VH-UJO  de Havilland D.H.66 Hercules               (c/n  344)

                            
                                                           
                                 The above shot is from the Geoff Goodall collection showing this large biplane in the latter days
                                 of its career at Lae, New Guinea in 1938.    The image from my collection, below, shows it whilst
                                 with West Australian Airways as G-AUJO circa 1929.   The D.H.66 was built to an Imperial Air-
                                 ways specification for a three-engined seven passenger aircraft to fly the Cairo to Baghdad air
                                 mail route.   Their performance so impressed West Australian Airways that they ordered four them-
                                 selves, to replace their D.H.50s.   It appears that the WA Airways machines had a 14 passenger con-
                                 figuration.  G-AUJO was the first and was delivered on 1 June 1929.   Major Norman Brearley was
                                 the founder of West Australian Airways (in 1921), and it claimed to be Australia's first regular revenue
                                 passenger airline.  In the photograph below the gentleman under the nose is his brother, Stan.  The air-
                                 craft was sold to Eric Stephens of Stephens Aerial Transport Co of Wau, New Guinea in 1936, along
                                 with -UJP.  However, while -UJP went north immediately, -UJO did not, and was stored in the WAA
                                 hangar at Forrest on the Nullabor Plain until Stephens (now reorganized as Stephens Aviation) could
                                 come up with the final payment.  It was then stripped of its seating, flown to Sydney (in July 1937),
                                 overhauled by DHA and finally arrived in Lae in June 1938.   VH-UJO met its end when it crashed at
                                 Marble Creek, New Guinea on a flight  from Salamaua to Wau on 6 February 1941.  .It was missing
                                 for four days until found by searching aircraft.