Today’s meeting at Woodend was well attended.
Graeme, VK3CDO, gave a fascinating talk starting with a bit of history of aircraft in Australia and ending up with a survey of air disasters in our region.
Graeme covered the history of the “DC” line of planes, starting with the DC1, DC2 and later the incredibly popular DC3. 13,000 DC3s were built over the years.
Among the “highlights” was DC2 VH-UYT which hit Mt Dandenong due, we think, to navigation errors which led to them not finding Essendon airport.
VH-UZA hit Mt Macedon in 1948 on a trip from Essendon to Deniliquin. The courageous hostess managed to evacuate all of the passengers just before the plane burst in to flames. The pilot had died and the co-pilot died shortly after.
There were 380 crashes in Victoria. ANA lost an airplane a month for four months in 1948. A sobering thought.