Any Information or History on Johhny "Timber" Wood
Any Information or History on Johhny "Timber" Wood
This will probibly be more for the older group who may still be with us:
My dad flew for many years in East Africa. He came to Kenya right after the WW11, flying Spits and stayed in country working for Alex Noon out of Wilson Airport.
After Kenya's independance he spend many years crop dusting in the Sudan and some time in Libya.
My flying days are winding down now so I have more time on my hands and looking at his log books I wanted to fill in a few of the gaps.
Much appreciate any imput or leads that I might follow up on.
My dad flew for many years in East Africa. He came to Kenya right after the WW11, flying Spits and stayed in country working for Alex Noon out of Wilson Airport.
After Kenya's independance he spend many years crop dusting in the Sudan and some time in Libya.
My flying days are winding down now so I have more time on my hands and looking at his log books I wanted to fill in a few of the gaps.
Much appreciate any imput or leads that I might follow up on.
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Hi Mike ,
I remember Timber from my youth in Kenya as I lived next door to the Noons in Karen , Nairobi , and they had a huge influence on my getting into aviation where I have been ever since .
Often wondered what happened to him , he and Alec were legends .
I would suggest you get in touch with Chris Noon , the older son , who is himself now retired from aviation ( commercial that is ) . I do not have his contact but did see he is on Facebook ( only yesterday ! ) where he is on the list as a Friend of his sister Vanessa Aniere . If that does not work for you , PM me and I will see if I can get an email address for you .
All the best.
By the way that is Book not pprune ! weird how they do that .
I remember Timber from my youth in Kenya as I lived next door to the Noons in Karen , Nairobi , and they had a huge influence on my getting into aviation where I have been ever since .
Often wondered what happened to him , he and Alec were legends .
I would suggest you get in touch with Chris Noon , the older son , who is himself now retired from aviation ( commercial that is ) . I do not have his contact but did see he is on Facebook ( only yesterday ! ) where he is on the list as a Friend of his sister Vanessa Aniere . If that does not work for you , PM me and I will see if I can get an email address for you .
All the best.
By the way that is Book not pprune ! weird how they do that .
Timber Wood
Thanks for the information guys, the idea to post was one of those "shot in the dark" ideas and it seems to have worked.
Planemike: Thanks for the email and I will follow up on that registration for you.
Kotakota: Many thanks for the background, I can only guess what some 20 something fighter pilots let loose in Africa after the war might have got up to. I will try to contact Chris Noon or hope he might see this post, and get a little more information.
Thanks again guys.
Planemike: Thanks for the email and I will follow up on that registration for you.
Kotakota: Many thanks for the background, I can only guess what some 20 something fighter pilots let loose in Africa after the war might have got up to. I will try to contact Chris Noon or hope he might see this post, and get a little more information.
Thanks again guys.
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Elspeth Huxley’s book: “A New Earth”
Read in Elspeth Huxley’s book “A New Earth”, at page 208 & 209 of Edition 1 (1960), the setting is the Mwea-Tebere (North-east of Nairobi, South-west of Embu) agricultural (mainly rice) scheme, set up in the 1950s. Here is what I read (I re-type all 5 small paragraphs so that you have an idea):
The game that formerly inhabited these plains has gone, but bird life has to some extent replaced it. Herons fish in flooded paddy-fields, cranes pick among the cracked stubble, storks flap overhead with dignity, geese in their V formation honk by, waders paddle, many other kinds of water-loving bird rise from field and bund as you pass by. The most pleasant sight I saw was a dam covered with purple water-lilies and circled over by flights of whistling teal making their sad, haunting cry.
But one species of bird has become a serious menace to the scheme. This is the Sudan dioch, or “Quelea quelea aethiopica”, a drab-looking finch that in recent years has taken to going about all over Africa in gigantic flocks – a single one, in the French Sudan, was estimated to contain eight million birds – and setting upon any large expanse of crop it can find. The damage has been getting worse year by year and in certain places, such as northern Tanganyika, is said to be more severe even than that caused by locust swarms.
To every pest modern science and human ingenuity between them can, given time and money, find an answer. The Tanganyika Government was the first to employ a bird control officer in the shape of Mr. Tony Haylock, whose own wheat farm had been devastated by these “quelea”, and he has worked out a technique of blowing up the birds in their roosting-places with drums of high explosive and oil. At Mwea-Tebere the diochs nest in a particular swamp into which it is impossible to penetrate in order to set the drums, so the method is to spray them from an aeroplane.
I did not see this done, but heard it described with a somewhat ghoulish respect. The pilot has to fly at dusk when the birds have settled in to roost. He has to take his aircraft across this swamp in semi-darkness, the most tricky time of day, at a height of ten feet: and the swamp is studded with ant-heaps a good deal more than ten feet high. He has to do this in cold blood with a drum of deadly poison at his back – Parathion, a substance developed during the war so lethal that a single splash on the arm would kill a man.
The pilot’s name is “Timber” Wood and he is forty years old. In the war he won several “gongs”, but the men on the scheme reckon that nothing he did then needed as much skill and cold courage as these flights in darkness that skim the surface of the swamp with lethal spray spurting out below him. They say he killed at least three million birds last season. As each bird will spoil, rather than eat, two ounces of grain daily, he probably saved over 2,000 tons of rice and every tenant owes him about £50. It is unlikely that any of them realize this, or would therefore subscribe to his memorial.
That’s it! But it’s a start! Good day!
The game that formerly inhabited these plains has gone, but bird life has to some extent replaced it. Herons fish in flooded paddy-fields, cranes pick among the cracked stubble, storks flap overhead with dignity, geese in their V formation honk by, waders paddle, many other kinds of water-loving bird rise from field and bund as you pass by. The most pleasant sight I saw was a dam covered with purple water-lilies and circled over by flights of whistling teal making their sad, haunting cry.
But one species of bird has become a serious menace to the scheme. This is the Sudan dioch, or “Quelea quelea aethiopica”, a drab-looking finch that in recent years has taken to going about all over Africa in gigantic flocks – a single one, in the French Sudan, was estimated to contain eight million birds – and setting upon any large expanse of crop it can find. The damage has been getting worse year by year and in certain places, such as northern Tanganyika, is said to be more severe even than that caused by locust swarms.
To every pest modern science and human ingenuity between them can, given time and money, find an answer. The Tanganyika Government was the first to employ a bird control officer in the shape of Mr. Tony Haylock, whose own wheat farm had been devastated by these “quelea”, and he has worked out a technique of blowing up the birds in their roosting-places with drums of high explosive and oil. At Mwea-Tebere the diochs nest in a particular swamp into which it is impossible to penetrate in order to set the drums, so the method is to spray them from an aeroplane.
I did not see this done, but heard it described with a somewhat ghoulish respect. The pilot has to fly at dusk when the birds have settled in to roost. He has to take his aircraft across this swamp in semi-darkness, the most tricky time of day, at a height of ten feet: and the swamp is studded with ant-heaps a good deal more than ten feet high. He has to do this in cold blood with a drum of deadly poison at his back – Parathion, a substance developed during the war so lethal that a single splash on the arm would kill a man.
The pilot’s name is “Timber” Wood and he is forty years old. In the war he won several “gongs”, but the men on the scheme reckon that nothing he did then needed as much skill and cold courage as these flights in darkness that skim the surface of the swamp with lethal spray spurting out below him. They say he killed at least three million birds last season. As each bird will spoil, rather than eat, two ounces of grain daily, he probably saved over 2,000 tons of rice and every tenant owes him about £50. It is unlikely that any of them realize this, or would therefore subscribe to his memorial.
That’s it! But it’s a start! Good day!
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The quelea spraying goes on , at least in Zimbabwe it does . The above excerpt is good , but my abiding memory is of Pete Crouch ( who learnt a lot of his spraying prowess in Kenya and probably knew Timber back in the 60/70s ) completing the same exercise as mentioned , then trying to land on the nearest 'strip' lit by Landie headlights and having to sideslip the aircraft with his head outside as the windscreen was completely obscured by blood and feathers. Money well earned indeed.
