Post by liz on Aug 13, 2018 10:41:24 GMT
I imagine not many children were flying in January 1949. As a 6 year old I flew from Blackbushe Airport to Kirkuk, Iraq in a DC3. It took 4 days to get there, how times have changed. In fact, we had a rather "interesting" first flight.
In those days we had to sit according to weight and we took off at first light as Blackbushe and many of the places we landed at had no landing lights. I was sat towards the back of the plane with my mother and there was one more child on board, a 9 year old called Bridget May. As a War Baby I told everyone I was going on a bomber; after all, the only planes I had either heard or seen dropped bombs and I would rush into the house and under the strong kitchen table, crying "a bomber, a bomber".
We got out over the English Channel and Bridget was crying. The air hostess asked me if I would like to swap seats with her, of course with such an adventure I was more than happy. I think it was probably the worst decision the air hostess could have made as when I swapped seats to sit with Mrs May I looked out of the window which was beside the wing. "Oh look". I told everyone, "the propeller isn't going round"! Yes, we had engine failure.
The pilot made the decision to continue on to Paris where, to this day, I can still see the fire engines running either side of the plane, obviously we weren't too stable for landing. Although it was my first flight I have continued to fly around the world covering well over 200,000 miles with my teddy bear that has now gone to Sudbury Hall Museum of Childhood for his retirement.
You might wonder why I'm telling you all this. I was hoping my memory was still sharp as I have decided the time is right to start writing my extremely interesting life story for my family and I want to get things right. The Iraq Petroleum Company, who my father worked for, used to charter the DC3 every week and I thought the name of the company was AirWorks with a green and yellow logo. I hope I am right.
Are there any log books available that show when we might have taken off? Something in my head says that flights were usually on a Wednesday but I also have in my head 14th January but that could be the date we landed in Tripoli Lebanon. Any information you could help me with would be much appreciated.
In those days we had to sit according to weight and we took off at first light as Blackbushe and many of the places we landed at had no landing lights. I was sat towards the back of the plane with my mother and there was one more child on board, a 9 year old called Bridget May. As a War Baby I told everyone I was going on a bomber; after all, the only planes I had either heard or seen dropped bombs and I would rush into the house and under the strong kitchen table, crying "a bomber, a bomber".
We got out over the English Channel and Bridget was crying. The air hostess asked me if I would like to swap seats with her, of course with such an adventure I was more than happy. I think it was probably the worst decision the air hostess could have made as when I swapped seats to sit with Mrs May I looked out of the window which was beside the wing. "Oh look". I told everyone, "the propeller isn't going round"! Yes, we had engine failure.
The pilot made the decision to continue on to Paris where, to this day, I can still see the fire engines running either side of the plane, obviously we weren't too stable for landing. Although it was my first flight I have continued to fly around the world covering well over 200,000 miles with my teddy bear that has now gone to Sudbury Hall Museum of Childhood for his retirement.
You might wonder why I'm telling you all this. I was hoping my memory was still sharp as I have decided the time is right to start writing my extremely interesting life story for my family and I want to get things right. The Iraq Petroleum Company, who my father worked for, used to charter the DC3 every week and I thought the name of the company was AirWorks with a green and yellow logo. I hope I am right.
Are there any log books available that show when we might have taken off? Something in my head says that flights were usually on a Wednesday but I also have in my head 14th January but that could be the date we landed in Tripoli Lebanon. Any information you could help me with would be much appreciated.
