Lapstone Part 2. The Flights, the numbers, and the timing

The Lapstone Conference Flights & More

This is a C-47A, more commonly known as a Dakota, a DC3. Ex-military, this aircraft was owned by Sivewright Airways, a Manchester, UK company. It is the exact aircraft, G-AKSM, that was chartered by Qantas to fly the Russian delegation to the ECAFE conference at Lapstone in the Blue mountains. This photograph was taken at Manchester's Ringway airport in 1949.

Here's an interior shot of a C- 47A aircraft fitted out for passenger service:

The layout has a central aisle and forward-facing seats with a pair of double seats facing each other at the front. The forward-facing seating is configured with 6 rows of double seats on the right as you look at this image and 5 rows of double seats on the left. All up we have seating for 26 people in this aircraft.

The C-47A had a range of 2600 km and a top speed of 324 kph, cruising speed for longer distance flights was approximately 260 kph. This civilian version of the DC3 had a cargo door and a hoist and a reinforced floor. This aircraft type was not pressurised so it would typically fly below 7000 feet but had a ceiling height of 26000 feet. The cargo hold area was immediately aft of the passenger cabin.

The Passenger Numbers

When you read through the various documents regarding this charter and the makeup of the Soviet delegation, you will find that there are some differences of opinion. From the MI5 report, we are lead to understand that there were 17 passengers and 7 crew, including 3 cabin crew. a pilot, a co-pilot, a navigator, and a radio operator.

However, the number of delegates noted by the MI5 report is 15. We, therefore, have 24 people in total including crewmembers against seating capacity of 26 all up. That leaves us with two spare seats if this was indeed the seat configuration of the Darwin flight aboard the C47, G-AKSM, or perhaps two more passengers who were not delegates.

The Timetables

I have included the overseas Qantas, London to Sydney timetable and a National/local service timetable for Darwin to Adelaide.

Qantas: Below is a timetable for the Qantas service from London via Marseilles to Sydney. Because the C-47 was a chartered aircraft, the aircraft type is different from the timetable, it shows a flying boat, but the flight times are thought to be similar.

The flight leaves London at 11.30 am. and arrives in Darwin at 17.45 pm local time the following day. According to the press reports, the flight actually arrived at 7 pm on Monday 29th November. It continues its journey to Sydney via Bowen arriving at that destination at 1.30 pm the following day local time. As you can see it was a lengthy journey. No wonder that Novikov was a little tetchy with one of the customs officers.

Trans Australia Airlines (National/local)

TAA operated flights between all major cities and thankfully we have been able to find a January 1st  1949 copy of their timetable and fares. 

Our interest is the Darwin/Adelaide and Adelaide/Darwin flight departure and arrival times. This could be critical information as we will be able to show that after the Qantas charter flight arrived from the UK and Europe, it would have been possible for a passenger from that aircraft to get a seat on an Adelaide bound aircraft and be there within 12 hours. (In 1948, Adelaide Airport was situated at Parafield, an approximate 40-minute drive from Glenelg in those days, somewhat quicker today.)

In the timetable above, you can see that when you compare both the UK to Darwin and Darwin to Adelaide flights, that it would be possible for a passenger from the UK to board an Adelaide bound on the Monday or Tuesday following their arrival. This would get our passenger into Adelaide by 5 pm on Tuesday evening, 30th November 1948. You need to make an allowance for Daylight saving with Darwin being 1 hour behind Adelaide. The distance from Darwin to Adelaide is 1600 km approximately and the flight time according to the timetable is around 11 hours.

Coming up

In our next, part 3,  post we will look at the names of the Soviet delegates to the Lapstone conference. We already know that one of them, Sherbakov, was on the passenger list on the UK to Darwin charter flight but was not present at the conference.

The intriguing questions is, will one or more of the names from the delegates list turn up on the Adelaide flight? Where there any other passengers onboard and if so who were they?