TheLocalYokel
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- Jan 14, 2009
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Some of the airport forums on Forums4Airports have a Random Stuff!! thread so I thought that I'd start one for CWL.
Subjects don't necessarily have to relate to aviation or to CWL. In fact, most aviation matters affecting CWL already have their own various threads in the CWL forum. The subjects don't even have to relate to Wales. The Random Stuff!! threads recognise that not every poster reads all airport forums so those who read the CWL forums will now have the opportunity to post about anything that interests them.
I went slightly off topic recently in a CWL thread and started discussing the cruise boats in the Bristol Channel. This reminded me that we didn't have a Random Stuff!! thread in the CWL forum.
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I thought I'd kick off by talking about one or two things that are aviation based, as it happens, and do have a South Wales connection, albeit many years ago.
How many people are aware that Cardiff once featured one of the busiest air routes in the world?
In the 1930s there was a proliferation of airlines around the UK featuring such companies as Railway Air Services, Western Airways and British Air Navigation Ltd, all of which used Cardiff's Pengam Moors Municipal Airport in the south-east of the city at one time or the other in that decade.
Routes often linked a number of major British cities like a bus service.
The short hop across the Severn estuary between Pengam Moors and Weston-super-Mare, where part of the airport site is now the home of a helicopter museum, became so popular at one point in the summer of the mid 1930s that it was reportedly the busiest or one of the busiest air routes in the world, mainly I would imagine carrying leisure travellers.
The second record is one that South Wales would never have wanted.
On 12 March 1950 an Avro Tudor V aircraft, G-AKBY, Star Girl, owned by Airflight and operating as Fairflight with 78 passengers and five crew was returning to Wales from Dublin following an international rugby match. Its destination was the Llandow aerodrome at RAF Llandow 15 miles to the west of Cardiff.
The aircraft was seen to be very low on approach but the pilot increased power leading to the front of the aircraft climbing steeply. The flight crew was unable to prevent a stall and the Tudor V fell to the ground from a height of about 300 feet. Everyone was killed except three passengers, two of whom remarkably walked almost unscathed from the wreckage.
At the time this was the world's worst air disaster.
The Avro Tudor was a civilian version of the wartime Lincoln bomber, itself a very close relative of the immortal Lancaster, although in truth there doesn't seem too much in common superficially, with the tail section not at all like the Lancaster.
The Tudor was a controversial aircraft with many crews disliking it. Two of the Tudor IV versions, Star Tiger and Star Ariel, operated by British South American Airways disappeared on commercial flights in 1948 and 1949 and were never seen again. Their disappearance in part fostered the 'legend' of the Bermuda Triangle.
The below link is to a short contemporary Movietone News report of the disaster.
Subjects don't necessarily have to relate to aviation or to CWL. In fact, most aviation matters affecting CWL already have their own various threads in the CWL forum. The subjects don't even have to relate to Wales. The Random Stuff!! threads recognise that not every poster reads all airport forums so those who read the CWL forums will now have the opportunity to post about anything that interests them.
I went slightly off topic recently in a CWL thread and started discussing the cruise boats in the Bristol Channel. This reminded me that we didn't have a Random Stuff!! thread in the CWL forum.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I thought I'd kick off by talking about one or two things that are aviation based, as it happens, and do have a South Wales connection, albeit many years ago.
How many people are aware that Cardiff once featured one of the busiest air routes in the world?
In the 1930s there was a proliferation of airlines around the UK featuring such companies as Railway Air Services, Western Airways and British Air Navigation Ltd, all of which used Cardiff's Pengam Moors Municipal Airport in the south-east of the city at one time or the other in that decade.
Routes often linked a number of major British cities like a bus service.
The short hop across the Severn estuary between Pengam Moors and Weston-super-Mare, where part of the airport site is now the home of a helicopter museum, became so popular at one point in the summer of the mid 1930s that it was reportedly the busiest or one of the busiest air routes in the world, mainly I would imagine carrying leisure travellers.
The second record is one that South Wales would never have wanted.
On 12 March 1950 an Avro Tudor V aircraft, G-AKBY, Star Girl, owned by Airflight and operating as Fairflight with 78 passengers and five crew was returning to Wales from Dublin following an international rugby match. Its destination was the Llandow aerodrome at RAF Llandow 15 miles to the west of Cardiff.
The aircraft was seen to be very low on approach but the pilot increased power leading to the front of the aircraft climbing steeply. The flight crew was unable to prevent a stall and the Tudor V fell to the ground from a height of about 300 feet. Everyone was killed except three passengers, two of whom remarkably walked almost unscathed from the wreckage.
At the time this was the world's worst air disaster.
The Avro Tudor was a civilian version of the wartime Lincoln bomber, itself a very close relative of the immortal Lancaster, although in truth there doesn't seem too much in common superficially, with the tail section not at all like the Lancaster.
The Tudor was a controversial aircraft with many crews disliking it. Two of the Tudor IV versions, Star Tiger and Star Ariel, operated by British South American Airways disappeared on commercial flights in 1948 and 1949 and were never seen again. Their disappearance in part fostered the 'legend' of the Bermuda Triangle.
The below link is to a short contemporary Movietone News report of the disaster.
