RESCUE FLIGHTS

Timaru Herald, Volume CLI, Issue 22204, 23 February 1942, Page 7

RESCUE FLIGHTS

Anything With Wings The Pilots Of New Guinea SYDNEY, February 11. Epic stories of how commercial pilots evacuated civilians from bombed New Guinea towns are being released in Australia. They flew anything with “wings and an engine* out of the danger zone over some of the most hazardous flying country in the world. Among the “crates” called into heroic service was the late C. T. P. Ulin’s old Faith in Australia, left in disrepair at Lae, administrative centre of New Guinea. Pilot Arthur Collins, of Mandated Airlines, and a mechanic worked on the plane, and on January 25 took on several passengers, including the Administrator, Sir Walter McNichol, who was carried on a stretcher owing to an illness, and the Assistant Secretary in New Guinea, Captain S. A. Lonergan. The plane safely reached Port Moresby, but was promptly declared unairworthy by civilian aviation authorities. Further repairs were made to the Faith, and on February 5 Pilot L. J. Stephens set out for Wau to carry out a private evacuation scheme in an area where practically all civilian planes had been withdrawn. He failed to reach Wau. and he is believed to have been forced down in the jungle. Stephens had previously made several plucky trips in a Gannet plane with evacuees from Wau. He suffers a “blackout” above 6000 feet, and as it was necessary to fly at 11,000 feet to cross the Owen Stanley Range, he took with him Norman Wilde, a pilot who had been engaged in gold mining for some time. Wilde took kthe controls as they crossed the range, and handed them back to Stephens as they came out of the heights and Stephens came out of his “blackout.” All Risks Taken Wilde added his name to the famous list of pilots by flying evacuees from Salamoa to Wau in his private Puss Moth plane. He loaded the two-seater plane with as many as eleven passengers at a time, taking off during bombing lulls. “It was a miracle how the plane ever left the ground or stayed in the air,” said a passenger. Another crazy flight from Wau was made, by Pilot M. Blackman, of Guinea Airways, and Mr Bernard Parer, a gold prospector. Pilot Blackman was in Lae when the settlement was bombed by the Japanese. Two days later he was

picked up in a plane bj' Pilot, Price, of Mandated Airlines, and flown 40 miles to Wau, where he found an aeroplane abandoned by Guinea Airways when the staff evacuated. Fuelling this old cockpit machine, Pilot Blackman flew to an out-drome at Slate Creek, where he took Mr Parer aboard as passenger. Describing the hazardous 800-mile journey to Townsville, where they arrived, Pilot Blackman said: “We had to make thirteen stops with the old crate. It has a range of only 180 miles, and a top speed of only 75 miles. Its fuel capacity is only 19 gallons. We took aboard four tins of petrol as cargo. The plane has a ceiling of only 6000 feet. To cross New Guinea it was necessary to climb 7000 feet over the ranges. Near the top of the mountains we held our breath, but the old plane just made it. We barely cleared the treetops. Luckily we were able to pick up petrol on beaches at each hop.”