VH-UEC de Havilland D.H.82A Tiger Moth
(c/n
DHA942)
I've said it before and I'll say it again "I
do wish DCA had seen fit not to re-issue the VH-U series -
these
markings should have been sacrosanct, and allowed to retire with the
original 1921-38 era
aircraft". Anyway, this Tiger was built as A17-519 and
civilianized in 1954 as VH-BWM for the
Royal Aero Club of South Australia. It was
re-registered VH-UEC in October 1958 to Aviation
Services
(SA) of
Parafield, Adelaide, who later replaced their Tigers with
Chipmunks. It is seen
above at Parafield in May 1960 with Aviation Services titling in this
photo from the John Hopton
collection. The VH-UE block, incidentally, was a random
registration block assigned to the SA/NT
Region by DCA
in 1957 and almost fully allocated over the following six years to SA
and Northern
Territory
based aircraft. It was followed by the VH-UP
block. VH-UEC was sold in October
1960 to
John Henderson of Adelaide, owner of the Shandon Hotel. It flew
in a silver color scheme
with
blue trim and with a large 'Shandon' in red on the sides of the
fuselage. On 15 January 1962
it crashed
near Colac, Victoria when Henderson was forced to fly under power lines
during a go-
around
and struck two fences and overturned. Not mentioned in the DCA
crash report, but the
owner at the
time said the go-around was due to children on the landing area..
In 1962 the wreck
of -UEC
was sighted dumped in the Aviation Services hangar at Parafield.
It was never rebuilt
and Henderson
replaced it with Tiger Moth VH-UEQ.