Post
by phylo_roadking » 19 Jan 2008 16:20
The route was...
Takoradi on the Gold Coast to Lagos in Nigeria, then Minina, Kaduna, Kano and Maiduguri before crossing into French Equatorial Afraica for Fort Lamu, on to El Geneina just over the border in the Sudan followed by El Fasher, El Obeid, Khartoum, Atbara and finally Wadi Halfa before the longest leg of the journey straight to Dekelia outside Alexandria.
The route was originally an Imperial Airways commercial route established in 1936 for an internal African service from Lagos to Alex. The route itself was hell on both aircraft and any new pilots outbound from England, the pilots barely acclimatised to the extreme equatorial climate and the aircraft being high-performance military aircraft with the minimum conversion for climate that preserved their performance, usually just different grades of lubricants and filters. Most of the stops were just fuel dumps with no spares' stock, only the bigger staging posts had spares, and aircraft were often standed for weeks waiting on spares to be brought by transiting aircraft from the coast. No matter how many spares were stockpiled enroute, the wear and tear on engines on the trip meant there was always a shortage for various items. Navigational acidents were frequent, with the longest legs being flown over featureless desert - instrument faults or navigational error caused the loss of many aircraft and crews. On arrival in Alex the aircraft needed FULL overhauls after their desert transits, the trip having put over 3800 miles of dust and sandfilled air through filters etc. in over 30 hours' flying time. This is one of the reasons why aircraft in the Desert Air Force had a reputation for being "secondhand" or highly-unreliable - they were already severely worn by the time they arrived in the Eastern Med even if they'd left the UK factory-fresh or very low hours on their airframes.
There were ferry pilots in the system, particularly due to the large number of aircraft stranded unflightworthy at Takoradi and being released for transit as spares and repairs allowed. But also I've read of a lot of fresh trained personnel travelling to the Gold Coast with their aircraft to transit in-theatre. Remember - not only the RAF used the route, but also the FAA ferrying replacement aircraft and pilots to the Eastern Med to the Illustrious among others. And of course the third case - pilots travelling by sea to Takoradi and collecting aircraft there to ferry while they themselves were en route one-way to specific squadrons or the general replacement pool in Egypt.
) doctorate, which was about the Takoradi air route.
Wing Ray writes that the idea was 'sold' to the public as simple expansion of Pan-Am's network, which coincided nicely with Pan-Am's switch away from flying boats to land based planes. I suppose it does tell us something that the Pan-Am's base network expansion apparently was funded by government money.