MONTHLY FEATURES
DECEMBER 2004 NEWSLETTER US DIVISION
Members will have noticed that the US pages carry an earlier date than the main newsletter. This is because the US page is added to the main paper newsletter when it is circulated in the US in arrear of the UK edition, so it is actually published between UK paper editions. So this month we have US pages dated December
Seasons Greetings. Hope you are all enjoying the Holidays. Also happy 100 years of powered flight. I was able to attend the Kitty Hawk celebration on Dec 16th & 17th, and though the second day was rather “damp”, & the Wright Flyer replica didn’t exactly fly, it was a fun event to be a part of. Thought the main newsletter did a nice tribute to the Wright Brothers as well. I was also lucky enough two months ago, after flying five round trips between Dubai & India, to arrange my commercial flight home thru Frankfurt just in time for the big Frankfurt Airline Show. Not only did I make some great purchases & trades, I had a nice visit with several of our European members as well as Chris Slimmer who was about to embark on another marathon airline journey around Europe. Speaking of members, please welcome new member Jim Davidson to the club.
Jim
Davidson,
4664 Highland Blvd., North Vancouver, BC V7R 3A5 CANADA,
Interest:
DH106 Comet.
At this time of year most of our members are up for renewal. So, please check to see if you have a renewal notice enclosed. I was pleased that more North American airlines seem to be issuing cards, although for some of them I had to travel quite some distance to find.
Thanks again to Ben Sutherland providing this and other cards.
THE FIRST IMPERIAL FLYING
BOAT
By Doug
Bastin with material from Daniel Kusrow
Mention of Imperial flying boats evokes images of the Short S.23 Empire boats and their post-war successors with BOAC. The story has been told many times, most recently in the book “Corsairville” which, although centred on the story of the retrieval of “Corsair” from a Congo forced landing also examined the wider history of this most nostalgia inducing form of transport.
However
the first boat that Shorts of Rochester built for Imperial Airways was just as
much state-of-the art, albeit somewhat less elegant.
The Short Calcutta was the first flying boat ordered by Imperial and also
the first metal flying boat to enter commercial service.
Imperial had inherited a few Supermarine Sea Eagles with British Marine
Air Navigation’s Channel Islands services but the Calcutta was intended for
service on the long haul routes that were
Imperial’s main development priority. Features
of this 1927 design were :-
All
duralumin structure (except fabric covered flying and control services and a few
stainless steel item).
Three
Bristol Jupiter (later Armstrong Siddeley Tiger – 840 hp) 540 h.p radial
engines for multi-engine safety.
Fuel
tanks in the upper wing - which allowed passengers to smoke in the 15 seat cabin.
Hot and
cold meal service.
Freight
and mail capacity.
The
target route was the Mediterranean leg of the services to India and Africa. The
first, G-EBVG, flew in Feb 1928 In August BVG landed on the Thames at
Westminster where it was moored for exhibition to MP’s for 3 days. This is the
view in the cover card which carries the Imperial Airways ref IA/C/63. Unlike
most Imperial cards of the time it is not by Raphael Tuck. The name of Barratts
Photo Press Ltd is on the card face and the back style is similar to many cards
issued for Surrey Flying Services. This image was republished in the BBC-Hulton
series of cards in the 1960s. After
some trial services to the Channel Islands and a one week experimental
Liverpool-Belfast service, the Mediterranean service commenced with BVG in April
1929, The Calcutta operated leg of the India route
was Genoa-Rome-Naples-Corfu -Athens-Suda
bay (Crete)-Tobruk-Alexandria. Passengers reached Genoa by AW Argosy from
Croydon to Basle then by sleeper train. A
DH Hercules operated the Egypt-India leg. Two additional Calcuttas were ordered followed by a third to
replace the early loss of the third original G-AADN “City of Rome” lost in
gales off Spezia. The fourth G-AATZ was
named “City of Salonika”
due to operations being re-routede through the Balkans and Greece due to
disputes with Italy. The first Two,
EBVG,H acquired the names City of Alexandria and City of Athens respectively.
AASJ was City of Khartoum. This
latter reflected the extension of Calcutta operations to the Africa route,
specifically the Khartoum-Kisumu sector, opened in 1932.
By mid 1932 the Calcutta fleet had flown 394,000 miles on the
Mediterranean and African services. In 1935 AASJ City of Khartoum crashed
off Alexandria and the surviving
Calcuttas were withdrawn to training duties to raise a new generation of flying
boat captains for the new Empire boats. AATZ now “City of Swanage” surveyed
a number of French water landing sites as part of its homeward trip.
The trainer fleet, based at Hamble was augmented by a converted RAF Short
Rangoon, the military equivalent of the Calcutta built for the RAF.
The
following real photo cards show four boats from the Imperial fleet.
G-EBVH
pre-delivery by photographer E Kelly of Rochester
The
next three cards are from the Daniel Kusrow collection.
G-AASJ
City of Khartoum, retrospective 1940s issue by Real Photographs Ltd
G-EBVG
City of Alexandria at Alexandria. Postcard backed photo, probably by a passenger.
G-AAYZ
City of Salonika at Salonika by a local photographer.
There
remains to be mentioned one more civil Calcutta – shown below.
This was F-AJDB supplied to the French Breguet company.
Another
was supplied to the French Navy. Breguet built another five under licence and
further developed its own variant, for
both the Navy, who named it the Bizerte, and
Air Union, who named their two, Saigon. The
Air Union examples also operated in the Mediterranean, between
Marseilles-Ajaccio and Tunis. The hull of
the Bizerte/Saigon was little changed but the wing, tail and rudder were
redesigned. The three engines were
Gnome-Rhome radials.
Conversely Shorts own development, the Kent (above on a Tuck card for Imperial) had a redesigned fuselage but the wings and tail were little changed in design but extended to accommodate a fourth engine. Three were delivered to Imperial and named Scipio Sylvanus and Satyrus. Later still, two examples of a clumsy landplane variant the Scylla were also delivered to Imperial. One Kent survived to be retired in 1938; Scipio sank after a heavy landing in Crete in 1936 and Sylvanus was destroyed by arson at Brindisi in 1935
URBAN SEAPLANES
Although the flying boat descendents of
the cover view Calcutta are long gone, seaplanes continue to provide service in
remote areas where there is water in plenty. Canada and Alaska in particular
remain centres for such operators. In the
British Columbian city of Vancouver there is an overlap between traditional
seaplane use and a new role as provider of a “different” form of sightseeing for
cities exploiting their waterfronts for tourist purposes. Peter White visited the city recently and came back with these cards,
both from carrier Harbour Air. Currently three
operators run scheduled floatplane services from Vancouver Harbour - Baxter
Aviation, West Coast Air and Harbour Air - mainly providing links with
Vancouver Island. Harbour Air, who also have two or three other bases in
British Columbia, lay claim to being the world's largest floatplane operator.
They
operate Turbo Otters, Beavers and a few assorted Cessnas. Between the three
operators, there are some 200 - 300 daily movements to/from the Harbour where
traffic mixes with helicopters (mainly Helijet) landing/taking off close by,
massive cruise liners coming and going right next to the terminal area, and
assorted yachts, power boats, hovercraft, etc. constantly criss-crossing the
landing/take-off area. The "control tower" for all this is on top of
the skyscraper that appears in the company-issue card shown below. (This adds
another element to the debate among airport collectors as to what aspects of
water-based operations count as airports
– DB)
London
so far lacks an urban seaplane operator, unlike Vancouver, New York and Sydney.
On the face of it London City Airport could provide such a facility being
equipped with two potential water runways alongside the landplane one.
Remember that this issue is going out near April 1st.
There
is nothing new about using seaplanes to give a new angle to city sight-seeing.
The pioneer US carrier Aeromarine, which has been researched by Daniel
Kusrow operated Curtiss Flying Boats in two markets.
Firstly there were winter operations from Miami to the Bahamas and Key
West to Havana, both particularly attractive in the 1920’s when the US was
“dry” under Prohibition but the Bahamas and Cuba
were both “wet” The Bahamas
service was promoted as the “High Ball express”. The second operation was
the operation of summer services from New York to local resorts including
Atalantic City and destinations on Long Island in summer. Later
Cleveland to Detroit was added. The
Florida services were promoted as“air cruises” as well as point-to-point
services. Aeromarine scored a number of
“firsts” for air travel. It had :-
-
the first US international passenger and mail air services
-
- the first in-flight showing of a moving picture
-
- the first ticket office
-
- the first airline baggage label
Conversely, before the installation of radio, the Curtiss boats carried an emergency communication facility in the form of a carrier pigeon in a housing attached to the wing. When Aeromarine ceased operations in 1924 30,000 passengers had been carried. The New York base was at the Colubia Yascht Basin on the Hudson River. Most cards issued featured the Florida operations but this one is of a Curtiss over New York.