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Post by Peter Lewis on Mar 25, 2007 22:15:31 GMT 12
Following up on the thread on ZK-AMA 'Aotearoa', we can now look at her low-profile sister ZK-AMC 'Awarua' The original intention was that TEAL had three Empire boats c/n S.884 ZK-AMA 'Captain Cook' c/n S.885 ZK-AMB 'Canterbury' c/n S.886 ZK-AMC 'Cumberland' S.886 was launched as G-AFDA 'Awarua'. Renamed 'Aotearoa', she became ZK-AMA S.885 became G-AFCZ 'Australia' and never reached New Zealand, serving with Imperial Airways and BOAC until destroyed by fire off Bathurst, West Africa, 14th September 1942 S.884 was launched as G-AFCY 'Ao-Tea-Roa' and was first flown 18th April 1939. The name drew strong protests, and this aircraft was re-registered ZK-AMC and renamed 'Awarua' After reverting briefly to G-AFCY, she was finally delivered to TEAL on 3rd April 1940. The Union Jack and ID stripes seen in the photos were already painted on at the time of delivery. There seem to be a lot fewer photographs of AMC around compared to those of AMA, reinforcing its lower profile status. The most often seen one is of AMC on takeoff at Auckland Here she is, moored in the Auckland harbour. The wartime ID colours can be clearly seen Another pic of AMC moored, with sister AMA in the background AMC at the floating dock at Mechanics Bay. The wartime markings have now been removed. The Short boat in the background appears to be one of the four Sunderland III transport aircraft that arrived for RNZAF service in December 1944. Three of these aircraft served with NAC on their island routes from 1947 AMC completed its final trans-tasman flight into Auckland on 12th June 1947. Sold by tender ex-Hobsonville in October 1947, the aircraft was scrapped soon after that time. If you have any other information or pics of AMC, I'd be glad to see them here.
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Post by Dave Homewood on Mar 27, 2007 0:29:31 GMT 12
Those are really interesting photos Peter. You so rarely see the aircraft with the wartime markings. Are these all from the same photographer?
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Post by Peter Lewis on Mar 27, 2007 9:48:53 GMT 12
The first one is definitely Leo White, and I suspect the third and fourth ones are also. The original print of the second one shows pixelation, so I would deduce that it is from a printed image in a magazine or a book - possibly the Weekly News?
What really strikes me looking at the original high-resolution full size images of these flying boats during take-off is the impression of the power and strength of the machines. I know that something like a modern 737 is actually heavier and vastly more powerful than a 1940s boat, but concrete and seal do not churn up and move around like seawater. They certainly created a real malestrom during this phase of the flight.
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Post by Dave Homewood on Mar 27, 2007 10:29:07 GMT 12
That's very true. I was thinking along the same lines looking at one of your recent shots of AMA on the other thread where there's a side on shot of it taking off, and showering spray everywhere.
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Post by marygarden on Apr 6, 2007 20:10:33 GMT 12
Howdy there! Haven't checked this message board for a while. As Dave would know, my father, Oscar Garden, made the delivery flight of the Awarua and also brought over the first fare-paying passenger (Ann Harrison) whose fiance was waiting for her in Auckland. From memory they were married the day after arrival. I've got loads of info re the Awarua and my father's experiences on them. After John Burgess left, he became Chief Pilot and Operations Manager of TEAL and was virtually the BOSS of the fledging airline during the war years. I'm in Auckland at the moment for 3 weeks, but when I get home will post some interesting extracts from interviews. Some of his experiences include the search for the German Raider (Rangitane was it?), and he was sent out to search for it an hour after arriving back from Sydney (a 12 hour flight). Amazing endurance these early pilots had. Also the time a passenger refused to put out his cigar during a particularly rocky crossing of the Tasman, and my father was reluctant to leave the controls. In the end he whipped the fire extinguisher off the wall and marched down and confronted the man with it! (Only cigarettes were allowed to be smoked on board for some reason.) Another occasion his seat was hit by lightning and the whole back of his head/hair was singed! However, on the whole my father grew to hate flying the boats (in spite of the romanticism) and always maintained that they were not designed to fly over a long stretch like the Tasman Sea. During the initial years he felt they were being used as guinea pigs and they had plenty of 'close shaves'. It was also very boring and in the early flights up to 13 hours flight. From the look of his log books he was making 3 trips (6 in total) a week at one stage. I've also got quite a few photos, 1,3,4 above are also in my collection and are White Aviation photos. The first photo I've got marked on the back 'coming in to land at Mechanics Bay'. My father was flying it when this photo was taken. As well, I've got info re the Australia (had another name initially, Clare). It was my father's job to fly it back to England after it had run into a sandbank at Basra (I think). Anyway apologies for this scattered contribution, will write more when I get back to Australia! And also have no idea how to attach photos on this message board. Mary Garden
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Post by marygarden on Apr 6, 2007 20:14:10 GMT 12
Me again, Who is Peter Lewis? I see these photos are part of his collection.
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Post by flyjoe180 on Apr 6, 2007 20:56:04 GMT 12
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Post by marygarden on Apr 7, 2007 7:27:37 GMT 12
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Post by marygarden on Apr 7, 2007 7:31:56 GMT 12
Thanks for that. I thought I had some pics on a CD I brought over with me, but I don't. Will wait until I get home, then try posting photos.
The German Raider I mentioned was actually the Orion, which had sunk the Rangitane. I'll paste in the transcript from an interview. Hope it's not too long!
Extracted from interview by Eric Tucker, a retired senior British Airways operations officer, with my father, Captain Oscar Garden (1990).
“ … the air force – they had no long-range aircraft of any sort – they hadn’t much of anything, the Wellington bombers that they were supposed to get they arranged to leave in England, with 75 Squadron, attached to the Royal Air Forcer – did some wonderful work too. So they were literally left with practically nothing out here, and, they got the idea of using us (flying boats Awarua and Aotereoa) as a standby for any long distance flights and they used us for taking any of the Defence people up into the Pacific …
I was made a Royal New Zealand Lieutenant in the air force for use in reconnaissance work. We didn’t make a great many flights. I had about three or four I think until one day I arrived back from Sydney – oh it was fairly early, about 1 or 2 o’clock, I think, we had a fast trip, and as soon as I landed they were rushing around like scalded cats and said ‘You’re off on a reconnaissance flight as soon as we get you refuelled and armed up’. They used to stick an old Lewis gun where the astrodome used to go and they had two 500-lb bombs slung under each wing, and they had one or two blokes from Hobson air force sent down to operate these things. I don’t know if these blokes had even seen a Lewis gun but I was afraid they might shoot the tail off because there wasn’t even anything for them to stand on to get up to the blessed Lewis gun. I still never figured out how we were supposed to use the bombs because all they had was two trip wires inside the flight deck that you were supposed to pull when the pilot told them to. Well I’d never done any airforce training. It was a bit like going back to aero club days when you dropped flour bombs on people and tried to hit.
Anyway, this trip was in connection with the sinking of the Rangitane. It’d only just left Wellington for Lyttleton, I forget now, on her way through the Panama and the German raider, the Orion, met up with it and sunk it. Took all the passengers and crew off ... I got back, Burgess had already left, he’d been in dock while I was on this return flight, and they’d chosen two directions, one to go south-east and the one to go northeast, from Auckland, sort of estimating where the raider might have gone to and take a sweep. And he’d gone off on the southeast leg and I was nominated to do the northeast leg.
Anyway, I just had time for a cup of tea and a sandwich while they were refuelling and took off with full tanks and these odd bods from the air force on, and we had sealed orders. I can’t remember who the first officer was, I think it was a chap who was killed afterwards with Safe-Air going across to Blenheim, I’m pretty sure it was him, anyway we opened these sealed orders and it gave you the directions and it said: ‘To work out the intercept basing the speed of the raider as 10 knots an hour’, and I said to this man: ‘You’ve been in the airforce and you’ve read a bit about these things, don’t you think 10’s a bit slow for a raider, in those days, that’s like pre-war stuff? I’d have thought more like 15.’ And he agreed with me, he couldn’t believe it, he said ‘it’s crazy, no raider’s going to leave the scene of a takeover at 10 knots an hour if he can do a bit more, in fact he might do more than 15’. We scrubbed this against all the orders, rules and regs and made our own rules and worked out a course of 15. And actually, it turned out, that we went so close to that dammed raider, though being on this course, we weren’t supposed to be on that, we must have almost seen him. The report that came out after the war from the crew of the raider – they were all standing by with the guns they had, they had a Dorneir float plane equipped with guns, ready to launch if we broke radio silence having seen them or if we had seen them, if they thought we were going to report them. They were holding their breath there and due to the almost dark; it was fading light, and a thick haze that we must have just missed seeing them. They were dark, low on the horizon, and with these conditions, we were in and out of a bit of low cloud and we missed them, but we must have passed them – oh – not even a mile away, you know, on this intercept and the way it turned out from what we heard, perhaps it was damned good thing because if we had seen them – there was nothing in cooee that could have done anything. The Achilles was 500 miles away, you see, and with dark coming on we would have been out of fuel in a few hours, we couldn’t have shadowed them for long. And you can bet your life if they knew they had been spotted they would’ve taken off on another tack and they would have gone further and further away and no one could have done a damned thing anyway. As it happened they did a wide circle up north round the Pacific and landed all the passengers and the crew they didn’t want, perhaps elderly ones, or sick ones, on an island and after they said, well we radio a message when we’re well away from here to tell them what we’ve done and somebody can come and collect you, which they did …
Anyway, they had this whole commission of inquiry and that’s when it came out also about – they were so surprised, the crew of the raider – to even hear an aeroplane, you see, they left before the war and we weren’t put here, all the information was that there was nothing in NZ that had this long range. They couldn’t believe it. One of them thought it was a Wellesley bomber that had been sent out. That was by the way. But that’s how we really knew how close we were to it. In fact, one of the passengers was a close friend of my sister’s and I met her and she said they were on board holding their breath – they heard us, you see, coming – and waiting for something to happen because the pilot was in the blessed floatplane ready to take off. I thought, well I wouldn’t have had two chances in hell if he’d got in my tail.
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Post by marygarden on Apr 7, 2007 7:46:15 GMT 12
Oh, here's some more extracts from bits and pieces I'm collecting from various interviews and articles etc. My father flew the flying boats for TEAL from 1940 to 1947, but before that he flew flying boats for Imperial Airways, mostly the Horseshoe Route (I think it was called) down through the Middle East and Africa. His main reason for resigning from TEAL was the decision of the NZ government (under pressure from the British Government) to bring in more flying boats after the war instead of the more efficient DC4s (which had actually been ordered and which is what all the pilots wanted). There were other reasons of course.
“In the long run we had a lot of trouble with them—ignition trouble, oil cooler trouble – they couldn’t cope with some of the temperatures we struck there, especially at the Australian end in summer, and mostly ignition trouble, and in fact the first few years we had a lot of headaches and some pretty good frights when the engine slows down across the Tasman. This was a kind of guinea pig stuff. It took over three years to get the bugs out and the worst part of all, especially on this over-water job, for which this kind of boat was not really originally designed, was that we couldn’t turn off the propellers. So when we had to shut an engine down, halfway across the Tasman, it wasn’t a bit funny, you know, with the load we were carrying. We had very little margin. In fact, once or twice I gave up the ghost, but we were lucky enough, got out of it.”
The average for both east and west crossings was 8 hours and 45 minutes. But the shortest flight was 5 hours 50. “We kept chipping it off, we got more used to conditions and perhaps striking westerly winds. I was a great one for getting above the weather if I could and catching all the tail winds. And I also had the longest flight – that was a real horror trip, 12 hours 8 minutes, because there wasn’t much petrol left.
When we started some of the conditions were a long way from what they are today. I remember there was no radio operating from Norfolk Island to get a cross radio check, and Lord Howe wasn’t up to scratch. In fact the radio operators were good, they were pin pointers, but if you were 400 miles south of Norfolk they couldn’t pinpoint you to within a hundred miles to be sure …the weather was a big factor, the worst part was these machines – you couldn’t get up above the weather if you were heading into a westerly wind. We didn’t have the range. Nine times out of ten we used to strike weather trouble about 300 miles from the Australian coast, sometimes it almost looked like line squall stuff. I’ve had the daylights frightened out of me. Get down below them and you’d find yourself in amongst some waterspouts, and all sorts of capers. And I remember one trip I was on, I told the steward to tell the passengers ‘Tell them to have a look down below at the white caps on the water and we were going like a bat out of hell, perhaps 200 miles an hour at 10,000 feet, and you’d look down, and there was a wind just about as strong going the other way on the surface. You just couldn’t believe it.
Another thing I remember the heating services were a long long way from being perfect, half the time, when you wanted them in winter the damned thing didn’t work. I know the crews didn’t get much, if there was any heat going the passenger compartments had first call on them, and, me, liking to get out of the weather, and give passengers a smooth trip if I could, maybe 10,000 feet or 12,000, but it used to get pretty damned cold, when you’d been up there a few hours. We used to leave at four o’clock in the morning from Sydney, in the dark. I can remember lots of cases where I’ve said to the steward ‘Listen, you’d better go and do the usual with the passengers,’ and that was to go down and tell them that we’re flying in very comfortable conditions, you know, smooth air, at 10 or 12,000 feet or whatever it was, but it’s getting cold. ‘If we go down to get warm to 2 or 3 thousand feet you’re going to have a pretty rough trip. Which would you prefer?’ Will we stay where we are and be a bit cold or do you want to go down? Always, of course, they’d say ‘Stay up’, you see. They used to laugh at me but after about 1943 they got the heating problems straightened out, didn’t have to bother. Another thing I can remember, it used to be a real pain in the neck, every passenger in the early days of the Tasman, they had a signed certificate to say they’d flown the Tasman, and the poor old captain had to sign every one of these blessed tickets. I signed thousands of them. And there must be a lot of them around, you know, souvenirs.
I remember, one of my early trips in the first year – I was going to Sydney and had aboard three chiefs of Defence – the Navy, Army and Air Force – and we got near this awful frontal condition off Sydney and I thought ‘Oh, I’ll give these blokes a fright, I’ll see if I can carve my way through it at about 10,000 feet,’ and there were great huge cumulus clouds – they must have been up to about 40 by the look of them, and I got inside this – it was like going into a great big cabin, a cave. Ooh ...oh boy oh boy! Lightning started, sheet lightning, and then we struck hail and these blokes were up front, you see, I got them up to have a look and I think they were getting lighter by the minute. So, actually, I was getting lighter too, so I turned tail and went down, got right down near the water and we got just about as bad a fright then. That’s when we got real line squall effects stuff. And I thought afterwards, well how damn silly, the three chiefs of the defence forces, the whole lot could have been bumped off in one crack.”
The flight were daytime flights and in the beginning left at 4am, but a few years later when Dad became Chief Pilot, he talked the “the powers-that-be” into leaving at 6 am. During winter they would often strike this “awful dirty weather” usually two or three hours out of Sydney, which in daylight was a bit more comfortable, because “in the dark, boy, we had some rough trips”.
Lightning strikes when the flying boats flew into thunderstorms were another spectacular accompaniment to some flights. The loud explosion and blinding flash of a strike were frightening but usually did no great harm. The metal hull enclosing the crew and passengers acted as a Faraday Cage, protecting them from any ill effects. But when lightning threatened it was essential to earth everything and wind in the 200-ft-long trailing aerial or the consequences could be unpleasant, as Oscar Garden remembers:
“We were about 400 miles from Sydney and struck one of those pretty frightening fronts they get there sometimes, with lightning flashes everywhere. So I said to the radio operator, Doug Reid, behind me, ‘You’d better earth everything, Doug.’ I automatically assumed he would wind in the aerial. The next thing, we got into this cloud mass, there was an almighty flash and we were struck by lightning all right. I said to Doug, ‘Did you earth the aerial?’ He said, ‘No, I didn’t wind the aerial in’. I said, ‘You do it automatically!’ He said, ‘I didn’t know’! It was a new one on him. The lightning went up the back of my seat and burnt all the hair off the back of my head. The first officer, Chris Griffiths doused ‘the boss’ with a fire extinguisher.) The back of the seat itself was scorched and, boy, Doug Reid made sure next time he was near lightning he had the aerial in. We got to Sydney all right, but it took a few weeks for my hair to grow …”
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Post by marygarden on Apr 7, 2007 8:28:13 GMT 12
Whoops! I should have been a bit slower, and did a bit of editing befores ending off my two previous posts. There's a few typos and errors. The 4am is wrong; it would have been later and my father talked them into leaving earlier. I also know that my father was a bit 'loose' with the truth (for the sake of a good story!), so if there are any blatant errors in what he's saying I'd really appreciate someone letting me know.
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Post by marygarden on Apr 7, 2007 10:44:54 GMT 12
Let's see if I managed to post this image correctly. It is the arrival sheet of the Awarua, April 1940 filled out by my father (Oscar Garden) with the same pic as posted earlier. He left Hythe with ZK-AMC on the March 15 1940 and as well as refuelling stops every 800-965km, there were 10 night stops at Marseilles, Brindisi, Haifa, Basra, Karachi, Calcutta, Singapore, Darwin, Brisbane arriving in Sydney on March 28. Due to the funeral of New Zealand’s Prime Minister Savage the 1931km flight across the Tasman Sea was delayed a few days until April 3. With Awarua’s arrival, TEAL could now be formally established. On 26 April 1940, it was registered in Wellington as a limited liability company jointly owned between the New Zealand Government (20%), Union Airways NZ (19%), BOAC (38%) and Qantas Empire Airways (23%). The deputy Chairman A.E. Rudder regarded a company run by three other airlines on behalf of three governments as an administrative nightmare. Note that there are 1000s of White photos at GeoSmart Limited. Address: 34 William Pickering Dve Albany Auckland. Also some at the Walsh Memorial library near MOTAT.
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Post by hairy on Apr 16, 2007 9:47:45 GMT 12
Note that there are 1000s of White photos at GeoSmart Limited. Address: 34 William Pickering Dve Albany Auckland. Also some at the Walsh Memorial library near MOTAT. The Leo White collection (1,000,000+ negatives and glass plates) has recently been sold by GeoSmart to the National Library of NZ it is currently in the process of being shipped to them so it may be awhile before it is accesable again. A collection I purchased has dozens of shots of TEAL flying boats, including some tear inducing shots of ZK-AMC being cut up on the mud flats.
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Post by Peter Lewis on Apr 17, 2007 23:25:29 GMT 12
Like this, you mean?
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Post by flyjoe180 on Apr 19, 2007 8:43:27 GMT 12
No photo there Peter...
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Post by Peter Lewis on Apr 19, 2007 12:22:22 GMT 12
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Post by stu on May 23, 2007 11:25:34 GMT 12
I was clearing out old files on the computer and discovered this among the aircraft I'd downloaded for FS2004. Interesting that even though ZK-AMC was the lower profile aircraft, it ended up being the one that turned up as a download. Timeslip "period photo" courtesy of Photoshop and more Photoshop tweaking ..... Cheers, Stu.
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Post by Dave Homewood on May 23, 2007 12:02:53 GMT 12
Lovely!
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Post by flyjoe180 on May 23, 2007 14:25:23 GMT 12
Yeah those are great!
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Post by stu on May 23, 2007 20:44:45 GMT 12
Thanks.
One day I'll have to learn how to take real photos ;D
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