Wreck Trek-The Southern Cloud

The reason why this air disaster has always been so mysterious was that it was not only Australia’s first major air trans- port accident but that the remains of the airliner were not discovered for more than a quarter century. Additionally the Captain flying her at the time was ANA’s most experienced pilot on this route. So dramatic were the tragic events of the time that the loss of VH-UMF Southern Cloud eventually led to the public losing confidence in what was up to that time an airline with an excellent reputation, even by today’s standards.

The loss of VH-UMF so long ago was really the first stepping stone in building the safe and efficient air transport industry that we enjoy today. The official post accident enquiry, despite having little hard evidence as to what really occurred was able to pass new (aviation) laws to help prevent this ever happening again. Amongst the changes initiated by the loss of Southern Cloud were: Radios were made compulsory for commercial aeroplanes and a chain of modern radio receiving stations was authorised to be built along the primary airways so that in future all airliners would be able to keep in touch via a ground station.

The meteorological service was upgraded so as to be able to provide weather forecasts for pilots by 0700 instead of late morning. Previous to this pilots had to take their weather data from the morning newspapers! However, it was to be 27 years before the riddle of the South- ern Cloud was to be put to rest. By sheer coincidence a construction worker with the Snowy Mountains Scheme whilst walking in the remote Tooma Gorge stumbled across some-thing which vaguely resembled the structure of an aircraft. Whilst the chance discovery had confirmed the final fate of VH-UMF, to many it had raised more questions than answers. This and Macarthur Job’s excellent book, Air Crash, which details the Southern Cloud mystery in great depth inspired AA to seek out the crash site and hopefully solve some of the queries raised in the book.

Getting There

Readers wishing to visit the crash site need a good map of the Snowy Mountains. We used the CMA’s Khancoban 1:50,000 map though a WAC chart of the area is also useful, however in both cases the actual crash site is at the very top of the map (isn’t this frustratingly always the case! Ed).

Our approach was via Adaminaby then onto the small SMA township of Cabramurra. From there you head for Khancoban. Some 25km from Cabramurra township is a fire trail on the (western) right hand side of the road with a ‘locked gate’ sign. You then drive a hundred metres up the fire trail to the locked gate. From here it is an easy 15km round trip walk. It took us just two hours along the SMA fire trail to get to the Deep Creek intake which is actually a very small dam. Just beneath the dam wall is a splash of faded orange paint, from there you follow the foot track through the brush to the crash site. This part of the track is steep though well marked.

Whilst there is little actual wreckage remaining, we found it was more the solemn atmosphere of the site which left us feeling quite sad, particularly as our visit took place on the 61st anniversary of the accident at the very moment when the crash was believed to have occurred.

Conclusions

Having actually visited the crash site allowed us to better assess some of the still unanswered questions as to what most probably occurred and if there were any survivors as has sometimes often been thought. It is difficult to imagine that any of the passengers or crew would have survived the initial impact let alone struggled through dense undergrowth on a steep snow, rain and wind swept mountain slope to be able to position themselves so as to be able to light the fires that were at the time reported as being visible from Tintaldra, 30kms to the west. Even if by some super human effort a survivor’s had been able to achieve this incredible feat then how would they have created a significantly large fire amidst so much wetness and with what? Our humble belief was that all had died on impact with the steep slope which would also most probably have been at a speed of around 150kts. In fact in it’s dying moments the Southern Cloud was probably recording the fastest ground speeds that it had ever achieved courtesy of the cyclonic tail- wind which had been reported as being in the vicinity of 60kts. Looking carefully at the flight path and where the aircraft impacted it is obvious that it must have just missed the top of the preceding hilltop which is roughly the same elevation as that which claimed the lost Avro. In blinding rain and snow, with its flight crew most probably unable to even see what was happening outside, the aircraft would have easily been sucked downward by the usual down draughts common in such conditions in very deep valleys such as the rugged Tooma Gorge. From here it would have taken probably just seven or eight seconds for the Avro to cross the valley and find its resting place less than a hundred metres below the tree line.

The fact that the Avro was still flying downwind also does not gel with Capt Shortridge’s possible attempt at letting down through the storm believing (or hoping) he was probably a hundred kilometres to the west of the southern alps and over relatively flat terrain.

Despite this, the crash of the Southern Cloud will always remain an intriguing aviation mystery.