G-AUJQ de
Havilland D.H.66
Hercules
(c/n 346)
G-AUJQ
was the third Hercules delivered to West Australian Airways and entered
service on the
two-day
Perth-Adelaide route in 1929. The two shots on this page are
from the
Geoff Goodall
collection and show the large biplane as both G-AUJQ and
VH-UJQ. The image above was
taken at
Maylands Airport, Perth circa 1930 whilst the scratchy photograph below
was probably
at
Kalgoorlie, WA. The Hercules aircraft were expensive to
operate and maintain and -UJQ
and -UJP
were sold to Imperial Airways a scant two years after entering WAA
service. -UJQ
was offered
in April 1931 by WAA's entrepreneurial founder Norman Brearley to
Imperial Air-
ways as an immediate replacement machine for their DH.66 G-EBME 'City of Cairo' which had
crashed
in bad weather on Portuguese Timor while on the First Experimental Air
Mail service from
London
to Sydney. By that time Vickers Viastras were beginning to
replace the Hercules on the
airline's Perth-Adelaide run and Brearley avowed he could spare
-UJQ. Imperial Airways accept-
ed his
price and -UJQ departed Maylands on 15 May 1931 for Darwin then London,
flown by
WAA
Captain J.F.Nicholas and Imperial Airways Captain E.P.Mollard and
engineer W.L. Gardner
both from the
ill-fated 'City of Cairo'.
It became G-ABMT with Imperial Airways and was named
'City of
Cape Town'. In 1934 it went the South African Air Force
and was given the serial number
261. Its ultimate fate is obscure.
