Saved from the dustbin (7)

The elder readers of this blog may remember Scottish skiffle singer Lonnie Donegan. In the very early sixties he had a hit with the prozaic title My Old Man's A Dustman. This intro serves to tell you that also in KLM Cargo we have our own dustmen viz. Aris Zwart and Bert Besseling. They were the guys who saved all pictures shown in this series from destruction by being too quick for the Danish colleagues of Lonnie's father. For more details please see Dustbin  (1).  In any case I'm glad they did because it gives me a chance to show you some of these pictures and write about them.
The first two shots give an impression of what travel was like in the thirties. At the time KLM operated a scheduled service to Batavia, currently known as Jakarta, Indonesia. There was an intermediate stop in Palembang on the southern part of Sumatra. Looking at the first picture the airstrip was located right in the middle of the jungle. Based on the fact that the aircraft does not show a name below the cockpit, I presume this is a DC2 and not a DC3. If that is correct, the picture can be dated around 1935.

Palembang airport around 1935 with the "terminal" in the background.

The picture below shows the terminal facilities of Palembang. Please note the purserlike person in the doorway. The scene radiates a very relaxing atmosphere.

Captain Scholte entertaining his passengers?

While being in the Far East, here's a picture from down yonder. Australian National Airways Pty Ltd, mentioned on this hangar at SYD-airport, later became part of Ansett ANA. The DC3 in the foreground, the VH-ABR, crashlanded in New South Wales in 1948 but it was rebuilt and still around five years ago!

A hangar at the airport of Sydney. It probably doesn't exist anymore.

Before the second world war it was necessary to make absolutely clear that your plane was a civil aircraft and not a military plane. Hence the abundant identification.

Dakota DC3 PH-ASM. It was a KLM-plane between July 1939 and  May 16, 1940
when it was confiscated by the Luftwaffe. The German Airforce employed this
aircraft at least until September 1944. Its final destiny is unknown.

As is demonstrated by the picture below, also after WW2 it was apparently necessary to clearly show ones identification.

Douglas DC4 PH-TAP. As its name 'Paramaribo' does not appear where
it should be (on the nose), this shot is probably taken prior to its baptism on
June 21, 1946 but after May 31 that year when it was registered in KLM's name.

Fuel consumption is one of the main cost factors for the airlines today. This in spite of the fact that fuel efficiency has greatly improved over the past decades. The Douglas DC7C, capable of carrying approx. 100 passengers, was able to tank some 34,800 liters. But looking at its empty weight (33,000 kgs) and its maximum take off weight (almost 65,000 kgs), filling the tanks to the brim hardly left any capacity for passengers... But then, I may be wrong here. But right or wrong, it is a very illustrative picture.

Douglas DC7C, PH-DSL 'Baltic Sea'. The picture is said to show
174 barrels of 200 liters each totalling 34,000 liters.
Picture made between 8 Apr.1957 and Oct. 13, 1964.

As usual all data related to these aircraft, come from the unsurpassed site of Herman Dekker.

Saved from the dustbin (5)

Digging for treasures in old shoeboxes is a sport not everyone is familiar with. But being a genealogist I can get really excited about boxes that have collected dust on dark lofts for decades. Letters and pictures from long dead ancestors often shed a new light on facts of which the whole family thought they meant something completely different or were not known at all. However, shoeboxes are not the exclusive territory of genealogists. Sometimes shoeboxes come in the form of neglected plastic bags in dark office corners and containing hundreds of pictures. Pictures shot during a not too distant past but overtaken by technical developments with such a speed that we can only look at them with amazement. A couple of those are shown below. For the origin of these pictures, please see at the end of this post.

The first one shows a not so current aircraft fuelling method. You pick up a barrel, hoist it on the wing, open up the barrel, turn it around and empty it into the wingtank. And then you wait until the chlou, chlou sound stops. It's as simple as that. But can you imagine fuelling a B747-400 this way? That bird takes almost 64,000 US gallons (241,500 liters). You would need a week or so...

Fuelling of the DC3 PH-ALN 'Nandoe' 
at Dum Dum airport near Calcutta in the late thirties.

I am quite convinced that todays aircraft are capable of flying without any human interference. And that includes take off and landing. I am equally convinced that the reason it's not being done, is of a psychological nature. Airline passengers probably aren't ready yet for experiments of that kind. However, the first step in that development is shown here. Whether it will ultimately make the profession of pilot superfluous remains to be seen.

KLM captains Scholte and Viruly (r) inspecting KLM's first automatic
pilot. It had its try out on the Amsterdam-Oslo route.

I think that polishing a propellor blade is a very meticulous job. If the shape of one of the blades deviates only slightly from the others, I can imagine that vibrations occur that have a detrimental effect on the functioning of the propellor. But how this was checked, I don't know.

Polishing a propellor blade.

Being on the subject of propellors, I feel this photo of a DC3 is just a nice, almost heroic picture. 

DC3 Dakota PH-ALI 'Ibis' in the late thirties. This aircraft was probably
flown to the UK in the early stages of WWII. It was shot down over the
Bay of Biscay by German fighter aircraft on June 1, 1943.

I am not an expert in these matters but I believe that still today, aircraft have to be capable of flying at half power. The Dakota below is showing just that with its starboard engine switched off.

The DC3 Dakota PH-ARY 'IJsvogel' was in KLM-service for just eight
months. It crashed at Schiphol Airport on November 14, 1938.

Two passengers and four crew were killed in the 'IJsvogel'-crash. The plane crashed in the Riekerpolder, situated south of the former village of Sloten. Today this is part of Amsterdam.

From: Algemeen Handelsblad, November 15, 1938
ex Koninklijke Bibliotheek

Thanks to my former colleagues Bert Besseling and Aris Zwart, the above pictures, and many more, have been saved from destruction. One way or another they all relate to KLM Royal Dutch Airlines. You may read the details of this find in 'dustbin #1'. Details pertaining to KLM aircraft and Dutch aviation are derived from the unsurpassed website of Herman Dekker.
To enlarge a picture please click on it.