Men Who Killed Qantas - Matthew Benns [19]
Apart from the DH86’s very flat gliding angle and its need for some form of airbreak (necessitating the later fitting of flaps to the upper wing), the aeroplane was directionally unstable. Flying hands off, natural stability should have been enough to maintain course. But if you let the DH86 get down to about 90 mph [145 kph] in a slightly nose-up attitude, it was inclined to wander directionally and the variations tended to increase. Application of corrective rudder seemed to have no immediate effect until, with increased rudder deflection, the machine would suddenly flick from a turn in one direction to a turn in the opposite direction. This could be very frightening.13
Brain also took issue with the plane’s primitive undercarriage, a cylinder containing an inadequate number of rubber blocks, which he described as making the plane behave like a ‘cat on hot bricks’ on landing. His letter of complaint to Woods Humphery was snubbed, with the Imperial chief deferring to the all-clear given by his own test pilot, Major Brackley, and de Havilland’s Hubert Broad. Brain, however, was to be proven correct. The plane was to get its first real public test by flying the Minister for Air to Paris. Imperial pilot Captain Wilcockson had to test the twin-pilot version the day before the Paris trip. He landed and announced that he ‘wasn’t taking the Minister anywhere until something was done about that undercarriage’. Woods Humphery later told Brain: ‘I thought you were a bit presumptuous, but evidently you were quite correct.’14
The first two Qantas DH86 aircraft were to be flown to Australia from England, with three more following by ship. Qantas was anxious to get on with crew training. Brain was taken aside by one of Imperial’s senior pilots, Captain Prendergast, and asked if he could recommend him as the pilot to bring out the second aircraft. It would prove a fatal favour. Brain took the first plane with a young English first officer called Price and a flight engineer called Pink. Experts armed with slide rules and charts loaded the plane with spare parts, including a spare engine on a wooden trestle bolted and wired to the floor, all carefully checked to ensure that the centre of gravity remained within the manufacturer’s guidelines. However, on take-off, Brain found the tail would not lift and he only managed to get off the ground with both hands pushing hard on the control column. In flight, it was also a problem and remained so all the way to Lyon in France.
He recalled, ‘The first thing I did there was to get a ladder and remove all sorts of spare parts from the rear freight compartment. Then I transferred the magnetos and other heavy equipment to the nose locker in the long “snout”. From then on the loading was reasonable and the aeroplane could be trimmed to fly hands off, though it was still not stable.’15
The DH86 flew on to Rome, Catania in Sicily, Benghazi in North Africa and then took off again on a beautiful morning with perfect visibility towards the RAF base at Mersa Matruh in Egypt. At 6,000 feet and half an hour out of Benghazi, Brain needed to use the toilet at the rear of the aircraft. Knowing it was already tail heavy, he handed control over to Price and got Pink to sit in his cockpit seat to counterbalance the effect of his weight going towards the rear.
Having ‘tested’ the toilet satisfactorily I sat down in the little folding seat near the door at the rear of the cabin. Sitting there enjoying the break, I felt the aero plane begin to yaw to the left. I smiled to myself knowing that Price was about to keep a radio schedule, expecting he would correct the course. But instead the aeroplane suddenly yawed to the right. This continued to increase, then the