A nostalgic look at aviation history
Posted on » Friday, April 02, 2010
Reading your article about Michael Stokes and Gulf Aviation/Gulf Air brings back many memories.
As one who first arrived in Bahrain in 1949 by flying boat, (a three-day story in itself), I have seen many changes in aviation in Bahrain.
I was living with my parents in Awali in 1950 when Gulf Aviation was first started and remember it well.
Aviation through the 1950s was a very chequered era, with many highs and lows.
In 1951, I flew to Dhahran by Aramco Aviation, the airline of the Saudi oil company.
This was in a Douglas DC3 Dakota of troop carrying style, that is, with seats backing on to the sides of the aircraft and freight strapped down the middle.
No problem going, but a week later on the return journey (being the only passenger) the captain and co-pilot told me before we set out that they would be putting shutters up round the cockpit windows to practise blind landings!
We landed a few minutes later at, what was then RAF Muharraq, on first the port wheel, then the starboard before settling down and coming to a stop.
On leaving the aircraft, I asked the two man crew why the shutters? They told me that it was in case they had to land in a sandstorm and could not see the runway and that the control tower could talk them down.
I asked them that if they could not see the runway, how could the control tower possibly see them and talk them down?
The captain looked at the co-pilot and said "Holy S++t, we never thought of that!"
The 1950s saw many changes with the main carrier from the UK being BOAC changing to land-based Argonauts with the same wheel configuration as the Dakota to the Boeing Constellation which had tricycle undercarriage, and then the Comet 1. The latter had a rather sad history to Bahrain, and although I was lucky enough to fly in it several times, it was marked with disasters off the coast of Italy with the loss of many lives.
Since the turn of the century, I have been lucky to have returned to Bahrain on a few occasions, including taking my wife, daughter and son-in-law out to see where I spent many happy years, and to enjoy Bahrain, the F1 Grand Prix and the friendliness of the people.
I hope that before too long I will again be flying to Bahrain.
Bill Wren