• Imperial Airways

Early in 1921 British commercial aviation, which had begun so optimistically two years earlier, had all but ceased to exist. Having struggled unsuccessfully to compete with their subsidised continental counterparts, the surviving airline companies, Handley Page Transport and The Instone Air Line, were forced to halt cross-Channel operations after sustaining heavy financial losses. Reluctantly and against its hitherto stated policy, the government was forced to hastily cobble together a series of half-hearted temporary subsidy schemes to help keep Britain’s fledgling air services afloat. This enabled the resumption of services on 19 March 1921, but it was hardly a long-term solution.

Following the recommendations of the Hambling Committee, commissioned by Secretary of State for Air Sir Samuel Hoare, and a year’s protracted bargaining among all interested parties, a workable and lasting compromise was eventually reached. The result was originally identified as The Imperial Air Transport Co, into which the now four (including British Marine Air Navigation and The Daimler Airway) existing commercial companies agreed in December 1923 to merge. This new enterprise was 50% underwritten by The British, Foreign and Colonial Corporation Ltd (run by Mr Szarvasy) in agreement with The Air Council, which guaranteed subsidies of £1 million over a 10-year period. The new company was actually formed as Imperial Airways Ltd on 31 March 1924 as a public company and should have commenced flying on 1 April 1924, but a bitter dispute with pilots over remuneration, not resolved until Major H G ‘Brackles’ Brackley as Air Superintendent interceded as a buffer between staff and the prickly general manager Major G E Woods Humphery, caused an almost month-long delay. Finally, on 26 April 1924, the new airline got airborne when DH.34 G-EBCX, flown by Capt. H S Robertson, re-opened the daily service to Paris.

The new organisation had inherited a motley fleet of 13 useable aircraft, but despite this seeming drawback by 17 June 1924 Imperial was additionally operating flights over the sectors Brussels-Cologne, Amsterdam-Hannover-Berlin and Paris-Basel-Zurich. Although accidents were far from uncommon in these early days, it was particularly tragic that Imperial should suffer the loss of a Paris-bound DH.34 on Christmas eve 1924, when it crashed on take-off from Croydon with the loss of all eight aboard. To fulfil its schedule at least six serviceable aircraft daily were required, but this was not always possible and on at least one day in August 1925 no flying at all was possible. Nevertheless, in its first year, Imperial managed to fly 800,000 miles, albeit at a considerable financial penalty. The dire equipment situation led to the delivery of Imperial’s first new aircraft, four HP W10s, in the spring of 1926, followed later in the year by several new AW Argosy and DH.66 Hercules airliners. While the former, complete with an onboard steward and buffet, served the European routes, it was the purpose-built Hercules that would enable Imperial to begin to fulfil its title and ultimate purpose, to link the mother country with the far-flung outposts of the British Empire.

In November 1924, Director of Civil Aviation, Sir Sefton Brancker accompanied (Sir) Alan Cobham on his epic survey flight to Rangoon, resulting in the government decision to replace the RAF’s pioneering Desert Air Mail service with a passenger and mail equivalent to be flown by Imperial all the way to India. Following a survey in August 1925 and having overcome the formidable logistic and political problems, an inaugural flight between London and Delhi was made in January 1927 by the appropriately named DH.66, City of Delhi, in a total flying time of 65 hours. As had been foreseen, political intrigues and obstacles both in the Middle East and Europe prevented a through service until the end of March 1929, when a weekly schedule was instituted all the way to India. Even then the Basle-Genoa sector had to be accomplished by rail, continuing onwards to Alexandria by Short Calcutta flying-boat to pick up the Hercules airliner through Iraq and Persia. Prior to their Mediterranean introduction, the Calcuttas had proved themselves on services to the Channel Islands (closed down in May 1929), superseding the less attractive Supermarine Sea Eagles inherited from British Marine. Meanwhile, a series of accidents with the older aircraft did nothing to help the equipment shortage and led ultimately to Imperial’s withdrawal from routes to Amsterdam and Berlin. Against this, by the end of 1927, Imperial was carrying 70% of all passengers between London and Paris and was able post its first modest profit of £11,000.

Imperial next turned its attention to Africa and the Cape. Following Cobham’s extensive survey flights of 1925 and 1927-8, he allied himself with the Blackburn Aeroplane and Motor Co to create Cobham-Blackburn Air Lines with a scheme for a service between Alexandria and Mwanza, Tangyanika (Tanzania) and eventually, all the way to Cape Town. The British government had similar ideas and its obligation to give first refusal to Imperial led to Cobham-Blackburn being bought out by Imperial in December 1928 for £50,000 and the formation of Imperial Airways (South Africa) Ltd in June 1929.

Though largely transiting British administered territories, as with the Indian venture, the new route was a logistical nightmare, requiring almost 60 en-route aerodromes and landing grounds to be prepared, together with rest houses to accommodate the passengers and crews. Although the new route became operational as far as central Africa on 28 February 1931, it was initially restricted to the carriage of mail owing to payload limitations of the only aircraft available, the Argosy, Calcutta and DH.66, in the hot and high tropical conditions. Thus, it was not until the delivery of the new HP.42 landplanes and Short Kent flying-boats, together with resolution of the dispute with Italy, that the route was thrown open to passenger traffic on 27 April 1932. Even then, it was a tortuous journey; Croydon to Paris by air, train to Brindisi, air to Athens and on down to Alexandria, followed by another ten stops en-route to Cape Town. All of which took ten and a half days at a fare of £130. Both the Indian and African routes benefited from advent of the new AW Atlanta four-engine monoplane, eight of which were delivered from early 1933. While Imperial was carrying increasing numbers of passengers (up by 75% 1932-3) and consistently turning in modest profits, this had to be set against subsidies exceeding £2m since its inception, whereas its shareholders had subscribed only £0.5m.

Under the charge of Major Brackley, on 29 May 1933, AW Atlanta Astraea set out on a survey flight to Australia, where the aircraft arrived at Melbourne on 29 June. Meanwhile, extension of the Empire route beyond India was hampered by the global financial depression. This particularly affected India where Imperial’s partner, the embryonic Indian State Air Service, became effectively stillborn. Practically, this meant that by the end of 1931 Imperial’s eastern terminus again reverted to Karachi. This was good news for KLM, which with its fast, modern Douglas DC-2 airliners and less frequent stops en-route, was able gain useful revenue by carrying UK mails for Singapore, having first been redirected from England to Holland. This situation began to be alleviated in May 1933, when a new British-Indian venture, Indian Trans-Continental Airways, opened a service between Karachi and Rangoon, operated by several AW Atlantas leased from Imperial, complete with crews. Long-drawn-out negotiations with the Australians ultimately resulted in the tender for the Singapore-Australia section of the route being awarded to Queensland and Northern Territories Aerial Services (QANTAS), headed by (Sir) Hudson Fysh. In the interim the experimental airmail service flown in April 1931 became something of a fiasco when the DH Hercules operating the eastbound leg from Karachi was damaged beyond repair during a forced-landing at Koepang in Indonesia.

In June 1934 Qantas Empire Airways (QEA) was established jointly between Imperial and QANTAS for the purpose of operating services beyond Singapore. The chosen vehicle was de Havilland’s new four-engine DH.86 Express airliner, five of which were ordered, while Imperial took three, ostensibly for their European services. The new through service was due to begin from the UK end on 8 December 1934 and from Brisbane two days later. But QEA was suffering from a dire shortage of equipment, caused by temporary grounding of the DH.86s after two serious accidents in Australia. Imperial was hardly in a much better position, but somehow managed to take up the slack by chartering two Atlantas to QEA for a couple of months. The first passengers for Australia left Croydon in April 1935, but the prestigious new service was never going to make much money from passenger traffic; in 1935 a mere 410 passengers were carried to India or beyond, though with a fare of £195 it was perhaps hardly surprising that there were relatively few takers. Although the twice-weekly service was scheduled with a total transit time of 13 days, frequent delays due to adverse weather, mechanical failure and assorted mishaps meant that it was not unknown for flights to arrive up to a week late.

In order to complete air links with Britain’s eastern colonies, after a survey flight from Penang by Capt. Walter Armstrong in a DH.86, regular scheduled services were opened on 23 March 1936, enabling Hong Kong to be reached in just ten days, as opposed to a 34-day journey by sea. By this time the only major British overseas territories not receiving an air mail service were those in West Africa. This was rectified in the autumn of 1936, when a branch line was opened from Khartoum to Kano and Lagos. Shortly afterwards the route was extended to Accra and up to five passengers were additionally carried on the DH.86 service.

Ever since its inception Imperial had made do with at best a motley collection aircraft, largely resulting from government insistence that it must ‘buy British’. To its credit, the airline had done wonders with what was often unsuitable and stopgap equipment, but in 1936 changed. The advent of the All-up Empire Air Mail Scheme, allowing letters for the colonies to be flown at domestic postal rates, saw Imperial boldly respond to the challenge by ordering no less than 28 new flying-boats off the drawing board from Short Brothers of Rochester.

On 30 October 1936 G-ADHL Canopus made the first revenue earning service between Brindisi and Alexandria and, with the formal opening of the marine terminal at Hythe on the south coast in March 1937, all Empire departures from Croydon came to an end. The new aircraft proved immediately popular with luxurious accommodation for 24 passengers by day and 16 by night, including a smoking room and promenade deck, together with the prospect of a reduced journey time of just nine days to Australia. Deliveries of the new aircraft permitted a new east African coastal route from Mombasa to Durban, although it was not until July 1938 that the C-class Empire boats reached Australia. For some time New Zealand had shown enthusiasm for an extension across the Tasman Sea and in August 1937 agreement was reached to set-up a three-way operating company, Tasman Empire Airlines (TEAL). Three of the five ordered Empire boats were received in the following year allowing completion of the final link in the Commonwealth chain.

Early in 1935 Imperial began considering the crossing of the North Atlantic and a year later, a co-operative agreement was signed with Pan American for each company to run two weekly round-trips between New York and England. The first of five trials began on 5 July 1937 when the Empire boat Caledonia, stripped of all non-essentials, lifted off from Foynes in Ireland heading for Botwood in Newfoundland, reached against the prevailing westerly wind in under 16 hours; simultaneously Pan Am’s Sikorsky S-42B Clipper III flew eastbound. Despite the success of these trials, both sides realised that neither possessed an aircraft of sufficient range and payload to offer a viable commercial service. Meanwhile, both companies co-operated on a joint service between Bermuda and New York, which opened on 27 May 1937. While waiting to see if the new Boeing 314 flying-boat would achieve its expected performance figures, Imperial ordered three larger S.26 ‘G’ class boats from Short Brothers for use as transatlantic mail planes.

Experiments were also begun with the unique Short-Mayo composite aircraft, which utilised a ‘C’ Class boat to carry aloft a smaller fast four-engine mail-plane for air-launch within range of the final destination. Imperial had hoped that the Air Ministry would support the building of ten of these for the Empire mails, but they were disappointed. Other trials were carried out with air-to-air refuelling using a Handley Page Harrow tanker aircraft, but in the end Imperial, still lacking suitable equipment, had to concede that the transatlantic service would have to go ahead without them. Accordingly, on 17 June 1939, Pan American opened its eastbound service with Boeing 314s flying to Southampton via Newfoundland and Ireland carrying 18 passengers and mail. Although deliveries of the S.26 boats began in June 1939, their performance could not match that of Pan American’s Boeings and shortly afterwards the RAF commandeered many of Imperial’s aircraft for wartime service.

During the mid-1930s Imperial maintained its European routes to Brussels, Cologne, Budapest, Paris, Basle and Zurich, the latter flown alternately with Swissair. Load factors on the European routes were significantly better than those of their long-haul counterparts and by 1935, Imperial was uplifting about 250 passengers each day from Croydon. The HP.42s plodded stoically backwards and forwards across the Channel to Paris, backed up by the Short Scylla landplanes that also serviced the Swiss destinations. But there was home-grown competition on the horizon in the shape of British Airways Ltd, formed in October 1935 by an amalgamation of four of the larger independent airlines. The findings of the government’s Gorrell and Maybury Committees regarding competition, route duplication and licensing finally took effect in June 1936 with the enactment of the Air Navigation Bill and creation of the Air Registration Board. But by far the most influential enquiry into Britain’s civil aviation infrastructure was that of Lord Cadman, published in February 1938, which recommended that British Airways Ltd should fly to the principal European capitals, with the exception of London-Paris (to be flown jointly), leaving Imperial Airways Ltd to concentrate on the prestigious Empire services. British Airways was also to be granted rights to South America via West Africa.

Late in 1938 Imperial finally took delivery of its new AW Ensign land-plane as a replacement for the ageing HP.42. The Ensign entered service between London and Paris on 11 October and by the year’s end five of the 12 examples ordered had been delivered in time for the Christmas mail run to Australia, but en-route all three thus employed went unserviceable leading to the type’s hasty withdrawal pending further extensive modification. Thus, it was not until October 1939 that all 12 machines had been delivered and transferred to Bristol’s Whitchurch airport with the rest of Imperial’s fleet, which was to become the airline’s wartime base. Plans for Indian Transcontinental to employ three Ensigns based at Calcutta were also, as a consequence, curtailed. Having performed useful wartime service, largely in Africa, the surviving eight machines were scrapped early in 1947. More successful, albeit briefly, was the graceful DH.91 Albatross airliner, which was originally ordered by the Air Ministry for experimental Atlantic mail flights. Imperial ordered five examples in July 1937, the first of which was introduced onto the Croydon-Paris service on 25 November 1938. The Albatross maintained the Paris run until the outbreak of war, allowing retirement of the trusty HP.42s and L17s from continental services. Apart from maintaining its own separate charter department, Imperial also provided sightseeing flights over the capital and luxury Sunday excursions to Le Touquet, which at £3.15s included dinner on-board and limousine transfers.

The Cadman Report was highly critical of Imperial’s management and in particular, managing director Woods Humphery, who was made a scapegoat for the company’s perceived shortcomings. In fact, he had done much to establish Imperial as a major global force in the developing airline industry, despite being hampered at every turn by the short-sightedness and prevarication of the Air Ministry’s mandarins. Somewhat reluctantly, in June 1938, the redoubtable Sir John Reith allowed himself to be drafted in as executive chairman and, in the process, Woods Humphery was sacked. Using his experience as head of the BBC, from November 1938, Reith set about organising the amalgamation of Imperial Airways and British Airways Ltd into a single state-controlled public service corporation. The upshot was the creation of BOAC, but by the time that it was officially established on 1 April 1940 Britain was already at war.