Mr & Mrs Thomas do Europe, 1927

[Ralf Roggeveen]

The Roaring Twenties. Mr Thomas was a successful American journalist who had often been in aeroplanes before.

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He had had a fairly interesting Great War, hanging out with some of the coolest characters around:

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He was pretty cool himself:

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Money was no object. The newspapers would pay for exciting tales of those crazy new European 'airlines' that didn't just carry mail - they also took 'passengers'! Who knows? Maybe the US will have some too, someday...

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'Okay, Thomas,' said the Ed, pushing back his eyeshade and chewing on yet another cigar, 'Sure money ain't no object. But everyone 'ready knows you're some kinda war-hero-daredevil-Rickenbacker-type character. You been in an airplane and you got shot at by the Red Baron, then you ain't afraid to fly them newfangled Briddish 'n' Dutch air-liner machines. And where's the female angle? Thomas, I'll tell you whats; Whats is, you can go, but you gotta take your Mrs, just to show it's safe for the Goils too. Geddit?'

After a great deal of argument (and a not ungenerous diamond mining visit to Tiffanys), Mrs T was finally persuaded to come to the Old World too. At least there would be London and Paris, plus the fun of the luxurious cruise over the Pond in the Mauretania. But where to begin on those European Airways?

Having spent so much time with Lawrence and Allenby in the War, Mr Thomas (unlike most Americans in the 1920s) was remarkably pro-British. So our old friend, romantic Croydon was the obvious place to start:

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Shall we follow their adventures through the magic of Golden Wings?

Unbelievably, they did go in winter! Some of the scenery, especially in the north, might prove attractive, quite apart from the funny old aeroplanes we'll travel in...

[Ralf Roggeveen]

Mr Thomas' book has a picture of this Handley Page at Croydon:

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It's G-EBMR, the 1926 W10 (HP30) City of Pretoria. We are going in:

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G-EBBI, Prince Henry, the slightly smaller W8b (HP18) of 1924. I had to ask my wife (a royal biography reader) about Prince Henry, imagining someone at the Battle of Agincourt maybe? But she tells me he was a son of King George V, which makes sense as the other two W8bs were called Princess Mary and Prince George. The original, blue livery of Imperial Airways, before they adopted the silver that we flew all the way to India in earlier this year.

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It'll be over two hours to our first (air)port of call.

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Everyone felt sick as soon as it was wobbling its way into the air...

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Mr Thomas wisely went up front and sat out in the open with the Captain and first officer! He immediately felt much better (Don't know about you, but I've often had the same experience in ships). Nor do we know whether poor Mrs Thomas managed to enjoy any of the spectactular views of London, including the Royal Naval College at Greenwich...


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...and the Medway Estuary above Rochester and Gillingham, where they approached the North Sea. Flying this way, roughly due East, you may already be able to guess our first stopover.

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[nigel richards]

Top photo No. 2 is 'El Orens' himself if I'm not mistaken.

Remarkable, larger than life man.
His autobiography; Seven Pillars of Wisdom makes for absorbing reading.
"a novel traveling under the cover of autobiography,":Charles Hill

If I correctly recall, T.E. Lawrence made a similar journey in a Vimy, as the one you are vividly illustrating.

I like these adventures.

Thanks for sharing with us Ralf.

[Sunny9850]

and as we yet again get to go on one of Ralf's wonderfully crafted adventures. The last one was worth being turned into a FS book IMHO. And almost caused me to miss a connecting flight once
since the wireless connection at KDEN was just a bit too slow to load the pictures. Would have made for a bit of an awkward explanation to the girlfriend why I missed the flight home as she already can't quite understand why I would still
"play" with FS at my age despite having a real airplane sitting in a hangar not 10 miles from the house

Looking forward to Mr & Mrs Thomas' trip.

Cheers
Stefan

[Ralf Roggeveen]

Thanks for your kind comments, chaps. We will be going quite near Nigel's corner of the continent before long... You'll have to tell Denver to improve their Wi-fi, Stefan!

The HP carrying the Thomases trundles on until eventually they sight the spectacular mountain scenery of Holland:

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Mr Thomas mentions that 'In order to save time, Captain Olley steers a course midway between Rotterdam and the Hague'; interesting that their pilot was the famous Gordon Olley who started his own airline, Olley Air Service Ltd, in 1933.

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The sort of view that would have been available, along with a deafening racket, once the passengers had got used to being up there:

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Strangely enough the Captain sits on the right in this airplane: possibly because the British designers were thinking of their cars with right-hand drive? Anyway, pilot on the left was not yet standardised.

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In the simulation I started to get worried because it was after 4 o'clock in the afternoon and darkness was rapidly falling. They did not light up airports like Christmas trees in those days, so it wasn't going to be too easy to find Schiphol, despite having done so many landings there in the past in the future (if you see what I mean).

After a bit of circling round, did manage to spot the place and still had enough fuel to bring her safely down.

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It would probably be most realistic to make these flights in the morning once the sun's up, using as much daylight as possible. You'll recall that Imperial used to leave at dawn in the Middle East, taking advantage of the clear light and cooler air. Here in Europe, however, passenger convenience (i.e. flying between breakfast and lunch) would have been paramount.

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The Croydon (Air Ministry) building that we saw was actually just being completed, not quite yet in use, when the Thomases were there. Not sure if Schiphol's famous terminal, seen here, had yet been completed - maybe Cees, who created this beautiful 1930s fs version, can answer that one?

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Don't know about the Thomases (he always makes out that he was really casual and brave about the everyday business of flying), but RR was fairly relieved to arrive in one piece!

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[Willy]

Ralf, glad to see you back in action!

[Ralf Roggeveen]

In Amsterdam Mr Thomas interviewed Albert Plesman, founder of KLM, whom he referred to as 'the Dutch Mussolini of the air' - ! (It wasn't yet an insult to be compared with the great Italian dictator who in those days was thought to be able to get stuff done).

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Plesman made some interesting points about air travel, including the observation that in a way it's a very cheap mode of transport because there are no costly roads or rails to maintain. (Nowadays you could make the counter-argument that we're having to pay an equivalent 'cost' in pollution to the planet, but it was certainly a good point back in the pioneering days).

Next part of the Thomases tour was to go to Paris via Brussels. They travelled in a scheduled KLM Fokker FVIIA:

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Unfortunately I flew this at dawn (while uploading a lot of coffee before going to work), imagining that we would enjoy a lovely sunrise over the Low Countries. Even in a 100mph aircraft it's only about an hour EHAM - EBBR, so it was still dark when we got there!

Took a look at the somewhat Spartan interior:

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(This is where the happy cloche-hatted flappers in my current avatar are supposed to sitting, not being buffeted about by the four winds and feeling horribly airsick.)

The Thomas book does include a fine photograph of an FVIIA, H-NADK:

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This aircraft had an interesting career, having been comissioned by the airline in April 1926 - it may well have been the actual one they flew in. In September 1927, by which time KLM were replacing single-engined planes with trimotors, it was sold to Englishman R.H. McIntosh, re-registered G-EBTS and named Princess Xenia. He only had it for two years before the famous 'Flying Duchess' of Bedford bought and flew it as Spider (perhaps in homage to Antony Fokker's first aircraft, Spin?). In 1934 it was sold on to the rich Indian Sir Bossabhor Bumanwallah (I'm not making this up, honest), who flew it till it was scrapped in '37.

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The flightsim FVIIA is H-NACT which actually stayed with KLM right up until that awful day, May 10th 1940, when the Luftwaffe bombed Schiphol and it was amongst the victims. (Registration was updated to PH-ACT in February '29).

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Alright, completely irrelevant, but she's been mentioned, so you'll have to have a picture of her:

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To be continued... (1920s aviation, not cheap Kiwi TV fantasy adventures).

[beana51]

Yes of Course Nigel, T. E.Lawrence, of Arabia fame!......fascinating man...Same with for his book, Seven Pillars of Wisdom., "All men dream: but not equally. Those who dream by night in the dusty recesses of their minds wake in the day to find that it was vanity: but the dreamers of the day are dangerous men, for they may act their dreams with open eyes, to make it possible. This I did."

He died at 46yrs old, after all of his dangerous exploits,on a motorcycle..,the Brough Superior SS 100...Having read the book,a few times,seen the movie many times,I think I will read it again,and watch the movie again....As far as Mr. Lowell Thomas?..Listening to his voice in movie theaters for years,on the News Reels then,he to was Fascinating man.also...And for a good story?.He would ride on Satan's back to hell to get it!! Cheers! Vin!

[Ralf Roggeveen]

Hope everyone had a great (is the Christmas Smiley green because he ate & drank too much?)... My best aviation present was a very detailed book about one of Santa's reindeers. Plenty of ideas for some wonderful fs flights in that!

We'd better get Mr & Mrs Thomas to Brussels and Paris before new year. There's obviously a good deal of interest in T.E. Lawrence, so I will just post a couple of pictures relevant to him:

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This is an aircraft he crashed in (as a passenger) in 1919 near Rome. The unfortunate pilots were killed, but TEL seems to have walked away in one piece. The book only describes it as a 'Handley Page' - maybe an 0/400? At the time Lawrence was presumably involved in the Paris Peace Conference, though there may well have still been an RAF presence in Italy; they deployed bombers there towards the end of the War.

Another picture of him on the Brough Superior:

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I'm quite interested in these bikes which were made just down the road from where I live in Nottingham. He owned no less than eight Broughs, finest bike of the time and a big influence on Harley Davidson. After he was killed on the one called George VII someone bought it for £5, repaired and rode it! It was recently valued at over a million. Good quote from him: 'Speed is the second oldest animal craving in our nature'. Incidentally, the book also mentioned that he was part of the groundcrew for the winning British 1931 Schneider Trophy RAF/Supermarine entry.

Back in 1927, the Thomases continue to rumble through the slightly less murky skies of Benelux:

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We are approaching the capital of Belgium. Luckily it wasn't too difficult to spot since my GW3 still contains the vast, depressing default airport - !

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Mr Thomas stayed here for a while and got some tours over the nearby battlefields of the Western Front, less than a decade after the end of the Great War. But we'll have to press on to Paris, another hour and a half by FVIIA.

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[nigel richards]

Hope everyone had a great (is the Christmas Smiley green because he ate & drank too much?)... My best aviation present was a very detailed book about one of Santa's reindeers. Plenty of ideas for some wonderful fs flights in that!

We'd better get Mr & Mrs Thomas to Brussels and Paris before new year. There's obviously a good deal of interest in T.E. Lawrence, so I will just post a couple of pictures relevant to him:

Attachment 55132

This is an aircraft he crashed in (as a passenger) in 1919 near Rome. The unfortunate pilots were killed, but TEL seems to have walked away in one piece. The book only describes it as a 'Handley Page' - maybe an 0/400? At the time Lawrence was presumably involved in the Paris Peace Conference, though there may well have still been an RAF presence in Italy; they deployed bombers there towards the end of the War.

Another picture of him on the Brough Superior:

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I'm quite interested in these bikes which were made just down the road from where I live in Nottingham. He owned no less than eight Broughs, finest bike of the time and a big influence on Harley Davidson. After he was killed on the one called George VII someone bought it for £5, repaired and rode it! It was recently valued at over a million. Good quote from him: 'Speed is the second oldest animal craving in our nature'. Incidentally, the book also mentioned that he was part of the groundcrew for the winning British 1931 Schneider Trophy RAF/Supermarine entry.

My Grandfather went to school with Lawrence. As a young man, Mr. Dowdeswell built himself up quite a reputation in Oxford, tuning-up these beautiful old motorcycles, where he and his 'daredevil' brothers used to race them.

Small world!

Ralf, you are jogging people's memories...Capital!

And so, on with your tale...

[Ralf Roggeveen]

Well, we'd better get them to Paris. Stayed one day in Belgium and left early the next morning when it was still very dark.

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Luckily it will turn to broad daylight by the time we reach the City of...er...Light. there's Brussels visible below:

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Of course Mr Thomas saw plenty of evidence of the recent Western Front in 1927, though some is still visible even today.

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When I was a child in the early '70s we took a school trip that went by train through northern France. In flat, depressing countryside there were hundreds of neat round ponds, all different sizes...

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...One of the teachers explained that these were shell-hole craters.

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A few years later, at secondary school in England, two old guys came to talk about the European Union (then known as the Common Market) which Britain had just joined.

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They were Members of Parliament, one Labour, one Conservative, but united in their love of Europe. Both had fought in WW2. One of them said 'I'm delighted to tell you boys that never again will there be a war between France and Germany.'

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A very small kid put his hand up and remarked 'Isn't that what they said at Versailles?'

[Ralf Roggeveen]

As you can see, travelling into France from Belgium the land is quite featureless, bisected only by large rivers and canals, all the way to Paris.

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Some of these have names that are still remembered in faraway places: the Sambre, the Marne, the Aisne, the Somme.

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Mr Thomas was, however, pretty upbeat about the recent War to End All Wars, recounting ripping tales of derring-do amongst French and British pilots.

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He also includes an interview with Sir Alan Cobham, the great pioneer of the Empire routes, whom he romantically dubbed 'A Sir Francis Drake of the Air'.

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Already mentioned that he compared poor old Plesman with Mussolini; he liked these peculiar similies, Croydon was 'Britain's Liverpool of the Air'.

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Unfortunately, as with many travel books, there is disappointingly little detail about the actual experience of arranging and getting onto flights - what we would find most interesting. He pads it out with stuff like the war stories and some pretty banal travelogue. Of course it's much more professional, slick and sophisticated than Sarah Elizabeth Carter's efforts which some of you may remember from our It happened to you adventures a year or two ago (cheese, Berlin, Seventh Day Adventists, etc).

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But the Thomases, unlike the Carters four decades later, will be diverging away from scheduled airlines, going in some very small aircraft, and there is a scary, but exciting incident right at the end.

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Strangely enough, there is no mention whatsoever of Colonel Lindbergh, although of course he flew to Le Bourget in the same year! (There may well have been commercial reasons for this, Thomas's financial backers being rivals to Lindbergh's or whatever - it wasn't such an innocent age as we might like to imagine.)

[Ralf Roggeveen]

During their visit to Europe Mr & (sometimes) Mrs Thomas made four basic journeys: two to the east, one north and one south. This being the first south-easterly trip, we're heading towards Switzerland and then the Balkans. First stop will be Strasbourg, regional capital of Alsace, just on the French side of the border with Germany. This area had been fought over since before the time of Charlemagne; and of course Alsace and Lorraine were part of the German Empire between 1871 and 1918, so it had only been French for less than a decade when the Thomases went there. Both the airports on Strasbourg have German names, and most place names are German, though you get some nice international ones like La Wantzenau. Everyone who lives round there is, of course, fluent in both languages and visitors can take their pick.

The Thomases went in a mysterious aircaft which he refers to as a 'Bleriot-Spad', almost certainly a late War fighter type converted to squeeze a couple of passengers into the fuselage. There are no clear pictures of it, nor any fs airplane that fits the bill. Since this is the longest stretch (about 3 hours) entirely within France, I decided to jump straight to the next type that they definitely did use (for Strasbourg - Basle), the Farman Jabiru:

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(That weird one sulking in front). A 'jabiru' is a kind of stork and this is the name of a modern company that makes a sort of Cessna copy. The French seem to imagine that storks are beautifully aerodynamic - their crack WW1 Squadron was Les Cigones, but it's hard to imagine the Americans or British putting much faith in any aeroplane called after such a bird.

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Jens Kristensen has made this excellent fs model, though it's only available in Danish markings, so we'll just have to pretend it has an F registration.

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With a few honourable exceptions French engineering produces strange, clumsy-looking aircraft, cars, ships, trains, weapons, power stations, telephones, toilets, etc. This resembles nothing so much as a flying (we hope) Art Deco hotel...

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Actually, must admit that I got to quite like it, though my autopilot may have been unrealistically usable compared with what would really have been available at the time. The enormous cantilever wing probably owed something to the Dutch reliability of Antony Fokker.

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It seated about nine passengers in what my wife would call Loyd-Loom chairs (and try to buy for our bathroom).

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Thought I'd got the wrong type when Mr T mentioned that it was 'four-engined' - but of course this is.

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Anyway, it got up off the ground and clambered to 6000 feet heading through the Champagne region where they make that fizzy overpriced stuff which occasionally makes everyone so happy.

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My late father used to say that the finest French wines were from the 1941, '42, '43 and '44 vintages. He suggested that the occupying Germans had somehow run the vinyards more efficiently and greatly improved the quality in just four years (!)

(Needless to say, he and his friends drank it all long before I ever got to find out if there was any truth in that particular legend).

[Wing_Z]

...it was sold to Englishman R.H. McIntosh, re-registered G-EBTS and named Princess Xenia...
Alright, completely irrelevant, but she's been mentioned, so you'll have to have a picture of her:

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Now Ralph, although I am lurking and thoroughly enjoying your latest meanderings, I do have to point out that the cheap Kiwi TV National Icon is not called Princess Xenia at all!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xena:_Warrior_Princess
But do not be discouraged by this, artistic license is available at the door...

[Okami]

Hi Ralf,

Just found your thread (didn't have time for internet the past three weeks, and didn't have internet at all the past week), otherwise I could have sent you a basic scenery for Brussels, anno 1929, backdated from 1961. It was the old terminals at Haren, which were opened in 1929 (previously, the terminal was a wooden barrack), which was Brussels' civilian airport until Melsbroek opened in 1947. Afterwards, the airport continued to be used as a Sabena/Belgian Air Force maintenance base until 1956, and as a GA airport with limited use until its complete closure in 1961, after which the terminal became the Belgian Air Force administrative HQ.



Unfortunately, the very nice Art Deco buildings were demolished 4 years ago, as the new NATO HQ is being built there (the old NATO HQ was built in the late 1960s over what were Haren's runways). This means the only buildings remaining of this old airport are the SABCA aircraft factory buildings, which were originally located on the northern edge of the landing grounds (the runways only came with the Germans in 1940). Some taxiways also survive, as they have been incorporated in an extension of the municipal cemetary, which was originally located on the western edge of the airfield. Also surviving is a very small section of one of the runways, just east of the NATO HQ, as wel as sections of the taxiway which connected Haren with the nearby Melsbroek Air Base (present-day Zaventem/Brussels Airport) - built by the Germans, but mainly used post-war to taxi aircraft between Haren and Melsbroek, as the former didn't have long enough runways for types such as the DC-4 and DC-6, or for military jets such as the Meteor or F-84G, which were maintained at the SABCA plant at Haren as late as 1956. (In 1956, SABCA opened a new plant at Gosselies/Charleroi, the present 'Brussels South Airport').

The terminal buildings were built by Harry Biard, as part of our upcoming Central Europe 1961 scenery (Haren is just 2 miles west of Brussels Airport).

Nikko