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I've flown all those VC10's when they looked like that!!

And I've flown 'WHU and all her sister ships when they were in that colour scheme!

As an aside the 707-436's did fly to LAX in the mid '60's (before my time) via where I know not. SFO was served via JFk en route to SYD - one of my first under suspicion trips.

I flew some LAX trips in the 70's and we normally went via Winnipeg - sometimes via Calgary or Edmonton. Homeward bound was via Ottowa or Montreal but I think that was due to a cabin crew dispute!!

There were British Airtours doing 707-336B trips to LAX into the mid-1980s. Were you BA mainstream 707 guys also handling the Airtours flights from Gatwick, or did they have their own crews (I'm conscious this might be a Tin Hat Needed type question !). I got offered a seats on an ABC charter on one. I presume these had the ability to go nonstop.

Slightly off-topic as the two BOAC 707-336Bs for the "Russiaway" service to Tokyo didn't get delivered until 1971, after the first 747s. There have been a couple of threads on here in the past about the oddball navigation procedures needed on those early Siberian flights

arem

The 436s probably went to Lax via Jfk and then Hnl, Nandi, to Syd which became a VC10 route in the seventies, I did several.

I recall the 707s having a service eastbound to Tokyo which then went to Hnl and Sfo and return westbound via Hnl and Tokyo.

I think there was a tech stop in Midway or somewhere else.

I don't remeber BOAC flying to Sfo from Lhr in those days.

The Airtours 707s had a service Mauritius to Perth which sometimes had to tech stop in Cocos if I remember correctly.

WHBM

The airtours 707 crews were BEA crews and separate to BOAC 707 crews - a lot came off the BEA comets.

Some good parties in Le Chaland in those days.

In 1968 the 531 went via SFO HNL - I know cos I flew it on one occasion, I don't think at that time we even served LAX - that didn't happen until the 531 rerouted through LAX.

I seem to recall that the 436 to LAX went through YUL most of the time.

The tech stop if required on the HNL-HND was normally Wake Island from what I Understood from others who did it. Never did it that way only HND-HNL as part of a 9 day RTW.

finncapt: In the late '70s BEAirtours had a "damp lease" arrangement with Air Mauritius for one aircraft. 12 days, mostly at Le Chaland with 5 working days!

Ah, memories............. (yorkshire accent coming up) if you told thm youngsters today they wouldn't believe yes!!!

I seem to remember Ken FitzRoy wrote about flying an Airtours 707 RTW for a charter party of Germans? Same event or did they do a few of those?

Don't know if any of you former crew recognise any onetime colleagues here - "BOAC Boeing 707 1964".


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=82_J8PCCFFs

Troppo in Fanny Bay
 

Yes the 707 cargo trip was something different more like being in a David Attenborough wildlife documentary.
Plenty of creepies in Fanny Bay, the guy in the room next to me was bitten by a spider whilst half-asleep and flown to Singapore for treatment, but
wasn't able to identify the critter from hospital photos.
Before he left Darwin he kindly shared with me 'it was brown and hairy and ran under the door'
After that trip I always unpacked my case very carefully.

Swimming was discouraged the local advice being 'don't worry about the Sharks the Crocs get them!'

All that and a Skipper who wanted to know if I could make scrambled eggs?
Phew, good job I'd had three years at a catering college.

Great memories!

BEA Airtours 707's. My memory suggests that Airtours did their own thing, and had no reference to the BOAC operation, and I recall that there was an Airtours accident of some sort, and we in BOAC "tut-tutted" about how we'd taken good care of our 707's for so many years then given them to BEA, who promptly bent one ! Good old inter-company rivalry.

My log book shows that I flew a 707-436 trip London/New York/San Francisco/Honolulu/San Francisco/New York in September 1962 and in May 1963 flew a Montreal/Winnipeg/New York trip, which suggests that we handed over / took over at Winnipeg, but I don't know where the aircraft went / came from to transit WPG.

On Aug 10th 1961 I flew a London/Toronto/LosAngeles/London trip, and in the same era I also recorded 707-436 trips New York/Los Angeles/Detroit/London and London/Montreal/LosAngeles/London.

I was 'posted' to Honolulu in 1961 to fly 707-436 services on the SanFrancisco/Honolulu/Tokyo/Honolulu/SanFrancisco/ sectors.

I flew a Tokyo/Wake Island/Honolulu service on 4th September 1961.

We also used a "reflight planning in the air" gambit, to "stretch" the fuel.
Flight Plans required fuel for departure to destination, say London to New York, plus an alternate plus a "contingency" fuel, 10% comes to mind, but don't shoot me down, it is over 50 years ago now ! If that amount of fuel was unavailable then one could flight plan from -say- London to Gander, with Boston as the alternate plus a lower 10% value, then approaching Gander one could re-flight plan Gander-Boston with New York as alternate, and in this case the 10% overall "contingency" would be considerably less than the 10% contingency from London to New York required at the start, so you might well have that lower amount available at the time one did the "re-flight planning". If not, then one just landed at the nearest suitable airport as a tech. stop for more fuel.

A friend in a VC-10 flew past Boston and on to New York, where he was given a 45 min. hold, due traffic, not weather. Had he held for 45 minutes he would have used his contingency fuel and ended up with less than the minimum required on tanks on arrival at New York ( can't remember the requirment ) and could have been in the poo with New York ATC, so .... he flew back for 45 minutes to Boston, where the weather had deteriorated and was now below limits. Had he stayed over New York he could easily have landed, but risked being cited, instead he had nowhere to go, but had done everything "legally". ATC got him down on a USAF base somewhere.

Sometimes The Law Is An Ass.

The BEA Airtours accident at Prestwick:-
http://www.aaib.gov.uk/cms_resources...8%20G-APFK.pdf

Like the Trident thread on this part of the forum that was around recently I have really enjoyed this thread.

There are a couple of books out at present called Out of The Blue (I & Ii) telling military tales of daring do....I think with a contribution to charity.

I wish you ex BOAC and BEA guys would do the same. I think it would be very popular indeed.

If I had the time I'd try and set one up and edit it, but no chance with current commitments.

Anyway.....please.......keep up the great work.

Some have, "Behind the Cockpit Door" by Arthur Whitlock for one, and an ex-Hamble trained, recently retired BA skipper, has recently published Part One of his memoirs, name not immediately to mind - like where are the car keys - but someone else might know before I start digging around.

Also, Glamour in the Skies, Stewardess tales by Libbie Escolme-Schmidt - whom I remember flying with as Libby Escolme.

Kollsman Sky Compass
 

For WHBM Post 114 etc,

The 707-436 had the Kelvin Hughes Sextant. The 707-336 had the Kollsman Sextant and for Polar Nav, also carried the Kollsman Sky Compass – for when there were no stars. Descriptions below.


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There were only about 20 BOAC Approved Stars, plus Sun Moon Venus.

Anything else in God's Firmament was wholly unapproved for BOAC Navigation and would get you an interview with the Nav Office God.


Black Art indeed. LFH

Thank you very much Lordflasheart for that research, and that made me dig in the attic for my original reference, which is (for those who have it) Propliner magazine No 29 (winter 1986), article “Over the Top of the World – SAS”, all about their pioneering DC7C Trans-Arctic flights, which includes a lengthy section “The Problems of Polar Navigation”.

This describes ‘three main obstacles being the existence of the Magnetic North Pole, the Polar Twilight, and the disappearance of direction at the Pole’. SAS were indeed pioneer users of the Polarised Sky Compass developed by the Kollsman Instrument Company (still in business, I see, in New Hampshire, although the products have moved way on). Magnetic North was handled by the Polar Path Gyro, which was a Bendix product, also applicable on transatlantic flights to New York, and “everywhere-south” issue at the Pole by a Polar Grid Chart, which was an RCAF concept.

Interesting. I knew there were many more "navigational stars" than that. It turns out the number is 58 - 19 first magnitude, 38 second magnitude plus Polaris. So, I'm guessing the BOAC stars were the first magnitude stars plus Polaris.

A periscopic sextant had a very restricted field of view. Thus, the approved stars were those that could be easily identified by colour and/or in a pattern that could be seen within this field of view. I am not sure whether they were 'BOAC approved' or those that were included in AP3270, the Sight Reduction Tables for Navigation Vol1, Selected Stars. Astro nav is all such a long time ago!!

I knew many 'BOAC Stars' most were not approved!

Half Pint, Fletch the Letch, Moon Man, Abe Licoln, Tommy Colgate, The Vile Eid, 007 etc.:ok:

For some reason 57 stars sticks in my mind and they were the ones in AP3270.

I remember some 12 BOAC stars, which were easily recognisable in a periscope sextant, and, ideally, one of these would be shot first as a gross error check.

This wasn't always the best method as it was/is preferable to shoot the "least angle to track" star first and the "greatest angle to track star" last.

(Thinking about it, edited to say I may have got that the wrong way round - it's obvious when you're doing it.)

This would minimise the error in running the postion line along track at the assumed ground speed.

If my memory is correct, the first shot star's position line needed running by 8 minutes of groundspeed and the second by 4 minutes.

When the fix had been obtained it told you where you were, as about a minimum of 4minutes, previously.

So one could say with navigation "you never know where you are, only where you were".