Boarders

Boarders are real or artificial lines that separate geographic areas. Borders, particularly national borders, impact travel. People can usually move freely within their own country’s borders, but typically may require approval to cross the boarder into another country. The process of obtaining such an approval for entry into Russia is why the Bazflyers were stranded, temporarily stateless, in the UK. The good news is this formality was helpfully expedited by the Russian Consulate in New Zealand and passports containing vital visas are on their way back to the Bazflyers. 

Meanwhile, in deference to the weather and ever echoing voices disclaiming responsibly for an un-typical English summer, the Bazflyers decided they would leave Comanche ZK-BAZ in it’s Breighton hanger and embark on a vehicular cross-boarder mission. This was a west to east expedition along the Scottish-English boarder....no passport or visa required.

Postcard picture boarder road

It’s probably an understatement to suggest the border separating Scotland and England is a contentious partition. It also bisects an enduring relationship spanning almost 2000 years of history.

Berwick-upon-Tweed is the most northern town in England. It has a turbulent history being passed between English and Scottish hands at least 13 times. In spite of this it’s quaintness is extremely easy on the eye with cobbled, steep streets boasting evocative names such as Foul Ford and Easter Wynd. 

Opened by Queen Victoria in 1850, the hugely impressive Royal Boarder Railway Bridge over the Tweed River was designed by Robert Stephenson, the only son of R L Stephenson the father of the steam locomotive.

Twizel Bridge on the River Till is one of the country’s finest medieval bridges. Completed in 1511 it stood for more than 200 years as the largest single-span arch in Britain.

Berwick Town Hall and Goal. It was from here many men sentenced for the most minor of offences were held prior to their deportation as convicts to Australia.

Meanwhile, ZK-BAZ rests among fine friends, a Stearman and Yak, at Breighton Aerodrome. Freshly serviced with only the GPS and nav databases to be updated before more international boarder crossings on RTW 2019....estimated departure 3rd September.

Stateless

As some readers of this blog will know, the Bazflyers from time to time, have a propensity to find themselves in the middle of nowhere....and right now it could be said they are again in the middle of nowhere. They are temporarily ‘stateless’, and as a consequence also confined inside the boarders of Great Britain. It’s a situation that must be endured until passports containing all important Russian visas arrive back from New Zealand. 

 

Quite unexpectedly and with no exceptions Russian visas could only be obtained on application to the Russian Embassy in one’s country of residence. This article of bureaucracy left the Bazflyers with no alternative other than to courier relevant documents and passports to New Zealand. That was of course assuming the proposition of flying eastwards across Russia remained the preferred option. 

 

Prior to starting out on RTW 2019, the Bazflyers had planned their return back ‘down-under’ from Europe flying a traditional route through the Middle East, India and South East Asia. However, the experience of flying through Far East Russia injected the proposition of an alternate option which was to fly east across Russia to Vladivostok on the Pacific side. With assistance from Evgeny at MAK General Aviation Services, the route is now locked and loaded only waiting on visas.

 

Bazflyers anticipate their temporary realm of ‘statelessness’ could be overturned by the end of the month. As soon as passports are in hand the Russian sector will begin. Meanwhile, you are invited to join us on some interesting flights in the middle of nowhere....

 

Russia is one very big land mass. The flight from west to east is approximately 10,000 kilometres (5,000 nm). Three weeks and eight stops have been allocated for the journey which is expected to involve 35 hours flying. 

 

Breighton Aerodrome

Who would have thought, certainly not the Bazflyers, that they would ever be in Great Britain having flown halfway round the world in their trusty Piper Comanche ZK-BAZ all the way from New Zealand. There is a well oiled saying about having to pinch oneself to make sure it is not a dream. To dispel the possibility of any such allusion the Bazflyers have done just that and are happy to report it is real. The journey to Great Britain had been 100 days. The distance flown was 35,000 kilometres. Time in the air 125 hours. The sense of accomplishment...real!

 

Bazflyer’s first internal flight in Britain was a 600 kilometre trip from Wick (EGPC) to the grass Yorkshire airfield of Breighton (BRE1). But, before even thinking about taking to the skies there was the not so small matter of preparing an IFR flight plan and having it accepted by a remote, faceless and impersonal computer system code named “Eurocontrol”. The convolutions and multiple attempts necessary to achieve this make solving Rubik’s Cube akin to child’s play. However, eventually being in receipt of an airways clearance ZK-BAZ was pointed skyward, where real people become involved. With that sensible routing solutions emerged. So much for the flight plan. If it wasn’t bordering on conspiracy one could be forgiven for thinking that Eurocontrol’s purpose was to discourage general aviation flight. 

 

Stepping out the cabin door after landing on Breighton’s immaculately groomed grass runway there was a very real feeling of being at a country airfield in a former time. A mix of old-world charm along with resident aviation aficionados simply enhanced the authenticity. Then of course there is the Real Aircraft Company....an amazing collection of airworthy vintage airplanes.

 

Viewed from the air Breighton’s heritage is still very evident. During WW2 the now disused and overgrown runways of this former Royal Airforce base dispatched and recovered countless bomber operations. Halifax, Wellington’s and Lancaster’s at one time all operated out of Breighton. The local inn and other wartime aircrew haunts dotted around the locality have seen little apparent change since the time they provided off-duty havens for the young airmen and airwomen. Many of them would have been Australian’s as the airfield was the base for RAAF 460 Squadron.

 

During the Cold War era Breighton became host to a battery of nuclear armed ICBM’s that were surrounded by a protective guard of ground to air Bloodhound missiles. While talking to a retired senior Air Force Officer the story emerged that back then a naughty airforce officer could look forward to being appointed Commander of a Bloodhound unit where long term boredom was the punishment. 

 

Until the Bazflyers resume their RTW journey, ZK-BAZ will rest at Breighton Aerodrome, safely protected in a hanger and happy in the company of some wonderful historic vintage aircraft.

 

Wick to Breighton 

View through the windscreen when taking off at Wick Airport

With the cloud and rain left behind in Scotland here is a view from above while flying down the East Coast of Britain at FL110

Bazflyers at work in their office

On descent over Yorkshire countryside

Parked on the grass at Breighton Aerodrome 

RAF Wick

History is often obscured by the thickening mists of time, and perhaps that is why an important event of WW2, an event that featured a 20 year old newly minted Flying Officer, a Spitfire airplane configured for photo reconnaissance and RAF Wick, has largely been forgotten.

Wick or John o’Groats Airport as it also known, sits just outside the fishing village of Wick in the very far northeast of Scotland. The airport was built at the outbreak of the Second World War and became known as RAF Wick. It was primarily used by Coastal Command flying patrols over the North Sea and making long range meteorological and reconnaissance flights. As the Bazflyers came into land at Wick the old runway system was clearly visible. On a closer ground inspection the original control tower, dwarfed by two nearby enormous old hangers, still contained artefacts from its wartime heritage.

It was from this airfield on 21 May 1941 following a briefing in the Operations Room of the control tower that 20 year old Pilot Officer Michael Suckling took off in his camera equipped Spitfire. His mission was to search the fjords around Bergen for the German battleship ‘Bismarck’.

Three hours later an excited young Suckling landed back at Wick. His camera film was quickly processed. Normally, processed films were sent from Wick by train but given what seemed apparent on the film and there being no other pilot available, Suckling was immediately tasked to fly the prints to London. 

Finding himself running low on fuel and in failing light, Suckling landed his Spitfire near the home of a friend, not far from his own home town of Southwell, Nottinghamshire. Together, they completed the remainder of the journey by car, delivering the prints to headquarters at Northwood, in north-west London, in the early hours of the next morning. There, the prints were examined and it was confirmed that Suckling had indeed photographed the Bismarck while taking on supplies and fuel in preparation for a long sea voyage. 

Suckling’s daring reconnaissance flight and prompt analysis of the prints in London allowed the orchestration of a navel pursuit across the Atlantic that culminated in the sinking of the Bismarck on 27 May 1941. 

It was one of those precious Bazflyer moments, standing in the old wartime RAF Wick control tower looking out over a misty aerodrome and the very grounds of one of the most famous photographic reconnaissance missions of the Second World War. 

Pilot Officer Michael Suckling was decorated with the Distinguished Flying Cross, but sadly exactly two months after delivering the vital reconnaissance images of the Bismarck, he was shot down while on a reconnaissance flight over France and was killed. 

The old RAF Wick control tower and home of Far North Aviation

The huge wartime aircraft hangers

Bazflyer1 with the ‘family’ team at Far North Aviation 

Wick is quite near John o’Groats pictured here on a typically misty day

During WW2 this small coastal harbour would have been a hive of fishing boat activity

Bluie-1

The air route that crosses the North Atlantic via Goose Bay, Narsarsuaq and Reykjavik deserves its unique immortalisation in history and legend. Like linking hands, strategic airports constructed and resourced in Greenland and Iceland during World War Two, enabled new aircraft built in the USA to fly across the Atlantic Ocean to Great Britain. Single engine fighter aircraft needed for the war effort lacked the necessary range to make a non stop Atlantic crossing. Furthermore, the airports also provided safe sanctuary for aircraft operating over the North Atlantic on anti-submarine and maritime patrol operations.

Greenland and Iceland were both Danish territories when World War II broke out but that changed almost overnight when Germany invaded Denmark. US Armed Forces established bases in Greenland, notably at Narsarsuaq, while Britain formally invaded Iceland. By the end of the war, thousands of aircraft had been ferried across the Atlantic by staging through Narsarsuaq and Reykjavik. The air route was code named ‘Bluie-1’.

Nowadays these wartime airports serve essentially the same purpose, however it is for small aircraft being flown between Europe and North America, and this week one such small single engine aircraft was Comanche ZK-BAZ. 

Weather patterns across the North Atlantic are notoriously fickle. Good weather can rapidly degenerate into appalling conditions. Just like those wartime pilots who flew from Goose Bay to Narsarsuaq and onto Reykjavik, the Bazflyers judicially studied on route weather patterns for some days prior to their own ‘Bluie-1’ departure. Indeed, their originally scheduled departure date was delayed two days while waiting for more favourable flight conditions. 

While flying inland from the Greenland coast 120 kms to Narsarsuaq, the two fjords Ernest K Gann graphically wrote about in his legendary book “Fate is the Hunter”, were clearly visible to the Bazflyers. In the book Gann graphically describes flying into Narsarsuaq in poor weather conditions, and how pilots had to be sure they were entering the correct fjord because once in they were trapped, unable to climb out or turn around. 

Fortunately weather for the Bazflyers arrival at Narsarsuaq was uncommonly near perfect, just a slightly tricky wind on the landing approach. Needless to say it wasn’t difficult to empathetically feel for those courageous wartime ferry pilots flying into Narsarsuaq in marginal weather conditions, and as Bazflyer2 rightly pointed out, many of them were women.

In the book about his 1969 flight round the world, “Flight of the Kiwi”, Cliff Tait describes flying from Goose Bay to Narsarsuaq and his inability to land there due to low cloud conditions. With insufficient fuel remaining to either return to Goose Bay or continue onto Reykjavik, the only option available to Tait was to find the American airbase at Sondre Stromfjord about 800 kms further north. Situated at the head of a long fjord the former military base is nowadays known as Kangerlussuaq (BGSF). 

Flying parallel to the unforgiving and rugged Greenland coast, in cloud and with unreliable compass information, Tait’s small airplane was miraculously spotted on military radar, and provided with vectors to the air base where he landed safely with very little fuel remaining.

Gratefully, the Bazflyers enjoyed reasonably good flight conditions along the way from Goose Bay through to Reykjavik. Following three nights playing tourists in Reykjavik, the final leg of their ‘Bluie-1’ journey is tomorrow’s 4.5 hour flight south to Wick in the north of Scotland. Ample time to dwell on the efforts of all the men and women stationed at Narsarsuaq and Reykjavik during WW2 and the valuable contribution they made to world peace.

Flight planning prior to departure from Goose Bay

Crossing the Greenland coast heading inland towards Narsarsuaq 

It is important to be certain you are flying the correct fjord on the way into Narsarsuaq (BGBW)

Finals to land at Narsarsuaq Airport 

Bazflyer2 about to board ZK-BAZ appropriately attired for a Bluie-1 flight

Departing from Narsarsuaq climbing to FL120 on the way to Reykjavik

Day’s end in Reykjavik following another sector on Round the World 2019

A tourist’s view looking across the old Reykjavik harbour