Men Who Killed Qantas - Matthew Benns [22]
Hussey and Crowther at first pointed the Camilla towards the Alligator River but then, on reflection, instead turned to Groote Island, where they landed and took on 6,370 litres of petrol. Captain Crowther still had the dried soap from his interrupted shave on his ears. That afternoon, and in radio silence, they returned to the smoking ruins of Darwin ready for a dawn departure to Sydney. Among the passengers they safely conveyed to the harbour city was the badly injured Captain Koch.
The war ended what was a golden age of flying for Qantas. The airline had bought a fleet of flying boats that summed up the spirit and romance of exotic luxury travel. In Qantas at War Hudson Fysh describes the joy of travelling on a flying boat: ‘Getting up out of his chair, a passenger could walk about and, if he had been seated in the main cabin, stroll along to the smoking cabin for a smoke, stopping on the way at the promenade deck with its high handrail and windows at eye level to gaze at the world of cloud and sky outside.’5 It was not unusual to enjoy a game of quoits or mini-golf on the promenade deck to break up the monotony of the journey.
At fuelling stops, passengers and crew would hang fishing lines over the side in some of the world’s most exotic locations. And it was luxurious. The cabin was made up with beds similar to a first-class rail journey for night flying. But more often the 15 passengers would overnight in luxury waterfront accommodation such as Raffles Hotel in Singapore. Hot meals were packed in thermos and vacuum flasks. Passengers would receive hot roasts for dinner and poached eggs for breakfast even though the plane did not have a galley. Oysters were packed on ice and portions were so big that they were often left unfinished. There was only one class – first – and the fare from Sydney to London was the equivalent of the average national wage. The service was so luxurious that Fysh felt Qantas had set a standard that would be an example the world over for service on airlines.
The British government wanted to run an airmail service to every corner of the empire using the flying boats. The dream was for all post to be carried swiftly by air at no surcharge. It never happened, but it did mean the business brains at Qantas knew there was a market for its services. There were problems. The Dutch airline KLM was making threatening noises about running its Indonesian service into Australia. Australia’s government air watchdog, Edgar Johnston, was convinced the future lay in American-built land planes. The Australian government opposed the idea of flying boats, as did the RAAF. But Qantas knew the DH86 contract was due to expire by 1939 and there would be no real four-engined land-based planes ready in time to cross the seas.
Qantas chairman Fergus McMaster went to Britain, where Imperial had commissioned the Short Brothers to build 28 all-metal Empire-class flying boats, and returned convinced they were the answer to Qantas’s problems. Chief pilot Lester Brain agreed and Hudson Fysh set off with Imperial’s Major H. G. ‘Brackles’ Brackley on a flying boat route survey. They eventually chose a route to Singapore via Brisbane, Gladstone, an overnight stop in Townsville, across the Cape York Peninsula, to Karumba, Groote Eyelandt and on to Darwin. From there the route went across the Timor Sea, to Kupang, Bima, Surabaya and Jakarta and, finally, Singapore. British Imperial Airlines would then take over the plane and fly the rest of the route to London via India, the Middle East and Egypt. Although the two airlines operated the routes separately, the idea was that they would be interchangeable. Fysh shrewdly insisted that the Australian end have its own engine overhaul facility to prevent the problem of a four-month delay in shipping engines to England for repairs. Qantas decided it needed six flying boats for the job, at a cost to shareholders of £480,000. In January 1937 Australian Prime Minister Joe Lyons gave the scheme the green light.
Now Qantas needed to teach its crews how to handle flying boats.