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Post by chinapilot on Dec 7, 2020 22:03:58 GMT 12
The fatal accident wasn’t the first time BCPA had a brush with San Francisco.
In 1947 a DC-4 operating the Oakland - Vancouver sector hit trees during the climb.
The turn onto the Oakland Range Station to intercept the northwest leg continued to the right towards high terrain.
Both pilots saw the trees through the clouds and simultaneously ‘pulled back’ - trees grazed the right wing and left stabiliser and the aircraft returned to Oakland.
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Post by chinapilot on Dec 6, 2020 14:15:27 GMT 12
Amazing - he didn’t even serve a complete year in prison.
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Post by chinapilot on Nov 28, 2020 15:27:22 GMT 12
Shows up well on Google Earth - there is/was an airstrip there also.
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Post by chinapilot on Nov 27, 2020 3:54:46 GMT 12
Thanks - excellent movie.
There is a RNZAF wireless operator in the credits - Stuart Dick.
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Post by chinapilot on Nov 26, 2020 17:00:45 GMT 12
22 July
No mention of 1st Lt. Robert Sprenger, USMCR, in the Rabaul POW list.
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Post by chinapilot on Nov 20, 2020 20:54:36 GMT 12
Thanks for that Errol.
Puts the human side on reports of losses in this excellent thread.
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Post by chinapilot on Nov 20, 2020 19:11:28 GMT 12
Doing ok thanks Dave. Hope you are as well.
Still in HK - not with the regulator now but part of the air accident team.
Was going to do some flying this year but a bug got in the way 😀
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Post by chinapilot on Nov 20, 2020 18:41:57 GMT 12
1 July 1944 Aitchison;Mathieson, Walker AF Did not return.
Not listed in the Rabaul POW list.
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Post by chinapilot on Nov 20, 2020 17:58:38 GMT 12
Hi madmax and thomarse - sorry about the tardy reply but have been fairly busy the last few weeks. Hope Dave forgives the thread drift but Peter’s book is available as a kindle download... Link is here; www.amazon.com/Dont-Tell-My-Mother-Fight/dp/0919614752/ref=nodl_Used to catch up with him when I had night stops in Vancouver in the late 1990s.
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Post by chinapilot on Nov 16, 2020 23:11:17 GMT 12
BALPA mentioned the elephant in the room - aviation jobs are just a figment of the imagination now for anyone contemplating pouring cash into a licence.
Yes - some so called senior pilots have remained but if they are in their late 40s/ early 50s it will be a decade or more before they retire.
World wide - about 100,000 experienced type rated pilots out of work and the number is increasing daily and will get worst this Northern hemisphere winter.
Airliners are getting parked - most will never return to service. The airlines themselves are mostly not viable business models and are being kept going by governments propping them up with taxpayers money. There is one or two airlines giving two years leave on half pay but the other 99.9% are saying goodbye to their staff as that’s a luxury that is unsustainable.
Bleak outlook I know but overseas economies won’t be able to prop up airlines for much longer and eventually the NZ bubble will burst as how long can you keep paying people for jobs that don’t even exist anymore.
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Post by chinapilot on Oct 5, 2020 23:25:00 GMT 12
Many thanks for taking the trouble to scan all this from the originals.
It would be great to see some input from other knowledgable members on the pilots especially whoever it was lost at Kavieng.
The excellent narrator probably went on to a career scriptwriting in Hollywood - anyway what ever he did I hope he had a good life.
Dave - if you see this maybe some consideration about making it a ‘sticky’?
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Post by chinapilot on Oct 4, 2020 19:25:29 GMT 12
Suffice to say that instructors like Brian and Bruce were the epitome of CFIs in those days. Hard men but to be honest don’t remember Bruce as a ‘Yeller’ but he expected a high standard which I often failed to achieve...
Membership of aero clubs in those days was mostly people who just wanted to fly for fun as a hobby with a few keen CPL aspirants and I guess strong discipline had to be installed in the club members so that club assets weren’t scattered all over the countryside.
Wonder what they would think of the quasi military schools of today with everyone strutting around in epaulets pretending they are airline pilots already. ( That also has its place as a necessary producer of pilots to meet the demand - until recent events anyway)
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Post by chinapilot on Oct 1, 2020 22:48:18 GMT 12
Sorry, which one Ian? At the back on the left? The one behind the two fingers with a lady just behind his left shoulder.
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Post by chinapilot on Oct 1, 2020 18:50:32 GMT 12
Just wondering if the beaming guy directly behind the up raised fingers is Antoni ‘Tony’ Glowacki...one of the BoB ‘Aces in a Day’ and at that time a very popular inspector with the then CAD.
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Post by chinapilot on Oct 1, 2020 17:32:17 GMT 12
Charles Warren was captured and became one of the few POWs to survive in the Rabaul POW ‘camp’ - most were murdered or died of sickness.
The other known NZ POWs held there;
Frank Keefe
Norman Vickers
‘Died due to disease and neglect’
John McFarlane
‘Fate unknown’
These official terms don’t really sum up the hellhole that would have been that ‘camp’ and the suffering they, along with the others , would have had to endure.
Warren was fortunate that he wasn’t there a few months earlier when a large number were murdered and buried in a mass grave which was discovered in c1970.
Officers were normally flown to Japan and mostly survived - ‘Pappy’ Boyington being the most well known.
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Post by chinapilot on Sept 26, 2020 18:33:14 GMT 12
Thanks for posting Dave - written when ‘reporters’ were reporters...
The US Navy submarine activity is an interesting subject and there are some good accounts about it.
The description of the officer sums up the attitude that prevailed - logs were scrutinised after a sub returned to base and captains that came back appearing not to have been sufficiently ‘aggressive’ were relieved of their command. Results were required and this seemed to be the ethos of the war as a professional business with people suitably motivated and trained.
This was noticeable when I did some research twenty years ago on another aspect of WWII and was able to talk with many ex US servicemen - “ I was trained to kill Japs and I did it to the best of my ability”...
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Post by chinapilot on Sept 18, 2020 14:17:13 GMT 12
Fairly certain Merv Meredith was a teacher at Rongotai College when he was constructing his one?
That is a great movie of CAH - thanks for posting.
Intriguing to see Barry’s head and shoulders above the combing ... I was offered a go in one in the ‘ 60s but was just too tall to fit in it.
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Post by chinapilot on Sept 3, 2020 17:49:27 GMT 12
....white triangle, 10 feet across, was seen in the scrub on a small coastal hill one mile southeast of Kieta strip. A well-worn track led down across a stream to two 30' x 10' tin-roofed lean-tos. The buildings and the Pythagorean symbol were strafed, causing light smoke to rise from the shanties...
Know that “small coastal hill”...unfortunately they didn’t get all the “shanties” as I was living there for a while in the’70s 😀
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Post by chinapilot on Aug 31, 2020 0:20:27 GMT 12
Chinapilot you can have a look at the photo's on the following link: catalog.archives.gov/id/138932372Select load all, and then you will see which thumbprint frame of the microfilm are photo's and which are reports etc. Thanks - great link👍😀
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Post by chinapilot on Aug 30, 2020 0:11:12 GMT 12
Aircraftclocks - ‘strike’ photos are mentioned several times - did any survive with the reports?
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