70 years ago today....first flight of the Dehavilland Dove

[Micky]

On the 25th of September 1945, the DH-104 took to the air for the first time...70 years in about 12 are still airworthy and flying...3 alone here in Germany.
For the past ten years I have had the honour and pleasure to fly on of them and still smile every time I get to fly her.
For me it was the first "airliner" I got to fly on after I left flight school and therefor the Dove has a special place in my heart.

What are your stories? The most be many people on her who flew on a dove or flew a dove in while they where still in active service. Or maybe somebody knows a story about the maiden flight 70 years ago...

Please share your memories and lets celebrate one of the most successful British airliners.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/De_Havilland_Dove

[ANCIENT]

I had the pleasure of flying the Dove and the Heron, both have left me with great memories.
The Doves I flew were operated by "The Northern Territory Aero Medical Service'
commonly refered to as NTAMS. The Dove gave many years of reliable service in Australias Northern Territory.
The Dove was replaced by the Nomad but in the transition period, if given a choice of aircraft I always chose the Dove as it was more satisfying to fly and in fact performed better than the Nomad. Sure the Nomad could get in and out of shorter field but it cruised slower and was no where as nice to fly.

The Dove and its big brother the Heron two of my all time favorites.

[His dudeness]

Flew D-IFSA quite a few times and simply loved the old machine, its smell, the shaking, the lovely sound of the mighty gipsies.
Happy memories, taking off from EDDB during ILA, flying over to EDDI (the mother of all airports IMHO), doing a low low approach there, climbing and banking over the huge building and cruising down towards the Siegessäule etc.etc....

http://www.airliners.net/photo/De-Havilland-DH-104/0170281/&sid=2be8b26a4db2675347386c53238fa3ac

[Gannet Driver]

Did my Twin Conversion in the Sea Devon - the RN's Dove - in the summer of 1968 at Lee-on-Solent with 781 squadron. What a nice aircraft!

Don't know when the Navy stopped using them and Sea Herons (had one ride in that too), they ran a regular schedule around the UK Naval Air Stations twice weekly. Known universally as the Clipper.

Very smart livery, white top, dark blue line above the windows and silver below, with Royal Navy in blue just above the line, squadron crest on the fin.

Only snag, my instructor and I were both big guys - the cockpit doorway and the main spar would certainly have hampered a sudden exit!

Good memories,

Mike

[DaveReidUK]

My only flights in a Dove were in Cranfield's flying classroom on an aircraft performance course. Nice aeroplane.

And as for its 4-engined big brother, only flew in the twin derivative (ST-27).

[Herod]

Never flew either, but on the basis of "if it looks right......" Happy Birthday, pretty aeroplane.

[TheiC]

It was a pure joy.


Unless OEI, when it taught valuable lessons about the advances in certification requirements.

But overall, I am only a substantial lottery win from ownership. (Because I don't do the lottery, this is not a real concern).

A truly beautiful and amazingly practical aircraft, with far and away the best not-at-the-edges-of-the-envelope handling of the all the >2 tonne 'transport' aircraft I've experienced.

In short, a masterpiece.

Could someone post an up-to-date account of the problems that G-registered Dove owners are having at present, with regards to airworthiness and oversight? A story I heard recently made me concerned that the UK-registered aircraft may never fly again.

[FlightlessParrot]

A few years ago, on this very site, I read a cryptic remark about the Dove benefitting from information from Messerschmitt. I've never been able to find anything to confirm this. Any truth at all in this, or was it just internet pseudodata?

Such a pretty aeroplane.

[Rhys Perraton]

I was lucky enough to fly both the wonderful Dove and Heron for Fairflight at Biggin Hill, probably the largest UK operator of the types. Happy days indeed. Mk 8 GARFZ was sadly lost in a hangar fire but GAROI, Fairflight's first Dove, carried on until I eventually delivered it to a parachute club in Belgium. Without doubt a lovely and classic British de Havilland machine.
Somewhere I have an article about those days that I wrote for a flying club newsletter, if i can find it I'll try and put a link to it on here.

[evansb]

CF-DJH, Toronto:

http://i1047.photobucket.com/albums/b477/gumpjr_bucket/DH_Dove_Toronto.jpg

DH.104 Dove 1 CF-DJH c/n 04015
The only Dove ever fitted with floats was a one off conversion
for the Hudson Bay Company of Canada.
It was then operated by S.J. Phillips as N91827
The aircraft was written off in Alaska in the 1960's.

[stopbar]

Early 70's I was an ATC cadet and used to pitch up in uniform at the ATC college at Hurn Airport where the CAAFU Doves provided live ATC training for the controller cadets. You used to just wander through to the the pilots crew room/office. No security in those days! Mostly I would sit in the cabin because an ATCO cadet would occupy the right hand seat and off we go and fly radar patterns directed by the ATCO cadets to give them practise, simulators were in their infancy then. Must have been quite interesting for the actual ATCO's at Hurn, fitting their own traffic in with the training Doves on separate frequencies, I have no idea what system they used but suspect it would have been quite interning at times, I think they tended to be vectored for the little used cross runway.

My highlight from these time was being able on occasion to sit in the right hand seat if the cadet did not turn up, yippee! On one of these occasions we were out over Bournemouth bay being vectored by the cadet, for the radar pattern and the pilot turned and said 'Ever seen one of these on one?' I shook my head. Within seconds after a swift bit of lever fiddling the right hand engine was silent and stationary! We continued around the radar pattern with the cadet, and indeed all on the ground unaware of what was happening. A few minutes later the prop was unfeatered and we were back to normal. The memory of that day are still fresh and it was my highlight of all the flights I did in the Dove that summer. A fabulous memory of a beautiful aircraft. :):)

[windriver]

The latest updates at aviation ancestry include a set of about 60 ads for the Dove (including one for the floatplane) to 1950 - Historic British Aviation Advertisements Archive - Search Results (http://www.aviationancestry.co.uk/?home/&searchQuery=dove&startYear=1945&endYear=1950&searchOrder=ASC)


There's a few for the Heron as well...


A true classic.

[chevvron]

Early 70's I was an ATC cadet and used to pitch up in uniform at the ATC college at Hurn Airport where the CAAFU Doves provided live ATC training for the controller cadets. You used to just wander through to the the pilots crew room/office. No security in those days! Mostly I would sit in the cabin because an ATCO cadet would occupy the right hand seat and off we go and fly radar patterns directed by the ATCO cadets to give them practise, simulators were in their infancy then. Must have been quite interesting for the actual ATCO's at Hurn, fitting their own traffic in with the training Doves on separate frequencies, I have no idea what system they used but suspect it would have been quite interning at times, I think they tended to be vectored for the little used cross runway.

My highlight from these time was being able on occasion to sit in the right hand seat if the cadet did not turn up, yippee! On one of these occasions we were out over Bournemouth bay being vectored by the cadet, for the radar pattern and the pilot turned and said 'Ever seen one of these on one?' I shook my head. Within seconds after a swift bit of lever fiddling the right hand engine was silent and stationary! We continued around the radar pattern with the cadet, and indeed all on the ground unaware of what was happening. A few minutes later the prop was unfeatered and we were back to normal. The memory of that day are still fresh and it was my highlight of all the flights I did in the Dove that summer. A fabulous memory of a beautiful aircraft. :):)
I was one of those ATCO Cadets who flew in the right hand seat, so was talkdownman.
We all had PPLs or were trained to the PPL syllabus (part of the ATCO Cadet training in those days - alas no more) so we had the opportunity to handle them ourselves. The ATCO Cadets were split into small groups during this part of the course - I think it was 4 to a group - and whilst 3 would make their way to Hurn Control Tower with an instructor to do the actual live training, the fourth would fly in the aircraft.
The College of Air Training (Hamble) had their Beech Barons based at Hurn at this time (1973/74) and on one occasion, a Hamble student was told to 'follow the Dove' on final approach. The Dove was carrying out a surveillance radar approach (SRA) which involved the pilot following heading changes passed by the controller. The Dove pilots would follow their instructions to the letter, so if they were heading 175 deg and the ATCO Cadet wanted them to turn to 180 deg, they would say 'turn right 5 degrees heading 180'. Often however, we were so new to this game, we would mistakenly say turn left and the Dove pilot would do this and turn left through 355 degrees . Anyway that is what happened on this occasion, so the Baron pilot followed him!!

[ZeBedie]

I'm told that the Dove had systems straight out of the Mosquito. In the early 70's, coming over my house, low, in a well banked turn soon after take off, they certainly sounded like the next best thing to a mozzie. Ahhh De Havilland.

[Fris B. Fairing]

Here's a nice story about a Dove undercarriage incident in Papua New Guinea:

Axe Attack Revisited (http://www.qam.com.au/qam-content/aircraft/dove/axe-attack/axe-attack-01.htm)

[VX275]

In the late 70's I was a Hangar rat for Rod Small who had G-ARDE on the display circuit. At the shows we went to we would have fun by asking the public to name the which system was hydraulic powered. Brakes? - No they're Pneumatic, Flaps? - pneumatic again, Undercarriage? - pneumatic. What else is there? Well the windscreen wipers are hydraulic.
Also this was an aircraft that more than most carried it name of its manufacturer, airframe was pure de Havilland and used Redux bonding, the engines were de Havilland Gypsy Queens with de Havilland propellers. Talking of the propellers IIRC the Dove was the first British aircraft designed with reverse pitch propellers but this had to be disabled (a screw knob detent on the centre console) as the engines couldn't handle the change of thrust direction.

[Chris Scott]

With apologies to the OP, whose English is streets ahead of my German, but mindful of The Wind in the Willows, there's nothing "toady" about the Dove!

As a boy, my first close look at a Dove was just after it had landed at a fairly hot, 5000-foot high aerodrome with one engine shut down. It was a corporate a/c for a mining company, and in my ignorance I hadn't realised that a twin-engined a/c might not perform easily on one engine in all circumstances. A throw-away remark from the pilot set me straight on that one.

In Morton's at Gatwick in the 'Sixties, we had several Doves but, as it remained a single-pilot a/c, rookies like me only got to fly as copilots on the Herons and Daks. Our Dove skippers included our chief pilot, "Tommy" Gunn (who had failed to upgrade his licence above CPL level) and Yvonne Sintes (née Pope). As well as requiring its public-transport commanders to hold a SCPL or ATPL, the DH 114 Heron (by then re-designated HS 114) had become twin-pilot (both due to its MTOW being greater than 12,500 lb).

Most of our Herons were Mark 1Bs with fixed L/G (sorry, undercarriage), non-feathering CSUs, and a MTOW of 13,000lb. We had one Mark 2, which was similar except for its retractable U/C. Finally, we had two ex-Spanish Mark 2Ds, whose fully-feathering props qualified them for Performance A and a MTOW of 13,500 lb. The Mark 1Bs had a lower APS weight than the Mark 2 and 2D, because of the fixed U/C. They all had Gypsy Queen 30s of only 250 HP.

Rhys Perraton mentions Fairflight at Biggin (above), one of whose Heron 2Ds was eventually retired to a pylon outside the Croydon Airport terminal building by the A23 London-Brighton road. At the time, it was repainted in Sammy Morton's colours and the registration G-AOXL. "X-ray Lima" was the Mark 1B that operated the last scheduled flight out of Croydon in 1959 (Capt Geoffrey Last), so for a few of us the retractable (and retracted) gear of the Mark 2D slightly spoils the effect.

The Dove and Heron have fully-castoring nosewheels, with steering obviously possible by differential thrust or aerodynamic rudder, but primarily by differential brake. This was achieved by displacing the rudder slightly, and then applying the pneumatic brakes using the thumb lever on the control column spectacles (only available on the L/H side). On a long straight, it's quite difficult to brake smoothly without yawing slightly. There is, however, an emergency brake powered from an air bottle under the L/H seat. There's a small lever by the bottle, and the air is provided evenly to left and right brakes. The bottle is topped-up from the pneumatic system. I found that, in the long taxi out for a departure on Rwy 09 (as it then was) at LGW, tickling the lever was the smoothest sway of braking if the skipper had allowed me to "drive" from the L/H seat. Not everyone liked me doing it, however...

I think there's still a private Dove based at Biggin, and wasn't there a PPRuNe thread about it recently?

[chevvron]

GOPLC lives most of the time at Dunsfold and still does public transport flights, occasionally from Fairoaks.

[stopbar]

Re#13 thanks Chevron for the info, didn't realise about the small groups in Tower and aircraft. Much encouraged by that and a week in a control tower while on Annnual camp as an ATC cadet, what a brilliant idea by someone to give senior cadets the whole week in an area they were interested in, it certainly convinced me and I have subsequently completed a really interesting career as an ATCO In both mil and civil since 1976 and am still currently an ATCO. I have never regretted making this career choice I can still get up at 0430 quite happily to go to work because it's so interesting! :):)

[DanS333]

The Doves I flew were operated by "The Northern Territory Aero Medical Service'
commonly refered to as NTAMS

Hi ANCIENT,

I now own one of the said NTAMS Doves, the years have not been kind I'm afraid. It is a 'long term' project to say the least.
https://scontent-hkg3-1.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-xfp1/t31.0-8/10873366_743503639032721_5365449788555272857_o.jpg
Cheers, Dan

[fdcg27]

I had the pleasure of spotting both Doves and Herons in commercial operation as late as the mid 'seventies.
The Dove was operated by two small airlines from BKL until one was lost in the lake while the Dove and Heron were both operated by a contractor to what was then Allegheny, later to become US Air, from CLE to a variety of smaller Ohio destinations.
Allegheny also operated the BAC 1-11, many of which could be spotted on their typical banked hub push at CLE, along with a flock of Convair 580s.
The Convairs seemed so quiet as compared to the United DC-8s and American 707s that screamed overhead on approach.
There were also Northwest DC-10s, TWA L-1011s as well as a 747 now and then along with many DC-9s and 727s as well as a growing number of 737s.
Never did spot a Caravelle, although United did have them in the fleet for a bit.
CLE is nothing like as busy these days.
Fun times.

[dhavillandpilot]

Although I have never flown a Dove I have flown both the original engined Heron as well as the Lycoming conversion

Even though the Gypsy aircraft was under powered, it was the second best aircraft I've ever flown (The Citation 550 is my favourite). It only had power levers with the mixtures and condition functions inter connected. Just push the throttles forward and away you went.

The Lycoming one, had the grunt to make it an 180kt short field performer. To achieve prop control we had switches on the pedestal to activate an electric motor that drove the pitch control.

If Dhavilland had not been so Britsh and stuck with the Gypsy engine they would have sold 3 times the number to the USA commuter airlines.

Saunders proved this even more so when they re engined the Heron with PT6s. This became the Saunders ST27, a real winner. But the Canadian government had to chose between the DHC6 or the ST27, history tells which they chose.

To indicate how good the Heron was I operated the last commercial flights in a Heron around Australia and out in the Pacific. The longest flight we ever did was from Sydney island hopping to the Cook Island without a hiccup.

What killed off the Heron, government bueauracy. Basically CASA didn't want the aircraft operating any more.