and the southern highlands. It seemed too good to be true, but it wasn’t, so, being a fair bit more flush with cash than what we are now, we paid our money and enjoyed a wonderful experience. The plane had CAA permission to fly considerably lower than a plane its size would have normally been allowed and the views out of the windows were stunning. Sadly, though I took dozens of photos, I was still taking photos on film at that stage and the resultant prints are buried in the archive somewhere. One day I will find and scan them, so annoying.
Flying for long periods of time (even short periods) is problematical for me since the accident so I don’t go out of my way to take a plane these days. And some of my flying experiences haven’t been exactly stellar (though it’s fair to say that that hasn’t been the fault of the planes – See “Come fly with me” from a few years ago.) Having said that, I love flying. I love the awesome rush of acceleration when the pilot feeds in the power on take-off, I love the way it saves so much time, but most of all, I love pondering how this massive, heavy metal carton can scream through the sky at amazing speeds. It blows my mind every time I fly and I am sure that it always will.