1949 Sydney Morning Herald DC3 Newspaper plane

[A37575]

The Sydney Morning Herald had two Lockheed Hudsons and two DC3 freighters based at Camden, NSW, Australia. They conducted air drops of newspapers at various towns and drop zones. This picture is of the groundstaff and one pilot (4th from the left) Bill Selwyn -former Wellington pilot WW2 -later a Qantas B707 captain.



http://i2.photobucket.com/albums/y25/HSWL/SwainSchubackDC3UA1949_0012.jpg

[emeritus]

And a fine looking bunch of bandits too!

If it was 2009 they'd all be decked out in uniforms and gold braid :O

Emeritus

[Wunwing]

Has anyone any idea when this operation was switched to Mascot. My grandfather worked on Sydney newspaper distribution all his life and one of the first memories that I have is going to Mascot with him and going on board aircraft while they were being loaded with papers.

We rode out from the city in one of the company trucks and since it was during the day I assume it was delivey of the evening papers.He worked on both the Sun and Mirror over the years so I am not sure which company it was but I suspect it was the Herald.

Reading the Adastron site it clearly was not a very long life for some of the Herald pilots, at least for those on the Hudsons.

I remember Bill Selwyn well from my early B707 days.He was a good instructor.

Wunwing

[A37575]

Has anyone any idea when this operation was switched to Mascot.

I don't know about a permanent switch to Mascot. Maybe around 1951. However there were several occasions when the Hudson or DC3 flew from Camden to Mascot as a positioning flight before newspaper services to Dubbo.
I was working as a general hand (age 17) at the Camden base and flew as a second dicky to Mascot with Dick Cruickshanks. The real first officer arrived later for the actual newspaper flight. That short trip was one of the greatest thrills in my budding aviation career. On 1 January 1950 another Herald Hudson crashed shortly after take off at Camden. It was a dark night and the cause was thought to be an engine failure. Dick Cruickshanks and his second pilot Bruce Purvis were killed.

Some years after the Herald closed down, it was decided to give it one more go and I believe that was from Mascot around 1953 I think. The aircraft was a Hudson VH-SML. The captain was Doug Swain DFC who was the previous Flight Superintendant under the manager Captain Harry Purvis AFC.

The aircraft was not cleared legally for IFR and on the very first flight which was to Taree (?), the aircraft dispappeared. Many months later the wreckage was located in the Barrington Tops ranges. Weather on the day of the flight was low cloud in that area and it seemed the pilot tried to scud run to stay visual under low cloud and hit the hills. That was the end of the Herald Flying Services I think.

[Fantome]

Harry Purvis's autobiography 'Outback Airman' tells about the acquisition of these aircraft and their operation in some detail.

[qfcabin]

I think you will find that the Bill Selwyn in the photograph went onto Qantas 707.
I am also pretty sure that he was the captain on the famous Mr Brown flight to HKG in early 70s. An early attempt to get a lot of money from QF. The crook notified Qantas after the flight was airborne that he had placed a device onboard that would explode descending thru 20,000ft or so.
A/C was at cruise by now. Much ado in Sydney while Selwyn , who incidentally was one of the calmest, most laconic men I ever knew,had his crew tear the aircraft apart searching for the device.
Chief exec of QF had a mill or so in a bag to hand over to the crook, but the cops lost the bad guy during the escape...no bomb found on board, and my memory is that Selwyn had to descend without that knowlwdge..Scary times.
It took a long time for the cops to get the crook but he was eventually convicted.
I remember this reasonably well because i was part of the cabin crew waiting in HKG to work that service back to Sydney that evening.
When we were briefed about what had happened, we did not believe it. This was very early days of this sort of thing. Most of those happenings were hijacks to Cuba in the US.
I'm sure others will have better memories of this man and this incident; just my two bobs worth.

[allyn]

Wasn't familiar with this incident so I looked it up:

Qantas - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qantas#Extortion_attempts)