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By Root 308 0

one of Qantas’s ‘most able commanders’ was flying the Lancaster G-AGLX from Ratmalana in Ceylon (now Sri Lanka) to the scheduled stopover on the Cocos Islands.8 As per routine, he called in his position and reported the flight was normal. There were some showers at the Cocos Islands, 1,111 kilometres ahead. And then nothing. The aircraft was never seen or heard from again. Ten passengers and crew were on board, including the son of Sir Roy Dobson, head of the Avro Company, which built the plane. ‘We felt quite upset about it all,’ said Fysh in his book Wings to the World.9 Thirteen aircraft were scrambled to look for the Lancaster but nothing was found. Fysh speculated that the cause could have been lightning coupled with a fuel leak – the converted bombers often smelled strongly of fuel at the rear of the fuselage.

The loss of the converted Lancaster came just before Qantas resumed its Singapore service. It now ran an express mail service with the fast Lancasters, and a slower but more luxurious service taking five and a half days with Hythe flying boats – an improved version of the old pre-war Empire flying boats. At the close of World War Two, Fysh noted that Qantas had come out of the war with a profit and a good ‘scratch’ operation of aircraft and routes, as the battle for the future of civil aviation loomed.

The world was changing. The charter of the United Nations was signed and in April 1945 31 nations met and signed the articles of association of the International Air Transport Association (IATA). In Australia the Labor government of Ben Chifley passed the Australian National Airlines bill to nationalise the aviation industry. The domestic carrier Australian National Airways fought it, but for Qantas the die was cast. Stopped from nationalising Ansett and ANA, the government set up Trans-Australia Airlines (TAA) to operate domestic routes and recruited the loyal Qantas hand Lester Brain to run it. The government then set its eyes on Qantas. Against this backdrop of political and financial manoeuvring, Fysh had his sights on something that would be equally important to Qantas’s future – Lockheed Constellation aircraft. Britain was pushing for Australia to take what Fysh called ‘forlorn hopes’: the Yorks, the Hermes, the Sandringhams and the Tudor IIs.10 At Australian government level Fysh’s case for Constellations was greatly helped when the Air Ministry in London sent ‘misleading figures’ comparing the as yet unflown Tudor II with the Constellation.11

In September 1946 Fysh managed to secure a meeting with Prime Minister Chifley. In his Qantas history, Wings to the World, Fysh recalled the meeting with the Prime Minister at Victoria Barracks in Melbourne. The minister responsible for the upcoming government purchase of Qantas, Arthur Drakeford, went in first:

Then a long fidgety wait before at last I was ushered into the presence. A visit to any PM is always something of great import to a person such as myself. Such a man has the weight of the country’s affairs and problems on his mind.

Smoking his pipe as usual, his puffs floating upwards in the still, rarefied air of the Barracks, Chifley invited me to sit down. In front of him on his pad lay the leaves of an urgent telegram. He did not waste words. He and Drakeford had made up their minds and did not want to hear any more.

Said Chifley, fingering the telegram, ‘You see this? It is an urgent telegram from Clem Atlee, Prime Minister of England, begging us not to go on with those Constellations you want.’

A pause, a smile, and then he said: ‘Well, anyhow, I have decided. We’ll give it a go.12

Fysh, giddy with success, hung on the strap of the tram back into the city, where he went to the GPO to send a telegram to Sir Fergus McMaster in Brisbane, notifying him of his success. Ironically, and despite the intense pressure from the British government, BOAC itself went ahead and bought the superior American planes. It ordered the bigger and more expensive Boeing Stratocruisers after first asking Qantas if it would buy Constellations on its behalf because the