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"Wavescan" is a weekly program for long distance radio hobbyists produced by Dr. Adrian M. Peterson, Coordinator of International Relations for Adventist World Radio. AWR carries the program over many of its stations (including shortwave). Adrian Peterson is a highly regarded DXer and radio historian, and often includes features on radio history in his program. We are reproducing those features below, with Dr. Peterson's permission and assistance.
Wavescan N511, December 9, 2018
Aircraft Emergency Landings at Night: The Aeroplane Jelly Song
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Listen to The Aeroplane Jelly Song |
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Both the words and the melody of The Aeroplane Jelly Song were composed by Albert Francis Lenertz to extoll and promote the frequent usage of Aeroplane Jelly as a popular and supposedly nutritious family food. Albert Lenertz first used this melody for a very different advertising song, the words of which promoted a particular candidate in a high profile political campaign.
Lenertz reworked the melody a little, and wrote a completely new set of words for Aeroplane Jelly, and thus this musical advertising campaign became the most successful in the entire history of radio advertising in Australia. This now historic and nostalgic advertising song was accorded a highly acclaimed historic honor by the Australian National Film and Sound Archives in the year 2008.
The composer Albert Lenertz, was a business partner of Bert Appleroth, an aviation buff, who began experimentation in the manufacture in Sydney of a new family food back around the era of World War I. He combined various quantities of gelatine, sugar and flavoring in the family bath tub. At the time, he was a tram conductor in the Sydney tramway network, and he sold his new jelly product door to door along the various tramway routes.
The new jelly product became so popular that he began large scale production, formed a commercial company, gave a popular name to his product, and entered into intensive radio advertising. In 1927, the name of the jelly (Jello) product was changed from De-Luxe Jelly to Aeroplane Jelly; in 1934 he used a Tiger Moth airplane as a novel method for the delivery of his product in country areas; and soon afterwards he conducted a state wide search for a girl to sing his new advertising song on radio.
Some 200 girls entered the statewide talent contest, and the winner was Joy King. At the age of seven, she recorded the song in the studios of mediumwave 2SM in Sydney, along with the 2SM Radio Orchestra. During the early 1940s, this recording of the Aeroplane Jelly Song was played a hundred times a day over two commercial radio stations in Sydney, both 2SM and 2KY.
In this edition of our co-operative DX program Wavescan, we have used the popularity of the Aeroplane Jelly Song as a fitting introduction to our opening topic for the day, Aircraft Emergency Landings at Night.
Aircraft Emergency Landings at Night: Five Events in Three Countries
We now present five interesting stories of Aircraft Emergency Landings at Night in three different countries, and here they are in chronological order.
During the year 1934, there was an air race from London, England to Melbourne, Australia in honor of the one hundredth anniversary of the founding of the city of Melbourne. During the night of Tuesday, October 23 (1934), the Dutch entry in the London to Melbourne Air Race got hopelessly lost over the eastern areas of the Australian continent during a very stormy night; they did not know where they were, and neither did anyone else.
The Dutch KLM plane named the Uiver (Stork) was an American Douglas DC2 piloted by Captain K. D. Parmentier and First Officer J. J. Moll, together with three fare-paying passengers. While flying from Charleville in Queensland on the last leg of the flight to Melbourne, the plane encountered a fierce electrical storm which cut all wireless communication. They were hopelessly lost and low on fuel.
Royal Australian Air Force RAAF wireless operators at Laverton near Melbourne were trying in vain to contact the plane Uiver (radio callsign PHAJU), as was also the coastal station VIM. They alerted all towns along the route from Queensland to Victoria to be ready to help. Radio stations were asked to broadcast emergency messages, navy ships switched on their searchlights, and railway stations along the Melbourne to Albury line put on signal lamps.
The location of the missing plane was first discovered as it flew over the small town of Henty, midway between Wagga Wagga and Albury. Not knowing where they were, the crew of the Douglas DC2 flew almost due east until they saw the night lights of a regional city and they flew over it several times, hoping somehow to learn the name of the city. This city was Albury, on the north side of the Murray River boundary between the states of New South Wales and Victoria.
The Chief Electrical Engineer for the city of Albury, Lyle Ferris, heard the drone of the Douglas DC2 overhead and he realized that it was the lost plane. He rushed to the electrical power station and signaled A L B U R Y in Morse Code to the plane by turning the city lights on and off.
In the meantime, Arthur Newnham in Albury, the announcer for radio station 2CO in Corowa, interrupted the program feed from the ABC in Melbourne and made an emergency broadcast by phone from Albury, appealing for cars to line up on the racecourse to light up with their headlights a makeshift runway for the plane to land. A large number of people responded to the radio broadcast, and they lit up the race course with a circle of 80 cars so that the pilot could see where to land.
At 1:20 a.m., the Uiver dropped two parachute flares and made its approach to land, coming in from the north. It bumped several times on the undulating centre of the racecourse, and it slithered to a muddy halt 100 yards short of the inner fence. The aircraft had landed safely.
The world had been listening on shortwave to VK2ME and on local relays from international shortwave stations. Millions of people around the world who were huddled anxiously over their wireless receivers breathed a collective sigh of relief; the ordeal was over.
After daylight that same Wednesday morning, radio station 2CO interviewed the crew and local citizens who had joined in with the rescue project of the Dutch KLM DC2. This special programming was broadcast Australia wide on mediumwave, and again on shortwave worldwide. Commercial station 2AY in Albury, with its 50 watts on 203 meters (1480 kHz), also participated in all of these remarkable aviation events.
Later that same morning the city mayor, Alderman Alf Waugh, spoke on radio and rallied local citizens to pull the plane out of the thick Albury mud, and 300 responded. A rope was attached to the plane and they began to pull.
Watching the effort from the family Chrysler sedan was 3-1/2 year old Patricia Strachan. She saw the men pulling on the rope, and when it broke, she saw the men fall splat into the mud, as she later described it. It was so funny, she said. Anyway, the plane took off successfully, flew on to Melbourne, and came second in the race.
Next in our chronological presentation of emergency landings at night is the story of another emergency night landing in Australia, this time at Armidale in northern New South Wales, and it was during World War II. The Armidale airport was the Australian airport at the highest altitude at 3556 feet, and during the materiel and personnel shortages back at that time, this airfield had been totally neglected.
According to Dr. Bruce Carty in his splendid compendium on the history of mediumwave radio in Australia, it was during the year 1943 that an approaching plane needed to make an emergency landing at night on the Armidale airport. Commercial station 2AD, with its 200 watts on 1130 kHz, made an over the air appeal stating that as many cars as possible were needed to light up the rough and unmaintained runway.
Interestingly, the local daily newspaper, The Armidale Express for December 29, 1943, declared that the despised Armidale airport "saved yet another plane and its occupants" in a subsequent emergency night landing. This December landing was also made at night, though the newspaper report does not state how the airport was lit for the occasion. However, as the newspaper stated, this emergency night landing in December by a Douglas DC airliner was not the first event of this nature at Armidale.
Third in our stories is the 1975 night landing made by a Fairchild Provider plane at Dumaguete in the southern Philippines. This plane was carrying a squad of security personnel into the area and they needed to set down at Dumaguete, an airport without night lights; and even in the clear sky moonlight, the runway could not be seen adequately.
The pilot made a few low passes over the runway, and local citizens became aware that a plane seemed to be in distress. The aircraft radio receiver was tuned to mediumwave station DYSR at the university and the travelers were surprised to hear an announcement from the local police office, asking nearby people to drive quickly to the air strip and to light it up with car headlights. Shortly afterwards, the plane landed safely, making this event the first night landing at the Dumaguete airstrip in the Philippines.
Next we cross over to England; and we find that two pilots, Stuart Wall and Keith Potter, were flying a single engine Cessna 182 from Dundee to Manchester when they encountered engine trouble while over Northumberland during the night of March 9, 2006. They put out an emergency mayday call on their aircraft radio, which was heard by air traffic controllers at the Newcastle airport, some 35 miles distant.
Newcastle phoned the airfield at Eshott and manager Steve Clarehugh agreed to have the stricken plane land on his unlit airstrip runway. Steve Clarehugh parked his Isuzu Trooper at the runway, and turned on all lights and flashers. Even though it was a rough landing and the plane hit a barbed wire fence, yet all ended satisfactorily.
Finally, it is back to Australia again, and this time our story is in association with the Royal Flying Doctor Service RFDS in the Great Outback. Two years ago, the RFDS in Mt. Isa, Queensland, received a radio call stating that a stockman was injured, and they needed a plane to fly in, pick him up, and transfer him to hospital for specialized medical attention.
RFDS pilot Geoff Cobden, together with a doctor and a nurse, arrived overhead in their RFDS plane at the Burke and Wills Roadhouse at Four Ways in outback Queensland around midnight. There are no runway lights at the Roadhouse, not even a runway, nor sufficient motor vehicles to light up a suitable landing place with their vehicle headlights. No, and the Roadhouse did not have any flares either.
As in the case of other similar night time flights, the pilot requests that a suitable landing location be marked with toilet rolls that have been soaked in diesel fuel. They will burn for half an hour, states the pilot. This unusual aviation event two years ago is not all that unusual, he says; it happens every so often.