Some colour footage of Empire Flying boats at Darwin in September 1940 has come to light in a film made by the New South Wales Main Road construction department who were taken with their up-to-date American construction vehicles on the liner SS Zealandia from Sydney halfway round Australia to remote Darwin to build strategic roads in the face of possible Japanese invasion. (Via the ”Short C-Class Empire Flying Boats-an appreciation’ and ‘Darwin History’ Facebook groups)
at 7.15 in https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ieX9UvzVORQ&t=0s&index=30&list=PL1380E9A415E76681
By: ianwoodward9 - 2nd August 2018 at 08:04
That was so interesting to see. Thanks, longshot and, as you say, thanks to those who found the film in the first place. In the air, flying boats were among the larger aircraft at the time; on the sea, viewed from a ship, they seem so much smaller.
By: AirportsEd - 31st July 2018 at 22:41
Yep, that’s an excellent find; never seen anything like it before.
Many thanks for posting.
By: longshot - 31st July 2018 at 20:59
All credit to the two Facebook administrators who spotted it [and to the two musicians who invented Kodachrome! ]….incredible that stuff is still surfacing after 75 years
By: Mothminor - 31st July 2018 at 20:47
Lovely film! So nice to see the colour footage. Well found and thanks for posting 🙂
By: powerandpassion - 31st July 2018 at 11:14
What extraordinary footage, and what extraordinary colour footage ! Thank you for the link.
All this seems like long ago and yet the land looks exactly the same, all these stories just the flicker of an eye in this ancient landscape.
I can almost taste the dust and feel the bewilderment of being such a tiny thing in this massive landscape. Not a great place to crash land an aircraft into, in the intrepid 30’s or wartime 40’s. It is fantastic to see Sydney Harbour and Darwin as it looked like in the war, and of course an Empire Flying Boat.
It makes me think of how vulnerable everything was. Most of Australia’s and New Zealand’s road making equipment was lost in Malaya in 1941, and if it was not for US industrial capacity and the Construction Brigades (CeeBees) coming in it would have been a terribly difficult Pacific War to run. The guts of it was American Caterpillars and Fork trucks traded for canned peaches and meat under Lend Lease.
All those trucks and graders left in Malaya were used by the Japanese and later returned into Allied hands as the Japanese were pushed back, with the CeeBees making good use of abandoned Japanese rollers to crush coral on many Pacific Islands. I can imagine an old, leather skinned Australian road maker in a battered hat finding his old grader, lost in Malaya, years later in Borneo, and with a quiet smile getting into the familiar saddle again.
Great footage. Great, brave times, such different, honest work for a man than being a derivatives trader today!
By: pogno - 31st July 2018 at 07:40
And at 5:17 a Miles Falcon VH-ACE flies past, later became A37-6 with the RAAF but WO soon after. What lovely film of the C class though, good find longshot.
Richard
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July 31, 2018 at 12:43 am