Men Who Killed Qantas - Matthew Benns [27]
On 22 April 1943 the redoubtable Captain Aubrey Koch was in command of the Camilla, flying from Townsville with 22 RAAF personnel and five Americans on a regular taxi flight. As he came to Port Moresby in light rain he found his way into the harbour and a safe landing blocked by dense black cyclonic cloud. Lester Brain’s official report said: ‘Thick weather intensified and spread. Koch was circling at low altitude on instruments [which was] unsafe and perhaps impossible. [He] turned and flew away over the water on a straight course on instruments, undoubtedly the correct action to take.’ It was a dreadful position to be in. ‘He had no option, and his final decision to land when his fuel was nearly exhausted was the only competent decision to make. [He] displayed sure, cool judgement and a very high standard of endurance and morale (two hours flying under extremely onerous conditions).’15
Landing on instruments in the darkness, Koch and his first officer misjudged the altitude and the plane stalled on landing, rapidly broke up and sank. Koch, who had already had to swim to shore after being shot down by Japanese Zeros the year before, spent 18 hours swimming before being picked up together with 17 other survivors in the afternoon of the next day.
On the same day Camilla crashed, Fysh’s intensive lobbying at the very highest levels of British government was rewarded with news from the English director-general of Civil Aviation, William Hildred, that four Catalinas would be supplied for the operation of an Indian Ocean service from Ceylon to Perth. Qantas was back in business with the first Kangaroo Route.
Crew and passengers who took the flight were given a certificate as members of the ‘secret order of the double sunrise’ because they saw two sunrises on the same journey.16 It was a marathon effort flown through enemy territory in complete radio silence and with so much fuel on board that emergency flying on a single engine could not be achieved until eight to ten hours into the flight. The lumbering planes had a top speed of just 204 kph. Qantas left the British roundels on its planes but gave them civil registration numbers and named them after stars: Altair Star, Vega Star, Rigel Star, Antares Star and, when a fifth plane arrived, Spica Star. The journey from the Qantas Empire Airways base on the Swan River in Perth to Koggala Lake in Ceylon was 5,652 kilometres, the longest journey undertaken anywhere in the world at the time.
The first flight left Perth on 29 June 1943 with Captain Russell Tapp in command. Fysh himself took the eighth service from Ceylon to Perth on his way back from England. Captain Crowther was commanding with legendary Australian navigator Jim Cowan charting the course. He would later use his skills to navigate routes for Qantas over the Indian and Pacific Oceans. The Vega Star left at 8 am on 30 August 1943. In his diary Fysh notes: ‘8.30 am. We are at 2,400 ft and our airspeed is 105 mph. Capt Crowther says it will be 11 hours before the aircraft has a single engine performance. This knowledge of twice the risk of a forced descent as compared with a single engined aircraft, plus the fact that we have no dump valves, plus the sea below, plus the fact that we are flying into Japanese patrolled areas lends a spice of adventure and risk to this trip.’17
It was a long, lonely flight. Fysh’s diary captures a sense of the isolation experienced by the flyers as they drone steadily on over an empty, moonlit ocean: ‘Midnight. The stars are shining bright and Crowther and Cowan have just taken a shot on Vega. Canopus is very bright and twinkling. Mars gleams