The DC-3 Aviation Museum
Proudly presents:
Dakota 6832
"Flying Fishcart"
Part - 2
submitted By: Robin Stobbs
r.stobbs@ru.ac.za
CHAPTER TWO
EUREKA!
"J'assistais …à la scène en simple spectateur!" Affane Mohamed,
Schoolteacher of Domoni, Nzwani (Anjouan).
Less than two weeks after leaving Zanzibar, and only a few hours after their ship had berthed in Durban,
the Smiths were handed a small, folded piece of paper that was to change their lives forever.
Unknown to them a cable had been previously received at their small, and still very new
Department of Ichthyology at Rhodes University in Grahamstown.
It read,
"HAVE SPECIMEN COELACANTH FIVE FEET
TREATED FORMALIN STOP
ABSENCE SMITH ADVISE
OR SEND PLANE REPLY =
HUNT DTAOUDZI (error for Dzaudzi)
COMORES.
It was 11:45 am on the 24th December 1952 and the Smiths had just arrived in Durban aboard
the Union Castle ship Dunnottar Castle returning from their latest expedition to
Kenya, Tanganyika (now Tanzania), Pemba and Zanzibar.
JLB's alert secretary, Mrs T.A. McMaster, immediately cabled the ship.
That small piece of paper handed to Smith read,
"REPEAT CABLE JUST RECEIVED
HAVE FIVE FOOT SPECIMEN COELACANTH
INJECTED FORMALIN HERE KILLED TWENTIETH
ADVISE REPLY = HUNT DZAOUDZI".
For the second time in his life Smith felt as though a bomb had exploded in his head.
Christmas time again; nobody does anything over the Christmas holidays. Why now?
Was this to be a repeat of 1938? The Comoro Islands are a thousand miles away out in the Indian Ocean.
If JLB had problems over the first coelacanth they were but minor compared to his dilemma now.
The Comoros were only 12( south of the equator where it was hot and humid, remote and primitive.
JLB had acquired considerable experience of such conditions and was well aware
of just how rapidly a fish can be reduced to a stinking pile of useless goo.
How long might a coelacanth last in that tropical climate?
How well had Hunt injected the formalin?
Did Hunt really have a coelacanth?
The Comoros were French territory, how long could Hunt hold onto the fish?
How long would it be before the French authorities got wind of the find
and confiscated the fish from Hunt?
These were but a few of the thousand and one unanswered
questions buzzing around JLB's troubled mind.
Where was this Dzaoudzi (Dzaudzi) anyway?
It must be somewhere near the Comoro Islands because that was Hunt's intended destination
when he left Zanzibar and the telegram had read "Comores".
Very few people then had even heard of the Comoro Islands
let alone the names of the individual islands or where they were.
Only after a long search in the ship's chart room was it discovered that Dzaudzi
was the main town of the island of Maore (Mayotte)
and was situated on a small islet of the same name on the eastern reefs of the island
and adjacent to another, slightly larger islet, Pamanzi.
So, it was the Comoros after all!.
Smith's inspired predictions on the habitat requirements of the coelacanth and its probable 'home'
were beginning to prove correct. He immediately cabled back,
"IF POSSIBLE GET TO NEAREST REFRIGERATION IN ANY CASE
INJECT MUCH FORMALIN POSSIBLE
CABLE CONFIRMATION THAT SPECIMEN SAFE
= SMITH".
Shortly afterwards another cable was received in Grahamstown. Smith's secretary
again promptly relayed it to the Dunnottar Castle in Durban.
"CHARTER PLANE IMMEDIATELY
AUTHORITIES TRYING CLAIM SPECIMEN BUT WILLING
LET YOU HAVE IT IF IN PERSON STOP
PAID FISHERMAN REWARD TO STRENGTHEN POSITION STOP
INJECTED FIVE KILO FORMALIN NO REFRIGERATOR STOP
SPECIMEN DIFFERENT YOURS NO FRONT DORSAL OR TAIL
REMNANT BUT DEFINITE IDENTIFICATION
= HUNT".
Now Smith had a major problem.
The odds against this being a coelacanth, in sound condition and recoverable all seemed far too great.
He had to trust Hunt's knowledge of fishes enough to accept that this really
could be another coelacanth but there still remained that nagging doubt that the fish
might turn out to be something else.
Hunt knew his fishes all right but he was not a trained ichthyologist.
Smith knew also that unless he collected the fish without delay he would lose it to the French
or, at the very worst, it would be so rotten when he finally reached it that it would be useless.
A ship or boat would take at least two weeks to travel from Durban to the Comoros
and, in any case, this was the season of the kaskazi and its strong northerly winds.
JLB knew how difficult it would be to push a small boat against both current and wind;
such a journey could well take weeks.
It was also the cyclone season in this part of the western Indian Ocean,
a most dangerous time to be out in a small vessel.
A sea voyage was, therefore, not a viable option.
The only way to collect this fish was for Smith to fly to the Comoros as suggested in Hunt's cable.
But how? There were no commercial or regular charter flights to the Comoros
in those days and, being the holiday season, a charter aircraft was out of the question
- even if Smith could have afforded the enormous expense.
After considering - and investigating - many possibilities, and enlisting the help of friends and Parliamentarians,
Smith, in desperation, called the then Prime Minister of South Africa and asked for his assistance.
Dr Vernon Shearer, a dentist and Member of Parliament for Durban,
had considered the situation so important for science and South Africa
that he had prepared the way for this contact between scientist and politician.
Prime Minister Dr. D.F. Malan was a deeply religious man - a Calvinist -
a man who held no truck with the ideas of Darwin and heretic theories of evolution.
He was also not an Anglophile and, perhaps above all else, he was on holiday.
NOBODY dares disturb the Prime Minister on his Christmas holiday.
Luck was again to play a part in the coelacanth story for among the books chosen by Malan
to take on his holiday at the sea was a presentation copy of Smith's "Sea Fishes of Southern Africa".
At 23h00 on the 26th December the telephone rang for Smith; it was the Prime Minister.
After listening to Smith's story, and realising that this was a confident, dedicated man sure
of his facts, he agreed to help.
It is an unwritten tribute to the integrity of Eric Hunt,
his knowledge of fishes and the high regard for him, that Smith was prepared
to lay his own reputation on the line by making this approach to the Prime Minister for an aircraft to fetch a fish
- an unseen, dead fish -
from some remote and foreign islands in the Indian Ocean on only the telegraphed word of an 'amateur'.
Not once did Smith question Hunt's identification, although the nagging element of doubt
was certainly there and it raised its ugly head more than once in the hours that followed.
Early on the morning of the 27th December Dr Malan instructed the Chief of the Defence Force,
Lt. Gen. C.L. de Wet du Toit, DSO and bar, to make available an aircraft to fly JLB to the Comoros.
Gen. de Wet du Toit then made contact with the Acting Chief of Air Staff and Officer Commanding 1 Group
South African Air Force, Brig. S.A. Melville, OBE, and, once again, JLB had to explain the situation in detail.
At first it was suggested by advisers to the President that a large four-engined Short Sunderland flying boat
be detailed for the flight but, when it was learned that there was an airstrip on Pamanzi,
it was decided that one of the many
SAAF Douglas Dakotas would be more appropriate.
Later that day, 27th December, Brig. Melville informed Brig. H. Daniel,
Officer Commanding Natal Command, that an aircraft would be
flying in early the following day to collect JLB Smith.
And so it was that in the very early hours of the 28th December the aircrew of the C-47
(a military version of the Douglas DC-3 Dakota)
"King Oboe Dog", in the radio phonetic alphabet of those days,
Serial No. 6832 took off from Swartkop Air Force Base near Pretoria
and landed at Durban's Stamford Hill Aerodrome at 05:45 to collect JLB Smith.
Navigators for the flight, Lieutenants Duncan Ralston and Willem Bergh had snatched little sleep that night;
they had to hastily prepare flight details, collect navigational charts and make what diplomatic contacts
they could at such a late hour and at such short notice.
Military aircraft could not simply overfly neighbouring territories without diplomatic sanction
and appropriate clearance - not even in those days!
The aircrew on this flight were not to know then that they had been selected by fate
to be forever remembered as the only aircrew ever to have been sent by their Prime Minister
on an official mission to recover a dead fish from a foreign island.
Their main concern at that time, however, was the fact that their long awaited New Year party was close at hand
and that this was going to be a long and tiring flight.
Their first reactions were, "Let's get this thing over and done with without delay."
The crew for that historic flight were:
Commandant J.P.D. (Jannie) Blaauw D.F.C., Captain;
Captain P. (Peter) Letley, co-pilot;
Lieutenant D.M. (Duncan) Ralston, senior navigator;
Lieutenant W.J. (Willem) Bergh, navigator;
Corporal J.W.J. ('Vanski') van Niekerk, radio operator;
and Corporal J. Brink, flight engineer.
Smith, champing at the bit, was anxious to get going and expressed his impatience
over what he thought to be an unnecessary delay in obtaining fuel and flight clearance
to Lourenzo Marques and beyond.
Smith, ever the egocentric self-appointed expert in tropical travel would not allow himself
to accede to the fact that other organisers might have had the foresight to adequately
prepare for what was going to be a long, tiring, and potentially hazardous flight.
Although all SAAF aircraft carried emergency food and water as part of their normal equipment,
and these had been adequately attended to by the aircrew,
Smith busied himself with the unnecessary tasks of providing for possible emergencies
by laying in extra food and water.
Flight logbooks show that this Durban stop lasted only one hour and twenty minutes;
not bad for a stop requiring refuelling, a complete aircraft check-out,
navigational finalities and diplomatic clearances.
To Smith, however, this delay was frustrating in the extreme;
in his mind he could visualise his fish slowly falling apart in the tropical heat.
At last he was allowed to board the aircraft with his hastily assembled field kit
of numerous wooden boxes containing gear that had accompanied him
on thousands of miles of expeditions over the years.
By 07:10 they were airborne en route for Lourenzo Marques (now Maputo).
After a 50 minute refuelling stop in Lourenzo Marques and a long flight up
the seemingly endless sandy beaches and mangroves of the east coast of Mozambique
they landed for their overnight stop in Lumbo at 15:25Hrs.
It was to be a long, slow, finger-nail-biting trip for Smith who had only one thought in his mind
- his fish -
was it really a coelacanth, was it safe, was it properly preserved
and a thousand-and-one other "was it's"?
Flying then was not what it is today; long distance, high altitude flights made
with high precision navigational devices in fully pressurised aircraft were still a long way in the future.
The Dakota had to make an overnight and refuelling stop in Lumbo,
a few miles north of Mozambique Island, the most northerly,
suitable airfield for the over sea hop to the Comoros.
Noisy, unpressurised aircraft like the Dakota, flying at 5000 to 7000 feet altitude,
are not the most comfortable means of travel and already,
after a long day's preparation and flight, both crew and passenger were feeling some strain.
The two navigators, especially, were more than ready for a good night's sleep
since they had been up most of the previous night preparing for this flight
and had been unable to snatch more than a moment or two rest since then.
Early the following morning, 29th December, the aircrew were preparing the aircraft
for the next leg with Smith 'snapping' at their heels like a highly-strung fox terrier pup.
By 04:45Hrs they were again airborne and about to wing their way eastward over the Indian Ocean;
the most difficult section for the two navigators.
Satellite and radio navigation aids were non-existent in those days and Blaauw flew
this leg at an altitude of about 7000 feet in order to increase the visible horizon.
The navigators had to carefully estimate drift as they crossed the 180 nautical miles (300km)
of Indian Ocean that separates the Comoros from Africa and northern Mozambique
and so, every now and then, Blaauw would descend to a lower altitude
so that they might obtain a better view of the set and condition of the sea below.
Accurate estimation of drift, or lateral displacement, was a pre-requisite to their navigation
as they crossed the ocean. To achieve this the navigators made frequent checks on the set of the waves
on the sea below and by reference to a small 'drift recorder'.
Lieutenant (now Lt. Gen., Retd.) Willem Bergh describes the drift recorder as being,
"A primitive but reliable little B16 compass only graduated in 5-degree intervals
and strung up against the windscreen by rubber cords"
Dakotas, at that time, were not equipped for maritime flights and this was probably the first long flight
of a Dakota straight into the middle of the ocean.
The navigators did have a bubble sextant but without a proper astrodome their observations
could not be relied upon for position fixes.
One instrument the Daks did have was a radio compass but, without a beacon at their destination,
this was of no help at all on this leg of the flight.
Lieutenants Ralston and Bergh set course for the middle of the Comoro Island group,
and the high peaks of Nzwani which would have been visible from a considerable distance.
Unknown to these modern navigators they were using a navigation technique
perfected by Polynesian voyagers in their explorations across the vastness of the Pacific Ocean
more than 3000 years ago.
This technique requires that one sets a course for the centre of an island chain or group
knowing that should drift set to the one side or the other at least one or more of the outlying islands
will be found and from there it is a simple matter to veer right or left to find the destination.
The higher and more visible the centre island the further off it can be identified
and so a smaller course correction can be made and at an earlier stage in the voyage.
Willem Bergh again describes the crossing.
"With the above limited navigation aids we had to rely on drifts,
taken from white horses on wave tops, and sun sextant sightings.
Theoretically this was ideal, since drift gave you the windshift across course
(hence verifying direction)
while flying into the sun gave single position lines at right angles to the course
(thereby verifying speed and progress)
- the two combined provided a vector for windspeed and direction.
But, white horses only appear on waves at a wind speed of about 17 knots,
so that you can drift considerably off course before being able to determine it.
Furthermore, sextant sightings taken under such difficult conditions
were suspect and only served to confirm speed.
So, firstly we had to fly reasonably high for easier early recognition of the island layout,
while aiming for the middle island of Anjouan (Nzwani).
We should then spot Moheli (Mwali) to the left, Anjouan straight ahead,
and Mayotte (Maore) far off to the right.
This, fortunately, was the case with good drift estimates all the way".
Shortly before 06:00hrs they might have sighted high cloud masking the towering,
2361 metre, volcanic cone of Kartala on Ngazija far over on their port (left) side.
Below and off the port quarter lay Mwali and dead ahead were the jagged peaks of Nzwani.
Their navigational expertise could not have been better
for they had accurately navigated across 180 nautical miles of open ocean
without anything more sophisticated than their experience,
visual corrections and a small B16 compass.
When they were some 30 nautical miles south of Mwali Blaauw banked right
and made course due east direct for Maore.
Shortly after 07:05Hrs they flew over Maore and after a pass around the reef-encircled island
they landed on the rough airstrip on Pamanzi.
The time was 07:25Hrs.
Incidentally, this landing strip on Pamanzi had been built by South African forces
during their World War II campaigns against the Vichy French forces in Madagascar.
(To continue please use Arrows to view additional story)
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