Taking to the Skies

by Jim Eames

  Crowley tells of a similar experience when an Australian army officer chartered him to drop food and water to an army unit on top of a mountain at Mambare, near Popondetta. Since any water container, no matter how it was packaged, would be expected to shatter on impact, everything had been packed in sandbags. When one of the sandbags snagged on the undercarriage leg Crowley said: ‘Hold on, I’ll circle a bit and we’ll think about what we do next.’

  In the middle of a climbing turn to gain height, he looked around to see the army man sitting out on the wheel of the Cessna trying to slit open the bag with a pocket knife.

  In addition to Kiantiba, airstrips at Kabwum and Pindiu in the Morobe District were also places which called for individual procedures. To handle Kabwum, just over 4000 feet at the far end of a valley on the northern slopes of the Finisterres, Crowley would instruct his trainee to fly past the entrance to the valley at around 3800 feet and once abeam the strip ask how high above the strip he thought they were. Invariably the trainee would estimate they were above the strip only to be given the news that they were actually 400 feet below the runway threshold.

  At Kabwum, as at Kiantiba, a chunk of rock would play a part, although this time in a more positive role. Operating out of Wasu, on the coast north of Lae, where much of the freight for places like Kabwum would be shipped by sea, the technique was to climb to an altitude of 4800 feet, the level of a large rock jutting from the mountainside on the northern side of the approach to the valley. Since trying to judge your height on approach above the sloping Kabwum Valley was extremely difficult, passing that rock with your wingtip exactly level with it meant you were 400 feet above Kabwum’s runway threshold.

  Even then care had to be exercised as strong headwinds could create perilous downdrafts near the end of the strip. Once on approach, however, you were committed to land as rising ground at the other end of the field meant a ‘go around’ was out of the question. The instant the wheels touched the grass full power was needed to reach the top of the airstrip. There, once again, the aircraft was turned sideways to prevent it from sliding back down the slope. Take-off was another character-building adventure for the uninitiated as when full power was applied you were committed to continue due to the steep downhill gradient.

  While a rock was important at Kabwum, at Pindiu, 56 kilometres east-north-east of Lae, it was banana trees. At over 3000 feet of altitude, Pindiu’s strip was short with a rise in the middle and, as usual, cut into the mountainside. Again, due to rising ground beyond, a missed approach was not an option. To ensure you were at the right height on approach you needed to pass level with a small banana plantation on the side of the valley’s ridgeline about 731 metres from the end of the strip.

  But at least later pilots like Wiltshire had the advantage of Crowley’s experience. In his very early days of flying to such places Crowley had to learn for himself. One method he adopted was, once he’d managed his first successful landing on the strip, to climb away and memorise any significant landmark and its height above the airstrip he had just left, thus providing him with a point-of-height reference he could use in the future. What that first landing must have felt like hardly bears thinking about.

  By the mid-1960s Crowley Airways had expanded beyond fixed-wing aircraft and had helicopters in its fleet, but problems were on the horizon. When TAA and Ansett took over from Qantas in the early 1960s and both launched their own small aircraft operations, Crowley was convinced that they, along with DCA, were trying to run him and other smaller charter operators out of business. Along with increasing demands for paperwork and still more rules and regulations, came other often bizarre, and costly, requirements. Since starting his venture, Crowley had operated out of an old Second World War hangar at one end of the Lae airfield. When a Royal Visit was due to pass through Lae, local authorities declared it too much of an eyesore for the Royal Flight to taxi past and forced him to pull it down—at his own expense.

  In 1961 Crowley branched out into a charter service in the Solomon Islands which would become Megapode Airways and, eventually, today’s government-owned Solomon Islands Airlines, but by the early 1970s he’d come to realise that his style of aviation was no longer worth the time involved in responding to the prodigious paperwork officialdom was demanding and he sold out and retired, first to the Gold Coast where he owned a flying school and became a Cessna distributor. In later years he moved to the family property near Junee.

  Until shortly before his death aged 93 in 2012, he still worked the tractor on the farm and kept a Cessna in the shed.

  ‘I’ve been too busy to renew my licence,’ he says, with a mischievous grin.

  Crowley himself would be the first to admit that he has been only part of the story of flying in New Guinea in those early days, although the Papua New Guinea government obviously considered his part significant enough to appoint him an Officer of the Order of the Logohu, the equivalent of the OBE, in the 2006 Queen’s Birthday honours.

  His contribution to aviation in the Solomon Islands was also recognised in 2012 when Solomon Airlines, the successor to Megapode Airways, invited Crowley and his family to the 50th anniversary of the founding of the original airline. Crowley took a break from his tractor and rounding up the sheep to attend.

  Turn the pages of a thousand pilot log books in Australia and behind the brevity of the Papua New Guinea entries you will find unique flying experiences often unmatched anywhere else in the world. Bobby Gibbes, who founded Gibbes Sepik Airways, found himself battling the same difficult flying conditions and bureaucratic roadblocks as Crowley, although the former highly decorated fighter ace was never reluctant to go over the heads of local PNG officialdom.

  Gibbes had decided that the Norseman high-wing monoplane would be ideal for charter work in New Guinea and was a far better all-round performer than the cargo-limited de Havilland Dragons and Fox Moth, then operating throughout the country. But when he applied to DCA to introduce the aircraft they knocked him back, so Gibbes took his case to his former RAAF compatriot, Air Marshall Sir Richard Williams, fortuitously now Director General of Civil Aviation, and got his way. It didn’t win Gibbes any friends in DCA, but the Norseman proved an ideal aircraft for New Guinea operations.

  Gibbes and his pilots provided invaluable support for government patrols and outstations and faced the same challenges with weather and terrain as Crowley’s people. Air drops were often a daily requirement and although there appear to be no recorded incidents of anyone standing outside the cabin on the wheel of a Gibbes aircraft, some of their experiences were no less spectacular.

  One of Gibbes’ pilots, Canadian-born Ken Davenport, arrived in Australia in the mid-1950s looking for a job but found nothing on offer with any of the airlines. Someone suggested he try in Papua New Guinea.

  ‘Where’s that?’ asked Davenport.

  He soon found out after Gibbes gave him a job flying Junkers JU-52s and Norsemans. Davenport vividly recalls one charter requiring the delivery of a 226-kilo roller into Simbai in the Western Highlands where the Administration was building an airstrip. Davenport remembers the three-engine JU-52 as a good aircraft for airdrops as it allowed you to fly slow at 65 knots over the drop area, certainly an advantage when trying to find a small clearing in the jungle.

  Pinpointing the area that morning Davenport slipped down the valley, made the drop and was on his way home when the leader of the airstrip construction team on the ground called to ask when they were arriving.

  ‘We’ve been. It’s already there,’ said Davenport.

  Unfortunately they’d dropped it in the wrong valley.

  ‘Knowing that sort of country, it’s probably still there,’ says Davenport with a grin.

  Like Crowley was to Wiltshire, Davenport had a valuable mentor in Peter Manser, another of Gibbes’ more experienced pilots, who helped him with the essentials for staying alive in the New Guinea aviation environment. When Davenport needed to be checked out for flying into Green River, a difficult airstrip in th
e mountains west of Wewak, Manser said to follow him in with the second aircraft.

  ‘Before we set out he gave me some strict instructions. If it got too tough, I was to turn back immediately.’

  As they flew on the visual conditions became worse but Davenport stuck close to Manser’s aircraft as he weaved in and out of the cloud formations. Finally he watched as Manser sideslipped down through a hole in the clouds and disappeared. Davenport, his nerves tingling, had no option but to follow him down. And sure enough, there was Green River. After they landed Manser took Davenport to task: ‘I thought I told you to turn back if it got worse.’

  ‘I would have, but didn’t know where “back” was,’ replied a relieved Davenport.

  After two years dodging hills in the Territory, Davenport joined Qantas where he stayed for 36 years, finally becoming the airline’s director of flight operations and chief pilot. Peter Manser would have a long career in Papua New Guinea, later as a captain with Ansett-Mandated Airlines.

  Numerous other Qantas captains won their aviation spurs in Papua New Guinea. Qantas veteran, Alan Terrell, gained his command experience there in the 1950s flying Qantas Catalinas and a de Havilland Beaver floatplane. Operating flying boats might have been far removed from the mountainous, short-strip environment in which other light aircraft operated, but the dangers were still there, just of a different variety.

  Terrell’s early work on the single-engine Beaver floatplane was largely in support of search operations by oil companies drilling in the Papuan Delta, an area renowned for poor flying weather in the wet season. One of his tasks was to fly personnel and supplies to an oil-survey station at Omati, located about 24 kilometres upriver from the Gulf. All the rivers in that part of the Gulf are covered in mangrove swamps, which could grow to a height of a hundred feet on either side, and since cloud usually didn’t get down as far as the river in the wet season but settled down to the tops of the trees, the technique was to enter from the river mouth, get below the cloud level and fly a few feet above the water.

  Provided you concentrated hard and kept your wits about you, the technique didn’t present much of a problem until one morning when Terrell rounded a bend in the river and his windscreen suddenly filled with a large coastal ship steaming downstream straight at him. With the possibility of cloud-covered hills on either side he had no option but to wrench the Beaver into a steep climb and fly back to the coast, wait for the vessel to exit the river and start the process over again.

  By late in 1956 Terrell had graduated to first officer on Catalinas Qantas and was operating out of Port Moresby to coastal settlements and the lake systems in Papua New Guinea’s interior. With their long range and versatility, the Catalinas fulfilled a wide range of aviation tasks in the territory, often including search and rescue.

  Early in October 1956 round-the-world yachtsman, Danny Weil was towed into Port Moresby’s Fairfax Harbour after his 12-metre yacht, Yasma, was damaged in a storm. Weil, born in England but living in the United States, was an experienced sailor who had volunteered to undertake the trip on behalf of ham radio operators with the aim of encouraging the establishment of ham radio stations on remote islands to join the thousands of other ham operators as part of a world network.

  With repairs completed Weil was due to leave Port Moresby on 24 October when Terrell and Qantas captain, Phil Oakley, bumped into him at the Papua Club and asked him about his sailing plans. Weil said his next stage would be from Port Moresby across the Papuan Gulf to Daru, approximately 240 nautical miles to the west.

  When Terrell asked him what route he was taking Weil replied: ‘Straight across.’

  Oakley, who had flown his Catalina over the Gulf numerous times, offered: ‘Don’t forget, there are various reefs right in the middle of that area. If you’re sailing a direct track you’ll run right onto them.’

  ‘Don’t worry. I’ll never go on a reef,’ was Weil’s supremely confident reply.

  Early on the morning of 25 October Weil had done just that and was sending out mayday signals for assistance. Oakley and Terrell took off before first light that morning and found the Yasma high and dry on Portlock Reefs, in the middle of the Gulf, its hull holed but otherwise appearing in reasonable shape. Advised that a Lincoln bomber from the RAAF’s 10 Squadron at Townsville was on its way and would drop a dinghy, the two pilots circled over the Yasma for a time but, running low on fuel, returned to Port Moresby.

  Weil subsequently managed to retrieve the dinghy dropped by the Lincoln but soon after Oakley and Terrell had landed back at Moresby, radio transmissions from the Yasma became increasingly hysterical. The sea was rising and Weil had taken to the dinghy. Since both men had exceeded their flying hours, another Qantas captain, Marsh Burgess, would take a Catalina out to see what could be done. Terrell volunteered to go along as a passenger to see if he could help. He was about to experience a flying lesson, Papua New Guinea style.

  An hour and a half later they were over the reef once more, but it was now completely submerged and there was no sign of the Yasma. Danny Weil was in the dinghy and despite throwing out a sea anchor, was being blown rapidly away to the west in very rough seas. It didn’t take long to sum up the situation. The first problem was there were no ships in that part of the Gulf and if something wasn’t done soon it would be too late for Weil. The second problem was the ability of the Catalina to handle a landing with such a sea running.

  Terrell knew only too well that the Qantas Catalinas were by now a far cry from the wartime new aircraft and although their hulls were still relatively solid, they had deteriorated rapidly over the intervening years. If things went pear-shaped they could all end up in the same predicament as Weil.

  Terrell watched in awe as Burgess, who had flown Catalinas during the war, barely hesitated. He made three approaches near the reef but found the area too rough and dangerous to land, with large ocean swells, up to four or five metres’ high, coming around both sides of the reef. Instead he chose a long, lower swell about 731 metres away and despite a hefty southeasterly crosswind he rode the swell by stalling the aircraft onto the water at around 50 knots.

  ‘There were several loud bangs but it was a copybook landing under extremely difficult conditions,’ Terrell recounted years later.

  In a further example of exceptional seamanship Burgess, despite having to shut down the aircraft’s port engine or run the risk of decapitating Weil, manoeuvred the Cat, buffeted by wind and sea, close enough to bring the dinghy alongside the open ‘blister’ on the Catalina’s fuselage so they could drag him aboard.

  Terrell helped pull him in and couldn’t believe the first words Weil uttered.

  ‘Where have you been? You’ve been a bloody long time.’

  ‘We were inclined to push the bugger straight back in,’ said Terrell later. ‘However, we didn’t, but he offered us no thanks for rescuing him so we set him down on the floor and took no further notice of him.’

  It wasn’t over yet. Once Burgess had the port engine going again he had to consider the take-off, which would have to be along a 1.8-metre swell with a crosswind causing the waves to break at about a metre, but with consummate skill and three hefty bounces the Catalina broke free and they set course for home. Terrell later described Burgess’ airmanship as among the best he would ever witness.

  Back in Port Moresby Qantas ground engineers replaced some rivets in the Catalina’s hull and several months later Marsh Burgess was awarded a certificate by the Royal Humane Society for his efforts. Danny Weil later became a US citizen and something of a celebrity in the ham radio world for his round-the-world expedition. He died in San Antonio, Texas in 2003.

  Along with their oil-search support role, the Catalinas and their crews created a lifeline for those living on Papua New Guinea’s isolated coastal communities. Lack of any road links even to the major centres in their own regions meant that the Catalinas and the irregular coastal shipping vessels were their only transport connection with the outside world. They flew in ev
erything from foodstuffs to building equipment, flew out sick children and injured plantation workers to hospitals in Port Moresby and Lae, and, as in the case of Danny Weil, even rescued errant yachtsmen at sea.

  Similar to those who flew to mountain redoubts in the middle of the island, those at outstations knew all the crews personally and many became good friends. There was always a cup of tea and refreshments waiting, although Terrell remembers at least one occasion where the bonds of hospitality had to be stretched somewhat.

  With the massive amount of flying involved, engine failures became a fact of life and one came Terrell’s way just as he landed at Kandrian on the south coast of the island of New Britain. A cursory check revealed this would not be a quick fix, such as flying in an engineer from Lae, almost 321 kilometres away. On this occasion a new engine would be needed and, since there were no land strips in that part of New Britain, the engine and the engineers to install it would have to be sent over by boat.

  I had about twenty passengers and it wasn’t long before we were having a pretty poor effect on the eating arrangements at Kandrian, where the normal population amounted to the patrol officer, his wife and their two children, so, 24 or so people arriving with no food or drink was a bit of a shock.

  Qantas put on a couple of DC-3 flights and they dropped supplies to us in a clearing just above the administrator’s compound and it was certainly nice to get fresh fruit and vegetables and the like.

  Terrell, his crew and the passengers were there for almost a week while the engine was changed and pronounced serviceable. Most were forced to sleep in a nearby copra shed while the local laundry staff performed miracles with their clothing ‘essentials’, although Terrell confesses it wasn’t all hardship.

  One of our passengers was a scrap-metal merchant who was looking for sunken wartime Japanese shipping wrecks and was great company, so by the time we retired each evening we were feeling no pain, although he would never tell us where the warm Japanese beer was coming from!