A time when aviating was very different

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Alisoncc
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A time when aviating was very different

#1 Post by Alisoncc » Sat Oct 22, 2016 1:40 am

Air Outpost (1937)
Preparations begin for the arrival of the airliner. She is east bound for India and Australia Four days out from England
...
If anything should happen to the airliner each man is likely to be punished, in Arab fashion, by the loss of eye or limb.


The Handley Page H.P.42 and H.P.45 were British four-engine biplane airliners designed to a 1928 Imperial Airways. Hanno first flew on 19 July 1931 and was later converted to a H.P.42(W) (Hannibal class). Did like the "steering wheel" in the cockpit. Spent 14 months at Sharjah in 1965-67. It hadn't changed much. :-\

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Re: A time when aviating was very different

#2 Post by 500N » Sat Oct 22, 2016 3:02 am

That was very interesting to watch. Thanks for posting.

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Re: A time when aviating was very different

#3 Post by ExSp33db1rd » Sat Oct 22, 2016 4:06 am

It hadn't changed much.


Will it ever !

Nice.

Note that the Captain only wore 2 stripes on his uniform, the legendary O.P. Jones - of Imperial Airways and BOAC fame - once noticed some "young whippersnapper" wearing 4 gold bars on his uniform. Things changed.

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Re: A time when aviating was very different

#4 Post by Rossian » Mon Feb 13, 2017 8:03 pm

Was it just me that thought that the station superintendent looked like Mr Mackay in "Porridge" even spoke and walked like him.

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Re: A time when aviating was very different

#5 Post by Undried Plum » Thu Apr 09, 2020 5:03 am

With the recent Big moon, I thought this film would be appropriate.

Some interesting yarns.


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Re: A time when aviating was very different

#6 Post by G-CPTN » Thu Apr 09, 2020 6:15 am

I did my police advanced driver training based out of Tempsford in 1967.

I see from GoogleMaps that the skidpan is still there;-
https://www.google.co.uk/maps/search/ra ... a=!3m1!1e3

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Re: A time when aviating was very different

#7 Post by Undried Plum » Thu Apr 09, 2020 6:00 pm

Today has been the 80th anniversary of Norway's catastrophe. Every flag in the country will have been flown at half-mast today, as they do on every 9th of April.

It has set my mind to recalling the extraordinary personal qualities, one or two of which are inner strength and moral courage, which the events of that year brought forward in some remarkable people who rose, unseen, in those dark days.

This post is not about the Norway situation, though I have much to say about it too, another time.

The Lysander video set me thinking about a very dear family friend, who in my young adulthood became my alternate godfather just after my official one passed on.

Though not a blood relative, as a kid he was always my 'uncle' Donald to me.

An extraordinary man. In later life he always teased me that his great claim to fame was that he officiated at my wedding in Paris. That act of love and of humanity, was as nothing compared to what he did in the 1940s in France.

He was from the Western Isles, with that lilting and warm accent and unobtrusive but penetrating gaze. Ordained as a Minister of the Kirk of Scotland, he was assigned to run the Scots kirk in Paris in 1938. For a couple of years he had a fulfilling time in Gay Paree. Then came France's equivalent of the 9th of April.

I remember a couple of very long private chats with him where he expounded on his negative opinion of fascism and of national-socialism (not the same thing).

As a godfather should, he left a very deep impression into my intelligence and my psyche.

He had done so to his 'flock' in many a sermon in that wee kirk in Paris, so when the Master Race strutted their stuff down the Champs Elysses he knew that he should leave France by the back door.

In my mercifully brief time in pokey, none of which was ever for a moment comparable to that of my two 'godfathers', I had been given an immense pillar and bedrock of strength by both of them which had, unknown to me, prepared me for what turned out to be a cushy time in unlikely comparison.

On his way, he (I'm cutting a very long story very short) set up a British Seaman's Mission in Marseilles and helped set about getting hundreds, later thousands, of British and Allied airmen out of France through an escape route to neutral Spain and non-neutral Gibraltar.

I remember him telling me a wee bit about the task of doing that momentous thing, but I read much more in a little book he wrote with a view to giving the proceeds to rebuilding 'his' decrepit kirk in Paris after the war.

I remember him mentioning the name of the Belgian guy and the Scottish Infantry guy by name. I'm pretty sure that he also told me the name of an Oz girl who was also involved in the Belgian guy's line of escape across the Pyrennees, though I did not and do not recall it

He told me that he had been betrayed by a man (I remember that name to this day) called Paul .

Donald, when asked by me directly, responded to my question directly by saying something to the effect of: "He's dead. I am not. He chose his road toward forgiveness. I chose mine. On the road of Forgiveness, we seemed to have separated somewhat along the way and have not been rejoined. I'm sorry for that."

A wonderful man, Donald.

Now, back to the topic, though I reserve the right to deviate again as I know that I'm mostly among friends.

When looking at GooChoobe stuff to see what is available to support this post, which has turned out to be even more waffly than my usual, I found a fascinating film about the woman who I'm pretty sure is the Strine woman whom Donald had told me about.


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A song for an uncle

#8 Post by Undried Plum » Thu Apr 09, 2020 10:50 pm

It's all true, though unbelievable for many nowadays.

Here's a wee bit of it, in song.

.

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Re: A time when aviating was very different

#9 Post by AtomKraft » Fri Apr 10, 2020 8:01 am

The Tartan Pimpernel?

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Re: A time when aviating was very different

#10 Post by Undried Plum » Fri Apr 10, 2020 8:34 am

Yup.

He wrote a book of that name for commercial purposes, to give every centime of the proceeds towards the rebuilding of that wee kirk in Paris.

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Re: A time when aviating was very different

#11 Post by TheGreenGoblin » Fri Apr 10, 2020 9:47 am

AtomKraft wrote:
Fri Apr 10, 2020 8:01 am
The Tartan Pimpernel?
Had never heard of this fellow until today... what an extraordinary man.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donald_Caskie
Later in 1943 he was transferred back to German custody and eventually put on trial in Fresnes, and sentenced to death. Awaiting execution by firing squad, Caskie asked to see a pastor. This saved his life; the German army padre Hans Helmut Peters successfully appealed to Berlin to spare Caskie. He then spent the rest of the war in a Prisoner of War camp, resuming his ministry in Paris after the war.
I wonder if he ever met up with Hans Helmut Peters after the war..
Hans-Helmut Peters (July 21, 1908 in Harburg-Wilhelmsburg- December 6, 1987) was a German Protestant Lutheran theologian and state superintendent of Sprengel Celle and Calenberg-Hoya of the Evangelical Lutheran Churchof Hanover .

Peters studied theology in Erlangen, Berlin and Göttingenfrom the summer semester 1926 after graduating from the Empress-Auguste-Viktoria-Gymnasium in Hannover-Linden. From 1931 to 1933 he attended the preacher seminary on the Erichsburg. On 15 October 1933 he was ordinalized as pastor of the Hanoverian state church in the Michaeliskirche in Hildesheim. From 1933 to 1939 Peters worked as a travel preacher based in Nice in the south of France and took over the administration of the municipalities of Sanremo and Bordighera in Italy. On 1 November 1939 he moved as an auxiliary worker to the church foreign office of the German Evangelical Church (DEK) in Frankfurt am Main and became secretary of the Evangelical Relief Agency for internees and prisoners of war. In the same year he published a study on "Luther's influence in France and German Lutherans from 1517 to 1626". On July 15, 1940, he took up a position at the German Evangelical Lutheran Christ Church in Paris. Here he also acted as special representative of the Ecclesiastical Foreign Office of the DEK in France.

Peters returned to Germany in 1944 pastor in Hattendorf. In 1946, as pastor of the landeskirche, he took over the function of the state youth pastor and head of the state youth parish in the Office of Community Service in Hanover. He became chairman of the Commission for Youth Work of the Lutheran World Federation and organized the ecumenical youth conference in Hanover in 1952. After a short stint as an assistant clerk in the State Church Office, he became pastor and superintendent at the town church in Celleon October 1, 1955. On 1 July 1959, he became the state superintendent for sprengel Celle. In 1969 he was additionally entrusted with the painting of the old sprengel Calenberg-Hoya. After the dissolution of the Sprengel Celle in 1971, he took over the management of the enlarged Sprengel Calenberg-Hoya. He retired on 1 August 1976.

During his tenure as state superintendent, Peters maintained relations abroad. As a delegate of the Hanoverian State Church, he participated in Franco-German theologian conferences and international ecclesiastical conferences, including the colloquium "Ten Years of Ecumenism Decree" of the Pontifical University of San Anselmo in Rome (1974). In 1966, in a trip lasting several months, he visited the Lutheran Gosner Church of Chota-Nagpur and Assam.
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Your destination remains
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Re: A time when aviating was very different

#12 Post by AtomKraft » Fri Apr 10, 2020 10:02 am

Ok plum
A chum of mine, Cath Caskie was a relative.
She told me about him, years ago.
A life well led.

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Re: A time when aviating was very different

#13 Post by k3k3 » Fri Apr 10, 2020 11:25 am

Sprengel was a word I didn't know, it's an administrative district, according to the prefix a diocese, parish etc.

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Re: A time when aviating was very different

#14 Post by ricardian » Sat Nov 07, 2020 4:46 pm

Ricardian, Stronsay, Orkney UK
www.stronsaylimpet.co.uk
visitstronsay.com
https://www.wunderground.com/forecast/EGER

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Re: A time when aviating was very different

#15 Post by Undried Plum » Sat Nov 07, 2020 5:57 pm

That quadrangle in the Sharjah film still exists. It's called Mahatta and now houses an air museum. It's now totally surrounded by the business district of Sharjah.

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