Leif Ohlsson Posted March 4, 2019 Share Posted March 4, 2019 Before we begin To date there have been five threads like this one. You can find them here (in the order I wrote them): • Recreating historical flights with the Aeroworx DC-3/C-47: The Balchen Operations flights 1944-45 to and from Sweden • Recreating historical flights with the Aeroworx DC-3/C-47: The KLM 1930s routes to Scandinavia • Recreating historical flights with the Aeroworx DC-3/C-47: The South Atlantic Ferry route & the Takoradi run across Africa to Cairo (June 1941) (This thread) • Recreating historical flights with the Aeroworx DC-3/C-47: The ABA, Swedish Air Lines company flights 1940 • Recreating historical flights with the Aeroworx DC-3/C-47: The ABA, Swedish Air Lines company 1941-42 courier flights to London & Leuchars Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Leif Ohlsson Posted March 4, 2019 Author Share Posted March 4, 2019 Waiting to take the big jump at Parnamirim field, Natal, Brazil Sasturday 21 June 1941, Parnamirim airfield, Natal, Brazil: We are waiting. In the heat. The OAT on the instrument panel says its around 30°C, some 90°F, outside. We are sweating. Copiously. And waiting to go. Beside me the copilot in his right seat is again going over the checklist for start-up and takeoff. But we don’t get the clearance. Three days ago, at Belem, we were interned by the Brazilian police. They wouldn’t let us out until our aircraft had been repainted in clear American civilian markings. So now we are flying for PanAm. Apparently. What the hold-up is this time, we don’t know. The world is at war. But not us Americans. The Brazilian authorities want to be helpful it seems. But they don’t want trouble with the Germans. So American military C47 transports can’t use this airfield if they aren’t repainted as civilian airliners. I don’t think any interested parties, German or otherwise, would classify us as anything close to civilian. A look backwards into our ”passenger” compartment would soon reveal the truth. Sure, there are nifty litte curtains on each window, and the passenger baggage holds haven’t been dismantled yet. But make no mistake - this C-47 is bound for military duties, somewhere in Africa or the Middle East. Those are long-range extra fuel tanks that effectively double our ordinary range. Our goal is Cairo, and we will deliver our aircraft to the British, who will quickly transform our former civilian DC-3 to their own variant of C-47 Dakota. That is also our navigator up there, just behind us in the cockpit. For this flight he has been allowed to move out of his ordinary cubicle without a view, to a table of his own, built up in what was previously the passenger compartment. Back there, he will bring his measurements from the astrodome of the solar height, or stars for that matter, and start making his calculations with a slide ruler and a massive set of tables. To help him check our whereabouts, he’s got no less than three multiband receivers and transmitters, installed just for the purpose of this flight. He will also administer the extra fuel he is all the time watching over. As we use up fuel in our ordinary tanks, he will carefully transfer fuel from the extra tanks in the compartment to fill them up again. We are going to make the big jump, from Natal here in Brazil, to Bathurst in the British colony of Gambia. From there we will make our way across the whole African continent, ending up at Cairo in Egypt. There, the plane we are flying will continue in the hands of the British, but our work will be done. I study the map I cut out of an old atlas at Miami, and the marks I’ve made of our route from there. Coming down through the Carribeans was a new experience. But we always knew the big uncertainty laid ahead of us. No-one has flown this route before. We are the first - of many we believe - to make the jump. True, once we cross the South Atlantic, the British have a well-rehearsed route in waiting. They have been using what they call the Takoradi run for a good while now. It’s their only way of getting airplanes to the North African front. The axis powers have effectively closed the Mediterranean. So the Blenheims and the Hurricanes, and even the Wellington bombers have to be dismantled, boxed and freighted by sea to the Gold Coast. At the Takoradi field they are assembled again and flown in a number of small steps across the southern Saharan desert countries to Sudan and eventually Egypt. We shall follow that route, ten of us in C47s similary hastily repainted in variants of non-military liveries. If we ever get the starting orders. I leave the aircraft for a moment to go outside. Above is a photo I took of one of the guys waiting with uts. It’s funny, ’cause in the repainting made hastily to get us out of Brazilian jail, he got an old variant of the PanAm logo, the one from 1928 with an eagle holding the world in his claws. But the painters couldn’t even be bothered to paint the whole world. The eagle had to suffice. In the photo above you may have noticed all the fuel drums stored in the open here at Parnamirim field. This is what they look in a close-up. I’ve never seen so many fuel drums before. I hope everyone is really careful with matches around them. And here’s a photo I took of our C47 being fueled up earlier this morning. They had a job of it those Brazilian ground crew! Here’s one of our guys - copilot of the ”U.S.10” back there - talking to one of the Brazilian field personnel. They have been really good to us, and say they’re sorry for our being interned earlier at Belem. The Brazilian authorities have not made any trouble for us apart from that. Our guys, of course, have built the entire airfield here, and there are a lot of people around Parnamirim and Natal who get a lot of good out of it, working for us. Suddenly I hear a roar of engines - one of our guys is finally taking off for the big jump. I hurry back to our N25823. Finally we’ve got the go order! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Leif Ohlsson Posted March 5, 2019 Author Share Posted March 5, 2019 Taking the jump over the South Atlantic - SBNT Natal Parnamirim to GBYB Bathurst, Gambia Here’s what we’re in for. 3,000 km of water, with no land within reach closer than continuing to Bathurst, or returning to Natal. I bring out my old formula for calculating range & flight time: Fuel consumption: 200 lbs/100 km, 2 lbs/km. Or 500 lbs/hr. Add 300 lbs for 40 min reserve. Estimated flight time: Distance in km / 250 ≈ flight time in hrs. We’ve been going over this many times. Just one last check. 3,000 km means 6,000 lbs of fuel + a substantial reserve if I’ve got anything to say about it. Our ordinary tanks take close to 5,000 lbs. The extra fuel tanks we carry mean an extra 5,000, for a total of 10,000 lbs, good for 5,000 km. That’s what I like, and I don't care that this means we’re starting way overweight, more than 2,000 lbs in the red. We shall get off, and we shall want this reserve, whether we are actually going to need the 2,000 lbs overweight or not. Flight time for 3,000 km means a full twelve hours in the air. We want to take off in daylight, and we want to land in daylight. So what does that mean? At Natal we are 3 hours behind GMT. Bathurst, we read, is on GMT. So, if the sun rises at 6 in the morning at Bathurst, that means 3 a.m. here. Add, or rather detract the 12 hours of flight time, and we should start from here at 3 p.m. There, I’m pleased with my ability to handle these strange figures of time zones and flight times. We start from here no earlier than three in the afternoon. It’s OK to start later, ’cause the day will only have progressed further when we reach Bathurst. That is excellent. It is now almost four in the afternoon. That’s why they’ve kept us waiting of course - if they had let us go earlier, we would have made landfall in Africa in darkness. I’m a little bit ashamed I didn’t get that. Never mind. We’re off now. 15:55 We, the copilot and I, read the checklist for taking off. We feel the gravity of the moment. We don’t want to forget things today. We very much want to do things right. By the book. By the numbers. 16:10 We’ve been warming up the engines for a quarter of an hour now. Checked and rechecked everything. I request taxi. As I pull back on the controls and lift the wheels of the tarmac there is plenty of runway left. Our 2,000 lbs overweight was not a problem, although I applied 1/4 flaps to be on the safe side. 16:25 +0:06 We leave the coast of Brazil behind at almost half past four in the afternoon. Now a whole evening and sunset, followed by tropical night all the way until morning, when at roughly half past seven in the rising sun, we shall expect the coast of Africa to show itself in front of us. Our course now is 60°, which I’m sure our navigator working from his big table on top of the extra fuel tanks shall improve on as the night wears on and the stars appear for him to gaze at and capture in from his astrodome. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Christophe Posted March 5, 2019 Share Posted March 5, 2019 I crossed the pond in a (fast) GA in the northern part of the Atlantic in a more casual way. It will be an adventure with a DC-3. May the wind be always at your back ! See you in Africa ! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Leif Ohlsson Posted March 5, 2019 Author Share Posted March 5, 2019 Thank you, Christophe, and all the best for your own adventure! - Leif Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Leif Ohlsson Posted March 7, 2019 Author Share Posted March 7, 2019 Intermission: The South Atlantic Ferry route - some facts and sources The map above is taken from The army air forces in World War II, Chapter 9: ”The Early Development of Air Transport and Ferrying”. It is a goldmine for all things related to ferry flights during this era. On the map you should notice the route marked with a fat line, demarcating the ”Pan American contract route”. The text says: Quote Ferrying operations over the South Atlantic route had begun in June 1941 when Atlantic Airways, Ltd., a Pan American Airways subsidiary corporation organized especially for the job, undertook to deliver twenty transport-type aircraft to the British in western Africa. Shortly after the passage of the Lend-Lease Act, the British government had requested, under terms of the act, a minimum of fifty transport planes for its trans-Africa operation. These planes were to be placed on the run between Takoradi in the Gold Coast Colony and Cairo--an airway of the highest strategic value in the line of communications between the British Isles and the Middle East. That is exactly the route we are going to follow. The text goes on to say: Quote The trans-Africa route had been pioneered by the British in the immediate prewar years, and at the outbreak of the war Imperial Airways maintained a regular transport service over the run between Khartoum in the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan and Lagos on the Nigerian coast. Coastal bases had been constructed at Bathurst (Gambia), Freetown (Sierra Leone), and at Takoradi and Accra in the Gold Coast Colony. Across the waist of Africa, airfields had been cut from the jungle or laid out on the desert at Kano and Maiduguri in Nigeria, at Fort Lamy in French Equatorial Africa, and at El Geneina, El Fasher, and El Obeid in the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan. With the loss of the French fleet in 1940 and the growing activity in the spring of 1941 of German air forces based on Sicily, the British line of air and water communications with Egypt by way of the Mediterranean was virtually closed. Fortunately, the existence of the trans-African air route enabled the British to avoid shipping aircraft by water all the way around Africa and up through the Red Sea to Egypt. A large base and an assembly plant were developed at Takoradi, and here fighter and bomber aircraft, waterborne from Britain, were assembled, tested, and then ferried across Africa to Cairo. Beginning in the fall of 1940, British ferry pilots began moving Hurricanes and Blenheims along this route. The first part of this US-Cairo route went from Miami to San Juan, Puerto Rico, and then to Piarco Field on Trinidad and Tobago, continuing to Belem in Brazil, and finally to Parnamirim airfield at Natal. That’s where we start our story. You can find exquisite period photos from exactly the flight we are recreating in War II in the South Atlantic, Chapter 6: The Long Hop. Some of them I took into my story here, others you should view at the source. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Leif Ohlsson Posted March 7, 2019 Author Share Posted March 7, 2019 And some downloads for you… In what follows I have tried to recreate all or most of the airfields of the ”Takoradi run” in a way and shape they could have looked like in the summer of 1941. In most cases I’ve started with the existing modern X-plane versions and retrograded them, studied historical photos where I could find them, and otherwise studied the Google maps to see if there were traces of old runways remaining in the layout of the modern fields. Much of it, though, will be a figment of my imagination. The Takoradi run PanAm DC-3: The aircraft we are flying is the Aeroworx DC3/C47, available as a free download (thank you again, Johan van Wyk!). The PanAmerican livery is mine, based on the original DC3 Airways bare metal livery in the original download. You are very welcome to use my PanAm livery; download the ”PAA Takoradi run DC-3 livery” from here. Parnamirim airfield, Natal, Brazil: Here’s the photo I’ve had most use of: Eventually, tens of thousands of people and their aircraft passed through here during WWII, but we are coming to it right at the beginning of its expansion. Built entirely by US forces, the field came to have a big importance for Natal and Brazil. At the time when we lift off from Parnamirim, Brazil has not yet entered the war, which is why we were subjected to some restricitions as soon as we landed at Belem Brazil. The repainting of aircraft I refer to in the story actually took place, as you can read about in one of the sources. • Download ”SBNT Natal Parnamirim 1941-45” from here. Place it in your Custom Scenery folder. It will replace the modern version that comes with X-plane. (If you already have your own modified version in the Custom Scenery folder, remove it temporarily.) I made this field by retrograding the existing modern X-plane version. Download my version of ”GBYD Bathurst 1941-45” from here. The name is British, it is colonial, and it doesn’t exist anymore. The correct name of Gambia’s capital today is Banjul, so if and when you talk to ATC you will hear ”Banjul International” used, instead of the old 1941 name Bathurst. I tried to change that, to no avail. Reading up on Bathurst/Banjul, I came across a mentioning of president Roosevelt landing here later in the war, on his way to one of the big conferences between the Allied powers. What he saw there of the British colonial rule, is said to have prompted him very strongly towards creating the United Nations at the end of the war. I haven’t found any period photos of the Bathurst airfield, so it’s all a figment of my imagination. The single concrete runway in the download coincides with a small part of the present runway, so ILS can still be used for that one, but fly it manually - you won’t be placed correctly. There are also three grass runways in a triangle, as was the custom of the period. Don’t know if they really existed. Now you can follow in the footsteps of the yound American pilot on his 1941 flight between Parnamirim airfield, Brazil to Bathurst, Gambia. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Leif Ohlsson Posted March 8, 2019 Author Share Posted March 8, 2019 Long night over the South Atlantic – SBNT Natal Parnamirim to GBYB Bathurst, Gambia We have taken off from Parnamirim field at Natal, heading into the night over the South Atlantic. The first problem to raise its ugly head is the magnetic declination. In the files I have stowed away magnetic declination is said to be -22° (westerly). The course measured on my map is ≈ 42-43°. Add the 22° declination to that and you get 64-65°. The 60° course given to us from Parnamirim thus isn’t totally outrageous. +0:20 I turn on the Sperry and ask the copilot to check on things while I go back to the navigator hunched over his table back there with the fuel tanks. What does he think? Of course he’s already on top of the declination issue, and has been so all the time. His advice - which should be taken! - is to go with the corrected course, as good as we have been able to measure it. So 65° it is. He promises to get back as the night wears on with the result of his star readings and much work with his tables. +0:40 The atmosphere was very unruly back there for a while. At the same time the Sperry just lost its marbles, or what shall I call it. Just wouldn’t stick to any course at all. I’m starting to learn that kind of behavior by now, so I just switched it off, turned it on again, and retuned it. All’s well again. For now. You really don’t want to lose the Sperry on a night light this, not out here, not for twelve hours. 18:20 +1:00 There’s been a time-zone change already. We are flying very close to a very dark cloud base. This is not the way to spend the night. Our navigator needs access to the stars. So we tell Parnamirin control goodbye and start a climb. +1:15 There they are, the stars. We see them at 3,000 ft, but level off at 5,000 ft, giving the navigator best possible conditions to take his reading. These are the tropics - it’s dark night already at six thirty in the evening. +1:20 The setting sun shines through some layers below us and create an eerie light. As of now, we are alone. Out of range for radio beacons on the Brazilian coast. No voice on the radio. I hope the navigator is doing better with his three shortwave transceivers back there. Up here it’s just the dark sky ahead. And the stars. Even the remnants of the sun are gone now. Some ten-eleven hours of this darkness remaining now. +1:30 Not quite true, it appears, that we are all alone. The navigator sticks his head through the open doorway and hand me a note that says we have just passed the little tiny island Fernando Noronha 45 nm, ≈ 80 km to the southeast of us. He caught a radiosignal and took a bearing. Good job. I quickly bring out my map over the South Atlantic Ocean and try to find Fernando Noronha. Didn’t even know there was an island there. And there it is. I am much comforted by looking at this simple drawing. A line on the map, and a distance scale that shows us to be just about 60 km from Fernando Noronha. 20 km more to the northwest, that’s nothing. Still, it shows that we did well to follow our own calculation. 60° would have taken us farther away on a more northerly course. The navigator says there is a tiny airstrip there. Too short for us anyway. That’s probably why it never surfaced in any information I got handed. I hope someday our guys will build an airstrip there which could accomodate us and even bigger aircraft, and supply it with a big fuel depot. Would make it so much easier to ferry aircraft to Europe by way of the African West coast. +1:40 My copilot gives me a nudge an points at the cylinder temperature gauge. It is a bit higher than it should be. Perhaps we have been running the engines on a bit too lean mixture. We increase the mixture and open the cowl flaps. Now we wait. We must take the best possible care of the engines out here. +2:00 19:20 The navigator sticks his head throught the open doorway again. This time to tell us he’s just transferred the first 1,000 lbs from the extra tanks in his previous passenger compartment to our regular tanks. A thousand pound in two hour, that’s pretty close to my rough calculations. The copilot and I spend our time adjusting the mixture and cowl flaps to reach a setting where we both agree they are as happy as they can be. 200°C cylinder temperature, 75°C oil temperature, that’s pretty much in the middle of their respective green sectors. The temperature outside is a comfortable 20°C, 65-70°F. Much cooler now than at Parnamirim, what with the altitude and the night. Ten hours to go until Bathurst. We watch the stars. +3:00 20:20 The smell of coffee wakes up from our silent watching the nothingness on the other side of the cockpit windows. The navigator has managed to organize a small electric cooking plate that works on our internal voltage in the plane. I can’t imagine where during our flight to Natal from the US he got hold of that. Full marks for initiative though. We can’t possibly use anything that has an open flame in the vicinity of those tanks back there. Now he says he’ll be making a fuel transfer next hour. We haven’t used up enough yet to make it worthwhile. After four hours he reckons our overweight will be gone as well. He needed the coffee, he says, to clear his head for making the first lengthy calculation of the three stars he’s been up measuring with his sextant through the astrodome on top of the fuselage. +3:20 The navigator comes back scratching his head. As far as he can tell, he says, we are pretty well on course. If anything he’d like to suggest a course change of 2° to the west. We laugh. Does he really think we could keep a course as fine as that, even if the Sperry was in a good mood. Which I no longer believe it is. I’m grateful as long as it keeps working at all. His figures, though, would tally with what my files on the magnetic declination says. It’s only -19° out here, as compared to the -22° back at Parnamirim. 2-3° less to add to any course measured on a map. Halfway across the South Atlantic it’s only -15°, and at Bathurst -7°. It’s good news. Bathurst in some 8 and a half hours from now, he says I’ve got to check the gyro often. Every hour, on the hour, at least. But I don’t change the course. Not yet. He’ll have to bring me a larger change than that. +4:00 21:20 I check the gyro. We drone on. +5:00 22:20 I check the gyro. The copilot checks the engines. The navigator reports transfer of another 1,000 lbs from the long-distance cabin tanks to our ordinary tanks. That is the second 1,000 lbs transfer. We are no longer overweight. We drone on. Seven hours to go. 22:40 +5:20 Checked the gyro. It needs checking about every half hour. (Note to self: Accidentally reset the stop watch. Must remember to add +5:20 to anything it says from now on; won’t be noticed here in the notes, but I must remember to do it when I make them.) I’m waiting for the navigator to come through with his half-way course corrections. Meanwhile I’m doing some calculations in my own head. Our map course is 43°, as measured early on. Add the declination of 15° out here in the middle of the South Atlantic, and we should be flying some 58°-60°. It will be interesting to see what the navigator comes up with. +5:35 The navigator comes through early. At five and half hours out he reckons we have 1.450 km left to Bathurst. Which means we have already passed the half-way point! Great news. In addition he sticks me a note where he has scribbled his new course suggestion, 57°. I smile and nod. But I don’t tell him anything about my own little calculations which pointed to 58°-60°. Very good to know that you can actually navigate with a map, plus reliable tables for magnetic declination. I change course to 55°. That’s about as close as I reckon I can trust the Sperry to keep a course. +6:00 23:20 Six hours out, less than six hours to go. Daylight in five hours or so, I hope. Two more timezones to pass, if I’ve got it right. What if we are so early that sunrise hasn’t happened yet when we hit the African coast? Almost subconsciously I decrease the throttle two-three inches or so. We’ve actually been flying a tad over 140 kts, while 135 kts is my usual cruise speed. We are in no hurry. Quite the opposite in fact. And since the overweight is gone by now, all the more reason to return to a more sensible cruise speed. +6:10 The navigator reports his third 1,000 lbs fuel transfer. Two more to go to empty the long-range auxiliary fuel tanks carried in his compartment. +6:40 24:00 Checking the gyro. Regularly 2-5° off at these regular checks. Not a problem, but it needs doing - often. The navigator comes through with his course estimate, 56°. I’ll stick to my 55°. Also, he says, now less then 1,200 km out, or less than five hours. Unless the two further timezones kick in pretty soon we’ll have an early arrival indeed. I can’t help myself, but decrease throttle to 27 inches, resulting in 125 kts cruise speed. We are proceeding at snail pace, but better that than arrive in darkness. Outside temperature at our 5,000 ft is now a mere 12°C, ≈ 55°F. We close the engine cowls. +7:30 00:50 The navigator comes through with his latest figures. Now he wants 55°. I just point at the Sperry - that’s what I’ve been flying for a good while now, although the Sperry needs reminding ever so often. He also says we hav less than a thousand km left now, less than four hours. Those time zone changes better kick in soon, or we’ll arrive in darkness for sure. We’re cruising at 125-130 kts as it is, and I dont want to go any lower. +8:00 02:20 One hour timezone change kicked in. We are less than four ours out and will be early in. But hopefully daybreak will have occurred. There’s a moon hanging out there right in front of us. We stare at it, the copilot and I, fascinated. This is not what the moon looks like where we live. I try to turn it round in my mind and decides it is waning. I guess if we were even further south, close to the equater, the moon would be totally reclining. And then, in the southern hemisphere rising again the other direction. There, I wouldn’t be able to use my old rules of thumb for when the moon is waning or waxing. +8:30 02:50 The navigator reports that he has done the fourth 1,000 lbs fuel transfer. One more to go. The lighter we get, the faster we fly. I decrease throttle again, to keep us at 27 inches and below 130 kts. Normally I would be happy to get where I want to go quicker, but just not tonight. We dearly want to arrive in daylight. The reclining moon is rising. Soon we’ll have a hard time watching it through the front cockpit windows. The engines are running a little bit hot, so we open the cowls to trail. +8:50 03:10 Suddenly, while I was studying some files about the rest of our route the recorded warning voice woke me up. What’s wrong? - and just in time I found it. We were about to crash into the sea. None of us had noticed the Sperry losing grips on what it was supposed to be doing, keeping us not only on the right course, but also the right altitude. Should have known something was wrong by the clicking in my ears, but I was too used to that, and too engrossed in reading about what’s to come, that for all practical purposes I was unconscious. How could I have missed that. We were always looking for ways to do things right, and then both of us up here forget the fundamentals - airspeed, altitude, course. In that order. I checked airspeed and course, but not altitude. Unforgivable. OK, we’re back at altitude now. But it was a close call, and something learnt for the future. Watch not only the airpseed and course, but also the altitude. The navigator hands me a note saying 53°. I’ll stick with my 55° for the time being. Less than three hours left now, he says. +9:30 03:50 The navigator now excels in notes with course correction. 52° he says. I give in and turn the direction knob of the Sperry a few clicks. 50° I will give him for a while. According to his calculation we have just over one and a half hour left. If so we shall have made it in eleven instead of twelve hours. He says our groundspeed, as far as he’s been able to read from star navigation, has been 145-150 kts for a good while. No wonder we’re making good time. I decrease throttle to 25 inches, and watch the indicated airspeed needle unwind. I have been trusting IAS too much. Should have remembered the inherent fault in what that meter measures increases with altitude. +10:00 04:20 Ten hours out on the dot. Nothing else to report, really. Longing for dawn, but not a sight of it. +10:30 05:50 Yes, we passed another timezone. And straight in front of my window I see a bright star that cannot be anything but the morning star. Morning is coming after all. How far to go now? I ask the navigator. He studies his charts and comes back with less than an hour. Will there be light, or at least dawn, by a quarter to six. We shall see. Suddenly there’s a need for us to get active. I get my mapbook out, with the course line. There’s a beacon down there at Cap Skirring, with a frequency of 112.50. I tune it, and when it comes in it should give us an idea how far along that white line we are. 150-200 km from Bathurst, says our navigator. We shall see. I’ve got both my beacon reading instruments tuned to it now. We wait. I look through my papers and find that there is a beacon where we are going, Banjul 112.90 - and it comes in loud and strong at a course of 46°. I continue on 50° for a while. Now we are really on the home stretch. But where is the dawn? The DME, distance measuring equipment, says 78 nm to Bathurst (Banjul), less than 150 km. You were right, navigator. And I tell him so. He goes back to make his final fuel transfer. We don’t really want to land with a lot of fuel sloshing about in the compartment. Better to dry them out as good as we can. +11:00 06:20 Yes, halleluja - there’s the dawn, a red glimmering out to the right from the copilot’s window. Can’t remember any time wheh I’ve longed for this sight as much. Usually, one gets very sleepy at dawn after a night of flying. I doubt that we shall be sleepy today. I ask the navigator to make more of his coffee. The beacon at Cap Skerring comes on. It is almost exactly 90° to the right of us as we fly. Which means we are well past it and on our way to Bathurst. The beacon there indicates 40°, so I change the Sperry. Now we fly on real instruments, not the stars. We are in contact again. What a beautiful morning this will be - not a cloud in sight, and the morning star waning, giving way to the sun. Soon it will come up right into our eyes. +11:10 We listen to Bathurst weather information. Wind from 270°, clear weather. Couldn’t ask for better. I shall call their contoller and put orselves into his capable hands. It is time for that. +11:15 There’s the coas of Africa under us in dawn’s early light. We’ve made it. We feel in safe hands now. The British have experience of bringing their aircraft in in this part of the world. It’s their colony. +11:25 The rising sun now illuminates everything we do. We are descending towards 2,000 ft. +11:30 Coming in for final approach. You can see that I try to keep just above 120 kts, the limit for flaps. Nose is high, as compared to cruise. We still have a full load of fuel in our tanks, remember. +11:40 We see the beacon at Bathurst. All is well. We cant miss this now. +11:50 We are down and parked at the tower. Thanks for that. I’m really tired. So tired and forgetful, that we didn’t even read our checklists for descent of landing or shutdown. Forgot a few things no doubt. But we are down and safe now. This was a long night. You can see a minute and a half of our landing here. Watching it again, I’m reminded of how difficult it was for us to spot the grass runway in the morning haze. I shall talk to the authorities here. If they are going to use these old grass runways for all who come after us from the other side of the Atlantic, they should at least rig some of those red & white guide lights to show wether you are on the right glide path. Incidentally, we landed with 4,500+ lbs of fuel left, enough for more than four hours. Oh, well, better that than the other way around. In any case we wouldn’t have made it on just our own internal C-47 tanks. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Christophe Posted March 8, 2019 Share Posted March 8, 2019 Nice ! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
St54Kevin Posted March 8, 2019 Share Posted March 8, 2019 OMG please more of this. I always wanted this kind of a story behind my flight in form of a tool/plugin/addon/website. But there is nothing. Keep it up. I will also fly this story but in my beloved VSkylabs C47 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Leif Ohlsson Posted March 9, 2019 Author Share Posted March 9, 2019 Glad to hear that you like these stories, and would like to write your own. Looking forward to reading them! - Leif Down the west coast of Africa Monday 23 June 1941, Bathurst, Gambia: We have slept a whole day, and some of the night. Yesterday was Sunday. We started on Saturday afternoon, and arrived early Sunday morning. Then it was bed, as soon as they showed us the way to or quarters here at the airfield. We do not plan to be tourists. When we woke up in the afternoon, we got to meet the RAF commanding officer here. He was very kind and went out of his way to tell us how appreciated our effort was. The British really need these transport planes as quickly as possible way up there in Cairo. They treated us to a really good dinner. Not what we were used to, but a lot of fresh vegetables and local meet, all cooked and served by local staff. The way these British officers treated the staff reminds me a lot of what I’ve seen down south at home. They sure have a race problem to deal with here, sooner or later. Our dinner was interrupted by the British signals officer who rushed in and whispered something in the ear of the commanding officer, who nodded and told him to speak up so we could all hear. It appears that only this morning Adolf Hitler and his Nazi troops had started an invasion of the Soviet Union. Churchill himself had been on the BBC radio, explaining that Britain was now allied to Russia. The signals officer had written some of it down, and read from his notes. Quote "No one has been a more consistent opponent of Communism than I have for the last twenty-five years," Churchill had said. "I will unsay no word that I have spoken about it. But all this fades away before the spectacle which is now unfolding ... Any man or state who fights on against Nazidom will have our aid. Any man or state who marches with Hitler is our foe ... It follows, therefore, that we shall give whatever help we can to Russia and the Russian people. We shall appeal to all our friends and allies in every part of the world to take the same course and pursue it, as we shall, faithfully and steadfastly to the end." We talked about this for a while between ourselves. This here war we had become involved on as more or less non-participatory basis suddenly had taken on a whole new proportions. It seemed everyone, except us in the US, now was at war with each other. And the importance of what we were doing likewise took on new proportions. We could see how the industries of our country pretty soon would be required to produce planes also for the Russians. If there was a lend-lease act in power vis-a-vis the British, it was only a logical consequence that the Russians would get planes from us too. And those planes would have to be flown in the same way we came. There would soon be a lot of planes coming through here. Those news were both good and bad. It was bad that the war suddenly had become much larger in scope. But the good thing, we said to each other, was that Hitler would never be able to defeat Stalin and his millions of soldiers. In the evening the British treated us to some Sunday night entertainment. In the mess room they showed ”How Green Was My Valley” with Walter Pidgeon and Maureen O’Hara. And later on they turned on the BBC World Service, which remarkably also played the #1 Billboard song on the US charts - ”Daddy” by Sammy Kaye and His Orchestra. That’s one thing we are going to miss - our country doesn’t have a national world-wide broadcasting service. We shall have to listen to what the BBC selects for us. Last night they were kind. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Leif Ohlsson Posted March 10, 2019 Author Share Posted March 10, 2019 Morning: GBYD Bathurst, Gambia to GLRB Robertsfield Monrovia, Liberia 07:45 That was a good night. But now it is Monday morning and time for us to leave Bathurst. We’ve checked our DC-3 which has been parked in the relentless sun the whole day yesterday. Nothing doing. It will have to get used to it. Now, a quarter to eight in the morning, the thermometer on the instrument panel alread says 33-35°C, close to 100°F. We want to get off and away. The goal today is Robertsfield in Liberia. We shall proceed down the coast of West Africa and try to hit Conakry, Guinea and Freetown, Sierra Leone. If we miss them, no matter. It’s GLRB Robertsfield we’re going to. We are parked in front of the fuel depot at Bathurst. Not that we need any topping up. We landed with almost full tanks, thanks to the extra long range tanks in what was the passenger compartment. Those tanks we asked the British to take care of yesterday, empty as they were. They will be sent back to Natal by boat, no doubt, to be used by another C-47 coming our way. 08:00 We go through the checklist. Yes, no more forgetting that, and start the engines to warm them up. 08:10 ±0:00 Thank you Bathurst. We’re leaving you now, but others will follow. Many others. +0:25 We cross the border to the Portugese colony Guinea. We are tuned in to a beacon on the coast there. Every bit of territory on this coast seems to belong to one or another European country as ”their” colony. I wonder what’s going to be left of that as this here war goes on. It’s a funny thing that the place we are going to, Liberia, actually was founded by black people from our own country, the US, who thought they would face better chances for freedom and prosperity in Africa than in the United States. I read about Liberia in my notes, where it says that ”Liberia was the first African republic to proclaim its independence, and is Africa's first and oldest modern republic.” That goes to show. My country didn’t have colonies in Africa, instead we must have treated the black people so bad that they thought they were colonized in their own country, our common country. So some of them went back to Africa, not to grab another colony, but to create a free state for black people. And they succeeded; better even than in some parts of our own country. Food for thought. We can’t get enough of this light. Never mind the heat, at least not yet. Coming from the North, as some of us do, this light, this early in the morning, is something to marvel at. It permeats every corner of our small cockpit. +0:45 That’s got to be the capital of this here Portugese Guinea. Give us half an hour on this course, and we’ll cross into another Guinea, this time French. All of these European countries must do pretty well out of all their colonies, at least judging by what we saw at Bathurst. I wonder how they would get along without them. The only main European country without these colonies must be Hitler’s Germany. And now he’s gone to war against the country with arguably the largest territory of them all, Russia. Does he want to make that the mother of all colonies? And does he really think the Ruskies are going to let him? +1:00 We definitely must be over this other Guinea, the French one by now. Haven’t found any beacon in my files to tune in to, but we are navigating by eye anyway. I did look up the declination in these parts of the world, and they seem to be -7°. But we don’t use the compass so much. Ocean to our right, Africa to our left - that’s about all the navigating we’ll have to do for the next three hours. After that, we’d better find some beacon, though. I check the gyros. And the altitude. And the airspeed - which needs a litle boasting. I get the throttle up to its proper 30” again. +1:20 I tune in to the beacon at Conakry, capital of this here French Guinea we are flying along now. Can one say capital of the main city in a colony? Or is the capital of this here Guinea Paris? Many things are quite strange to us in this part of the world. And in these times. Much will change, that’s for sure. We bathe in the sunlight. I check the gyros. +2:00 That’s Conakry down there, the capital of the other Guinea, the French one. I wonder what’s up next. A glance on the map says another English colony this time. In half an hour, Sierra Leone. We shall aim for the capital Freetown. Their radio beacon is already coming in and we change course a bit more south for it. But after that we shall continue to the only free nation here it seems, Liberia, and their airport Robertsfield. In case you’re wondering I read up on the name. Roberts isn’t some American or Englishman, but refers to Joseph Jenkins Robert, the first President of Liberia, back in the 1850s. +2:15 Suddenly we’re flying over low clouds. But they come and go, so I wait to ease off on the throttle. We do want to see where we’re going, since we are navigating with our eyes only. Beacons are just a means to get where we’re going as quickly as possible. The air gets very hazy, though, probably ’cause of the humidity from the ocean and the heat. +2:30 We couldn’t find Freetown with the help of the radio beacon. A look at the map explained why - Freetown is on the other side of a large bay, and beneath a mountain range just on the coast. That was a surprise, didn’t expect mountains out here, like out of nothing. But that’s got to be Freetown down there. +2:40 Getting back on course we had to climb to more than 3,500 ft to clear these mountains. We had been lulled to carelessness by the seemingly never-ending plains and fields. If we had been flying in clouds, on compass or navigating blind, these mountains would have been the end of us. Lesson learned - down here we want to see where we’re going, all the time, always. +03:00 We’re flying over an ocean of green. Sometimes, in the haze, it’s difficult to tell whether it’s ocean or rainforest down there. I anticipate one more hour over Sierra Leone. What does that name mean anyway - ”the Lion Mountains”? - and who gave it to the territory; surely not the British? I read up on it in the small dictionary I’ve brought. It’s acutally ”Lioness Mountains”, and it was the Portugese who came up with it. +3:25 While I muse over things like these, we find ourselves thick in the middle of low clouds. I descend 500 ft, to 1,500. We do not want to run into any more unexpected mountains. Interestingly, it was the British that founded this colony to harbour freed black slaves from my own country, the US, during the American Revolutionary war. Not surprising, they saw no future in the country who had enslaved them until then. Another contingent of black people came from Nova Scotia of all places, where they had first been offered a place to settle by the British. Racial discrimination from my own kind of people drove them away, and they chose the African settlement the British offered them. They were actually the ones who founded Freetown. History is complicated. I must revise my view of the British slightly, at least during the 18th century, and also my view of my own country’s history. +3:30 I believe we have now crossed the border into Liberia, and I tune in to the beacon at Robertsfield. It doesn’t come in yet. We wait. Now we’re down to less than a thousand feet to get under the dark clouds. We also listen for Robertsfield weather. Nothing on the radio yet. +3:45 Very strange coastal landscape here, with lots of lagoons or something, running parallell to the actual coast. Also, a new mountain up there. We’re actually flying inside of it. The water we’re flying over now is not the Atlantic but a huge lake, right inside the coastal line proper. Lake Piso, says our map. Close to a place called Robertsport, but not the Robertsfield we’re heading for. I estimate another 100 km, less than half an hour. Both the weather readio and the beacon really should be coming in now. +3:55 Robertsfield weather comes through - rwy 22 they say, which means turning inland for a landing pattern. 1,500 ft broken. Otherwise fine. +4:00 We call up Robertsfield tower and ask for a pattern at 1,000 ft. They comply, and the controller gives us bearings for rwy 22, as expected. +4:10 The controller wants us to climb to 2,000 ft for the pattern he’s thought out. No can do. There’s clouds here. We say goodby to him, and fly by the radio beacon. This time I’ll make a proper fly-over of the field, and then turn left for my own ordinary downwind-base-final pattern. Got to remember 040° - 310° - 220°. There it is, Robertsfield. Looks like a well maintained field. Landing gear down on the downwind leg. Bring speed down below 112 kts - no flaps deployment above that. There we go, flaps down as we turn to final. +4:25 12:35 Down and parked at the fuel station. When we check, though, we still have more than 3,000 lbs of fuel left. Enough for the rest of the day, wherever we finally decide that it will be enough for one day. Now for lunch, let’s see if they can rustle up something over there at the tower and offices. Looks promising. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Portia911 Posted March 11, 2019 Share Posted March 11, 2019 Hello Leif, just wanted to thank you for these entertaining and informative accounts. I have enjoyed this one, and your KLM one immensely. I have loved the Manfred Jahn C-47 over many years (on another platform), and really looking forward to installing it in XP11 soon - all the more so now for having read your splendid posts. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Leif Ohlsson Posted March 11, 2019 Author Share Posted March 11, 2019 Hello Portia911 - and welcome. I'm new here, too, although I've been flying X-plane off and on for years and years it seems. The Aeroworx DC-3/C-47 is, as you say, a wonderful machine. I'm glad you find this kind of storytelling enjoyable. For today, not the next installment, but some downloads preparing for it: Intermission: Download GLRB Robertsfield, DGTK Takoradi, DGAA Accra, and DNMM Apapa, Lagos This might be a good time to download the 1941-45 versions of the field where we just landed, plus the next few ones, all the way to Lagos, Nigeria. From there on in, it’s another story. Then we go into the desert. For now it’s all coastlines and rainforest, and a rather pleasant climate. GLRB Robertsfield: As usual, I made this one by retrograding the very nice modern era X-plane version. There were so many nice details that I had a hard time removing them. In the end, I removed one modern looking office building and definitely a high mobile phone antenna mast. I hope what’s left doesn’t stick out too much as non-1940s stuff… DGTK Takoradi: This was an interesting one. There is actually a photo of it: I interpret those wide swaths of runways/taxiways/apron as grass, so that’s how I modelled it, including the apron. Very nice to land and taxi on; don’t know it I made the right interpretation. Note that runways are short and wide, more like landing areas, really. There is much to say about the role of Takoradi, but let’s wait until we get there. DGAA Accra: Again, I downgraded a very modern airport with a single long runway, to two runways in X-shape. I thought I saw some evidence of that in the Orthophoto (included). A few taxi areas were kept to form a rather complicated system of aprons. Accra may not figure in this flight very much, but later on in the war it became a very important destination, as soon as transport routes like the one described here took their way over Ascension Island, and then on to Accra. You may want to have this one, if you are at all interested in flying these classic routes. DNMM Apapa field, Lagos: This is definitely part of the Takoradi run, as developed by the British. The field I made up is an all-out figment of my imagination. It is placed on the spot of the gigantic Lagos Intl. which I totally eradicated, including the nearby military airbase. Instead you will find three large grass runways in a starshape, plus an apron with the usual hangar tower, terminal building and open maintenance hangar. Judging by the look of Takoradi, it would seem the British were fond of grass fields. Should you wish or need to use the ILS system, the one you should choose is the westerly north-south ILS beacon. Don’t rely on the autopilot to put you down on the right spot - the 1940s runways are much shorter than what the ILS system for the modern version was made for. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Backwood666 Posted March 11, 2019 Share Posted March 11, 2019 Awesome story, well written and would be cool to do something like this someday. Kudos Captain o7 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Leif Ohlsson Posted March 13, 2019 Author Share Posted March 13, 2019 Hello Backwood666 and thank you. It seems another welcome, from one newbie to another, is in order! We continue the story: - - - - - Afternoon: GLRB Robertsfield Monrovia, Liberia to DGTK Takoradi 14:10 We board our DC-3 again. We have a delivery to make, and it would bee good to get to Takoradi today. That’s where we can learn more about the really difficult parts of this ferry run. After all, the route we are flying is known as ”The Takoradi Run”. We are curious what that’s all about. We are OK with our 3,000+ lbs of fuel. That will take us the 1,000 km to Takoradi and then some if we need to. 14:30 ±00:00 Wheels up and we leave Robertsfield behind (below). That was a nice place, and it seems a very nice country. Wouldn’t mind at all to return to it again. But now we’re off for a run along the coast. I’ve marked a few waypoints, but bascally we just follow the coastline. Ocean to the right, Africa to the left, as simple as that, just like how we got here. +00:05 We say goodby also to Robertsfield control. The afternoon is hazy and we need to stay at some 1,500 ft, give or take, to have eye contact with the ground. +00:30 That peninsula down there has a very distinctive shape. Easy to find on the map I keep in my lap and try to follow. And it appears right on time, too, after half an hour, as it should with a distance flown of around 130 km. The small town inside of it, right at the left, is called ”Cestos Market Hall” according to the map. This is really a comfortable kind of armchair flying we are doing right now. No controller on your case if you happen to get a little bit too high or too low. Africa or the ocean getting away from you; need to change the course a bit? - Easy, just turn the knob on the Sperry one or two clicks. I guess it would be too much to ask for it to continue like this. +00:40 There’s another peninsula, looks a lot like the one before. Did I misidentify that one? No, after 40 min of flight, about 170 km, we really should come up on exactly this one. The town inside is called ”Bame Town”, the map says. +01:00 We follow the coast. I notice the beginning of a slight pink lining to the clouds, and that suddenly worries me. Did we start out too late from Robertsfield? Should we in fact have stayed there over night? Oh, well, nothing doing right now. I do hope Takoradi has some lights along at least one runway. We’re about to find out in three hours time. Thoughts like these make me want to cut some corners. I change course to straight 90°, to cut across the first part of the Ivory Coast, the French colony coming up next. We’ll continue along the coast once we get back out to the ocean again. I think this will take us pretty straight on to Takoradi. Luckily, there’s a beacon at San Pedro, right were we want to come back to the water again. I tune in to that, although it won’t come on for a while yet. But now I listen for it. +01:15 Clouds get lower and visibility is almost nil, even though there’s no rain. I descend below 1,000 ft. Not much space left between the cloud base and the ground. And there could be mountains. I wish for the ocean again. +01:30 Really not much space at all. There are hills. I disengage the Sperry. Can’t sit back and not be in control over landscape like this. +01:35 The beacon at San Pedro come in loud and clear, 40 nm left before we see the ocean again. We’ve probably just crossed the border between Liberia and the French Ivory Coast. I miss Liberia. What a fantastic name for a country founded by ex-slaves returning to the continent from which their ancestors were brutally captured and sold. And returning from a country where they, themselves, could not find a place. Ivory Coast, that smells like profit hunger pure and dirty. Just as the place we’re going to, The Gold Coast no less. +01:50 The low clouds are gone. I’m glad. We just passed the San Pedro beacon, and I see the ocean. In just a few minutes, we’ll return to the old route of flying along the coast. +02:00 Flying along the coast again, in good weather. Estimate that we have 2 hrs left to go. We will be over Takoradi at six o’clock, my best guess right now. Should be alright, as far as daylight is concerned. Just about. I have already increased our indicated airspeed to 140 kts, instead of the usual 135 kts. +02:25 We come in over large lagoons. I check the map, and that’s really what they are, ”Lagune Ebrié” is says. At the end of them we are supposed to come iin over the capital of Ivory Coast, Abidjan. My little guidebook says the lagoons are 100 km long. There’s a beacon at Abidjan, 114.30 MHz, and we tune in to it. We get a crazy course, straight out into the ocean. It takes a while for me to realize that this must be some ship out there transmitting on the same frequency. You can’t trust these new systems for navigating implicitly, however fine and advanced they seem. You still have to think. +02:45 The proper beacon at Abidjan comes in with the morse signals AD. The false one didn’t have any such signals at all. It just pointed us out towards the sea. We have been flying the right course. Abidjan is now 30 nm, just 12-13 minutes away. +02:55 There it is, Abidjan, a very large city. As far as I can see from the map, we now have more or less one hour left to go. This means we won’t come in over Takoradi until half past six. I have miscalculated the relation between flight time and the time in the real world. Stupid. The pinkish glow on the clouds scare me a little. Tropical sunsets are rapid. +03:25 We are definitley inside the British Gold Coast now, as far as I can tell. Unfortunately, Takoradi does not have a long-range beacon, only a short-range, so-called NDB. I tune in to that one and continue to fly a straight course according to the map and previoius waypoints. We should get it right. But we listen closely for the ADF to come in. We are also tuned in to the weather transmissions from Takoradi. Nothing yet. The evening haze is thickening. I worry. I always worry. +03:30 There’s an eerie light in the cockpit. The sun is definitely setting. Takoradi weather does come in. Sounds good - 2,000 ft cloudbase, winds light and variable, landing rwy 09 or 06. I will choose 09, since that is almost straight in from our present course. +03:40 The NDB at Takoradi comes in. All is well. +03:45 On the little country roads below us lights are coming on. On our tail, the sun is defintiely setting. AND WE SEE THE BEACON AT TAKORADI! We’ve done good so far. I switch off all beacons and morse signals and we start on the descent and landing checklist. Takoradi rwy 09 straight ahead. +03:55 As we park outside the tower & hangars, night is already falling, just as I thought. It was difficult to taxi in the dark on this huge grass field. And the landing was hard; I may have shaken something loose. Better have the mechanics here check out the aircraft tomorrow. We hear they are exceptionally good, and have to be so. We shall learn more tomorrow. You can study the hard landing here - it doesn’t take much for something to shake loose. Fuel left is close to 1,500 lbs, good enough for three more hours in the air. But we shall fill up again tomorrow. Now we shall rustle up the people in charge here and get some grub and somewhere to sleep for the night. This was a long day. We covered almost all of the west coast of Africa. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Leif Ohlsson Posted March 14, 2019 Author Share Posted March 14, 2019 Intermission: Days at Takoradi, meeting all those people who keep the Takoradi route running June 26, 1941 (Thursday): We’ve been held up here at Takoradi for a few days. There really was something that shook loose during the landing, and the mechanics had a bit of trouble fixing it. Otherwise they may be the most proficient aircraft mechanics on the planet, since they get so much practice. This is where Beaufighters, Hurricanes and lots of other British aircraft arrive in boxes by ship from England. We had the opportunity, while waiting for our DC-3 to be repaired, to see and take some photos of many aspects of what they’re doing here. The need for transporting dismantled airplanes by boat to Takoradi harbor arose when the Germans and their allies - Italy, Spain, perhaps to be joined by a France under German occupation - effectively closed the Mediterranean and all access to the British strongholds in Egypt and the Middle East. That’s when a small group of 24 officers and men arrived here at Takoradi less than a year ago. They tell us that the leader, Group Captain H.K. Thorold, headed the maintenance team of the RAF expeditionary force in France, before they had to retreat from Dunkirk. He must have been used to dealing with make-shift workshops and such, because that’s is for sure what must have met them here. I took a photo of a Hurricane being unloaded from its crate, and assembled in the low buildings at the rear. I also got this photo of Hurricanes and Blenheims (in the background), some of them already assembled and ready to start their flights across Africa and the southern Sahara all the way to Egypt and Cairo, others just being hauled out of their crates. . Why Takoradi? we asked our hosts, and they told us that this was the starting point of a civilian air route flown by British companies during the last decade, before the war started. And this is the route we are going to follow as well, starting tomorrow when we hope the mechanics have had time to cater to our DC-3. It’s a tricky route, since a lot of it goes through desert, and not necessarily friendly desert either. It is still unclear how the French posts in the southern Sahara, like Fort Lamy, will regard us. Are they loyal to de Gaulle in London or to the German friendly regime in Vichy France? We are not sure. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Leif Ohlsson Posted March 15, 2019 Author Share Posted March 15, 2019 Heading out for Lagos in Nigeria June 27, 1941 (Friday) 08:00: We walk around our DC-3 and pay particular attention to the landing gear. Can’t find any difference. The mechanics here must have done a good job, ’cause this is where they say somehting had shook loose during our landing a couple of nights abo. We trust them implicitly, and board the aircdraft. We’re back in our office now, and have business to attend to. Our flight today is pretty simple, at least on paper. We’ll just continue to follow the coast. I will probably want to land at Accra, just to report on the state of the field. That’s one of the things they’ve asked us to do, back at Parnamarim, Natal, on the other side of the Atlantic. There will be many, many others following our trail, and those who organize this huge operation will want to cut as many corners as possible. Perhaps, I think to myself, they will build a field on the small Ascension Island, and fly directly from there to Accra. That would save many days. But we’re not there yet, least of all today. 08:40 ±0:00 We leave Takoradi with its three grass runways behind, aiming for the coast and a mornings flight with the sun more or less in our eyes. +0:05 Today we say goodbye to the Takoradi control almost as soon as we’re airborne. The course for Accra is self-evident - just follow the coast. We’ve tuned in to the beacon at Accra, just to check our progress. I feel good being back in the air again. I don’t even switch on the Sperry. It’s soothing to feel the slight undulating of the aircraft, and make watever small corrections necessary to keep both land and ocean under us. +0:25 The Accra beacon comes in. We are following it. +0:40 The weather broadcast from Accra tells us we should use rwy 06 for landing. This is almost straight in. On the way in to Accra, there are hills and even a lake, which is unusual here. +0:45 Accra is a large city, like all the major cities we’ve seen so far here in Africa. +0:55 Landing at Accra was smooth as silk - for once. Very good runways. This should make an excellent starting point in Africa for future routes - as soon as Ascension Island can be used. At least, that’s what I think. 11:05 ±0:00 We leave Accra again, after having talked a bit to the tower personnel - and got ourselves a good cup of coffee. These are coffee and cocoa regions - and slave regions. We are still over the British Gold Coast, and will cross into the French colony Togo in three-quarters of an hour. We shall not be landing there - still can’t trust the French regimes in the colonies, until they’ve made up their maind in the de Gaulle-Vichy/Petain controversy. Also, both Togo and the next colony down the coast, French Dahomey, are known as the Slave Coast. This is where most black people back in the States stem from. +0:25 The Sperry just let us down - again. Suddenly we were going 30° off course, straight out into the sea. Seams like it lost its orientation, and had to be reset. Once adjusted again, no problems. This is one instrument that needs watching over! +0:30 It’s almost noon, and the midday clouds developing is a relief, both from the heat and the tendency to fall asleep to the drone of the engines. At least they’re something to watch, along with the cloud shadows on the ground. +0:40 We’ve crossed into French Togo and are now officially over the Slave Coast. Quite a step from the Gold Coast. Or perhaps not. +1:00 We trundle on and I’m pretty convinced we are over that other French Slave Coast, Dahomey. We’ve got the radio direction finder tuned to Lagos now, just waiting for it to come alive. +1:10 The Lagos beacon comes on. We adjust our course slightly. We also get Lagos weather. Landing rwy 22 it seems. +1:25 15 nm out from Lagos I decide to let them know we are coming, and also guide us in. After all, we are guests here. The controller gets back and starts us on a trip around the countryside. I don’t mind. We seem to be in good hands. +1:45 We are down at Lagos. Landed on fine grass runways. I thought I did an acceptable landing, but it seems every time we land on a grass runway someting shakes loose. Can’t see anything wrong with the landing gear, though. Doesn’t feel wrong. What did I do wrong this time again? As usual my copilot managed to make an amateur movie of the landing. I study it to learn. Was this a too hard landing? I don’t think so. Not the best I’ve done, but not something that should cause something to break on the DC-3. I’ve got to work out this problem with grass runways. Anyway. There may not be so many grass runways ahead, if any. Tomorrow we head out over the whole width of Nigeria. When we land, it will be on the fringes of the Sahara desert, at Kano in northern Nigeria. Now we shall rest. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Leif Ohlsson Posted March 16, 2019 Author Share Posted March 16, 2019 Intermission: Download Accra and Lagos airports as they may have looked in 1941 Both DGAA Accra and DNMM Lagos of course exist in modern X-plane versions. You can download my (possible) 1941 versions of them here: • DGAA Accra 1941-45 • DNMM Lagos Apapa 1941-45 Trying to find out what’s wrong with my landings June 27, 1941 (Friday) 08:00: I am disgusted with my poor landings on grass fields, and decide to take the DC-3 up for a series of touch-and-go landings here at Lagos before going anywhere. These are as fine grass runways as you can get, and I need to get the hang of landing on these runways, or we shall be in great trouble landing on the dirt strips that await us on the Saharan outskirts. I arrive early, wishing to do these exercise landings on my own, without an audience. Didn’t get to do that, since my copilot turned up as well, offering to film my performance with his 8 mm amateur home movie camera.. Did not relish the idea too much, Still, it would help giving me an idea of what I’m doing wrong. Here’s what he cut together for me of my four touch-and-go landings (I did five, but he ran out of film for the last one, which was my best one - go figure): Clearly, in retrospect, I am shy of the ground and afraid of running out of runway. As I cross the threshold, the approach speed is too low, bordering on a stall. Then I hold off too high, which makes the aircraft stall out from as much as 6 feet at times, or so it seems. What I did learn from this repeat exercise is how to use the stick/elevator for speed control, and throttle for adjusting approach altitude/angle. So, what I will try to remember - and repeat in every landing we are about to make across Africa - is: 1) regulate speed by stick/elevator 2) regulate altitude/speed of descent with throttle 3) keep a decent approach speed 4) do not level off too high over the deck. It was a good exercise, even if I’m not there yet. Should do this more often. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Leif Ohlsson Posted March 17, 2019 Author Share Posted March 17, 2019 Leaving Lagos for the desert June 27, 1941 (Friday) 10:00: The two of us, me and my copilot, are still discussing landing techniques, when our navigator appears. He’s been looking up magnetic declinations for the rest of our flight. He is of course fully aware of the fact that from now on we are more or less destined to do without any form of radio beacons and such luxuries. We are going into the desert, and no-one has built a radio beacon - as far as we know - in the desert. So, here’s the list he presents to us: Lagos -3° Kano ±0° Maiduguru +1° Ft. Lamy +1° Geneina +2° El Fasher +3° El Obeid +3° Khartoum +3° Wadi Haifa +4° Kairo +4° It is very interesting that as we leave Lagos and get more and more into the desert, we are going to have to calculate with positive declinations, as distinct from the negative ones we’ve become used to so far. This means that for every course we measure on the map with our rulers and protractors we shall have to deduct the declination, instead of adding it. Here’s the course our navigator has plotted for us today. The waypoints are larger centres of population. The distance total to Kano from Lagos is close to 900 km, which means almost four hours in the air. As for fuel, from now on I intend to start with full tanks from every place that we can get enough fuel. We have no idea what the refuelling situation looks like along the route. And we can only imagine the effort it has taken to get fuel to those outposts in the desert in the first place. This leg of our journey does not start auspiciously. When I throttle up at the edge of the runway, I can’t get higher rpm then 2,200-2,300. We cannot leave into the desert with something as wrong as this, so I return to the maintenance hangar, fully set on calling - once again - on the mechanics. This is when my copilot taps me on the shoulder and points downwards, to the throttle consol: I have inadvertently reduced mixture to less than auto lean, almost to cutoff. Now I’m really ashamed, but my copilot just shrugs and says, good thing you noticed in time. He’s a good guy. Enough of my nervousness for today. Now I really want to leave, and make this flight as good as I possibly can. I’m a lucky guy to have two other people helping me. 10:35 ±0:00 We say goodbye to Lagos and set a course of 39° (yes, I’m really trying this time to do it by the numbers). This is what our navigator has measured on the map, plus the still negative declination of -3°. We have 110 km flying to the first waypoint, Ibadan it says on my map. I will watch for it to appear in 26 minutes from now (give or take, I don’t imagine we or I will be able to hit it that close. But still. +0:26 Exactly on the time calculated, I took this photo from my left-hand seat, flying (or watching the Sperry fly) with the map on my knee. That is Ibadan down there, no doubt. And I’m much relieved. Our navigator’s dead reckoning works, at least this far. I set the course he gives me for the next leg, 29°+3°≈ 32° for Ilorin, due to appear at +1:00. That is, about half an hour from now. I give him an appreciative nod. He’s good at what he’s doing. +0:39 Those very distinctive hills out there are supposed to appear at 160 km, +0:38 minutes. Fits rather well. +0:55 This lake appears right on time at the right place. Very comforting, And soon after that we cross over Ilorin, our scheduled waypoint. I immediately set course 59°+1°≈60° for Minna. It should appear at +2:00, about one hour from now. This leg is as long as the two initial ones together. Let’s see if we can get it right. Also, I only add 1° declination now (Lagos was -3°, Kano will be ±0°). +1:25 We come upon the river Niger, a gigantic flow of water. From the map, and our navigator’s reckoning, I would not have expected it in another five minutes. But there it is. We may have been doing a rather good time of it. We’ll see in another fifteen minutes or so, when we are supposed to cross a tributary to the Niger. +1:45 We don’t see that tributary, which worries me a bit. Nothing doing but wait until +2:00, a quarter of an hour from now, to see if we can spot Minna. We really should not miss that. It’s big, and we haven’t made that much of an error measuring on our map and correcting for declination. +1:52 We pass a city of some sort, but I believe Minna ought to be larger than that. We wait. +1:55 We pass a lake, which I believe is the one south of Minna. Our course may have taken us a bit too much south. If so, I’ve added too much compensation for declination. Maybe we should go for 0° declination correction next leg, like it will be at Kano. +2:00 I believe we have now officially missed Minna, or that the smaller city I spotted earlier really was Minna. If so, we have been flying too much south. I change course, but after talking with the navigator, we decide on 40° instead of 45° for the next leg. No correction for declination any longer, it is probably 0° now for a good while. +2:05 After just 5 minutes we pass this distinctive lake. Our course on the map would have us cross it a bit further north, so we continue on this 40° course instead of the map course 45°, hoping that we shall be back on course at our next waypoing, Kaduna, which is half an hour away. +2:25 We come in over the center of Kaduna, almost ten minutes ahead of calculations. Last bit I made an aberation from the set course to follow a big road I was sure would lead us into the center of the town. Now we’re back on track and I set the Sperry to 26° for the next leg, to Zaria, due in just 10-15 minutes or so. +2:40 There it is, Zaria, spot on this time. We change course to 39°, no correction, for Kano, our goal, due in another 35 minutes or so. It seems we’re pretty good at navigating legs of half an hour or so, less proficient at longer ones. I hope we will be able to divvy up the flights that await us in half-hour stretches, but I doubt it very much. After all, we’re heading into the desert, where everything reportedly is indistinguishable. It sure seems like that on the map. +2:50 As we close in on Kano, I study the map. The airfield clearly is straight north of the city center, so that shall be our approach. Kano is a major and important refuelling point on the Takoradi run, we know that much. So it stands to reason that is has a manned tower, and weather service. We listen in to their weather broadcast, and it says wind 40° at 8 kts. Landing rwy 06. That’s pretty good for us, since we come in more or less for a direct approach. Unless we want to go over and get a look before starting an approach. We’ll see. +2:13 We arrive over Kano airfield as estimated and make our cross-over, for a conventional landing pattern rwy 06 (the one we are flying along now). +2:20 A couple of minutes later we’re down, but the dust takes a good while to settle. This is what it’s going to be like from now on I suspect. 3,300+ lbs of fuel left, but we knew that. As I said earlier, for every stop where I can get fuel along this route, I will try to get full tanks. The landing was acceptable I think. The exercise at Lagos this morning made a difference. I hope the effect will last. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Leif Ohlsson Posted March 19, 2019 Author Share Posted March 19, 2019 Through the desert (I): Kano to Ft. Lamy June 28, 1941 (Saturday) 08:30: It is only half past eight in the morning, and the heat is already killing us. We didn’t sleep well last night. Nothing wrong with our welcome here - the British were overwhelmingly glad to see us, and treated us accordingly. It’s just the desert. It is all there is. Dust and brown colors. Starting up our engines we are reminded that this is what they are going to breathe for the duration. Not a comforting thought. We have seen how the British equip their own planes to cope with the dust - large and bulky air filters. We have nothing like that. And we shall cross 1,500 km of this desert today. After that - if we get that far today - we still have only crossed one third of what we have to. On the map I keep on my knees I have marked out what we hope to fly today. I’ve made a repeat note of the magnetic declination for the fields we have as a resource today: DNKN Kano ±0 (where we start, now) DNMA Maiduguri +1 FTTJ Ft. Lamy/N’Djamena +1 HSGN El Geneina +2 In between these fields, I have marked other waypoints which I hope we can identify from the air. I’m not at all sure, but it’s worth a try. Our first leg to such a waypoint is 280 km, course 100°, flight time estimated to 1hr 5 min. 08:40±0:00 We leave a trail of dust as we lift off Kano. On course now, for possibly more than six hours. We shall see how far we get. There are two alternative airfields in between. +0:10 I discover that by an inexplicable mistake I’ve measured our course on the map to 80° instead of 100°. And we’ve been flying that course for some 12 minutes now. I will fly 120° for another twelve minutes and then return to the correct 100°. +0:22 We’re back on course, 100°. Hope this took care of my initial mistake. +0:33 After half an hour we should pass a characteristic bend in a road. This might be it, plus the village. Seems reasonable. I will take this as confirmation that we’re OK. Our navigator taps me on the shoulder and hands me a note saying 98°. As if we could fly that close to a course. But I set the Sperry to 98. We shall do our best. +0:45 We spot a medium-sized city to our right. I don’t think that’s our waypoint. Too early. The waypoint I’ve marked is called Potiskum, and my pocket dictionary says it’s a boom town with one of Africa’s largest cattle markets. It should appear after one hour or more into our flight. +1:08 One of us thought he saw a road lined with trees. That’s sign of population for sure. We turned 45° to the north for just a minute or so, and lo and behold, there is Potiskum, the large cattle market, right on time, too. Very good. Our navigator prudently gives us the course for the next leg, to Maiduguri, where we might try a landing if so required. 87° on the map, declination is +1° correction so correction -1°, to 86°, for about 50 min. Then we should see it. This is the first time we try deducting the now positive declinations. Perhaps we should have hit Potiskum more exactly if we had done it on the last leg as well. We shall see. +1:30 Exactly on this time we are supposed to come in a bit north of a medium-sized town. We do, but we are straight over it instead of a bit north of it. I immediately adjust our course to 84° instead of 86°. Let’s see if that will pay off. +1:52 We see the airfield, far out there. We hit it almost exactly. Very comforting. I decide not to make a stop here, but we shall make a touch-and-go, and then continue. Part of our task is to try out these fields for others that come after us. The weather broadcast from Maiduguri says we should use rwy 06. We make one touch-and-go landing. But then I see things that need to be told to the authorities here, so I go around again for a proper landing rwy 06: This is no way to manage an airfield - letting the runway protrude over public & very trafficked roads. Got to tell the commander here a few things. Also, I will take the opportunity to fill up our tanks again. 12:10 ±0 We leave Maiduguru trailing the usual cloud of dust. Quite stunning, if you don’t think about what the engines are inhaling. Anyway, the authorities here promised to get on to the protruding runway very quickly. Good to know for those coming after us. Course is now se to 83°-1°≈ 82° for Ft. Lamy, which we estimate to cross over in 53 minutes. I start the clock for a new leg. +0:15 It suddenly strikes me that we haven’t compensated for a 7-10 kts sidewind from the north. No wonder we always end up south of the course line. I immediately detracts another 5°, to 78° in order to keep to a track of 82°. I hope that this correction at least is of the correct order of magnitude. We shall soon see. I have a feeling that the correction for sidewinds will be much more important than the magnetic declination. Stupid, stupid me. And I’m supposed to having absorbed a whole lot of navigation courses back home, before I got this command. +0:45 The river up ahead is the border between Tchad on this side and Cameroon on the other. Fr. Lamy airfield should be on just the other side of the river. +0:55 We are down and parked at Ft. Lamy. This is a very advanced airfield. The French must really regard this as an important stronghold. I don’t think we’ll try to get fuel here. We don’t need it, and I don’t look forward to the hassle. None of us speak French, and none of the French people I’ve met have shown much enthusiasm for speaking English. Also, this looks like a very military place, and I don’t fancy militaries other than my own kind for the duration. 13.30±0 So what we do is we take off again and set course to our next waypoint, a lake or marsh which we should be able to spot. It’s more than an hour away, so we need to get the navigation right. I start the clock for a new leg. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Leif Ohlsson Posted March 20, 2019 Author Share Posted March 20, 2019 Through the desert (I cont.): Ft. Lamy to El Geneina June 28, 1941 (Saturday) 13:30: ±0:00 Our next waypoint is more than an hour away. We need to get the navigation right, so I star the clock for a new leg. +0:45 Those hills looked pretty daunting from far off, and I was half looking forward to a break in the brown monotony. No such thing. Up close they are nothing. Still, I suppose the village below them live by the rain they might pull down from occasional clouds. I’m not even quite sure I can identify them on the map. Roads, and the village, will be of greater help. But they’re not what we are looking for. Got to wait at least another quarter of an hour. 01:08 Now this waypoint we bloody well couldn’t miss, could we (as the English we’ve met here would express it). And it was spot on time, too (as they would say as well). I relax. This lake was good to find. 14:40 ±0 I reset the clock and continue on the same course for our next waypoint, which is just under one hour away. It is just a road crossing, but a very characteristic one - three roads and a river. I hope the river hasn’t dried out completely, so that we won’t be able to identify it. We’ll see. +0:15 The hills over there were supposed to appear after a quarter of an hour - and they did. Ther river, however, no sign of it. Which makes me doubt that we shall see the one I was hoping to use as a waypoint in another 40 minutes or so. +0:25 I’ve been thinking for a while now - what do I long for most of all? Simple answer - some real weather. I never thought I’d miss clouds and rain and fog and drizzle and more clouds. But I do. And after that, after weather? Mountains, hills, rivers - in short, landscape. This isn’t landscape we’re travelling through - or over, rather. To me it’s the forebodings of death, nothingness. And yet people live down there below us. We can see the marks they leave - not many, but still. There are roads, houses, fields of a kind, even gardens. I wonder what life here does to a person. What in the life of someone down there would I be able to talk to him or her about? What would we have in common? What would we want to have in common? Those are the things you think about, flying over terrain like this. These thoughts are very depressing. +0:50 I think this green area is the one south of our course line on the map at 220 km. The timing is right. If so, we have hit it too much south. I will make a gamble and steer 50° hoping to hit our waypoint after five minutes. If we haven’t seen a road in ten minutes I will have made the wrong gamble. C’est la vie. +0:55 That village down there’s got to be it, our waypoint. Can’t see any roads, but it’s right on time, and where there’s three roads that met, there’s gotta be a village. My gamble payed off - I think, I think. We change course to 84° on the map - 82° when +1° declination and +1° wind drift are compensated for. I keep changing the correction for wind drift, hoping to get it right one day. 15:35 ±0 I also reset the clock for a the last 308 km leg to El Geneina. No more waypoints. In one hour and a quarter I shall expect to see an airfield under our nose. Arrogant, arent I? +0:19 There are hills appearing center and left - as they well should after 20 min, if you compare with our course line on the map. So far so good. These hills make me feel so much better, both because we seem to be right on track, but also because of the variation they provide. I’ve longed for that. I now adjust the gyros ever so often. For the first time, really, it seems to be worth the trouble trying to keep to a course within a degree or two. Until now, we could always expect to come within range of one or another radio beacon at the end of a long run, like over the South Atlantic. Not so here. Loose you course by more than a degree, and after an hour you will likely be totally lost. I flew this close to one of the hills, just for the thrill of it. fior the next one, though, I turned the altitude knob of the Sperry a few notches to climb a couple of hundred feet. You can enjoy thrills only so much. Not much excitement in having to ditch our aircraft out here. +0:35 That hill just below us appeared slight to our right, whereas it should have been slight to our left, if you study the map at 152 km. I adjust the course to 85°. I really am getting arrogant, aren’t I? But I think the explanation is no more sidewind. We shall see when we can get weather from El Geneina. I tune in to that frequency and wait. +0:45 I’ve been so busy thinking about navigation and one degree left or right, that I’ve not noticed how the ground is creeping up under us. The radio altimeter now says less than a thousand feet, so I climb, even though we were at 3,000 ft. Didn’t know that the desert here was such highlands as well. we end up at 4,000 ft, with at least 1,500 ft below us and the ground. This is actually very mountaineous terrain. Right now the El Geneina weather broadcast came in. And they say winds are light and variable. That confirms what I thought, or deduced, from our drift compared to the map. Very satisfying that sometimes you are able to get some things right. Anyhow, they direct us to rwy 04. We’ll see what that looks like when we get there. +0:55 Waiting for El Geneina to show itself (in another 20 minutes or so), our navigator taps my should and points to his watch. It’s already 18:30 local time. We’ve been running away from the sunset, flying east, but now it is catching up on us. It is sure to be dark pretty soon around here, but I’m not too worried. We shall get to El Geneina before that. But it is a good reminder for me not to forget time zones when we fly. We do not wish to be caught in the dark out here. The ground is still closing in on us, but at 4,000 ft, we still have a thousand feet between us. I stay on at this altitude. El Geneina airfield is slightly less than 3,000 ft according to our files. +1:00 Our navigator taps my should and says he’s been taking rough bearings on the El Geneina weather broadcasts, and says they are more 75° than 85°. We split the difference and agree on 80°. Only minutes away now anyway. +1:07 And there it is, right iunder our nose, El Geneina. Slightly more to the left and beyond we spot a beacon, from the airfield. We breathe more easily, as the sun really is setting behind us. +1:15/18:50 We are down and parked at El Geneina. A fine little airfield, no frills, but exquisitly placed, right when and where we needed it. We’ll let the sun set in peace, and find somewhere to eat and sleep here tonight. The terminal building looks very colonial and promising. We shall return to our DC-3 tomorrow morning. Today, it, and we, did well. Incidentally, I don’t mind at all showing you the landing. I believe we really kissed the ground on this one. Couldn’t tell if we were down or not, until the nose rose up in front of me. What I will not show, is the magnificent ground loop I made one second after the film ends. I asked the copilot, who makes these films on his 8 mm camera, to cut it out. He mercifully obliged. You’ll have to imagine it. No great harm done, though. We’ll be all right for tomorrow. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Leif Ohlsson Posted March 21, 2019 Author Share Posted March 21, 2019 Intermission: Download several desert fields The last 1941 version of the airfields along the Takoradi route I offered for download was Lagos. So here are links to the one’s we’ve flown since then: DNKN Kano 1941-45: Kano Airport is the oldest in Nigeria and the first aircraft landed in Nigeria was landed in Kano 1922, with operations starting in 1936. In the first decades of operation, it became an important fuel stop for airlines flying long-haul services between Europe and Africa. Newer aircraft did not need such fuel stops and, with the demise of the Kano economy in the late 20th century, many international airlines stopped serving the airport. When they indefinitely suspended services in June 2012, KLM was the only European airline serving Kano, which they had done without interruption since 1947. (Wikipedia). My 1941 version of Kano has two dirt runways at ang angle. I thought I could detect evidence of the second one studying Google Earth orthophoto. DNMA Maiduguri 1941-45: My version has three dirt runways. Again, I thought I could detect the possibilites of such a layout from the orthophoto. I corrected my initial version after what we found during our landing there, with one runway being stretched out across a very well trafficked route. Sloppy work. Hope there aren’t many other such instances. FTTJ Ft. Lamy 1941-45: The city, today called N’Djamena, as is the international airport on the same place as my 1941 reconstruction, was founded by French commander Émile Gentil on May 29, 1900, and named after Amédée-François Lamy, an army officer who had been killed in the Battle of Kousséri a few days earlier. It was a major trading city and became the capital of the region and nation. During the Second World War, the French relied upon the city's airport to move troops and supplies. (Wikipedia) My version was made by retrograding the excellent modern X-plane version. I think I did keep a little too much of the very fine detail, but then again, it reinforces the impression of a strong military base, also in 1941-45. HSGN El Geneina 1941-45: The field is situated in the Darfur region of Sudan, which means it has been in the middle of the genocidal actions taking place there during the last decades. In these modern days the field therefore became a base again, this time for massive humanitarian relief actions. You can watch unique photos here: ”Historic photographs courtesy of Tom Culbert, and color photos of current UN operations courtesy of the UNAMID staff”. I used the photo above to recreate a simpler, earlier, version with a dirt runway. Among those photos, there was also a good historical period sketch of the route we are flying. Note how there was an extension to India and China from Khartoum. Not few of the DC-3s flying that route would end up in Burma, flying ”the Hump” into China - with a great many losses. As is evident from another map, there was also an extension to Russia northwards, from Cairo over Teheran and the Caspian Sea in southern Russia. That route would rise in importance not long after our flight. Remember, our flight takes place at the end of June 1941, when Nazi Germany has just started their invasion of Russia. After that, there would be many aircraft coming to the help of the Russians, both from England (Hurricanes and Spitfires), and from the US (Bell Airacobra, North American B-25, and many others). Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
St54Kevin Posted March 23, 2019 Share Posted March 23, 2019 Would be cool to have a link to the whole package of custom airports you visit linked in the OP Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pedrovl Posted March 23, 2019 Share Posted March 23, 2019 Thank you very much Leif, I'm sure I will enjoy these flights... once I can find more time to x-plane and maybe update my systemm. So yes, at this moment I'm downloading the lot for later use. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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