Great winter reading here, a day by day account of flying a PBY through Africa in 1988. By David Legg
It may well be the trip featured in the TV documentary, which no doubt some here will recall, and probably still have the VCR tape !
http://theflyingboatforum.forumlaunch.net/viewtopic.php?f=102&t=1303&hilit=evans
” I was fortunate enough to fly in C-FJCV (by then registered Z-CAT) in East Africa in 1992 just before the French couple that owned it (the Jaunets) sold it to the group in New Zealand. Over a ten day period we flew a very large circle taking in parts of Kenya (starting and finishing at Wilson, Nairobi), Tanzania and Zaire (now DRC) and over-flying the width of Rwanda. We also visited Zanzibar. Water landings were carried out on Lake Victoria, Kake Tanganyika and Lake Kivu (Rwanda/Zaire border). It was something of an adventure and great fun. For any of you that have my ‘Peacetime’ Catalina book, the colour photo on the front cover was taken during that trip at Mahale on Lake Tanganyika, 120 miles from the nearest road and where we camped on the beach, not 50 yards from the Catalina moored in the shallows.”
By: David Legg - 13th December 2013 at 15:55
Thanks Propstrike – although the aircraft featured is the one that was in the BBC TV doc The Last African Flying Boat, my trip was not that flight but one carried out a while later by which time it had been re-registered Z-CAT. However, anyone visiting the forum mentioned in the link should first go to the beginning where the genesis of the African flights is described in excellent manner by one of the pilots involved at the time. His story does include the TV programme. I wrote my bit as a sort of postscript looking at the flights from the other end of the operation.
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December 13, 2013 at 3:43 pm