A Sample Feature From Aviation News

Postcard From Cannes

by Walter Harris

Above: The main London terminal in the pre-war days was Croydon, seen in this foreshortened view in 1935 with the big Short Scylla biplane airliner dominating the apron. (Photos, Mike Hooks/Av News Files).

In those days, the customary way to get to Croydon was by chauffeur-driven car; or to take advantage of the new agreement between Air France, our carrier, and the Dorchester Hotel in London, which permitted Air France’s luxury coaches to use its car park as the focal point for its Croydon-bound passengers.

Lightweight luggage had still to be developed for air travel, and I believe a steamer trunk or two (too heavy to transport) were being wheeled on to the tarmac by a team of porters as, with an overwhelming clatter, our tri-motor Dewoitine D338 taxiied towards us.

Like most aircraft of the day, the D338 was designed for short hops on the most intensive commercial routes, such as London to Paris, with connecting stops after refuelling. A similar business philosophy applied in America, but there the major cities were often further away from each other than those in Europe, and aircraft needed to be faster to cover the requisite distances in bearable times.

Donald Douglas’s DC-1, followed not long afterwards by the DC-2 and after that by the most successful airliner/transport of all time, the DC-3, had helped push the Ford Trimotor and other aircaft using the triple engine configuration, into aviation oblivion in the early thirties.

By the mid-thirties, most European airlines still favoured the tri-motor layout; Air France used the Dewoitine and Wibault 283, but the twin-engined Caudron C445, Blochs and Breguets, were poised to succeed them. In 1934 Air France had also started to employ Liore et Olivier H 242 four-engined flying-boats.

The Douglas series was infinitely quieter than its competitors, and subjected its passengers to far less vibration from its two engines than they had suffered from three; it was also incomparably safer and more comfortable. Only the big four-engined corrugated aluminium Imperial Airways biplanes, of the Heracles and Syrix Class, were more luxurious, and flew with great majesty from Croydon to Le Bourget, but their speed of about 95kt meant a journey of some two-and-a-half hours.

Luggage stowed, we climbed up the steps into the Dewoitine, to be greeted by the sight of cane chairs. The fuselage was steeply canted, and through the open door on to the flight deck I could see the centre propeller swirling like dust round the machine’s nose.

The hatch was closed, the noise rose to a level that was almost unendurable, and we began to move across the grass. The sense of purpose, of irrevocable commitment, filled me with a mixture of trepidation and excitement. We stopped, the engines were run up individually, a haze of vibration ran up the windows like a heat wave.

All three engines were bellowing now; the control tower and main building hurtled by, and the tail came up. I was sitting behind the trailing edge of the wing, in front of my mother and father, and able to look straight down as we throbbed in a shallow bank above the airport.

About half-an-hour later, we flew over the Channel coastline and ground our way towards France. The waves below seemed petrified, a ploughed field of water; we took minutes to throb over a couple of ships and our speed was a matter of painful toil rather than fluency and elegance, adding a sense of infinity to our journey.

We arrived at Le Bourget half deaf and already tired, and were guided by an official to where our next aeroplane was already waiting for us on the tarmac. This was a twin-engined Breguet with Hispano-Suiza engines, which soon showed a preference for ejecting flame from the root of the exhaust pipes where they went into the engines, instead of from their tips. As we came into Grenoble to refuel, I had a nosebleed.

The co-pilot promptly invited me to sit in his lap for the landing, which didn’t stop the nosebleed running its course, but made me feel one up on my father. Although I was by no means blasé about my third take-off that day, and it was still as exciting as it was ear-shattering, the possibility that we might not get as high as the nearest cloud no longer occurred to me, because I was accustomed to the odd jet of flame from the exhaust root. I forget what time we arrived at Marseilles for the final leg of the journey to Cannes, I think mid-afternoon.

Air France had saved the most terrifying aeroplane for last, a high wing, tri-motor Fokker with the sort of rhythmic, thudding beat which gave a specially sinister quality to the sound, similar to that of the Jumo engines powering the Luftwaffe’s bombers during the Blitz.

Above: One of Air France’s trimotor Dewoitine D.338 airliners by the famous Paris terminal at Le Bourget preparing to depart on a service to Berlin in May 1939. The author flew the first leg of a flight from the UK to Cannes in one of these machines, which he remembers as a particularly noisy aircraft.

For the rest of this feature please see the October 2005 issue.