Leif Ohlsson Posted March 24, 2019 Author Share Posted March 24, 2019 Thanks guys. I'll think about a common post for airports and repaints. What's "the OP", I wonder? Kind regards, Leif In the meantime, next episode. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Leif Ohlsson Posted March 24, 2019 Author Share Posted March 24, 2019 Through the desert (II): El Geneina to El Obeid (did not reach Khartoum today) June 29, 1941 (Sunday) 07:30: The first thing I do when I wake up today, even before breakfast, is to write down the magnetic declination figures in preparation for today’s flight, and the rest of our flight: Geneina +2° (where we are now) El Fasher +3° El Obeid +3 Khartoum +3° Wadi Haifa +4 Cairo +4° Too often, I’ve forgotten to apply these corrections. Since the declination is positive, the figures are to be detracted from our map course, to get a correct track over ground. In addition, we shall have to correct for wind. The two last items, Wadi Haifa and Cairo, are for another day. We shall be glad to reach Khartoum today. (And I nourish a secret hope that we will get some real weather along the route). Today we will fly 1,200 km, landing at two places underway. I’ve marked another waypoint, which is just a small town or village. We’ll see if we can get that right. We could make it directly to Khartoum, but we’ve got the mission to check out all the potential landing fields along the route, and we will, which means well make quick landings at El Fasher and El Obeid. I estimate we won’t get to Khartoum until well into the late afternoon or early evening, just like yesterday. As the engines warm up in the morning sun and we make ourselves reasonably comfortable in our seats, we discuss navigation and fuel. As for fuel, I continue to insist on full tanks, so no problem there. Our navigator hand me a note with his rough course calculation: ”Map course 87° to first airfield. Declination +2°. Wind correction 0°, since winds here are light and variable. Distance to El Fasher 300 km. We fly 135 kts/250 km/hr. So fly 85° and watch out for your airfield after 1 hr 7 minutes.” ”And seven minutes”. He’s got some gall, that guy. 08:10±0 We leave El Geneina, sun in our eyes. We’ll have that until it rises above us as the morning wears on. +0:35 Strange hills pop up all around. Can’t very well use them to check navigation though. Too many, too much like each other. What they remind me of is a moon landscape, as I’ve seen color paintings of it in a fantasy book by Chesley Bonestell. That was one of my favourite night time readings before we left to come here. Couldn’t imagine that I’d find a landscape like Chesley Bonestell’s moon craters here in Sudan. We are up to 5,500 ft now, trying to keep at least 1,500 ft between us and the high plain below. +0:55 That is definitely a wadi, a dried-out river bed, below. If it’s the one I think, El Fasher is due somewhere out there ahead of us. Can’t see it yet. Can’t see the road that should be here either, but that’s the way it’s been before. Roads disappear into the dust more easily than river beds. +0:58 At first I thought the clearing at right was El Fasher, but no. The beacon is faintly visible more to the left, far out there. But still spot on. We managed to fly a one-hour leg absolutely correct. No wind, of course, but we got the declination correction right. Calling them up on the radio, they gratifyingly answer. We get a choice of rwys 05 or 11. As we come in on a course of 85° it’s either way. I’ll make my choice as we close in. +1:08 We touch down at El Fasher. He’s not so bad at calculating, our navigator, after all. But I tease him about that extra minute: ”It’s a shame you can’t count better than that”. He looks pleased. He knows he’s done a good job. And so have we all, getting here right on time. The terminal area looks good enough, but we want to get underway, so we taxi around this triangle of three runways and take off again on rwy 23, right past the hangars. The windsock pointed right at us, when we turned into that runway, so I just applied take-off power. 09:28±0 I reset the clock and the navigator hands me the note for next leg: ”Map course 93°. Declination +3° Winds light & variable, 0° corection. 175 km to waypoint. So fly 90° for 42 minutes and start looking for your little village. May you find it…” Well, I don’t have much hope of finding it either, but there’s a road on the map which we might find. After 42 minutes mind you. Not 40 or 45, but 42. That navigator… +0:41 We saw, and took the photo above of one village back there, 37 minutes out. But now, one minute ahead of what our navigator estimated, we see another one, which I think it’s the correct one. The roads fit better. It’s called Burush on the map. The one above, that we took a photo of, isn’t even on the map, I think. 10:13 ±0 I tap the shoulder of our navigator, who just hands me another note, more succint this time: ”93°. 1:25. El Obeid.” Hah. As if he could predict a target one and a half hour away that accurately. As if I could fly a course that close. We’ll see. I reserve a good measure of skepticism. But I say nothing, and just nod. (I reset the clock one minute late; got to remember that - if it should turn out that he really is as good as he thinks.) +0:15 The desert is full of signs. I trick myself into believing that the dark patch over there could be a wadi which fits with what the map says at this point. But how can I know. The next minute there is another dark area which is just as good (or bad actually) a candidate as the previous one. There’s nothing to check our progess against. It’s all flat. Brown and flat. Brown and flat and hot. I don’t understand how people can live here. Or how they would want to. Then again, many times I wonder how some people at home, in some areas, in some circumstances, would want to live like they do. The simple answer, of course, is that they may not want to live like they do, but they can’t do otherwise, Perhaps they cannot imagine doing things differently. Or, if they can, they lack the means to change their circumstances. That’s the theory behind socialism, of course. For powerless people to change their circumstances, they need societal power, the help from all the rest of us. But there’s something in all of us, me too, that slows down change, even with the help of society. We adapt. Unfortunately we adapt to bad things and bad circumstances. Many a time I’ve wondered about how people in my little home town, on a hot summer’s day, bring out their chairs and sit on the pavement in the sun, obviously enjoying it. And yet they could with very little effort walk or bicycle or take a bus to a park or a natural reserve and sit in the shadow under a tree, viewing a meadow instead of a parking lot. Following a stream of thoughts like this make me feel arrogant. Who am I to have such a judgemental basic view of my fellow comrades under the sun. Under this sun, here, now, over the Sudanese high plain. I’d very much like to come to some sort of balanced view of matters such as these. A look at the gyro takes me back to the reality of here and now. Right now I have no other duty than to keep that gyro adjusted to 93°. Not 94° and not 92°, but 93°. That is my job, and two other people depend on me doing that accurately enough. The copilot takes care of the engines. The navigator keeps looking and calculating and listening for radio signals. I have the privilege of sitting with my arms crossed and just watch the landscape pass below. But the gyro I must not forget. +0:55 The navigator lifts my earphones and talks into my right ear. ”El Obeid reports wind 360°/9 kts. Landing rwy 01. Altimeter 2988. Don’t know how far away they are, but keep on this course.” So I do that. And adjust the altimeter. I wonder where the wind will have pushed us. Perhaps it only started blowing here, as we close in on El Obeid. After all it was calm back at El Fasher, less than two hours ago. +1:10 We cross a road and see a city in front of us. It fits with El Obeid, but could this really be it? - It’s early. 1:13 It really is El Obeid. And as usual, I don’t spot the field until we are right over it. Rwy 01 means a right hand circuit. Not a problem, but on final I couldn’t find the field again. This field really needs a beacon. And there were trees on one runway, which we had to avoid taxing past the fuel storage. 11:30 +1:25 Down and parked at El Obeid. Since I have a few things to talk about with the authorities here, I decide to shut down, search up the officials, and also get some accomodation and food. The heat and the dust and the scorching sun takes its toll. A night of resting here will do us good. Then we’ll take on the last leg to Khartoum; and on another day (or days) the long flight along the river Nile up to Cairo. There’s no hurry. And oh, yes - the fact that we were down and parked on exactly the time the navigator said does’nt count. We were over El Obeid at least ten minutes early. To give him credit, though, that’s probably my fault. I noticed we were flying a bit faster than usual the last leg. And we were dead on course, that’s for sure. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Leif Ohlsson Posted March 25, 2019 Author Share Posted March 25, 2019 Intermission: Download two more desert airfields Here are links to the two airfields (1941-45 versions, according to my fantasy) along the southern end of the Sahara desert that we have flown to date: HSFS El Fasher 1941-45: The airport today is known also as Al Fashir, and serves the capital with the same name of the North Darfur state in Sudan. I made the 1941-45 version of it on top of the modern version (not visible of course). Any navigational help thus will be available to you on one runway, although as usually you should not rely on the autopilot being able to set you down on the shorter 1941-45 runways. Fly the approach manually. Runways are gravel, which doesn’t generate as much dust as dirt runways. The layout is the triangular one seemingly much in favour on British fields of the period. HSOB El Obeid 1941-45: This airport, too, has been made on top of the existing one, so any navigational help is available here, too. The pattern is the same, a triangle of gravel runways, eliminating the need for taxiways. Quite good an idea, I think. Now, this might be a good time to quote at some length one of the many real stories of the Takoradi run which is available out there if you search for them. This one is from the BBC ”WW2 People’s War” site: Quote I am writing this account of an extraordinary operation carried out in 1942 by the RAF; not so much in terms of my personal reminiscences (which I will keep to a minimum), but because of my profound admiration for the planning which occurred at the time. I have never read any account of this and feel that it should be recorded. […] During 1942, the RAF in Egypt needed more combat aircraft of all sorts, as most of the bomber aircraft at the time were of the older types. Things were not going well, we had lost Tobruk, and had been forced back to the El Alemein battle line, the first battle having taken place on June 26th. The RAF in Egypt were in great need of Wellington Bombers, however, these did not have the range to fly from England to Egypt direct. Also, the Luftwaffe had control of the Eastern Mediterranean, and we were sending convoys to Malta, so an alternative route had to be found. Having completed OTU, we fully expected to be sent to one of the bomber squadrons based in England. However, to our surprise we were told that we were to take delivery of sixteen brand new Wellingtons straight from the factory and ferry these to Cairo. The planning of the route, which had to be done in stages (legs) was worked out in fine detail. We had to take an overload petrol tank on board, otherwise we wouldn't have the range of flight between landing places, with each leg expected to be around 800 miles. It is hard to envisage this now, but the Wellingtons had a speed of 120 mph, so an 800 mile journey took a long while! Because of restricted facilities at landing places en route, we could only take off with 3 or 4 planes a day (providing the weather conditions were favourable), and so that there would be adequate handling and servicing facilities from the RAF ground crews at the various legs of the journey. […] The first leg of the journey took us to Gibraltar where we had to await the "all clear" to land at the next place, which was at that time called British Gambia. The distances were vast, the facilities minimal, the ground crew had no aerodrome, so had to ensure that an airstrip was cut out between the trees in the jungle. The personnel suffered constantly from fevers and malaria. We attempted the next leg to Lagos, but couldn't get there because of engine trouble, so landed in Robertsfield, Liberia. Following engine repairs, we continued with our journey and finally made it to Lagos in Nigeria. Here we waited for clearance before flying to an airfield in the Southern Sahara Desert near to Lake Chad. The next stage was to El Fasher in the middle of the Sudan Desert, before flying to Khartoum and meeting temperatures of 140 degrees fahrenheit. Here we had an unexpected treat - there was no room at the camp, so we had to spend the night at the five star Luxor Hotel! Finally, after flying nine gruelling stages over three weeks and six thousand miles, we flew up the Nile and landed in Cairo. I would like to pay tribute to the way in which the above operation was organised, and to the RAF ground crews who serviced the aircraft upon their long journey, particularly as they did their tour in West Africa in very grim conditions. Two of the sixteen aircraft did not make it, so this is also a tribute to those flying crews. I, in turn, would like to honor people of this kind, and their stories, by recounting the fictional story we are in the middle of now. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
St54Kevin Posted March 26, 2019 Share Posted March 26, 2019 Thanks guys. I'll think about a common post for airports and repaints. What's "the OP", I wonder? Kind regards, Leif In the meantime, next episode. Thank you. The opening post so the first post of a thread Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Leif Ohlsson Posted March 27, 2019 Author Share Posted March 27, 2019 Through the desert III: El Obeid to Khartoum June 30, 1941 (Monday) 06:30: Waking up this morning, the desert dawn visible through the curtains, I decided to make a change. I will not have one more day of flying over endless, featureless desert. So I brought out the maps, and erased the direct course I had drawn between El Obeid and Khartoum. Instead I drew a course flying more or less straight east until we hit the Nile (impossible to miss, right?). Then I want to follow that great river all the way up to Khartoum. Never mind the extra few hundred pounds or so of fuel. We shall not miss seeing the Nile now that we have come this far. I talk to the crew. I’m not really sure what they think, but they go along with my plan - as long as I tell the commander here what we’re doing in case we have to make an emergency landing along the Nile somewhere. Incidentally, I believe our chances would be much better along the Nile than somewhere out there in a nameless, featureless desert. I tell them so, and they seem to get the point. My copilot leaves the breakfast table to tell the commander at the base our intentions. The navigator and myself go outside to have a look at our DC-3 before the flight. 06:40 The sun is just coming up over the horizon when we make our usual walk around the DC-3, kicking the tires, waggling the ailerons, and all those other small things we do to convince ourselves that we actually can check and stop all the bad things that could happen to us up there, out there. Of course we can’t. And of course the professional maintenance people here have already done every check that can be done. They are good, these mechanics. They have to be - they deal with wrecks from the desert battlefields all day along, patching them up, reassembling them. Their average, they tell us, is one rebuilt aircraft per three wrecks delivered to them. Not bad during these circumstances. We let them know that we are impressed. And we really are. As for fuel I decide to forego any refill. We certainly have enough left for a 500-600 km trek through the desert and then along the Nile. Our navigator will have an easy day of it, too. He could just say ”Fly 90° until you hit the Nile”, but he does come up with a figure corresponding to the provisional line I’ve drawn on the map. ”82° he says, minus 3°declination, minus 1° correction for winds from the north. So, fly 78° until you hit the Nile, and we’ll see how far from your waypoint we hit it.” Good man, that. And, as usual, he hands me a note of the declination for the rest of our flight all the way to Cairo: El Obeid +3 (where we are now) Khartoum +3° Wadi Haifa +4 Cairo +4° 07:05 ±0 We leave El Obeid behind. As the landing gear creaks back into the engine nacelles, I start the mission clock. At 5 minutes past seven in the morning, the sun is already a good bit above the horizon. I had hoped for an hour or two of cool air, but it doesn’t seem likely now. The course our navigator has given me puts the sun straight into my eyes. No matter. I reach for my sunglasses. Anyway, in a couple of minutes the sun will have risen above the windshield rim. Thinking back on El Obeid, I’ve grown quite fond of these triangular shaped airfields the British seem to favour. If you have the space to build an airfield like that, it’s great to be able to choose the most appropriate runway for the prevailing winds. And the runways not in use can be utilized as taxiways, keeping the runway in use clear for traffic. I like it, and I will say as much to anybody showing an interest down the line. +1:00 I took this photo exactly one hour after take off. I believe our navigator managed to take us to the exact spot I just drew up on the map this morning, not intending anything in particular, except getting to the Nile. But that has got to be Aba Island down there, exactly on the spot and time we should be here. He’s getting really good at this, our navigator, and I tell him so, without reservations. He looks pleased. It’s nice to have done a good job and get appreciation for it. ±0:00 We turn left to follow the Nile, I reset the clock and remove my sunglasses. The sun now comes in from our right side. Our navigator can take a rest. Following the Nile along all its meanderings is my job. This will get us to Khartoum, no problems. +0:30 At times during our flight along the Nile, we loose sight of the river as such, only a belt of green areas remain. I guess so much of the water is used for agriculture along the river, that sometimes the river disappears. Reality is a bit different from my map, where the river is a blue band meandering across a yellow-brownish desert, all the way down to Khartoum. But after a while we regain that blue band also here in the real world, and we are no longer afraid that we’ve lost our course. +0:40 It’s still a great satisfaction to be able to correlate the landscape outside the cockpit that we fly over, with the image of the map I’ve got in my knee. I believe the village we are just flying over is Al Getianah. It fits with the time, with the island up ahead, and with the distinct bend in the river here. With all these bends in the river, and no real need to keep to an exact compass course, I’ve let the Sperry off to grass for a while. Feels good to notice how much the aircraft really undulates. No wonder the elevator trim rotates back and forth all the time when the Sperry is working. Also, it seems to need a constant aileron trim to the right. I solve this by turning the rudder trim (the crank down by my feet on the lower section of the engine console) a quarter of a turn to the right. Helped wonderously well. Now I can fly the aircraft completely hands off without the Sperry. Very empowering. I will do this more often. +1:00 We have come in over Khartoum, no doubt about it. I have a plan here - I want to follow the White Nile, the muddy one we’ve been following up til now, to the point just at the northern end of central Khartoum were it is joined by the clear blue Nile from the Ethiopian highlands. It is said there’s a bridge in Khartoum where you can stand and watch the two waters, one muddy, one clear, mix for their continuous common journey down through Egypt and out into the Mediterranean. I would like to see that from the air. Then we’ll turn south in over central Khartoum again, and find the airfield. Landing ought to be from the south with the prevailing winds from the north we’ve had so far, so we’ll make a complete pattern once we’ve flown over the field. +1:05 I got to make my turn over the bridge, the Blue and the White Nile, and I’m grateful for that. +1:10 Also we found the airfield, no problems. Downwind leg already as we fly along the rwy 01. And I kissed the ground on landing. Watch for yourself: Well, I didn’t feel that bounce one little bit. I asked the others, and they say they didn’t feel it either. I wonder if it was really there. I don’t think it was. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Leif Ohlsson Posted March 30, 2019 Author Share Posted March 30, 2019 Intermission: Tales from Khartoum (and a download) I made up the 1941-45 version of HSSS Khartoum on top of the modern international airport (which therefore will be temporarily invisible as long you keep the ”HSSS Khartoum 1941-45” version in your ”Custom Scenery” folder). Any existing nav help, such as ILS, will certainly work, although it won’t place you exactly on the threshold of the much shorter runway in the 1941-45 version. I have found only one period photo of Khartoum from the air, and you don’t see much of the airfield, which ought to be somewhere in the backround haze. Which left me with some considerable room for artistic licens. Which is why, as was evident from the aerial photo in the last post, I made up the 1941-45 version of Khartoum airfield with three runways, in the customary triangular layout. I’ve grown quite fond of that, as you may have noticed. In places, there are certain traces of such a layout evident in Google map images. In the case of Khartoum I found evidence for at least one of the extra runways I made up. You can see for yourself in the download, since I included the Google map photo I used. You will find such photos in all my downloads except one, I believe (Wadi Haifa, yet to come), and in that case it was because the desert sand just didn’t leave any marks of a runway which could be seen in the WED programme. Otherwise, I’ve kept sundry buildings and objects included in the very fine version that comes with X-plane. That’s why you will find hangars and offices in seemingly unlogical places. They belong to the modern version, but doesn’t do any harm in a 1941-45 version, I thought. Here’s a rather fine period photo from July 1943, depicting (and I quote the source): ”US service men and local tribesmen talk by the Wadi Seidna air strip as C-46 Commando planes are on the runway, at the US Army & Air Force/Royal Air Force base in Khartoum Anglo-Egyptian Sudan. (Photo by Ivan Dmitri/Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images)”. The Wadi Seidna Air Base is situated 22 kilometres north of Khartoum in Sudan. You can find it on maps if you look for it there. It was not built at the time of the 1941 flight recreated here. This might be a good place to include another true story, from a person who really worked at Khartoum during the era we are recreating here. The source is the same as the previous story, the BBC ”WW2 People’s War” site: Quote Our Aerodrome was shared with Alitalia Airways, and was being watched, as the Italians were about to enter the war they had several planes standing outside but until they joined in we all did routine flying, cross countries and the odd air test. I also spent many hours on the Link Trainer […] At last the Italians came into the war, so we were immediately put on a war footing. Nobody really knew what to do, civvies were put away, guns were issued, the native workers started to scrape the rust off the bombs. A number of us dashed across to the Alitalia buildings to capture anything going. The Italians cleared off in one of their planes, we claimed all the cutlery and cut glass from their club and also two Savoy 79s, which we used for the beer run. When we examined the planes they had Bristol Pegasus engines and Vokes air cleaners, so most of the parts were the same as the Wellesleys. […] At last the Italians packed in the war and the last big event was our squadron taking Hali Sellasi back to Addis Ababa to his palace. It was at this time that our life was considerably changed. The convoy route, known as the Takoradi Run, was started bringing planes across Africa, stopping at 200 mile hops via Kano, El Genena, El Fasha, Lama, El Obeid, Waddi Halfa to Khartoum. We were constantly flying to these strips to repair planes so badly assembled that some almost fell to pieces. I think the native mechanics that helped to assemble the planes only had tool kits comprising of hammers! For several months the convoys were made up of one Blenheim and six Hurricanes, or Fulmers, but later we started getting American Tomahawks and Kityhawks lead by Baltimores, Marauders, Bostons and Glen Martin Marylands. And this is what the author, Guy Buckingham, looked like at the time: His story is much longer than what I quoted here, and if you are the least bit interested in unique historical tales like these, please read it in full. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Leif Ohlsson Posted April 1, 2019 Author Share Posted April 1, 2019 Through the desert IV: Khartoum - Wadi Hafia - Cairo in two legs July 2, 1941 (Wednesday), : I have a confession to make. Yesterday, Tuesday, we were supposed to take off for Cairo. We could have, and we should have, but I thought it better to let all of us have a day and an evening off after the worst of the desert. So we got quarters at a good hotel here in Khartoum. The British really know how to make the best of their imperial and colonial rule. It would leave me with a bad taste in the mouth after a while (I hope), but yesterday evening we had a good time. At the American embassy here in Khartoum we watched the latest Hollywood war drama, ”Sergeant York”, starring Gary Cooper. The action was from the last war, and Gary Cooper played a hilly-billy sharpshooter and good-for-nothing who undergoes a religious reawakening, joins the army, but wants nothing to do with killing. Then he reads the Bible and undergoes another reawakening, this time to become a soldier no holds barred. He ships out to Europe, finds himself the last remaining unwounded non-commissioned offer in his unit, and is placed in command attacking a German machine-gun nest. Seeing his comrades being shot down all around him, he fires individual rifle shots with such devastating effect that the Germans surrender. He then becomes a national hero and is awarded the Medal of Honor. True story, they say. I say that Alvin York may well be alive and well, that’s the sole fact I’m willing to accept as truth beyond doubt. For the rest, I don’t doubt what Alvin York may well have accomplished what they say he has, but I don’t like the way he’s exploits are exploited (pun intended). I suppose we shall see a lot of films like this in the months and years ahead. Personally, I got a bigger kick out of listening to the US Armed Forces radio broadcast this morning, telling the story of how Joe DiMaggio hit a home run off Newsome of the Boston Red Sox. This meant he extended his hitting streak to 45 consecutive games and took sole possession of the major league record. This I believe to be truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. Getting back to business, this is what the last part of our flight across Africa and down along the Nile looks like: As you can see, I have marked a course that will take us along the Nile most of the way, seeing as much of it as possible. I intend to fly that course manually, apart from the first stretch after Khartoum at the bottom of the map up until we find the Nile again after its long detour into the wilderness, which I don’t intend to follow. That first stretch I leave to the Sperry. The long and the short of it is that I don’t think I’ll be able to fly close to 2,000 km manually in one go. So I tell the crew that we might as well make ourselves ready for a night at Wadi Haifa, some 800 km from Khartoum, roughly midway to Cairo. Fuel we will not need there. The almost 5,000 lbs we carry in full tanks from Khartoum will take us to Cairo, no problems. What fuel there is at Wadi Haifta is best reserved for those who come after us in much smaller aircraft with less fuel capacity. 06.50 It’s ten to seven in the morning, and the sun has already risen a good bit over the horizon. We stumble into the aircraft, still sleepy, still not having got over last evening’s hospitality both from the Embassy, and from Brits at the hotel. Slightly difficult to get back into the routine of flying alone over the desert, but at least we all know what we are supposed to do, and there’s a security in doing things by rote. The copilot and I read the checklist for startup back and forth. The navigator sits down to work out the route I want to fly. The course for our first stretch, our navigator says, should be 335°-4° for declination, means 331°, -2° for winds from the north, means 329°. Or something close to that, like 330°. He says. And we should see the Nile again after 1 hour and 20 minutes. He says. And by now, I believe him, without reservations. 330° and 1 hr 20 min it is. Then I’ll take over and fly the rest by matching landscape to map. 07:10 ±0 We leave Khartoum, sending grateful thoughts to our hosts. Course 330° into the desert. Two minutes later - I can’t believe it’s such a short time - we see nothing but brown, ginger bread brown, desert in all directions. The Nile has gone off east into some marshes, doing no good for anybody, evaporating water that could be put to much better use downstream. We’ll see it in an hour again, when it returns for its final run into Egypt. Somebody, some day, ought to build a canal along the route we are flying. That’s what I think. But then again, I may be wrong. +1:10 We see this - the Nile returning to us. Ten minutes early, but as far as I can tell right on the spot I drew rather haphazardly this morning. If I have a choice, I will never fly without the navigator entrusted to me for this flight. I have the outmoust respect for what he’s accomplishing. Otherwise, I try keeping my promise to myself to fly this last stretch to Wadi Haifa manually, no Sperry watching over me. To tell the truth, I find the elevator trim totally counterintuitive. To apply down trim you rotate the wheel backwards, while the indicator shows and upward motion. And vice versa for elevator up trim - rotate forwards, indicator showing downward motion. I would dearly have liked the wheel to move just like the yoke - forwards down trim, backwards up trim. But not so. Takes a bit of getting used to, but I’m getting there. Rudder trim is much easier, just like I learned yesterday. A quarter of a turn either way makes everything alright. Eventually, after having lost a bit of height, and regained it by increasing throttle & rpm, we are back on my preferred height of 3,000 ft, roughly 2,000 ft above ground. And we are keeping it pretty well, at cruise speed. Maybe there’s hope for me to learn this after all. I really must see to it that I get more practice flying without autopilot. It is most satisfying being able to keep both altitude and airspeed at the desired values without the help of the sometimes overly nervous Sperry. I’ve still go to learn to check the gyros though. That chore won’t go away. Only now the gyro is just for my convenience, not guidíng the Sperry. It is easier to watch the gyro in front of me than leaning over and check the nervous compass. I have not started the mission clock again, so now I’ll just have to remember that we hit the Nile at 08:20. And we expect to arrive over Wadi Hafa town ≈ 500 km or two hours after that. At 10:20 I should look for Wadi Haifa. There’s another old lesson I have to relearn (I’ve told myself this lesson time and time again, but it seems I’m not very good listening). If I for some reason, course adjustment or other, loose some altitude, it is a really bad idea trying to regain it by hauling back at the yoke. It will only result in us losing speed and then loosing even more altitude. Instead, increase manifold pressure (throttle) just a tad - no need really to change prop for a small adjustment like this. When you’ve regained your altitude, reset manifold pressure, and make some final adjustment with the yoke. Contrarywise, if at some point you need to loose a little altitude to get back to the prescribed, it is probably easier to press forward a little on the yoke. If, after a while the aircraft seems to want to climb again, apply a small amount of down trim. Why two different methods? My answer - it’s easier to loose altitude than regaining it. Loosing altitude (a small amount) by applying a little down elevator with the yoke increases your speed. If that holds, when you’re down to your desired level, you have probably managed to ”fly on the step”, as my personal flying house gods, like Ernest K. Gann, and Wolfgang Langewiesche would have expressed it. As this flight along the Nile - which otherwise could have been exceedingly boring - drones on, I'm getting a very good feeling. The aircraft I’m flying is as stable and benevolent as I could ever wish. Learning its little follies and idiosyncracies just adds to the good feeling. I can do this. Of course, I know, the weather is fine, there’s no turbulence, and I don’t have to hold a compass course absolutely true. But I intend to get there. At my first opportunity, I shall try to fly a compass course leg wholly without help of the Sperry. And then there’s flying blind. And flying instrument approaches. I’ll get to all of that in time. Then, after a good while, I can return to the Sperry and the convenience it brings. I have nothing against it - as long as I can learn to fly without it. And while I’ve written all these last good many pages in my notebook, I notice that the altimeter shows a steady 3,000 feet, the airspeed is 130 kts and I’ve been following the Nile while still being able to write this. I’m content. I hope it will last. 09:25 I believe those islands down there were the ones marked as a waypoint on the map. I shall make a shortcut across two large river bends here. And yes, the DC-3 behaved very well during the time I took that photo and made the notes for it. We are becoming good friends, this DC-3 and I. Now that I’ve begun to study the idiosyncracies of the DC-3 I notice that it says on the elevator trim indicator that I’m flying 1° nose upwards. That’s OK I suppose - heavy fuel load, not the greatest speed we could have. I shall study this more closely in the future, perhaps aiming for a 0° inclination. Would that be and ideal?, I wonder. To try it out, I set the elevator trim to 0° nose up and try to maintain altitude by juggling airspeed with yoke, and altitude with throttle. I seem to find a new equilibrium at 135 kts and 30” manifold pressure. Since this is what the manual says I should have, I am pleased. What it tells me is that we’ve been flying slightly slower than ideal. I believe 135 kts IAS translates to 140 kts over ground, which is 257 km/hr - still pretty close to the 250 km/hr I use for navigation in my head. I feel better and better, getting to know my aircraft this way, never mind that it’s late in the day, so to speak. 10:20 Sooner than I thought, the clock shows 10:20. We get Wadi Haifa weather on the radio - calm, arriving rwy 01. That means a straight in approach if I manage to find the field. I believe Wadi Haifa town is beyond not the first bay, but the second, barely visible right now. When we hit the town, I’ll fly due east or perhaps more accurately 100° and look for the field. Won’t be easy, I anticipate. It’s a dirt field, no doubt, in a desert of dirt. But that’s the plan. 10:30 Wadi Haifa town was easy enough to find. The field, some 20 km east of it, was just as difficult to spot as I anticipated. As usual I couldn’t identify it until it was more or less hidden by the nose of our plane. Rwy 01 is the one jutting out to the left above. A right hand pattern resulted in me not finding the field again, until the last moment. The result was I landed dead stick after a very steep approach. In the movie that my copilot made (as per usual) you can see that this is not a regular approach: If there had been any sound to this 8 mm amateur movie you would have seen that I did not apply any power at all, with full flaps, just bled off the speed of the steep descent gradually. More luck than anything that we got down unharmed. Finally down, this place look really desolate. I don’t look forward to staying here the rest of the day, and through the night. They don’t seem to have much of accomodation anyway. We’ll see. I’ve got to talk to the commander anyway about installing some form of lights guiding us in. Those white and red landing indicators are really good. They ought to be able to rustle something like that up. The beacon they have really isn’t much help at all. On a sunny day like this we didn’t see it. As you can see, I forgot to retract the flaps. Also as per usual. I’ve got to do better. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Leif Ohlsson Posted April 2, 2019 Author Share Posted April 2, 2019 Intermission: Wadi Haifa The first thing to say about Wadi Haifa in 1941 is that it no longer exists, not the city, nor the airfield. Both are drowned below the surface of the Aswan Dam (Lake Nasser today), built in the 1960s. So the airfield, some 14 km east of the new city Wadi Haifa on the banks of the Lake, is a new one. This is how it looks today: There is a high quality model of the HSSW Wadi Haifa airfield in X-plane. I used that, shortened the runway, added one runway 01/19, and generally retrograded the existing model. A pity, but you can see remnants of it in the airfield general store, including ads for Coca Cola - which is barely possible, given that the field was used the way we’ve seen in the 1941 flight recreated. Both the English, and later on the Americans, landed here and refuelled on their way to Cairo. You can download my version of HSSW Wadi Haifa 1941-45 here. To add to the conundrum there are no regular flights to this airport today, even if Sudan Airways have services from time to time. Wikipedia has some interesting facts to say about Wadi Haifa town: Quote Wadi Halfa is a town on the shores of Lake Nasser in the north of Sudan, and marks the point of entry into Sudan for those coming in from Egypt. It is surrounded by the dunes of the Nubian Desert, the eastern edge of the Sahara Desert, and has a population of around 15,000. Historically, Wadi Halfa was Nubia's most important trading point, being the gateway between Egypt and Sudan. Today the city's buildings are immaculate, surrounded by the golden dunes of the Nubian Desert. It is the stereotypical border town, small and full of paperwork, hassle, and dirt. The town is actually the new Wadi Halfa; the original Wadi Halfa was submerged when the Aswan High Dam created Lake Nasser in 1971. Sudan's military dictatorship forcibly removed the approximately 50,000 inhabitants of the area from their lands and relocated to the desert, where many died of malaria and other diseases. A few Wadi Halfans, however, remain along the Nile, the river that built their ancestors' identities as fishermen and river traders, building new settlements several times and finally settling on the current location when the flooding stopped. Seasonal flooding still occurs. Travelers may wish to visit the ancient archaeological sites of Nubia before they, too, are submerged by a series of dams under construction which threaten Nubia's remaining pyramids, which predate those of Egypt. Historically, the now drowned airport played an important part in developing regular flights across Africa. Wikipedia on this subject: Quote In 1925 Alan Cobham made a first survey flight for Imperial Airways (a forerunner of British Airways) from UK to Cape Town, South Africa, stopping at Wadi Halfa on the way. In 1937 a Savoia-Marchetti S.73 flown by Ala Littoria was flying from Asmara, Eritrea to Wadi Halfa and crashed while approaching the runway at 5:30 a.m. killing all three crew and six passengers. That same year, Imperial Airways commenced a flying boat service between Southampton, UK and Durban, South Africa stopping at Wadi Halfa on the way. In 1943 BOAC (a forerunner of British Airways) started a weekly flight between Cairo, Wadi Halfa and Khartoum with Lockheed 18 Lodestars. During World War II, Wadi Halfa was a communications post for Allied forces in Africa. The presence of the Aswan Dam (which didn’t exist in 1941) makes it necessary, when flying over it in 1941, to sort of marvel at how wide the Nile becomes at some parts of its flow. I keep these thoughts to myself. Let the other members of the crew rest in ignorance about what we’re flying over. It will let it remain a mirage of times to come. After all, we are in the desert, where mirages abound. The first thing I did after a lunch on sandwiches at Wadi Haifa, was to go out into the desert with the team of Brits here. This is what they do - they search and find the numerours aircraft with crews who have crashed into the desert for one reason or another, like this Blenheim. Then they drag them (with lorries and tractors and what not) to the base behind the airfield office, and they either repair them or scrap them to use the parts in planes they are assembling from several crashed ones. I’ve already heard their average - one flyable aircraft from three crashed ones. That is an amazingly good record. We feel very humble watching these efforts. But we are also eager to finally get to Cairo and deliver our DC-3 to the British authorities there. After all, that is what we’re here for. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Leif Ohlsson Posted April 4, 2019 Author Share Posted April 4, 2019 Through the desert IV (cont.): Wadi Hafia - Cairo, last leg 15.20 The afternoon wore on quite a bit, so it was late when we finally were ready to leave Wadi Haifa. We’ve a thousand kilometers ahed of us, four hours, so I really wished to get off earlier than four hours before sunset. I don’t like landing on strange airfields in darkness, be they lighted or not - which we don’t really know. As far as we could remember from Khartoum, the sun sets around half past seven in the evening around here. So, we really don’t want to get off from later than half past three, 15:30. I hope we didn’t take too long out there with the rescue crew. At the last minute our navigator asked permission to run out to the canteen over there and get us all a couple of Coca Colas. I hope that won’t mean we will arrive in darkness over Cairo. 15:30±0:00 The runway here at Wadi Haifa is so uneven that we were virtually catapulted into the air, leaving the ground from the top of a hump. Unfortunately we sank back again, with a slight bounce, but no harm done I think. Anyway we’re off on time - just - and I hope we are in for an uneventful and calm last leg. I want to have time to familiarize myself even more with our DC-3 before we must leave it into the hands of others. I started today’s exercise by carefully setting the elevator trim indicator to 0° nose incidence. That’s got to be some sort of ideal, right? From there on, I try to keep to 3,000 ft altituder (leaving a healthy 2,000 ft below us to the ground). I noticed that someone’s been at both the elevator trim and rudder trim over night. Can’t understand how that might have happened - I was very careful yesterday to leave them both the way I wanted them. Now I have to reset them while the DC-3 hasn’t even settled yet. One thing I haven’t thought about before, is that the constant need to access elevator trim makes it impossible to fly with my right armrest in place. Simply can’t get at the trim wheel without folding the armrest backwards. But as soon as I get the aircraft settled on 0° nose incidence, I fold the armrest back again. Much more comfortable. Did I say how stable the DC-3 is, once trimmed? And how well she flies offhand? I don’t think I’ve flown any other aircraft this stable and settled once she gets trimmed right. Do you remember how frustrated I was at first over the counterintuitive turning of the elevator trim wheel? Well, I’ve thought about it a bit since then. Not that I’ve changed my opinion of it, but rather about finding an helpful way of thinking about it. The trim rudder, I reminded myself, is like a small elevator attached to the real, quite large, elevator. What it does, is to either prompt or force the large elevator trailing edge to rise (for ”up” trim) or to deflect it downwards (for ”down” trim). This is does by deflecting itself downwards, just like applying down elevator makes the tail end of the aircraft lift, so to speak. Or to deflect upwards, thus forcing the elevator to deflect downwards, in turn making the tail want to lift. So, turning the elevator trim wheel forward, like the yoke forward, will make the elevator trim rudder deflect downwards, in turn making the large elevator deflect upwards. And the tail of the aircraft will be prompted to deflect downwards, making the aircraft climb (if enought power is applied, otherwise it will stall, sooner or later). That is how I will think of the elevator trim rudder wheel: Turn it forwards, trim rudder down, elevator up, aircraft climbs. Trim rudder wheel backwards, trim rudder up, elevator down, aircraft descends. Does that make any sense to you? 01:15 There’s a power station down there, says my copilot, and the navigator leans over to watch. Maybe that’s why the river was so wide back there, he ventures. They have built a large bloody dam, haven’t they? I say nothing. I don’t know what to think. A dam the size of that we would have heard about, wouldn’t we? Then again, a dam would make sense, if that really was a dam. You can collect water during the rainy season, and let it out during the dry season, making irrigated agriculture the year around a possibility downstreams. And you get the electric power. On the backside of it, a lot of people will be displaced. And a dam here, in this flat landscape, would spread out over an enormous area, if it is to hold any amount of water making it worthwhile to build. In this climate, I wonder if evaporation wouldn’t be a problem. What if they in fact loose more water this way than they would otherwise have? Oh well, that is for future generations to worry about. I don’t think that was a dam back there. Just some seasonal variation in the flow of the Nile. After all, during the rainy season it rains a lot up there in the Ethiopian mountains where the Blue Nile originates, and down there along Lake Victoria and south of it. That’s were the other, White, Nile originates. Imagine that, a river that starts all the way down south of the equator and runs out in the Mediterranean. That’s quite something we are following for a part of its run. I keep talking to take my crew’s mind off that dam, or whatever it was, back there. It disturbed me, don’t know why. Another interesting fact is that gradually I have to very carefully reduce manifold pressure to stop climbing above the 3,000 ft I’ve set up as a target. I could have just applied down trim, but I want to check what it takes to fly with the nose (and wings, more importantly of course) at 0° incidence, and what the consequence will be for airspeed. I think the airspeed has increased somewhat, as it should (or what?). The more fuel the engines digest, the lighter the load, the less power it will take to keep us at equlibrium speed. And I think that equilibrium speed will be faster, for constant angle of attack. Am I right or am I right? Suddenly I’m not sure any longer. Perhaps the airspeed at 0° is always the same, but the power to keep up the equilibrium varies with wing loading? Or - perhaps - 0° incidence isn’t something to strive for, regardless of wing load? Got to read up in my ”Stick and Rudder” - or talk to somebody who has +01:50 While I ponder intricacies like these, towns and villages and even bridges pass below us, and a mountain ridge is creeping up on us on our right. On the other side of that lies the Red Sea I believe (although we don’t see it of course). And up ahead awaits Luxor and the Valley of Kings. We are indeed coming in over much more densely populated areas. 02:00 At Luxor the river makes a big bend east, towards the Red Sea. The reason is simple - an unusual mountain range is pushing the river away. From the map we know that it will return. We don’t have to let us be pushed away by the mountains, we fly over them. These are kind of unsettling mountains. Very strange, almost spooky shapes. Perhaps it is the many tales of ”The Mummy” and such that spook us. On the other side of this ridge, the river returns, but it is guided along its course by mountain on both sides. I had no idea there were so many mountains here in downstream Egypt. Always had an idea of just a big river delta. That will come, too, I suppose. But here, the course of the river is determined by the mountains on either side. 02:30 Here we are still flying at 3,000 ft, so these mountains are high - not alpine high or anything, but high, and quite inaccessible it appears. I think I’ve been wrong to assume that 0° incidence (of the nose) is any kind of an ideal. And I’ve been wrong about the equilibrium speed being faster, the lower the wing load. It’s quite the contrary. If you have constant angle of attack of the wing (and nose of course), it follows that as wing load decreases, the airspeed required to retain lift of that lighter load will be less, not larger. So, I will now set manifold pressure to 30, as recommended, and adjust elevator trim to reduce the need to press on the yoke either way. As I did that, again, I found out that all my reasoning so far, however well meant, has been based on my inability to see which way the elevator trim rudder wheel actually moves. It is designed to work intuitively correct. Rotate it backwards does in fact mean trim up, Forward does mean trim down, just as the yoke. I’m ashamed. What did mislead me were the little indicator arrows. Up means forward, not up. Down means backward, not down. They refer to the rotation direction of the wheel, not the trim rudder effect. My confidence in the Douglas aircraft engineering people is restored. I have less confidence in my own ability to understand simple things. 03:00 As we level out again at 3,000 ft, finally at equilibrium again, the sun is clearly setting. We now fly with an indicated airspeed of 143 kts, which most likely is over 140 kts groundspeed. This at 30” manifold pressure, props 2050, and nose inclination some -2°, which seems healthy enough an attitude with less than 2,000 lbs of fuel in our tanks at the moment. I assume the wings are set at roughly 3° angle of attack at 0° nose incidence. So the wings are down to 1° angle of attack. Pretty good, probably. One hour to go. I’m a little concerned about how well I will succed in re-trimming for approach speed. I would like around 120 kts slow and steady before lowering gear. Then speed will drop to below 112 kts by itself, allowing me to safely deploy flaps. +03:20 The ground has been slipping away under us. It is now more or less at sea level, so I decide to descend to 1,500 ft, a favourite altitude of mine over ground. I still can’t get over how walled in the river Nile is by mountain ridges and plateaux. +03:35 It’s six o’clock, and the sun is setting in the west. Still no clear signs of Cairo, and I can’t follow the many meanderings of the river any longer. Sometimes I think I see the Mediterranean up there, but that’s got to be wishful thinking. Cairo airfield lies a good bit inland, as does Cairo itself for that mater. The port is Alexandria, on the coast. +03:45 I think I can place that island back there. If so, we have some 200 km yet to go, which means another 50 min. And the sun is setting. +03.50 It’s interesting how comparatively narrow the Nile is down here, as we close in on the delta. Thinking about it, it strikes me that almost all the water may have been siphoned off into the green bands on each side. That’s what Egypt and Egyptians live by and off. And it takes a lot of water to grow three crops a year in this desert climate. The water consumption must be enormous. I suppose it is not such a far-fetched idea that some day the Nile won’t add any water at all to the Mediterranean. All of it will have been used for agriculture here. It won’t dry up or anything, of course. But the risk, I suppose, is that seawater will be coming into the delta higher and higher up the river. It has happened in other places. +04:00 There is a beacon at Cairo Almaza (HEAZ) which is how the field is called officially. The distance to it is displayed as 35 nm, which translated into a quarter of an hour (if I managed the calculation in my head). The sun is really setting now, and the lights on roads and from houses are coming on. We may get a beautiful final quarter of an hour in the air. We are tuned in to the weather broadcast from Cairo Almaza. When it comes in, it will be time to clear the decks for our final landing. I almost wish this flight could last a bit longer. I’ve learned so much, not least during the flight along the Nile. Almaza doesn’t come on, in spite of the fact that we see their beacon. Must be something wrong with the weather transmission. Never mind, I’ll just land on any runway that suits me - the winds can’t be that strong. It was a beautiful end to a beautiful flight. We landed at Cairo. We delivered one Douglas DC-3 aircraft in mint condition to people who really need it and will put it to good use. I am pleased. I’m not pleased with my own performance at times, but I am very pleased with how much I have learned. I will do better, I promise myself as we leave together, the three of us who have come all this way, crossing an ocean and a continent. I wonder, will I ever do something like this again? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Leif Ohlsson Posted April 4, 2019 Author Share Posted April 4, 2019 Cairo Almaza - a download and a goodbye The pilot of the DC-3 N25823 and his crew that we have been following didn’t show what their landing looked like. I can understand that. Better to say goodbye short and sweet, like they did. But I’ve got it in among my files, so I cut together a few meters of the 8 mm amateur movie the copilot shot: This wasn’t their best landing. But the few minutes before landing at Cairo is worth showing. It is a beautiful ending to a fine flight. And they did get there. For me, the only thing that remains is to give you the opportunity to land at the same airfield in Cairo they did. Today there are two large modern airfields right next to each other, within Cairo city. The one you might think of is HECA Cairo Internationl Airport. Here’s what Wikipedia has to say about it: Quote During World War II, the United States Army Air Forces built Payne Airfield to serve the Allied Forces, rather than take over the existing Almaza Airport located 5 kilometres (3.1 mi) away. Payne Field was a major Air Transport Command air cargo and passenger hub, connecting westwards through Benghazi Airport (during the war known as Soluch Airfield) to Algiers airport on the North African route to Dakar Airport, in French West Africa. Other locations which transport routes were flown were RAF Habbaniya, Iraq on the Cairo – Karachi, India route; Lydda Airport, BritishPalestine; Jeddah, Arabia, on the Central African route to Roberts Field, Liberia (1941–1943), and later after the war ended, Athens, Greece and on to destinations in Europe.[5] When American forces left the base at the end of the war, the Civil Aviation Authority took over the facility and began using it for international civil aviation. Isn’t that interesting - the present day large international Cairo airport wasn’t even built at the time the flight we have followed took place. Instead our crew landed at the HEAZ Almaza airfield, which today is a military airbase. Here’s what Wikipedia has to say about that one: Quote In December 1931 the Egyptian Parliament approved the formation of an Anglo-Egyptian company to undertake civil aviation enterprises in Egypt. The company, named Misr Airwork S.A., was empowered to establish and operate flying training schools, local passenger flights, service stations, housing, provisioning, maintenance and repair of civil aircraft, aerial photography and survey, as well as regular and occasional air transport services for carrying passengers, mail and freight. By 1938 the company, based at Almaza, was flying regular scheduled flights between Cairo and Alexandria, and to Assiut, Nicosia, Haifa, and Baghdad, operating a fleet comprising a D.H. Dragon, D.H. Dragonfly, three D.H.86s and five D.H. Rapides. The company became fully Egyptian-owned in 1948, was nationalized in 1949, and was renamed United Arab Airlines in 1961, and then EgyptAir in 1971. During World War II the military aerodrome was renamed RAF Almaza, becoming EAF Almaza in 1947. So that’s where our crew landed, and that’s where I made up what the field may have looked like in 1941. I went a little bit overboard and gave it four different runways. Thought I could discern photographic evidence for it in the Google map photo which is included. Judge for yourself and remake to your pleasure. In the process, I made up the HECA Payne field under construction. There are only three rough runways modeled (not in use until 1943). You can download these fields. If you put them in your Custom Scenery folder, they will temporarily make their modern counterparts invisible, as long as you let them remain in that folder. Any navigational help such as ILS and beacons will still work. • HEAZ Cairo Almaza 1941-45 • HECA Cairo Payne Field 1943-45 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Leif Ohlsson Posted April 6, 2019 Author Share Posted April 6, 2019 I can see that some of you have gotten to the end of this thread. So I guess it is OK for me to start another one. You can find it here, if you want to follow that, too: Recreating historical flights with the Aeroworx DC-3/C-47: The ABA, Swedish Air Lines company flights 1940 In the first post there, I give you all the downloads I prepared for that thread, as some of you have expressed a wish to have. Kind regards, Leif Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
St54Kevin Posted April 6, 2019 Share Posted April 6, 2019 I absolutely love your passionate simming keep it up. Do you plan to keep you first posts updated with all your recreating flights threads? So we can keep up with all that awesome stuff? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Leif Ohlsson Posted April 7, 2019 Author Share Posted April 7, 2019 Thanks Kev, that might be a good idea. I'll see what I can do about it. Kind regards, Leif Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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