Hi Sillohed and everyone else on this thread which I have only just come across (after all these years). I joined WWH as a 27 year old pilot in Tripoli in 1958, flying their 3 British registered EP9s and 5 American registered Beavers. Manager was Ken Howard and our main contract was with Esso Libya. Other pilots at that time were Kees Bos, Chris van Riet and Jan Mante. Later additions to the fleet were a Cessna 170 (for communications work and vastly underpowered, which made for some interesting desert take-offs), a Twin Bonanza (delightful aircraft) and then the two Conrads (N102S and N8181H) which were a good idea in theory but turned out not to be in actual operation. A growing family (I married Elizabeth, a Yorkshire girl, at Tripoli in 1959) resulted in our finally leaving WWH in 1965.
In the winter of 1958/59 I also had a six-months detachment to the WWH operation at Chittagong in what was then East Pakistan, flying two PBY5A Catalinas in the Bay of Bengal for Pak-Shell. The manager was Wal Rivers, and one interesting visitor during that time was Douglas Bader who was at the time the boss of Shell's world wide aviation operations.
I have lots of pics of all of these aircraft but see that some guys are having difficulty downloading. I will explore further and in the meantime would be glad to hear from other ex-WWHers either here or at
[email protected].
Regards to all,
'Doc' Watson