A little bit more
My own French was not improving, mainly because my entire crew took great pleasure in speaking English. Jean Brion, the Radio, Jonny Jonniaux, the Navigator, Henri Crama, the fatherly Engineer were the nicest people that you could meet and treated me with the utmost courtesy and good humour. I cannot stress enough how well received the British were at that time. We were really regarded as the true liberators of the country and the old fashioned concepts of the "British Gentleman" and "an Englishman's word is his bond" still existed in Belgium of 1952.
I flew nearly two years as First Officer with Serge Tabutaut and learned a lot including, for a brief spell, how to legitimately double your money. Once, in Leopoldville, the day before departure, Serge said to me " Bring 500frs. to the bank with me tomorrow."" That was quite a lot of miney then and we British First Officers were always broke.. One of the ways that we all existed was through the "carnet d'avances" that we all had. The Congolese franc was always at par with the Belgian Franc so you could get an advance on your salary with Sabena in the Congo which would be changed at par at Brussels and would take several weeks to get through and sometimes, with a bit of luck, got lost completely. When you were scheduled to go to the Congo there would always be a lot of British F/o's waiting to see you off with their slips, duly signed from the carnet for you to bring them the money to see them through the rest of the month. Anyway I duly borrowed the 500 Frs. and went with Serge to the bank where he asked for their value in "Congolese, Leopold the First ,one franc pieces". These were huge coins with a hole in the middle and weighed a ton. We staggered back to the infamous Sabena Guest House where the crews stayed; I was mystified. Serge told me that all would be revealed on the flight back to Brussels. The first stop was Kano. It was already night and for once, the runway lights were working. There had been times when the lights would go out whilst you were on the approach and it was because the Nigerian rats loved the rubber which surrounded the wiring and were eating through them and the wires. We staggered with our Leopold francs to the outside of the ancient Terminal building where, under the light of naptha lamps , several Arab traders were squatting surrounded by charm bracelets and other souvenirs. We deposited our burdens in front of them and ,without any haggling, we were promptly given 1000 B.Frs each in notes. Evidently the silver content of the coins was so great that it was worth more than the coin itself and the Arabs would beat them down and make silver trinkets of them. Unfortunately the coin was so large and unwieldy, it was withdrawn from circulation so that the ,quite legitimate, racket came to an end.
I referred to the "infamous" Sabena Guest house at Leo. as Leopoldville was always known,. It was not the most comfortable place but it was owned by Sabena so the crews stayed there. There was no such thing as a meal allowance but three meals a day were paid for by the Company. The predictable result was that everyone ate their three meals instead of saving on their allowances. This proved very bad for the health and there was gross overweight amongst many of the crews. When you ordered a steak, the Congolese waiter would yell "Steak, equipage" (Crew Steak) to the kitchen and the result would often tell why. Crews were only on very rare (no pun intended) occasions served the best steaks. This situation went on for some time but we were eventually given proper meal allowances and moved to the Hotel Memling which was infinitely better than the Guest House.
Sabena had one or two service a week to New York on D.C.4's . Although my Captain was one of the most Senior, he had been left off the New york sector after an incident when Sabena based some crews in Hawaii to take part in an "Air Lift" ferrying military personnel to and from Korea when that war was raging. There had been a big parade which had been interrupted by an aeroplane "beating up" the parade ground. Unfortunately the ceremony was being broadcast and the Commentator had given a graphic description of the beat up "The aeroplane is so low that I can see in the cockpit and I can see the letters OO..etc. etc."
Eventually , however, he served out his sentence and we were put on the coveted New York run. The flights, invariably went by Shannon and Gander, due to the limited range of the D.C.4. Passengers were rare. I have been on flights that went with one or two passengers and then returned empty. It was on such a flight that a Steward came up to the cockpit and announced "We have 150 oysters on board and our passenger does'nt like them." "Bring them up here" said our Captain. and we scoffed the lot.
The system of promotion in Sabena was very fair. Providing that you passed the very strict and probing examinations on the new aircraft and you were eligible to fly it then the seniority list was faithfully adhered to. You started your career as a First officer , flying D.C.3's on freight in Europe. and then progressed all the way up on the various aircraft used, each of which paid increasing rates, until you reached the top as First Officer flying four engined aircraft on the Atalantic. When your turn came then you started the whole procedure again as a freight Capt on D.C.3's in Europe. The aircraft , in question, at that time were D.C.3,s,
Convairs,later Caravelles and D.C.4's and D.C.6's on Europe and the Middle East . The Long courier was on D.C.4's,D.C.6's and later, D.C.7cs, Boeing 707's. D.C.10's and Boeing 747's .
The most unpopular was the beginning, flying freight on draughty "Dakota's" in the early hours of the morning all over Europe. One of the chores was flying hundreds of pigeons all over Europe in the middle of the night. The pigeons would be released from small aerodromes, some of them only just bigger than a field, by the two "conveyeurs" that you carried with the pigeons. Large sums of money would change hands on the results of the ensuing race home. Apart from the unsocial hours of these flights the smell of pigeons was very hard to get rid of and hung over you for days afterwards. To make matters worse, Sabena secured a contract to fly hundreds of pedigree pigs from Blackbushe , in England, to Belgrade, in Jugo-Slavia. It was on one of those flights,on June 4th.1954 when I was a Freight Captain following another Sabena Freighter to Belgrade that I heard the Captain, my colleague and friend, Dougie Wilson, calling "Mayday" over Graz, in Austria. I was about fifteen minutes behind him and he had possibly strayed out of the corridor, laid down by
Russia and had been attacked by a Russian MIG, killing the Radio officer, wounding the other Freight Captain and Doug had made a very creditable landing at Graz without flaps or brakes as the hydraulics had been put out of action. I continued on to Zagreb where everyone was very upset about the incident and treated us very well indeed. The resultant return of the unfortunate Radio Officer in a sealed coffin and an unpressurised aircraft is another story that could have had nasty results with the Alps standing in the way but, fortunately the crew realised this in time and flew all up the valley of the Rhone instead. I hope that I still have some of you with me, I seem to have been here all afternoon. Reg.
Last edited by regle; 27th Oct 2009 at 17:24.