Podcasts reflect Amy Johnson's solo flight to Australia

Podcasts reflect Amy Johnson's solo flight to Australia

Another podcast to add to the list of those I posted about a month ago and again one of particular historical interest, celebrating as it does the 90th anniversary of aviatrix Amy Johnson's amazing solo flight from England to Australia over the course of nineteen days from the 5th to the 24th May 1930.

Amazing is just the word to describe her achievement considering she had only learned to fly less than a year previously, in July 1929, and by all accounts had barely 75 hours' solo flying experience when she took off from Croydon Aerodrome on the 5th May 1930 with the aim of beating the 15 days' record flight time to Australia that at the time was held by the pioneer Australian aviator Bert Hinkler.

Amy Johnson and her aeroplane Jason in India, May 1930 

As it turned out events conspired against Amy and she missed out on the record by only 4 days, however she was still rewarded with a CBE in the 1930 Birthday Honours and is rightly remembered as the first Englishwoman to fly solo to Australia (and later, in 1932, breaking the record for a solo flight from England to South Africa).

The enormity of her accomplishment(s) and the manner in which they captured the public's imagination at the time can best be appreciated through the sheer number of people both in England and Australia who turned out to greet her on her arrival/ return, as well as her having a popular song written and recorded in June 1930:







Her diary and notes from the Australian flight forms the basis of this series of podcasts created by the Amy Johnson Arts Trust, a charity based in Amy's home town of Hull, and which recreates day-by-day her remarkable journey in what is a very immediate and vivid performance.  They are, as the Trust's director suggests, an excellent and very timely way to mark Amy Johnson's remarkable feat and her important role as a pioneer of women's aviation.  I look forward to listening to them over the coming weeks and hope they will prove popular.



While researching for this post I also came across a recently uploaded amateur production from 2010 by Cambridge theatre company BAWDS, which looks worth watching, and of course the 1942 film They Flew Alone starring Anna Neagle as Amy is also highly recommended by this blogger.

Tracey Curtis-Taylor finishes UK to Australia biplane flight

"Time flies like an arrow; fruit flies like a banana" (as the late, great Sir Terry Wogan once said) and once again time has indeed flown by - like an arrow, if not like a banana - since my last post on here.  You can't keep a good blogger down, though, so here I am again with a news item from last month featuring a wonderful lady adventurer who this blogger greatly admires.



Tracey Curtis-Taylor finishes UK to Australia biplane flight 

I've featured the adventures of modern-day aviatrix Tracey Curtis-Taylor on this blog before, specifically when she set out a couple of years ago in her 1942 Boeing Stearman biplane to retrace the route taken by the pioneer female pilot Lady Mary Heath from England to Cape Town, South Africa in 1928.  That journey was subsequently made into a B.B.C. documentary and jolly fascinating it was too.

Towards the end of last year Ms Curtis-Taylor undertook a new challenge - to follow the same route Amy Johnson took on her famous England-Australia flight of 1930.  In the same Stearman biplane as before Ms Curtis-Taylor took off from Farnborough in Hampshire in October to make the 14,000-mile journey across Europe, the Middle East, India, South-East Asia and Australia, just as Amy Johnson had done more than 80 years previously.

As the above article explains, Ms Curtis-Taylor landed at Sydney airport on the 9th January, thereby completing this massive trek and following in the slipstream of one of her inspirations and a proper heroine.   Tracey Curtis-Taylor is both of these as well, not only for her remarkable recreations of historic endurance flights but also for helping to keep the memory of these early aviatrices alive today, not to mention her involvement in encouraging more young women into the field of mechanical engineering.

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Tracey Curtis-Taylor mentions "not wanting to stop [flying]" in the above clip and the good news is she that she isn't intending to any time soon.  That report briefly mentions the shipping of her aeroplane to Seattle for Boeing's centenary celebrations next year, but before that Ms Curtis-Taylor has stated her intention to fly her biplane across the breadth of the United States as her next adventure and I for one can't wait to follow her progress on this new feat of endurance, continuing to emulate the pioneer women pilots of the early 20th century.  Congratulations, Ms Curtis-Taylor, and the best of luck on your next endeavour!

**Further good news in relation to this story is that the B.B.C. will be broadcasting another documentary later this year following Tracey Curtis-Taylor's England-Australia flight.  No details have been released as yet but expect it to be shown on one of the main B.B.C. channels some time in the Spring.**

Amelia Earhart mystery – 1937 photograph could be clue to her fate

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Amelia Earhart mystery – 1937 photograph could be clue to her fate 

Back in June of 2013 I blogged about the news of the latest evidence pointing to the popular theory regarding the disappearance of noted aviatrix Amelia Earhart and her co-pilot Fred Noonan during their attempted around-the-world flight in 1937.  This theory has it that Earhart and Noonan missed their scheduled refuelling stop at the tiny (< 1 mile square) Howland Island in the Pacific Ocean and flew on in their twin-engined Lockheed Electra until forced to come down on one of a group of then-uninhabited atolls known as the Phoenix Islands - probably the larger Gardner Island (now known as Nikumaroro).

source - Daily Mirror

This hypothesis is by no means a recent one - Gardner Island was identified as a potential emergency landing ground almost immediately after the Electra's disappearance and reconnaissance flights were made over the atoll during the initial two-week official search, with pilots noting "signs of recent habitation" but no "answering wave from possible inhabitants" when they zoomed low over the rocks.  Later private searches including around the Phoenix Islands produced no evidence of pilots or machine and their ultimate fate has been the subject of investigations and conspiracy theories for three-quarters of a century.

The International Group for Historic Aircraft Recovery (TIGHER) - a non-profit organisation founded in 1985 for "aviation archaeology and historic preservation" - have been pursuing the Gardner Island theory for several years now, culminating in last year's expedition to Nikumaroro where sonar scans of the surrounding sea bed threw up an odd shadow 600ft below the waves that could be the remains of the Electra.

Piece of metal may offer clue to disappearance of Amelia Earhart's plane

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Now TIGHER are following up another lead with the discovery of a previously unknown photograph (which can be seen in the original Miami Herald article) of Earhart's Lockheed Electra at Miami Municipal Airport on the 1st June 1937, shortly before take-off for the next stint of the journey to Puerto Rico.  In it, a detail not seen in any other photo of the time - a sheet of metal covering what would previously have been a window.  More intriguingly, no record of this repair exists among all the documentation linked to Earhart's flight.

Among the many artefacts that TIGHAR have brought back from Nikumaroro - which include a 1930s-style woman's shoe (similar to ones worn by Earhart), bearings & tools, metal zips and pieces of Plexiglas almost identical in shape and design to that used on the Electra - is a section of aluminium panel bearing 1930s construction techniques.  It is this piece of metal that researchers are now closely comparing to a computer-enhanced blow-up of this never-before-seen image in the hope that they can match the rivet patterns and so prove beyond doubt that Earhart and Noonan did not crash into the Pacific Ocean but did indeed make it to Gardner Island, where they may have even survived for a time before succumbing to starvation and exposure.

If it can be proved that the aluminium panel seen in this new picture matches the piece recovered from Nikumaroro then it must surely settle beyond doubt one of the most enduring mysteries in aviation history - one that has remained unsolved for 77 years.  While this would not be the first bit of tangible evidence suggesting the Electra landed on Gardner Island, and with the Pacific Ocean ditch still a possibility, if the rivet patterns do match it will - taken with the other items found - be as conclusive as possible proof that the last resting place of Amelia Earhart, one of the greatest women pilots of the 20th century, has been found.  I for one certainly look forward to finding out!

Thirties thrills, tunes and tea

Last week was another busy one for me, culminating in a trip to my local seaside resort of Southend for a job interview followed by lunch and a trawl of the charity shops with mater.  Putting aside my career prospects I shall move right along to the post-interview portion of the day, the results of which will be far more exciting and interesting to you, I feel sure!

We began the afternoon with a late lunch; deciding that the the BHS cafe wasn't up to much ("horrendous", I believe mother described the food as looking) we came upon a hitherto-unknown-to-us bistro just opposite and what good fortune it was that we did, for we have now a new favourite refreshment stop in Southend.  The Remedy Tea Shop turned out to be a charming little tea room that had just recently sprung up in the high street and we both enjoyed some very nice sandwiches, paninis and - of course - tea!  The selection of the latter was impressively extensive (albeit wasted on Mum, who - used to plonking a teabag in a mug of boiling water - requested "plain old English [breakfast] please".  But I mustn't talk deprecatingly about her on here, she doesn't like it!).  I must admit my plan to test one of the less common blends backfired on me, however - the "Russian Caravan" Ceylon/Darjeeling/China mix leaning a little to much towards the Darjeeling for my tastes.  I should have stuck to the Assam I know and love!

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The place was beautifully decorated and laid out in a manner that perfectly reflected its aim of being "a haven of tranquility" and really was like a traditional English tea room of old.  A well-judged mixture of tables and chairs, armchairs, cabinets and even a fireplace all added to the homely feel of the place.  Highly recommended!

After our enjoyable repast it was ho! for the charity shops.  Sadly for such a large town Southend has surprisingly few such shops - only two on the actual high street.  Fortunately my interview had taken me down one the many side roads that bisect the main thoroughfare and which had two further beneficiary boutiques (not to mention two more restaurants that will require further investigations, Bacchus and Old Hat - the latter of which looked to be just on the verge of opening a vintage shop opposite its main business).  Mother scored a £1 M&S summer shirt for my stepdad in the first store, but the main event was the large Havens Hospice a couple of doors further down.  Occupying fully two shop fronts, one of which was devoted solely to books (like a library, it was!) it was the kind of charity shop one could easily spend half the day in.  The day had almost been and gone by the time we got there, though, so we weren't able to make much of a dent in the place - very unfortunate considering that the other side of the shop had half a wall's worth of CDs, DVDs and... a dozen boxes of 78rpm records at 50p a disc!  As I rifled through the first two baskets I quickly divined that they must have been some old boy's life collection - a mixture of 1930s dance bands and classical compositions from what I could see.  Time was against us, though, so not being able to make a proper selection I went for the alternative - an 8 LP box set The Golden Age of British Dance Bands!

With the hour now well past 4 and both of us needing to get home, I paid the princely sum of £3 for the set and we hot-footed it out into the street - only for me to suddenly realise I'd left my umbrella inside.  Popping back in to grab it I decided to make my way back out through the book department (quicker to the street - honest!) only for something I'd somehow missed the first time to suddenly leap out at me:

How could I have overlooked this - and how would this not be coming home with me when it was priced at a faintly unbelievable £2?!  I fair snatched it off the shelf, dashed to the till (mother was pacing, tight-lipped, outside) and threw the money at the young lad behind the counter.

I didn't get a chance to look at the book more closely nor listen to the LPs until the weekend and I'm pleased to say I'm over the moon with two of the best scores I've had in a long while.  The book in particular is an absolute steal - I think it was wrongly marked by the shop as 1963 when it is quite clearly 1930s (although I do have a habit of mixing up the last two digits of a number when I'm in a hurry, so they may have got it right).  There's no date to be found in it anywhere, but references to "the late King" [George V] and the autogyro pioneer Juan de la Cierva would certainly point to 1936.

Thrills of the Skyways is a real "Boys' Own" affair, published by Dean - the same people who later (re)printed some of the "Biggles" books and although there are none with that name (nor indeed authors' details of any kind) there are several First World War stories in a similar vein and it would not surprise me in the least if W.E. Johns wrote one or two of the articles.

It's a wonderfully evocative book and takes its place as one of the jewels of my collection, up there with my 1933 Modern Boy magazine, 1929 Tit-bits Yearbook and 1938 Power & Speed almanac.  It's written in the positive, effervescent style so typical of one of our favourite decades and provides a fascinating insight into the history of aviation in the 1930s (albeit aimed at young boys - aren't we all young at heart, though?).  There are facts and pictures therein that even I knew nothing about.  I was amazed to see that a Cierva autogyro was fitted with floats and operated successfully from water, for example.  Some of the predictions for the future are grin-inducing too.  Where, I ask, are our floating island landing strips, hmmnn?!

Some predictions were less rosy, though, as the dark clouds of a prospective second war were already looming large judging by the article above.

I will thoroughly enjoy delving into this book while listening to (and converting to mp3!) over 120 of the best toe-tapping Thirties tunes and I can't wait to see (and hear) what further gems both these splendid finds impart.  And I may just have to go back again soon for some of those 78s!

Flying in the slipstream of Lady Mary Heath

Tracey Curtis-Taylor: Meet the daredevil recreating Lady Mary Heath's historic 1920s flight

I remember first reading about this lady's aeronautical attempt last month during the coverage of the Goodwood Revival and I planned then to make a post out of it but then time moved on, work got in the way and the story was half-forgotten.  Now, with barely a week to go until its hopefully successful conclusion I can finally manage to feature it on here.

Really this is the story of two remarkable women - Mary, Lady Heath (born Sophie Peirce-Evans), a pioneering aviatrix whose name had sadly been lost to obscurity and Tracey Curtis-Taylor, the accomplished modern-day female pilot inspired by her forbear.

Flying through the glass ceiling: Saluting Britain's intrepid female aviators

Lady Mary Heath (or Sophie Peirce-Evans) is a name that by rights should be up there with Amy Johnson, Amelia Earhart and Diana Barnato-Walker in the list of famous women aviators.  The first woman to gain a commercial pilot's licence, the first woman to jump out of an aeroplane by parachute and the first person to fly a light aircraft solo from England to South Africa, a world altitude record-holder of the time - and she's practically unheard of today.  She looks to have been a most fascinating personality, glamorously photographed in fur coats atop the wing of her 'plane or dancing the night away in sumptuous ball gowns even while part-way through her record-breaking Africa flight, where she also took the time to hike around the savannah.  Even putting aside her feats in the air she sounds a remarkable woman - a university graduate, athlete, mechanically-minded and an ambulance driver during the Great War.  She truly was a trailblazer in all walks of life and her early death at only 42 is made only more tragic as a result.



Flying in the slipstream of Lady Mary Heath

Tracey Curtis-Taylor seems every inch the 21st-century incarnation of Lady Mary (and other early aviatrices) and her career before this event is just as remarkable, if still somewhat constrained by what regrettably remains a male-dominated industry even now.  However her role as an air show display pilot - currently at the excellent Shuttleworth Collection in Bedfordshire - and this attempt to recreate Lady Mary's 1928 Cape Town - Goodwood flight is a worthy and thrilling way to honour the memory of this forgotten female flier.

Not only is Ms Curtis-Taylor using a comparable aircraft in her 1942 Boeing Stearman but she has to contend with the same sort of endurance conditions Lady Mary would have faced 85 years ago, including variable weather and complex geopolitical borders.  Her journey looks to be as exciting and challenging as it would have been in 1928 and I have no doubt that she will overcome all obstacles and finish the course, just as Lady Mary did.  Here's to them both, and to Brooklands in a week's time!  (Hopefully I'll be able to post an update).


A Woman In Africa from Nylon Films on Vimeo.

A documentary film of Tracey Curtis-Taylor's extraordinary journey, A Woman In Africa, which will feature glorious African scenery and in-air footage of the flight is scheduled for release next year and if it can bring the name of Lady Mary Heath - and Tracey Curtis-Taylor - into the public consciousness, boost British tourism and show everyone what women in 'planes can do then so much the better!

Phone pioneer speaks for first time in 128 years

Phone pioneer speaks for first time in 128 years

It is a source of constant amazement to me how technological advancements at the turn of the last century have allowed sounds and images that would previously have been lost or unseen to be recorded and documented for future generations - us - to uncover and experience.

Nowhere is this better illustrated than in this recent story from the Smithsonian Institute (via the B.B.C.), featuring the inventor of one piece of modern electrical equipment being recorded for posterity by another piece of modern electrical equipment(!).

We Had No Idea What Alexander Graham Bell Sounded Like. Until Now.

In this 1885 recording we can [just about] hear the voice of Alexander Graham Bell, de facto inventor of the telephone, as picked up on a wax cylinder made at his Washington laboratory.  Only now able to be played back using incredible, modern computerised techniques (I find the incongruity of a late 19th/early 20th century turntable mounted on a high-tech 21st century computer system most amusing) this short excerpt of speech is the first time Bell's voice has been heard and identified.  One can just imagine it uttering the immortal words “Mr. Watson, come here, I want to see you” and it is, as the accompanying article states, a landmark discovery in the history of not only Bell but of the era too.

The Smithsonian is without doubt one of the foremost museums in the world and this story is a remarkable testament to their collections, their preservation & restoration abilities and their obvious love and enthusiasm for all aspects of history.  Thanks to them (and also researchers at the US Library of Congress and the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory) this fantastic recording can be heard for the first time in nearly 130 years and, more importantly, saved for future generations to appreciate.

Tornado steam locomotive sets new record

Tornado steam locomotive sets new record

From pedal power to steam power now, and guaranteed to get to Scotland far quicker than any penny-farthing could, Tornado the modern-build steam engine has further added to its laurels.

Striking a blow for the steam locomotive in what must be a great vindication for its creators, 60163 Tornado proves that it has what it takes to go the distance (literally!) and easily overcome the two of the most difficult railway gradients in the British Isles during this record-breaking inaugural trip to Glasgow.  Not to mention weather that, as you can see, while as typically British as the scenery would be a challenge to any train.

There it once again captured the hearts and minds of all who saw her, bringing back happy memories for many and providing everyone involved with a marvellous experience.

I have a distinct feeling that this will not be the last 40-year old steam engine record that the mighty Tornado will break and I for one look forward to reading of its next great achievement.  Well done, chaps!

Books on vinyl records: alive to the pleasures of rabbiting on

Books on vinyl records: alive to the pleasures of rabbiting on

Now this looks like a charming idea; I do hope it works. It sounds, as the article mentions, a risky business but with any luck putting children's stories onto a record could well pay dividends. It should add to the popularity of audio books among the young for one thing with the added novelty of, to them, an unfamiliar format.

(Indeed I recall times in the past when family has visited me and I have had to field questions from innumerable curious children:

"What is that, Uncle Bruce?"
"That's called a record, darling."
"What does it doooo?"
"Well, it's a bit like a CD in a way..."
"Oooh, can I have a go?!")

So it may be that the natural curiosity of children around anything new and unusual to them will ensure the success of this venture and expose a whole new generation to the delights and wonders of vinyl records and thus hopefully ensure their continued survival and enjoyment. I wish the fellow and his idea every success.