About the book and author
There are regions of the this earth that deserve every bit of hype they get for being challenging flying environments; the legend status bestowed by pilots who've been there and pilots who only dream about it. Papua and Papua New Guinea are such places; scenes of landing steep, uphill strips on densely forested highland mountainsides have been emblazoned on the mainstream consciousness by movies like Air America. One pilot who's walked the walk is Matt McLaughlin, a humble kiwi transport pilot who has penned his memoir of his experience flying there in his book Flying the Knife Edge.
Here's a sneak peek via chapter excerpt straight from the book. It can be purchased in paperback or Kindle format on Amazon.com. Enjoy. —Editor.
Chapter 5
Of Golden Voices, The Ononge No-Go-Around, And Raskols
The secret of reaping the greatest fruitfulness and the greatest enjoyment from life is to live dangerously. —Friedrich Nietzsche
Within four and a half weeks of starting my training with Mack Lee and Air Manubada, Mack had sent me solo into five of the Goilala (gwee-la-la) airstrips: Ononge, Woitape, Fane, Tapini and Guari. Six days a week I battled the Trans Niugini Airways lads at these outports, launching from Port Moresby amidst a gaggle of Cessnas and BN-2 Islanders; the aircraft peeling off in a bomb burst at the 35 Mile Ridge for their ports of choice, me doing my darndest to outfox Sarge and Tony Froude and the other pilots of ‘the nasty opposition' and beat them to the waiting passengers and freight. I had settled in well, and was almost at the point where Mack was happy to send me off to fly solo for the mission station at Kerema. But trouble was brewing.
A Trans Niugini Airways Cessna 185 at Sopu Photo: Dave Sarginson
Behind the scenes frustration levels were high. Bishop Marx and Brother Nolin were upset that my training was taking longer than they'd expected. They wanted me to move to Kerema as soon as possible although, strangely, they still hadn't purchased a new mission plane. Mack was frustrated because he wanted the training done right and wasn't prepared to sign me off early. He knew the possible consequences of letting a pilot loose in the PNG mountains prematurely – a pine box lowered into a six-foot deep hul bilong planim man. COVS, the volunteer agency in New Zealand, got involved too, reminding all parties that the clock was running on my one-year commitment as a mission pilot. I was piggy in the middle, a boss-man balus missionary with no aeroplane. Just as things started to go really pear shaped, a compromise was reached. The Catholic Church of Kerema realised their timeframe didn't match mine and they released me. Mack Lee, realising that I wasn't too bad a pilot, and that he could do with some help, offered me a job. I took him up on his offer and said an awkward thankyou and goodbye to Marx and Nolin in Kerema. It was an unfortunate set of circumstances and, although the decision had been out of my hands, I did feel a touch of guilt having transitioned so quickly from missionary to mercenary.
The ops into the Goilala ports were very fluid. Unscheduled hops between airstrips were part of the routine. Often I'd land at one of the airstrips with a firm plan to pick up passengers and freight and fly straight back to Port Moresby only to find a huddle of people stripside wanting to be shuttled somewhere else: locals, missionaries and itinerant government health and education workers. They could purchase a ticket to fly with me for 20 or 30 kina, and be at any other Goilala port within 10 or 15 minutes. This was infinitely better than the alternative: an all-day hike along arduous village paths snaking through some truly horrendous terrain. One day, about to depart Fane on a Tapini shuttle, I saw Tony Froude loitering on the porch of a wooden house at the side of the strip. I wandered over to say gidday and he let me in on the Goilalas' best kept secret. This was the home of two elderly French nuns, Sister Martha and Sister Gerard of Our Lady of the Sacred Heart (their order had been serving the community here since 1915). The old dears didn't have much interaction with Europeans and they were always happy to entertain visitors. Morning tea with these lovely ladies was to become a regular diversion. Whenever I could, I dropped in to see them for a quick chat, leaving Alex Gusi and his offsider Alan Kafua to arrange my passengers and freight as I sat down at the nun's squeaky wooden table and tucked into fresh-ground coffee, hot scones straight out of a wood-fired oven, and homemade guava jam. In return I'd carry their outbound mail and post it for them in Port Moresby. It wasn't much, but doing this tiny good deed helped ease the residual guilt I felt for dropping the mission job with the Church in Kerema.
Short final at Fane airstrip: 4,400 MSL, 12% slope, 1,480 ft/451 m in length. Photo: Shane Wedding
The more I flew into the mountains behind Moresby the more I got a sense of the wartime credentials of some of these seemingly insignificant villages. It was only after I left PNG I made an effort learn more about the nation's rich 20th century history. Far from being forever isolated from the real world, some of these Goilala ports of inconsequential clusters of tin shacks and bush-material lean-tos played a vital, if little-known, role in the defence of Port Moresby during the Japanese air raids on the capital during 1942–43. This was at a critical juncture in WWII, a time when the balance of power between Allied and Japanese forces was at its most precarious, a time when it seemed altogether possible that the Oriental invaders would one day march right on into Australia itself, grasping control of the supply routes across the entire Pacific Ocean.
Following the Japanese occupation of Rabaul on New Guinea's eastern island of New Britain in January 1942, Port Moresby was well within range of Emperor Hirohito's bombers and fighters. The Territory's military commanders realised the urgent need to expand the network of civilian coastwatching stations that had existed prior to WWII. The rapid Japanese advance necessitated the deployment of top secret radio signals detachments to the remote mountains around the approaches to Port Moresby, to give advance warning of Japanese air raids. To this end the ‘Air Warning and Coastwatching System' was created within nine days of Rabaul's demise. The signals detachments (more commonly referred to as ‘spotters') consisted of two or three volunteers, initially drawn from the ranks of the 39th Australian Infantry Battalion. Their training was supposed to include a seven-day course at Signals Camp just above Rouna Falls 18 miles out of Moresby on the Sogeri Road, but often the course was compressed into one day, or they received no instruction at all and were trained in the operation of their communications equipment while en route to their secret destination. Such was the urgency of their mission. One author wryly remarked: "All that most of the spotters had in common was an abysmal ignorance of anything to do with signals." Despite this, the network quickly became extensive, covering the approaches to Port Moresby as well as many other areas of military tactical significance; in the first month alone 15 stations were established. By the end of 1942 there were over 180 signalmen operating from 61 stations throughout Papua and New Guinea. In October 1942 the air warning and coastwatching stations were incorporated into one company, the New Guinea Air Warning Wireless Company (NGAWW).
These men did more than just give advance warning of air raids: they collected ground intelligence; passed on weather observations; assisted with enemy target identification; and aided in the rescue of downed airmen. The Japanese soon learned of the presence of the spotters, which made their mission all the more dangerous, with the men facing torture and execution if captured. One ‘Tokyo Rose' (the name given to any of several English-speaking female broadcasters of Japanese propaganda), in a characteristically caustic tone, dubbed them the golden voices.iv In one unfortunate incident NGAWW operatives were betrayed by their own side. Spotters at Salamaua (a town on the north-eastern coast, in Morobe Province) had an expansive view of Salamaua's enemy-occupied airstrip, and had been providing invaluable intelligence reports on the movements of Japanese aircraft as well as reports on the damage caused by Allied bombing attacks. One day in July 1942 a villager came running to their hidden observation post shouting, "Masta, man bilong Japan i kam, planti man i kam!" (Lots of Japanese troops are coming!). As the three Australians made a hasty exit into the jungle an enemy grenade and machine-gun attack broke out behind them. The spotters had been extremely careful not to give away their position (never lighting fires; using the noise from a nearby river to mask the sound of their generator) and couldn't figure out how they'd been compromised. Had they been dobbed in by Japanese-friendly locals? This was not the reason for the enemy attack. Well-known war correspondent Damian Parer had visited their hideout and taken photos of their location for the Department of Information. Aware of the sensitive nature of the pictures, he'd left written instructions with the film that it was not to be used until he personally gave the OK. Some ignoramus at the department, confirming that the words ‘military' and ‘intelligence' shouldn't be included in the same sentence, released a picture from the reel to the Australian media. The Japanese had learned of the spotters' Salamaua hideout when their agents saw the picture and read about the location in the Sydney Morning Herald!
An Airlines PNG Twin Otter at Ononge airstrip. 5,300 MSL, slope 7%, length 1,640 ft/500 m Photo: Georgie and Ron McKie
In the mountains north of Port Moresby there were stations at Ononge, Tapini and at Goilala, a remote outpost three days walk from Tapini on the main spine of the Owen Stanley Range. Spotters Powderham, Marshall and Webb set up the station at Ononge. Setting out from Yule Island, 55nm west of Port Moresby, their journey took two weeks – transported by military launch, lakatoi (a large traditional tri-hull canoe), by truck and on foot. Signalman Webb described the last part of the journey:"We are a few thousand feet up and still climbing. The country is rugged in the extreme. The jungle seems impenetrable and the valleys and mountains are awe-inspiring. Knowing as we do how treacherous and wild these parts are, we pity any airman who crashes in this steamy unruly riot of nature which is at times veiled in cloud and mist..."
Photo: MAF archives
Conditions were no less challenging once the spotters made it to their respective outposts. These men were often living among native tribespeople who had never had contact with Europeans. They lived in complete isolation, in fear of discovery by the enemy, in a hostile and alien environment. At the end of their secretive field posting they would return to HQ in Port Moresby sick with malnutrition and often plagued by malaria, scrub typhus and skin diseases of every variety. The ‘golden voices' of the New Guinea Air Warning Wireless Company were yet more unsung heroes of PNG's defence against Japanese invasion.
In Ononge the spotters set up their Teleradio equipment and the aerial in a village hut (haus wialas). Spotters were generally dispatched with three months of rations as well as extra bags of salt, and cowrie shells, so they could barter with villagers for fresh produce. Soon after arriving the three Australians asked the local government police boy to set up trade with the locals. The story goes that within the hour the whole village turned up, with 48 meris each carrying a 10kg bag of sweet potatoes. The shocked spotters paid for the almost 500kg of starchy vegetables with salt. They had just finished stacking their weighty purchases under the haus wialas when they saw another 55 meris arrive with another 500kg of sweet potato! Webb wrote: "What do you do with a ton of sweet potato? We've had them boiled, baked, chipped, and stewed. Just as well they make very good eating."
On one occasion the Ononge spotters were broadcasting a warning of inbound enemy aircraft to Port Moresby HQ when enemy fighters started circling overhead. They stopped transmitting and lay low. When I visited Ononge village in 1992 I was told a similar story, although it had a more dramatic ending. I was given a tour of the village behind the airstrip and shown into Ononge's church. The priest told me that one Sunday morning during the war, Japanese aircraft attacked the village, perhaps suspecting the presence of the Australian spotters. It just happened that as they swooped in low over Ononge on their strafing run the village folk were gathered inside the church, celebrating Sunday mass. Japanese bullets tore through the flimsy weatherboard walls, cutting a swathe of destruction precisely between the congregation, who occupied the main body of the church, and the priest, who stood at the pulpit. Not one Ononge resident was hurt in the attack. After such a convincing display of divine intervention I'm guessing attendance figures for Ononge's Sunday mass were at record highs for the remainder of the War years.
I had my own near-miss at Ononge just 12 days after Mack Lee sent me solo to the Goilala airstrips. On 8 June 1992 I was scheduled to fly two trips to the mountain ports north of Port Moresby. The first, a routine mid-morning flight to Woitape and Fane, went off without a hitch. The weather was fine and clear, there was little wind, and it was an easy mission. By the time I got back to Moresby and refuelled the aircraft and helped Jimma load the Cessna for the second flight, it was just after 1pm. On board were four passengers and their baggage, about 100kg of tradestore goods, and about 150kg of fuel (giving me an endurance of three hours, more than enough for the 25 minutes-each-way flight to Ononge and back). I had not had much experience with afternoon trips into the mountains yet, but did know enough to realise that conditions would be significantly more challenging in the pm. This was when the morning's katabatic (down-slope) winds would reverse, transforming into anabatic (up-slope) winds. This meant tailwinds for the critical approaches into the Goilala's short one-way uphill airstrips: making a tricky job trickier (the tailwinds would translate into a landing with a higher groundspeed, meaning more runway was required for the same landing speed – a strip effectively became shorter in tailwind conditions). It was also the time of afternoon build-ups – the massive convective clouds that would shroud the mountain valleys in cloud, punctuating them with microbursts and squally rain showers.
On final into Kamulai: 5,600 MSL, slope 11%, length 1,574 ft/480 m Photo: Georgie and Ron McKie
One USAAF pilot, posted to Port Moresby with the US 5th Air Force in 1943, gave a fine account of PNG's afternoon weather in his memoirs. His assessment of the scary pm weather was just as relevant for me in the 1990s as it had been when he wrote it during WWII: "We new pilots were warned: ‘watch out for New Guinea's afternoon weather. It can become a sneaking bitch.' New Guinea's treacherous afternoon weather started in the early morning as tame fleecy-white clouds. All day these innocent puffs of white were heated by the tropical sun and fed moist sea air. Those puffs of cotton rolled, boiled, and grew into ominous iron-grey cumulonimbus banks which moved across the sky until they lodged on top of the 14,000 foot Owen Stanley Mountains. By late afternoon, they often formed into a vertical grey wall that reached up to infinity. When I first came to New Guinea and observed this daily weather phenomenon, I found it fascinating; but once I was in the air and forced to meet its challenge, my attitude changed. I looked upon it as a horrid, recurring nightmare. These cloud banks didn't just appear. They were sneaky. First they were mushrooming, picturesque, anvil-shaped, vertical columns. Then, like jaws in a trap, they moved together. If you were at the wrong spot at the wrong time of day, within minutes you could find yourself trapped, locked in their clutches, and surrounded by a solid wall with all visible escape routes sealed."
As I climbed out from Jacksons Aerodrome towards the 35 Mile Ridge and the entrance to the Ononge–Woitape valley, I noticed conditions had became a lot more blustery since my first flight. Flying parallel to the 35 Mile Ridge at 6500 feet my aircraft was buffeted by severe turbulence in the lee of the Owen Stanleys to the north. The cloud cover was lower than it had been earlier, with a ragged 7000-foot base obscuring most of the mountains around me. Ononge's circuit area was still clear though, with the cloud 500–1000 feet above the level of the 5300 ft AMSL strip. I joined overhead and turned downwind at 500 feet AGL1, noting that the windsock showed a tailwind of at least ten knots. This was going to be interesting. Turning onto final approach the aircraft was hammered by choppy turbulence and lurched this way and that as I fought to maintain a steady aim point (the second cone marker on the 500 metre-long 7% up-sloping strip) and hold an initial approach speed of 70 knots. Mack had taught me to anticipate an updraft as I crossed a knoll about 100 feet before touch-down in Ononge, and with my stomach in nervous knots I waited for it. If not anticipated, the updraft would balloon the aircraft high on the normal approach path and could increase the indicated speed by 10 to 20 knots. This day the updraft came early and was much more vicious than normal. I was too slow to react. In a nanosecond I was pushed high and fast, and now faced landing about halfway up the airstrip. Ononge has a 10-foot-high embankment at the end and I knew if I persevered with the approach I would crash into this wall of earth and rock. I was in more hot water than a Japanese tea bag.
I had no choice. Go around. I applied full power and waited for the aircraft to respond. It didn't. Nothing happened. With my landing weight of 1400kg (15% below maximum weight), at over 5,000 feet above sea level, and 15 degrees Celsius above ISA, my normally aspirated Continental engine had limited power to give me.
Someone or something stopped the clock. Time slowed down. It seemed like each second became a minute and I became acutely aware of the smallest details of the scene (this effect, temporal distortion, is a perceptive phenomenon commonly experienced by people faced with sudden life-or-death situations). The aircraft kept descending and we bounced halfway up the strip. I should have turned right at this point, avoiding a shack at the top right-hand side of the strip and falling off to the lower ground of the Woitape valley to my immediate east. But I didn't. I was fixated on the airspeed indicator. The aircraft was barely flying – the stall warning was blaring and she was very mushy on the controls. I held the aircraft on the edge of controllability, and as the embankment at the end of the strip started filling up the windscreen, the psychological shock of impending disaster manifest itself as a hot prickly rash, which swarmed like a clutch of centipedes from between my shoulder blades up the back of my neck to the top of my head. The prickly heat intensified on the top of my scalp, then crept down to my forehead, stabbing like a headband of electric needles. It is a sensation I will never forget.
The Guari airstrip: 6,100 MSL, slope 6.4%, length 1,968 ft/600 m Photo: Georgie and Ron McKie
The only escape route open to me was to fly to the left of the embankment and fall into the valley to the west, but to do this I had to nurse the aircraft in ground effect3 through the vegetation growing on the side of the strip. As I gingerly rolled the Cessna to the left I heard an alarming whap-whap-whapping from my side of the fuselage: the aircraft had become an airborne lawnmower, chopping its way through the low patchy scrub where the airstrip met the jungle. My front seat passenger (a local man) undid his seatbelt in slow motion and started scratching around on the right side of the cockpit looking for his door handle. He was preparing to jump out of the aircraft before we crashed! With seconds still taking minutes, I had the time to ponder his actions – I understood his logic, but his plan was deeply flawed. There is no exit door on the right side of the cockpit in a Cessna 206. My only other thought was immense disappointment with myself that I was about to crash an aeroplane in New Guinea so soon after being sent solo.
As the stall warning horn continued blaring away I flew less than five feet above the deck, the Cessna still impacting grass and saplings as I aimed for the left side of the embankment. We finally fell away into the valley and I nosed the aircraft down a touch and slowly retracted one stage of flap, hoping to reduce my drag and outclimb the forest we were sinking into. This tactic worked and I picked up flying speed and stooged down into the valley, doing a 180 degree turn and making my way towards Woitape (by now I was well below the level of Ononge's threshold, and flew behind and below the knoll where I'd picked up the massive updraft). I remember 60 knots was the maximum speed I saw on the airspeed indicator throughout the entire go-around.
I don't remember landing in Woitape five minutes later. I do remember telling the passengers that conditions in Ononge were too dangerous, that I was going to leave them here, and that I'd pick them up the next day and shuttle them to Ononge. They didn't argue, and tootled off into the village. I got out of the aeroplane. My hands were shaking like a seismograph needle and I felt physically sick.
A quick walk around revealed just how lucky I'd been. The propeller and the front of the engine cowl were stained green from all the tall bush grass I'd flown through. The left-hand-side wing strut was also covered in grass stains, and foliage (sticks, grass, leaves) hung between the left main wheel and the sprung steel undercarriage leg. I soaked a rag in avgas from the underwing fuel drainage valve and scrubbed off all the stains, picked the vegetation from the undercarriage and unwound a couple of vines from the wing strut. Once my hands stopped shaking I saddled up and flew home, having decided I wasn't going to tell Mack about my misadventure. Safely back in Port Moresby I secured the aircraft on the tarmac in front of the aero club and drove back to Br Damian's house. I had a mini nervous breakdown that night as I related my near-miss to Damian, some kind of post-traumatic hyper-arousal freak-out. His solution was to serve me a large glass of scotch. It helped. My diary from that day has one simple entry: Bloody good lesson. Wind. Afternoon. Local knowledge. Nothing is predictable. BE CAREFUL!
That Friday night over a few beers at the aero club I told the story to Sarge, Tony and the TNA boys. I told them that on landing in Woitape I'd had foliage in my undercarriage, and poopage in my pants. They thought it was funny.
"Shit!" said Sarge, "you went to the LEFT in an Ononge go-around? Everyone knows the go-around is to the RIGHT, you silly bastard!"
This story is just a short excerpt from the book: Flying the Knife Edge, by Matt McLaughlin, available in paperback or Kindle from Amazon.com.
