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Qantas Foundation Memorial
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Friday, 02 December 2011 10:22 |
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Since the arrival of the Museum’s most recent iconic artefact, a Catalina aircraft, our Director of Volunteers, Peter Elliott has been busy organising a modification and maintenance assessment report to update the project timeline and financial budget.
“Once the updated budget is finalised, work will commence to bring the aircraft up to exhibit standard and we expect this to take about 6 months” advised Rodney Seccombe, Qantas Foundation Memorial Chairman.
“We are extremely grateful for the sponsorship of $150,000 from the John Villiers Trust which enabled the Catalina to fly into Longreach and for the subsequent contribution of $50,000 to assist with the final stages of the Catalina project to bring the aircraft up to exhibition standard”.
Qantas Foundation Memorial (QFM) would ideally like to carry out some of the more major modifications in a purpose built hangar. Negotiations are currently underway in seeking assistance from our friendly sponsors and supporting organisations with such facilities which are available in Sydney.
We are encouraging interested people and QFM members to support this project by making a tax deductible donation to:
Qantas Foundation Memorial Ltd
BSB 034194
Account number 140620 Ref: (surname)
QFM Donations Account
QFM welcomes offers of support and help with this project. Please check this page for regular updates. |
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Catalina arrives in Longreach today |
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Tuesday, 13 September 2011 22:31 |
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On Wednesday 14 September 2011 at 4pm the Qantas Founders Museum, Longreach, will welcome the Catalina (VH-EAX). The aircraft will be met by 93 year old former Qantas First Officer Dr Rex Senior who flew Catalinas during World War Two. |
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Wednesday, 07 October 2009 07:25 |
The Foundation has recently acquired a Catalina aircraft as a new display for the Qantas Founders Museum. The aircraft, pictured below, is presently based near Madrid in central Spain. Volunteer engineers and others have been working towards flying the aircraft to Australia in about October. This is one of the aircraft types considered as iconic Qantas aircraft. The significance of this type of aircraft to Qantas history was that they flew between Perth and Colombo (Sri Lanka) during World War 2. The flight was done in radio silence to prevent detection by Japanese forces. The flights took around 28 hours non stop.
 The Catalina was the very last flying boat type operated by Qantas and indeed a Catalina was the only Qantas aircraft ever destroyed by sabotage. Most importantly, through its Catalina flying boat operations across the Indian Ocean between 1943 and 1945 Qantas created, and still holds, a world-wide air service duration record that has never been broken – and probably never will!
The Catalina was an American military reconnaissance flying boat built by the Consolidated company which first flew in 1935. It was a big aircraft for the day – although when one eventually appears on the tarmac at Longreach its 31.7metre wingspan will look relatively small next to our Jumbo jet and 707.
The Catalina has two Pratt and Whitney engines which were and remain both noisy and reliable. The aircraft carried bombs, depth charges, mines and machine guns and played an important part in the war against Germany, Italy and Japan while being flown by the American, British Commonwealth and other air forces.
For the Royal Australian Air force, when Japan entered the war, a small number of Catalinas provided Australia with its only long range bombing force. Later in the war, RAAF Catalinas made the most northerly penetrations into Japanese territory ever made by RAAF aircraft when in 1945 the so called ‘black cats’ laid mines off the Chinese coast and around Hong Kong.
But our interest in the Catalina relates to the Qantas connection with these aircraft. And it was an early connection.
In 1941 the Australian Government asked Qantas if it would deliver eighteen Catalinas, on order for the RAAF, from the United States. Qantas agreed and using experienced company pilots, navigators and engineers under the leadership of senior caption Lester Brain, safely delivered all eighteen aircraft (and one extra for the Royal Air Force at Singapore) across the Pacific Ocean. When Lester Brain and famous navigator P G Taylor and crew delivered the first of these ‘Cats’ theirs was only the third ever flight across the Pacific!
Now, what about that wartime world airline endurance record that Qantas still holds?
In 1943, at a time when the war was being bitterly fought and Japan had complete domination over much of South East Asia, including the Indian Ocean, Qantas took delivery of five unarmed Catalinas. The only protection these ‘Cats’ had was their camouflage paint. These five flying boats and their brave crews and skilled maintenance staff were to operate a highly secret air service between Colombo, Sri Lanka (then Ceylon) and Perth, Western Australia.
A distance of 8780 kilometres had to be flown over Japanese dominated oceans to re-establish an air link – broken in 1942 – with the United Kingdom. The Catalinas flew in complete radio silence lest their radio signals allow Japanese fighter aircraft to be homed onto them, with virtually no navigation aids and so heavily overloaded with fuel that, if they suffered an engine failure in the first seventeen hours of flight, they would either crash or would be forced down onto a Japanese dominated ocean. If that occurred and they were captured, Qantas crews faced being murdered by the Japanese – that is if they were lucky – as the Japanese routinely brutally tortured any aircrews they captured for extended periods first.
These Indian Ocean flights in the slow ‘Cats’ that travelled at around 100 knots were made non-stop; no landings and the average duration was twenty-eight hours. The very longest flight took thirty-one hours and forty-five minutes. How would you like to be in the air for that long today in a modern properly fitted out passenger aircraft let alone in an unpressurised, noisy and cramped aircraft subject to surprise enemy attack for much of the distance? More than sixty years later this record still stands and it is a record created by an airline that played a vital role in helping Australia prosecute the war against Japan.
These five ‘Cats’ made 271 safe crossings of the Indian ocean right through to the end of the war and in the process delivered high priority government and military passengers, microfilmed mail and urgent war-related freight.
If these five Catalinas did such a wonderful job why hasn’t at least one of them been preserved? Sadly, they were part of the American ‘lend lease’ scheme. One of the provisions of that scheme meant that most equipment of value after the war could not be used for other purposes. The aircraft were towed out to sea and scuttled in accordance with the legal provisions of ‘lend lease’.
But this was not the end of Qantas’ involvement with Catalinas. After World War II Qantas took delivery of six former RAAF Catalinas and used them to operate services in New Guinea, Norfolk and Lord Howe Islands and for other tasks. It was during a bitter period of competition over Lord Howe Island services with Trans Oceanic Airways that, in August 1949, a moored (and fortunately empty) Qantas Catalina exploded on Rose Bay, Sydney, and was destroyed. An incendiary device was later
found in the aircraft wreckage. An executive from Trans Oceanic Airways was suspected of sabotage and charged but later acquitted of committing the act.
The final Qantas Catalina was retired in 1958. So why don’t we have one of these Catalinas in our collection? Alas, they were all eventually scrapped. So we have to start from scratch and get a new Catalina of our own. The Qantas Founders’ Museum’s Catalina will, in all probability be an amphibian aircraft rather than a ‘straight’ flying boat as Qantas previously operated but will nonetheless be a wonderful addition to the museum collection. Its arrival will create immense public interest and, due to the visitation it will create, this will be an important event for all of Longreach and indeed for the people of Western Queensland.
Composed by Steve Eather Curator |
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Last Updated on Wednesday, 07 October 2009 07:58 |
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Wednesday, 08 April 2009 11:03 |
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Qantas Foundation Memorial Ltd (QFM) is a Trustee Company responsible for the administration of the Qantas Foundation Memorial Trust. QFM was incorporated on 20 February, 1990, with the goal: To commemorate the ethos and preserve the material history of the foundation and early operations of Qantas Airways Ltd.
It operates the "Qantas Founders Outback Museum". While Museums preserve past heritage for the historical, educational and entertainment benefit of the community, within this Museum, displaying people, places and aeroplanes, and the re-creation of flight in this pioneer era of aviation, there is a theme for the present generations of Australians:
Hold a vision. Pursue that vision with a tenacity of purpose, a dedication to excellence, and a sense if integrity, so that people will stand back, observe, and say "I am proud of what has been achieved".
The Qantas Founders Outback Museum is the initiative of people of Western Queensland. |
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Last Updated on Tuesday, 23 June 2009 07:41 |
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