大象传媒

Chapter 8

With the end of the Pacific War it was necessary to re-route our flights through different staging posts to avoid incurring expenses at American bases now that U.S. Lend Lease had ceased. This meant flying via Darwin to Morotai in the Halmahera Islands and then up to Balikpapan in Eastern Borneo and from there across the mountains of Borneo to Labuan Island. From Labuan we flew to Saigon and across the South China Sea past Hainan Island to Hong Kong. At that time Darwin was a fairly primitive town, with not much in the way of social opportunities apart from expeditions to nearby creeks suitable for swimming. The service accommodation was in wooden buildings set up on supports above the ground to allow some ventilation and the legs stood in cans of oil to prevent termite damage. The climate was very humid and we were glad to get into the air and this humidity meant that the build up of thunder clouds took place very rapidly. Take off was often complicated by the presence of kangaroos and wallabies on the To reach Darwin from Sydney entailed a night flight up to Cloncurry where we arrived at daybreak. Dawn was a difficult time to obtain radio bearings to aid our navigation and it was often a worry when there were virtually no landmarks to help. It was still a fair distance on to Darwin. Flying across the vast red interior of Australia was an experience in itself with only the very occasional sight of a cattle station hundreds of miles from the nearest neighbour. Sometimes a bush fire glowed in the night sky and in the heat of the day a willy-willys or dust storms could be seen racing over the desert. There were weird rock formations and huge salt lakes but precious little vegetation until the last few hundred miles before Darwin where the swamp lands and estuaries started.
Flying regularly North and South across the equator always meant flying through the inter-tropical front. This front is an area of very unstable weather that lies parallel to the equator. To the North of the equator during the Northern latitude summer and to the South of it for the other six months. It took the form of massive thunder clouds that built up during the day, rising up to 25,000 feet and more which made it quite impossible for us to climb over the tops. We had to try and cross early in the morning and it was a matter of luck as to whether we flew through the calmer parts of the cloud formation or whether we ran into violent vertical air currents.
These flying conditions may not have been comparable to the hazards of flying on wartime operations over Germany but nevertheless it could be very stressful at times and flying headlong into a wall of threatening cloud did cause the adrenaline to flow.
Returning from the Phillipines to Peleliu on one occasion we encountered very severe turbulence in a thunder cloud and the rate of vertical rise and fall caused such flexing of the wings that we were forced to descend close to the surface of the sea, where we had to remain for several hundred miles. At this height we were unable to maintain radio contact and if we had ditched into the sea we would have most likely disappeared without trace.
Another hazard of tropical flying was the condensation of water in the fuel tanks and it was imperative to check for this before takeoff. More than one of our aircraft were lost from this cause.
Saigon was a pleasant place to call at on our way to Hong Kong. The airfield at Tan Son Nhut, a few miles outside the town, was being operated by the British despite the territory being legally French. Consequently there was some animosity and there was the situation where the Union Jack was constantly having to be raised on a slightly higher mast than the Tricolor on the airport control tower.
Strangely, the Japanese were allowed a considerable amount of freedom in the area due to the lack of allied troops. Some were given the job of driving service trucks and Japanese aircrew were still flying to arrange the disbanding of units in the interior of the country. Some of the installations were protected by armed Japanese guards. It seemed that in fact the Japanese had behaved reasonably during their occupation of French Indo- China and as a result were respected there better than elsewhere.
I spent several days in Hospital in Saigon with gastro-enteritis, taking massive doses of Sulfaguanadine. The medical orderlies there were Japanese and efficient. I was more concerned about the sound of gunfire at night which came from theAnnamite guerrillas nearby.
Our transit accommodation was in the Hotel Terminus at the end of the Rue Catinat and it was pleasant in the warm evening to sit outside on the pavement and sip our drinks watching the very attractive slim girls stroll by in their long chungsams worn over long silk trousers. When we had spare time we were able to use the facilities of the Circle Sportif in the centre of town where we swam in the pool with the French community and I tried out my schoolboy French, talking to an attractive teenager Mireille.
There was an occasion which gave us a small insight into
life amongst the Malay natives when we were spending a one night
stopover at the airfield of Balikpapan located on the South East
coast of Borneo. When we returned to the plane from our camp in
the morning, we found that the plane had been broken into during
the night and various articles had been stolen. We immediately
drove to the local village and demanded to see the headman. He
was identifiable by the chain around his neck on which there was
a medallion bearing the head of the Queen of the Netherlands. We
were taken to the village longhouse where it was decided that we should be taken by canoe down the river to the sea where several small sailing boats were tied up in the estuary. These were either fishing craft or boats sailing across to the Celebes Islands. We searched inside the dark holds of these craft but predictably nothing was found. However, everybody was very courteous and after returning up the muddy river we were presented with a gift of lychees.
In April 1946, while based in Hongkong, we were sent to pickup a Dakota from Mingaladon airfield near Rangoon in Burma. This meant staging through Saigon and Bangkok. We were keen to visit Bangkok which had a reputation for bright lights and friendly girls.
Driving into Bangkok from Dong Muang airfield I was impressed by the street lamps which were ornamented with winged figures. Our
Mingaladon airfield was some way outside Rangoon and we were taken by jeep into the city. A large and very black West African was the driver and he drove like the wind, scaring us all to death. The major attraction at Rangoon was the Shwe Dagon Pagoda and it was well worth the visit. The pagoda was high, with a covering of gold leaf and around the base were many attractive shrines. In the city of Rangoon itself there were more shrines, the overall impression being one of decaying oriental culture.

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