....from the timetable I might have caught flight BA162 on either Tuesday 5th or Thursday 7th, leaving Nairobi Eastleigh at 09.00 and arriving, via Entebbe, Khartoum, Cairo and Rome, at Heathrow the following day at 10.10. At each stop the passengers disembarked during the scheduled refuelling and drinks were served in the airport lounge. This should have taken an hour although, over the years of these journeys, some of these stopovers were often far longer.
The Handley Page Hermes was a development of the military Hastings, an aircraft rushed into service shortly after the Second World War to fulfil the need for transports during the Berlin Airlift. As a passenger 'plane the Hermes was noisy and unreliable, so it often arrived late, but it was far quicker than the Solent flying boat it replaced, which had taken three days to reach the East African coast from Southampton.
The Hermes did not last long in service, giving way to the no less noisy but slightly more reliable Canadair Argonaut. My England-bound flight on an Argonaut in September 1955 shed a large part of the port outer engine over the Mediterranean. The captain was quick to walk down the aisle and reassure the passengers, and we learned from one of the air hostesses that we really didn't need to worry: the captain had flown Lancasters over Berlin during the war and had lost much bigger lumps off his machine.
However, the damage meant we had to stay the night in a very posh Rome hotel. The children on board, of which there were many in the same circumstance as me, took advantage of the situation by running amok in the hotel - I have happy memories of repeated slides down the ornate bannister into the foyer - so the staff hired a coach in which they could confine us while they drove us round and round the city until we were exhausted.
In its turn the Argonaut was replaced on BOAC's routes by....
....the 'whispering giant', the Bristol Britannia, the first 'plane on which it was possible to balance a pencil on its end. The Britannia, with its turboprop engines, was a huge step forward, quieter, reliable and comfortable.
I subsequently flew in a Constellation, an American aircraft, and, with some excitement, in my first jet, a De Havilland Comet 4. The last 'plane in which Richard and I flew as unaccompanied schoolboys was a Boeing 707.
The UK international flights came in to Nairobi and we connected to Mombasa either by car, a rough journey down what was still a mainly dirt road, by overnight train, which was very comfortable, or by air. The workhorse of the local air routes was East African Airways' Douglas DC-3 Dakota. The above picture was taken by my mother. There is no caption but I suspect that it was the one time when Richard and I flew to Nairobi with my father, when we hit the worst thermal I have ever experienced as we came in to land at Embakasi airport.
The Handley Page Hermes was a development of the military Hastings, an aircraft rushed into service shortly after the Second World War to fulfil the need for transports during the Berlin Airlift. As a passenger 'plane the Hermes was noisy and unreliable, so it often arrived late, but it was far quicker than the Solent flying boat it replaced, which had taken three days to reach the East African coast from Southampton.
However, the damage meant we had to stay the night in a very posh Rome hotel. The children on board, of which there were many in the same circumstance as me, took advantage of the situation by running amok in the hotel - I have happy memories of repeated slides down the ornate bannister into the foyer - so the staff hired a coach in which they could confine us while they drove us round and round the city until we were exhausted.
In its turn the Argonaut was replaced on BOAC's routes by....
I subsequently flew in a Constellation, an American aircraft, and, with some excitement, in my first jet, a De Havilland Comet 4. The last 'plane in which Richard and I flew as unaccompanied schoolboys was a Boeing 707.
Many thanks to Tony Chetham for pictures of the Argonaut Hermes.
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