An Historic Plane with an Aussie Connection

[old man emu]

There are many planes from the first half of the 20th Century that were used to do some unique things. Unfortunately, most of them no longer exist as saving  today for our tomorrows wasn't a high priority in the aviation world of those times. Happily, around the world several of those unique planes remain. One can view Ross and Keith Smith's actual 1919 England to Australia Vickers Vimy at Adelaide Airport. But you won't see Smithy and Ulm's original Southern Cross.

 

Happily there is one plane with a strong Aussie link that has recently undergone restoration to airworthy condition in England. This plane is Sidney Cotton's Lockheed 12-A Electra. Who, what do you ask? Sidney Cotton was an Australian-born character of the first half of the 20th Century. I would not be too far wrong in suggesting that that rake, Errol Flynn, modeled himself after Sidney Cotton. 

 

What do you wear in an open-cockpit military aircraft in WWI to keep out the the cold? Why, of course. You wear a Sidcot suit.  His experience with high level and low-temperature flying as a member of the Royal Navy Air Service, led Cotton in 1917 to develop the revolutionary new 'Sidcot' suit, a flying suit which solved the problem pilots had in keeping warm in the cockpit.  This flying suit was widely used by the Royal Air Force until the 1950s.

 

In the 1930s, At a time when most photographs were in black and white, Cotton purchased the rights to sell outside of France a French colour film called Dufaycolor, which led him to engage in frequent travels throughout Europe, which he did flying himself about. In September 1938 during the Sudetenland crisis, Cotton was approached by agents of the Deuxième Bureau (the French intelligence department) to undertake spy flights over Germany. Cotton's role in promoting Dufaycolor  gave him a plausible excuse to fly to Germany. Starting on 25 March 1939, using the cover of a newly founded dummy corporation, the Aeronautical Research and Sales Corporation of London, Cotton started to make spy flights over Germany, Italy and the Italian colony of Libya in the pay of the Deuxième Bureau. In April 1939, Cotton was recruited by Fred Winterbotham of MI6 to take clandestine aerial photographs of the German military buildup. Cotton turned over his Lockheed Electra airplane to the Deuxième Bureau while MI6 provided Cotton with a new Lockheed 12-A Electra aircraft.

 

Cotton's was the last civilian aircraft to leave Berlin before the outbreak of hostilities. After Cotton took off from the airport in Berlin, he noticed Luftwaffe planes on their way to bomb Poland. Upon landing in Britain, he told British customs that he just left Berlin earlier that morning and was told: "Left it a bit late, haven't you?" One biography is titled Sidney Cotton: The Last Plane Out of Berlin

 

It is this Lockheed 12-A Electra which has been returned to England and restored. The restoration is the subject of his video.

 

 

The story of Cotton's escapades in spying on Germany was the subject of an Australian, made-for-television program. This is the trailer for the programme.

 

 

[Rastus]

The original Southern Cross is preserved at Brisbane Airport.

[onetrack]

OME may have confused Kingsford Smiths Southern Cross aircraft with the Southern Cloud, which was a historic aircraft that crashed in the Snowy Mountains in 1931 with no survivors, and the wreckage was not found until 1958, when it was discovered by chance by a Snowy Mountains Scheme worker.

 

The Southern Cloud was an Avro 618 Ten, a licence-built Fokker, built in the U.K. by Avro Aircraft, which company was founded by A.V. Roe.

 

Amazingly, one passenger (Stan Baker) who planned to fly on the Southern Cloud, cancelled his booking at the last moment and travelled by train. When he learnt of the disappearance of the Southern Cloud, he developed a life-long fear of flying.

 

However, he finally gave in to his fear and boarded the Amana, an ANA DC-4 that left Perth on 26th June 1950. Incredibly, the Amana crashed in the Darling Ranges just East of Perth, only 22 mins after takeoff, resulting in the deaths of all 29 on board.

 

The crash of the Amana was the worst civilian air crash in Australia to that time, and there were no firm conclusions as to the cause of the crash, but corrosion was found in the fuel systems of the aircraft and water in the fuel supplied was slated as the cause of the crash. However, it could never be determined as to how the water got into the fuel supplied.

[facthunter]

THE Southern Cloud memorial is located in the Main street of  Cooma erected by the Lions Club. Actual bits the Plane are Part of it  (Metal) you can tell what type of engines were in it. Bristol I think. .  Nev

[facthunter]

Read the  "Amana Mystery' By Macarthur Job  and get back to me if you have any questions about the fuel system. I have over  1800 hours on C 54, DC 4, Aircraft and the fuel system is tricky.  Nev

Edited February 24 by facthunter

[onetrack]

Nev, that dissertation by MacArthur Job on the Amana mystery, is truly both fascinating and enlightening.

 

https://safeskiesaustralia.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/FSA_sep-oct2010_The_Amana_mystery.pdf

[old man emu]

1 hour ago, onetrack said:

OME may have confused Kingsford Smiths Southern Cross

I was wrong in thinking that the original no longer existed, but it is on display at Brisbane Airport. I was thinking of the flying replica which is owned by HARS at Shellharbour Airport, Albion Park NSW.

[facthunter]

Of Course the ORIGINAL Flying Cloud,  No longer exists  It all rotted away.   The one at Brisbane is the Southern Cross. Nev

Edited February 24 by facthunter

[onetrack]

Nev, aren't you confusing ships with aircraft now? The Clipper Flying Cloud, a Boeing 307 Stratoliner, is still in existence.

[facthunter]

No. You can Check it up as I have. They are both Trimotors associated with Kingsford Smith. Nev

[old man emu]

Sorry, Nev.

 

Smithy's Southern Cloud crashed in the Snowy Mountains in 1931. This is the Flying Cloud 

The Boeing Model 307 Stratoliner (or Strato-Clipper in Pan American service, or C-75 in USAAF service) is an American stressed-skin four-engine low-wing tailwheel monoplane airliner derived from the B-17 Flying Fortress bomber, which entered commercial service in July 1940.

[onetrack]

I'm with OME on this one, Nev.  Kingsford Smith never owned any aircraft called the Flying Cloud.

 

And the engines in the Southern Cloud were Armstrong Siddeley Lynx IVB, 7 cyl radials.

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Armstrong_Siddeley_Lynx

[facthunter]

I meant the SOUTHERN cloud  .I called it that earlier..  Nev

[old man emu]

Australian National Airways, Ltd. (ANA) was a short-lived Australian airline, founded on 3 January 1929 by Charles Kingsford Smith and Charles Ulm. ANA began scheduled services on 1 January 1930. It owned five Avro 618 Tens, that were British license-built versions of Kingsford Smith and Ulm's famous Fokker VII/3m Southern Cross, which also flew as an ANA aircraft although was not owned by it.

 

VH-UMF Southern Cloud (crashed March 1931)

VH-UMG Southern Star. Sold March 1933 to Hart Aircraft Service of Melbourne to operate a regular Melbourne-Launceston service and renamed Tasman.

VH-UMH Southern Sky, sold to Keith Virtue's New England Airways.

VH-UMI Southern Moon. Sold 1933 to Charles Ulm, rebuilt as the long-distance flight aircraft VH-UXX Faith in Australia.

VH-UNA Southern Sun (crashed November 1931)

VH-USU Southern Cross, owned privately by Kingsford Smith and Ulm.

 

Footnote: In researching this post, I found that there is a lot of information on the 'Net about the development of commercial aviation during the period 1930 to 1960. If you get bored reading stuff on this forum, you might enjoy using some of the names in this post to learn more about that history.

[Grumpy Old Nasho]

That's interesting about the Southern Cloud. My mum grew up in Cooma, just 60ks from the crash site, she was 9 at the time of that crash, and her uncle has a memorial plaque in the center of the town just for him, for his bravery in WW1. I worked at the Talbingo Snowy Dam site for a short time 6 months after discharge from conscription. All that time and family history and I never knew anything about the Southern Cloud. It crashed only 2ks from Worlds End ... what a terrible omen. I'll bet the plane was under-powered and over weight for the conditions and such a long flight. No radio contact either. Big lessons to learn in those days, probably putting profits before safety.

[facthunter]

You might recall the SMA Beavers flying into those areas..  Nev

[old man emu]

28 minutes ago, facthunter said:

You might recall the SMA Beavers flying into those areas..  Nev

 

1 hour ago, Grumpy Old Nasho said:

I'll bet the plane was under-powered and over weight for the conditions and such a long flight.

It was on a routine, scheduled flight from Sydney to Melbourne. On 21 March 1931, the Southern Cloud departed at 8:10 AM from Sydney. Weather conditions en route were hazardous and much worse than predicted. The flight left Sydney before the crew had seen the synoptic chart published in the Sydney Morning Herald. The chart showed a deep Low pressure area across the route, which would have caused cloud and unstable area, along with westerly winds that would have drifted the plane towards the more mountainous heights than if it had diverted to the west Having no radio, nor radio navigation facilities, the crew could not be warned once the severity of the weather was known, nor could they have navigated to safety.

[Grumpy Old Nasho]

No, never saw one, I was working night shift, busy ducking for cover from earth moving explosion rocks raining down out in the field. Quite hazardous working there. 

[facthunter]

 Lots of Baltic workers?  Nev

[Grumpy Old Nasho]

13 minutes ago, old man emu said:

The flight left Sydney before the crew had seen the synoptic chart published in the Sydney Morning Herald. The chart showed a deep Low pressure area across the route, which would have caused cloud and unstable area, along with westerly winds that would have drifted the plane towards the more mountainous heights than if it had diverted to the west Having no radio, nor radio navigation facilities, the crew could not be warned once the severity of the weather was known, nor could they have navigated to safety.

Flying by the seat of their pants perhaps, gazing at stars?

[Grumpy Old Nasho]

4 minutes ago, facthunter said:

 Lots of Baltic workers?  Nev

You name them, they were there. My foreman was Fijian. Fellow workers were from all over Europe, Italians, Germans, Yugoslavs, Spanish, etc.

[facthunter]

At least at that time of the year Ice should have not been a problem.  In 1931 It was all very rudimentary, but the Planes didn't fall  apart.  Nothing to go by once you are in cloud.  Nev

[Grumpy Old Nasho]

So what happened, did they fly blind into the side of a mountain? Is there a link to read?

[facthunter]

It wasn't found for years and then only by accident. Fires had been through the Area. Not far from Tumbarumba. Nev

Edited February 25 by facthunter

[Grumpy Old Nasho]

I found a link

 

" Additionally, Green was able to conclude that the aircraft struck the mountain in a steep right bank, facing a north-easterly direction. This was interesting as the north-east direction was the reciprocal to the one the Southern Cloud was meant to be flying on. "

What Happened?

"It is hard to properly conclude what exactly occurred. The most likely scenario is that the Southern Cloud ran into terrible weather and wind, where the wind blew it off course and over the Snowy Mountains. The pilots tried to get back on course, and believing they were away from the mountains decided to descend. However, the wind meant they were still over the mountains and so they proceeded to fly into Deep Creek Gorge. After seeing terrain ahead no doubt Shortridge would have been forced to turn to avoid, however there was insufficient room for a turn and the aircraft went into the side of the northern ridge of the gorge where it would have crashed. Other theories that cannot be ruled out include the aircraft breaking up mid-flight or the plane entering a spin or a spiral. "

https://www.antiqueairshow.com/post/the-disappearance-of-the-southern-cloud-unraveling-an-decade-long-aviation-mystery

 

Taking off with only the Sydney Morning Herald for a weather report from the night before, what could go wrong? They only had to wait 15mins before taking off to get the latest weather report from the Sydney Weather Bureau, geez!