TAA Celebrates 40th Anniversary, Pt II

Convair factory in San Diego said that Western Air Lines, who had ordered 20 Convair 240s, were running into financial difficulties and wanted to reduce their order by 1 O aircraft. Convair had a great list of orders and it looked as if any new customer would have to go right on the end of the line and wait three or four years to get their aeroplanes. But Convair had decided that if they could sell any of the Western aircraft on the line to the Western specification, the purchaser could have Western’s delivery places. Watkins returned home and finished off his report with a firm recommendation that TAA should grab this opportunity and get early delivery of some of these Convair 240s. The report was finished over the weekend, typed up on Monday and was handed to Lester Brain that afternoon. Watkins asked Brain on Tuesday morning what he thought of it but Brain said he had not had time to look at it. The same question was posed on Wednesday morning and met with a similar reply.

Watkins reminded Brain that TAA only had one week to make up its mirid as Convair were about to close up the positions, to which Brain retorted, “You can’t buy aeroplanes in that sort of a rush, you can forget it, but I will look at it tonight and I promise I will talk to you about it in the morning”. Watkins arrived in the office at the usual time on Thursday morning and there was a message for him saying that Mr Brain wanted to see him urgently. On going to his office Brain said to Watkins “I read that report, I believe you are right, that is the aircraft we are looking for. I think we ought to do something about it. I will take you down to the Chairman and see if we can get something moving”. At 11. 30am Watkins was summoned into the Chairman’s office and Lester Brain was still in there with the report. Arthur Coles said “I have read this report and I am impressed. I think that this is what I was hoping you would find. This pressurisation seems to be the thing that really sets it apart. It sounds a very good aeroplane and it is an opportunity to get it quickly and I think we should move on this. You have been very positive in your recommendation, would you be prepared to argue that way to anybody?” Watkins replied, “Yes, of course I would. I believe it”. “To the Prime Minister?” “Yes, if I get the chance. ” “We’ll go and see him!”

With that Coles and Watkins set off immediately in a TAA DC-4 for Adelaide to continue their efforts to arrange the Convair purchase. On that flight, Watkins had to work out the total US dollar commitment for the prospective purchase. Coles asked Watkins what was the minimum of aircraft to make up a fleet. Watkins suggested four and Coles replied, “Well if you prang one you don’t have a fleet, so we had better get five”. And that was how the number of Convairs to be purchased was decided. On arrival at Parafield, the TAA staff mistakenly thought that they were being subjected to a snap inspection when they saw the senior staff coming off the DC-4. Little did they know the real purpose of the visit. That evening a meeting was arranged with the Minister, Arthur Drakeford. Drakeford said “Arthur Coles was very impressed with the recommendation you made. I think we ought to take it straight to the Prime Minister and see if we can get approval on this”. During the 15-minute conversation between Ben Chifley and Arthur Drakeford, Drakeford quietly said to Watkins “Ben will like this pressurisation as his ears always trouble him when he is flying”. The upshot of this conversation was that Chifley agreed to the purchase provided the Secretary of the Treasury, Norman Watt, verified that the amount of dollars could be spared. Coles and Watkins returned to Melbourne and the Treasury approval was obtained the following day. A phone call was then placed to San Diego and Coles spoke to Frank Lehrman, Convair’s Sales Director and ordered five Convair 240s. Not long after, Coles and Brain visited Convair to sign the contract.

When Watkins returned to San Diego he found that there were some problems with the Convair 240s. Some minor snags had been encountered with some of the systems but the main problem was the growth in the weight of the structure and installed equipment. TAA had a guarantee in the specification of a certain range/payload performance at the maximum permissible takeoff weight and the maximum landing weight. Convair would not be able to meet this unless they reduced both the takeoff weight and the zero fuel weight. The latter was the more difficult to accomplish and this led to quite a delay taking several months. TAA informed Convair that they would not accept the aircraft until Convair met the details of the guarantee. In Australia, these setbacks were magnified out of all proportion by the opponents of TAA. A campaign had been set up actively denigrating the aircraft.

Some comments were made stating that the aircraft would only cruise at 200mph and would be unable to fly non-stop from Melbourne to Sydney. Watkins said of this, “Extraordinary statements were made. I used to get copies of the Australian newspapers and showed them to the Convair people and they thought it was just a joke. They did not think they were genuine newspapers, they couldn’t believe it”.

Watkins received a cable in San Diego from Coles which simply said, “Catch next plane Sydney”. On his return, he was met by a glum Brain and Coles and they told Watkins that although they were very sorry, the Convair project would have to be scrapped. Watkins protested but Coles said that he was now the only member of the Commission still in favour of going ahead with the Convair. The Prime Minister was also worried and said that the Government could not afford to have a real failure on its hands. It was a tribute to Watkins that seven days later, after having prepared a detailed submission, he was able to convince the Commission that the purchase should be allowed to go ahead. Fortunately for Watkins, he had a copy of the American Airlines timetable detailing the Convair flight times over similar distances to Melbourne/Sydney and he also quoted the operating weights. Americans were using their first batch of Convairs for pilot training and route proving in advance of the 1 June 1948 introduction into service. The value of all this information at this time was incalculable. After the submission, the Commission members said that they were all in favour and the purchase was allowed to proceed.

History was the final judge. The Convairs were an outstanding success and the opponents of their purchase were made to eat their words. It was a wonderful victory for the Airline and Convair gave them a significant boost in achieving the passenger market penetration they so much wanted. However, equally noteworthy was the intense struggle to achieve their purchase, an event without parallel in Australian commercial aviation history.

Even after this victory, the problems were not entirely over. The shortage of dollars was so acute that although Watkins had ordered long-range tanks, the purchase of these did not go ahead. When Watkins was at Convair awaiting delivery of the first aircraft, a cable was received from Australia saying, “Cancel order for long-range tanks, no dollars available”. Watkins had to then go to Convair and tell them that although he was sorry, he would be unable to take the tanks that had already been installed. By a stroke of luck, Convair found that the fuselage tank could be used in the Convair Coronado flying boat which was about to undergo testing, to be used to transfer water inside the fuselage to test the CG in various postilions. Because of this, Convair agreed to remove the tanks from the TAA Convair 240 at no cost to the airline. However after this was done, the Convair 240 did not have the range to cross the Pacific and had to be delivered to Australia on a route from San Diego to Tulsa, Chicago, Montreal, Goose Bay, Narssaq, Keflavik, London and then on the Kangaroo Route to Australia.

In London, TAA was requested to demonstrate the Convair 240 to some interested British observers. Watkins said, “John Chapman put on a first-class demonstration. He was good at demonstration flying. He had been a dirt track bike rider and was a good exhibitionist”. Amongst those present was Sir Hugh Kilner the Chairman of Vickers and he remarked to Watkins that it was of interest to Vickers to see what they were up against. Sir Hugh added that Vickers were working on a four engine intercity airliner which had just flown and which they felt was showing considerable promise. The aircraft which was as yet only identified by a type number developed into the highly successful Viscount.

Within a few years of its founding lost two of the men who had made such a vital contribution to its establishment. Arthur Coles vacated the Chairmanship in 1950 and was succeeded by Norman Watt. Some years later Lester Brain resigned from TAA to take up the position of Managing Director of de Havilland Australia. He was replaced by John Ryland and John Chapman became Assistant General Manager.

For TAA, the Viscount was the highly successful tool with which they were able to capture a major portion of the passenger traffic on the Australian trunk route system. It proved to be extremely popular when pitted against ANA’s DC-6 and DC-6Bs. TAA had gambled that the Viscount with the benefits of gas turbine power, would capture passengers from ANA and in this they proved correct. Its popularity was evidenced by healthy load factors from the start.

However, despite its many positive features the Viscount did have some shortcomings. John Watkins said of these, “Where the Viscount fell down was in its structure, the materials used in its structure and the philosophy used in justifying the safety of the structure. The Viscount was made of zinc-bearing light alloys which turned out to be rather prone to stress corrosion for one thing and also to have a rather poor fatigue life under repeated stress.

The major load-bearing elements like the main wing spars and the tail unit were designed to a load spectrum that was calculated and checked by strain-gauged aeroplanes in flight and then converted into an expected lifetime of loading conditions. Then by test methods in the structures laboratory, it was converted to an expected safe life before you would get fatigue failures occurring in any of these members. Now it is terribly difficult to take into account all the million and one variations in the life experience of an aeroplane and in the minute differences in manufacturing quality between test specimens and in the run-of-the-mill factory production. The unfortunate fact is that you cannot be certain of the calculated safe life and this began to show up in the Viscount at a fairly early age and we had to change spar booms and all sorts of components. We changed some of them several times over, which meant pulling the whole structure to bits when putting in a new sparboom. You can’t live with that for long, but it was the only way to keep the aeroplane safe. So they had to go, there was no way you could keep a Viscount operating indefinitely. It just became too expensive and time-consuming to keep on replacing the parts that you were doubtful about”.

An example of TAA’s close liaison with aircraft manufacturers was their relationship with Fokker which fostered the development of the Friendship, an important aircraft that was widely used on TAA routes. As early as 1954 when the Friendship was in the project stage, TAA was approached to give some expression of interest. During 1954, John Watkins was overseas with TAA’s Chairman Norman Watt for the acceptance of the first Viscount and Watkins persuaded Watt to go to Amsterdam to meet the Fokker people. They talked to Frits Diepen who was the Commercial Director of the Fokker Company. Diepen showed Watt around the works and he then drew Watkins aside and asked him would there be any possibility that they could get Watt to sign a letter, not making any commitment on the part of TAA, as they knew he could not do that, but could he just say that it was the type of aeroplane that TAA expects to be interested in buying in a few years time. It would be a great help to Fokker because the Dutch Government was backing the development of the prototype and they did not have any positive evidence that there was a world market for this sort of aircraft. If Fokker could produce a letter from somebody on the other side of the world saying that this could be what they are looking for, it would be a big help. A letter was drafted and Watt signed it. Diepen told Watkins several times later that it was a tremendous help. The letter was taken to the Dutch Government and that helped to maintain the continuity of funds necessary to develop the Friendship.

There were many details that TAA put to Fokker which they found were worthwhile incorporating in the design. In particular, TAA requested Fokker to thicken up the skin on the wing centre section on which TAA reckoned that the stress levels were too high. As these centre sections were in manufacture, Fokker did not really appreciate this move because of the amount of work. The TAA view was reinforced by DCA’s Senior Aeronautical Engineer. Peter Langford who also visited Fokker with Watkins and he said that DCA was doubtful that they would approve the Friendship unless the stress level was reduced. In retrospect Fokker appreciated this move to get the skin gauge increased as it is one of the reasons that the Friendship has never had to be removed from service because of cracks developing in important structural elements.

A celebration was held by Fokker in Amsterdam in November 1983 to launch the Fokker F50 and F100, to which Watkins had been invited. The Fokker Vice Chairman said in a speech that Fokker were particularly grateful to TAA and John Watkins for T their support of the Friendship. He added that Fokker considered John Watkins to be the Godfather of the Friendship. Frank McMullen, who is now TAA’s Engineering Director, was TAA’s resident representative at Fokker for 2% years when they were first getting the Friendship. He had also been invited to attend the function but was unable to, due through ill health at the time. , Apart from the aircraft TAA did operate, it investigated other types which, for one reason or another, were not purchased. In the early 1950s TAA looked at the DH Comet for use on the Perth route but what was really wanted was an aircraft that had a shorter range than the Comet and a longer range than the Viscount. When British Commonwealth Pacific Airlines was disbanded, TAA was keen to acquire their DC-6s as they were considered ideal for the trans-continental route to Perth. TAA had been chartering the BCPA aircraft when they were available, to carry holiday traffic in particular to Perth and it had proven a very popular aircraft on the service. TAA in fact maintained the BCPA DC-6 fleet for that airline. Whenever there was a standby DC-6 available in Sydney and TAA had a good traffic period on the east-west route, they would charter the aircraft complete with crew on a wet charter basis from BCPA.

The BCPA DC-6s were also used on TAA scheduled flights from Melbourne to Perth and this happened over a three year period during the peak holiday season for a fairly short time on each occasion. However, these aircraft were taken over by New Zealand and TAA really had no aircraft which were suitable for that route for some time. Although the Viscounts were used on the Perth service they were only able to do so with considerably reduced commercial loads and external slipper fuel tanks. A procedure used by TAA to help combat the Viscount range problem was to re-flight plan over Kalgoorlie. The theory was that if TAA could not justify flying Adelaide to Perth against the prevai- ling headwind with the required 15% fuel reserve, it would, when over Kalgoorlie and if conditions were suitable, re-flight plan Kalgoorlie/Perth with the required 15% reserve for that sector. This did not always work and on occasion, it became necessary for the Viscounts to refuel at Kalgoorlie, although this was fairly infrequent.

Next Issue: A major disappointment for TAA was their inability to acquire Caravelle jets during the late fifties. Instead, the government airline was forced to operate Electra propjets due to the restrictions of the Two Airline Policy. We also look at why TAA purchased the A300, the first domestic widebody and provide an update on the new 737-300 and A320 twinjets.