Aviation Historian 14
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What a job. Unloading raw beef from an MMA DC-3 at Wyndham - Western Australia’s northernmost town - for road transport to Wyndham Meatworks, the mainstay of the town’s economy.
Changing plugs at Glenroy in 1954. Colin Hayes’s note on the original slide says, “We lost a motor on take-off with three tons of beef aboard, and only just made it back”.
The monorail gantry for loading beef from the chiller room at Air Beef Pty Ltd’s abattoir and base at Glenroy, Kimberley.
Inspired perhaps by the logo of the processed-cheese brand The Laughing Cow, this benevolent-bull-in-helmet-and-goggles emblem adorned MMA’s Douglas DC-3 VH-MML RMA Gascoyne (later RMA Lyndon) - but not, apparently, for long. Fred Niven, who kindly forwarded Ray Webster’s recollections to TAH, writes, ‘‘Prior to [VH-MML] entering Air Beef service, an Air Beef characterisation of a bull’s head, the words ‘Air Beef’ and the name Gascoyne were painted on its nose by Ray Clapham, but only remained there long enough for photos to be taken. It never operated with the logo on the nose. Its name was later changed to RMA Lyndon to bring it into line with the company’s policy of aligning aircraft names with the last letter of their registrations.”
Pristine DC-3 VH-MML, newly delivered and still wearing its bull logo and the name Gascoyne, taxies in for refuelling at Wyndham in 1954. Built by Douglas at Oklahoma City in March 1945 as a C-47B-30-DK, with USAAF serial 44-76613, it was immediately passed to the RAF as a Dakota IV, KN470, and saw service in Egypt, India and Burma. Following its career with MMA it passed through many further ownerships, before being re-registered as VH-BPN in 1977. It was still operating, on pleasure-flying duties, in the early-to-mid 2000s, and is believed to survive in storage in New South Wales.
Congo crisis: A line-up of ONUC (Organisation des Nations Unies au Congo) aircraft at Kamina in January 1963 - Philippine Air Force North American F-86 Sabres and Swedish Air Force (Flygvapnet) Saab J 29Bs on the right, and Imperial Iranian Air Force F-86 Sabres nearest the camera. A Douglas DC-3 and two Sikorsky UH-19 helicopters complete the group.
Langley Aerodrome, seen atop its houseboat "carrier” on the Potomac river in 1903.
The moment of launch - Langley machine viewed from below, front wings twisted and bent against framework.
Samuel Pierpoint Langley’s model of his Aerodrome, which he simply scaled up in order to create the full-size aircraft