Ferry flight - Redhiil to Singapore : G-AWOX - July 1971
Dave Ed - I think I posted something on this ferry flight on the old Skyweaver website. Like BB, we had an eventful trip and even managed to fly for 4 hours 25 mins on one leg. - is that a record for the Wessie?
I wrote this up for my family as part of an autobiography so forgive the style!
"On June 30th, we finally set off from Redhill on what was planned as a two week flight to Singapore. JH, being senior to me was the aircraft Captain and we flew most of the trip down to India swopping seats; although when we got into the really nasty weather, as an ex Navy IR instructor, I seemed to do most of the flying!! In the cabin we also had NO, a bearded engineer who was not only very talented but also good company. After clearing customs at Gatwick, we set off across the Channel for our first night stop at Lyon. However bad weather forced us to make an unscheduled landing at Chateauneuf – a great start to our trip. The helicopter had been fitted with a cabin fuel tank to cope with some of the longer legs, and on a couple of occasions, we had to shut down one engine to conserve fuel which enabled us to fly for 4˝ hours.
From Lyon, we flew on to Naples, Athens, Izmir, El Azig, Tabriz and Teheran. Navigation in those days was almost medieval compared with modern day sat nav. We had an ADF, a basic VOR/ILS system and VHF and HF radio. There was no autopilot, it was hands on all the way, and when we were out of range of the usual nav aids, we were back to following a map! On the leg from El Azig to Tabriz we were transiting the high mountains bordering Iran, and uncomfortably close to the Russian border. Of course, this was at a time when the Cold War was at its peak, and naturally at this critical point we got lost; the road we were following just seemed to disappear. Expecting at any moment to be buzzed by a pair of Mig 21s, we held our nerve and after 20 minutes recovered our route and slid down a long valley into Tabriz.
After a two day break in Teheran, where Bristow’s had a big base, we set off again into the dusty brown lunar landscape of the Persian plain and the southern mountains. Isfahan, Shiraz and Bandar Abbas passed by as the temperatures soared. We flew high to keep cool, and out of the heat haze. On our last leg before Karachi, we had to make a refuelling stop at Char Behar. This was used by Imperial Airways in the thirties on their long runs down to the Far East, and amazingly there was still a small depot stocking cans of aviation quality kerosene. Our problem was that there was no-one to refuel us. So for two hours in temperatures of around 40 degrees centigrade, we poured can after can into the aircraft tanks. I seem to remember a figure of 112. Whatever it was, it was one of the most uncomfortable afternoons I have ever spent. Even worse, after that, was another 3 ˝ hours flight to Pakistan, stinking of kerosine.
After 3 days in Karachi at a blissfully proper hotel, we set off again on July 13th to Ahmadabad in India. Here we refuelled and cleared customs. This was an experience in itself as it seemed to take forever and I have never seen so many dusty old files surrounding the office walls – it looked as though nothing had been thrown away since the Raj. Our next night stop was at a small airport near Nagpur. We were taken by a rickety taxi to a very seedy looking hotel in the town, and although it was the best there, we spent the whole night scratching ourselves. The next day, the weather we feared most had arrived. It was now the monsoon season, with incredibly vigorous weather systems bringing violent rainstorms almost every day. We had to spend another night at Nagpur for the weather to clear, staying this time in a sort of rest room at the airport, and living off boiled eggs, the only food that looked edible.
Our next leg was to Calcutta with a stop at Ranchi. However the weather intervened again and we were forced to make a precautionary landing in a jungle area near Khunti to wait for the low clouds to clear. We shut down the engines and looked around at a deserted grassy area surrounded by what seemed to be banana trees – not a soul to be seen. Within ten minutes, however, the helicopter was surrounded by a horde of native Indians peering at this apparition from the skies!
In Calcutta, we were gratefully taken by a BOAC aircrew bus into the city centre to spend the night in a luxurious hotel. Walking out into the street was totally fascinating. This was the year of the Bangladesh revolution and thousands upon thousands of refugees from East Pakistan had descended on the city, sleeping on the streets and in the parks. It was quite literally a seething mass of humanity interspersed with the sacred cows and an incredible colophony of hooting from countless cars and lorries.
The next day, we had to get back to Dum-Dum Airport, but this time only in a local taxi. Getting to one of the ring roads, we found our way barred by a mass of striking workers. A heated argument with our taxi driver ensued, and at one point JH wanted us to leave the car. However NO and I vetoed that idea and virtually threatened the driver with instant death if he didn’t get the taxi through the melee. This seemed to work and we managed to get away. Leaving Calcutta across the Ganges delta we ran into even more extreme weather. To avoid the worst storms we headed towards an airport in Burma called Akyab. Although we had negotiated visas to enter Burma, with great difficulty, these were issued specifically for Rangoon, and to land elsewhere created a certain amount of official pandemonium! We were taken to spend the night in a government rest hut, under armed guard, and hurriedly put back on our helicopter the next morning. Unfortunately, the weather had got no better, and for the next three hours I flew the Wessex in the worst thunderstorms I have ever known. We were flying in very turbulent cloud, in incredibly heavy rain and with no navigation aids! It was pure dead reckoning, hoping we were just off the coast; not daring to climb any higher, and very aware that just inland was higher ground than our 1000 foot altitude!
One further and rather sobering consideration was our technical situation. Since leaving Karachi, we had been required to do a specific and complicated check on the rotor hub, as recently there had been a fatal accident, where part of the head had disintegrated and a rotor blade had detached in flight. In order to complete the maintenance check we had to do a dye penetrant test to see whether there were any cracks in this component. This was an almost impossible task in the weather we had been experiencing. So our fingers were very crossed and our anus’s very tight as we bucked and tossed in the stormy monsoon.
Obviously our luck held out, and we reached Rangoon to spend an extraordinary night in the most wonderful colonial hotel – The Rangoon Palace. I think we must have been the only guests as tourists to Burma were heavily discouraged by the authorities. It was enormous, with that languid air that Forster and Kipling brought to their novels.
The flowing day we set off for the last two legs of our journey. In Phucket in Thailand, we were able at last to carry out the maintenance test on the main rotor assembly, and, believe it or not, we had a hairline crack in one of the arms. So that was it, the helicopter was grounded. We sent a memorable telex message to Redhill “ G-AWOX is f****d in Phucket”!! As we boarded a commercial flight down to Singapore, we reflected on a marvellous experience which covered over 7,500 miles in 20 days and 76 hours of flying."
... and sadly no photos