Around the World in 1939

[chris_c]

Rather than doing the yard work (and so incurring the wrath of SWMBO in the process) I spent some time pouring over period timetables and as near as I could determine, in July of 1939 it should have been theoretically possible to fly commercial airlines all the way around the world. It does not appear that doing so was possible before this time as PAA's first scheduled trans-Atlantic service does not seem to have begun until 28 June 1939 but terminated with the onset of war in Europe in September. As near as I could determine IAW conducted only survey flights across the Atlantic starting in 1937 with scheduled mail-only trips only beginning in mid August 1939 but suspended on 2 September.

So, provided you limited yourself to destinations served by Pan American Airways, Imperial Airways and United Airlines that is the route is a bit convoluted but it would seem to work:

Arbitrarily starting from New York City and heading East.
PAA LaGuardia Marine Terminal -> Southampton, UK
PAA Boeing 314 w/3-stops

IAW Southampton -> Bangkok, Siam (Thailand)
IAW Short Empire C-Class w/17-stops (!)

IAW Bangkok -> Hong Kong, China
IAW DH-86 D-Class w/3-stops

PAA Hong Kong -> Manila, P.I.
PAA Sikorski S-42 non-stop.

PAA Manila -> San Francisco PAA Treasure Island Terminal
PAA Martin M-130 w/3-stops

San Francisco Mills Field -> LaGuardia Field, New York
UAL Douglas DC-3 w/4-stops

Even with the assorted flying boat and Imperial Airways scenery available for FS Golden Wings it is going to be necessary to roll back a number of the intermediate stops but this looks like a pretty time-consuming challenge. All the aircraft are available from various authors.

Anybody have any thoughts or suggestions?

Chris

[warbaby]

This would be great fun. I have flown all these aircraft, and with a little research I could get started.

[Deleted]

Hi,

If you like to have an apropriated - it means backdated - environment, I would suggest, to move all ABxxxxxx.bgl, APxxxxxx.bgl, and OBxxxxxx.bgl files of Scenery folder in a temporary one. By doing that, all modern default airports will disappear. However if you have to create some airports or just Afcad on land, I would do this before moving the files. Otherwise it will rather be difficult to find them afterwards.

Of course, it's just a suggestion to get a total "virgin" world. But it's really funny!

Cheers,

Bernard

[kellyb]

This sounds like a fun project. It would take me most of the winter just to get ready (!).

I would suggest, in any case, that the yard work be done before setting off, or you'll be in a heap of trouble when you get back.

[chris_c]

Well, I have the PAA and IWA seaports in my FS GW3 installation and the US trans-con trip is quite familiar using the Radio Ranges and and customized rolled back airports. The only problem is the Bangkok-Hong Kong segment.

This is a three-stop segment using the DH-86, an FS aircraft that I have little experience with and am unsure if this model, authored by Lee Holmes and as far as I know never really finished is capable of the the trip. Moreover the stops present some issues in Golden Wings and will need to be rolled back to a more primitive state but one entire airport is missing.

The 1939 Imperial Airways timetable lists the route as:

Bangkok -> Udorn, Siam, which is probably now VTUU Udon Ratchathani Thailand. Direct 258 nm from Super Flight-Planner. I have no idea what was there in 1939 for a runway and am doing some reading to try and determine what might have existed when it was an IAW stop.

Udorn -> Hanoi, Tonkin, French Indochina. Direct 362 nm. The only Hanoi airport in FS is VVNB Noibai International but Google Earth shows a possibly closed airport in downtown Hanoi. Could this be the old French colonial airfield? A rolled back VVNB may have do as none of my attempts to create new airports from scratch have resulted in success. D'oh!

Hanoi -> Fort Bayard, China. Fort Bayard is the French colonial name for what is now the city of Zhanjiang and under French rule until 1946 (I would expect after the 1941 occupation of Indochina it was probably under Japanese control). However there is no FS9 airport there and the only intermediate Chinese airport between Hanoi and Hong Kong is Haikou ZJHK on Hainan Island, a direct distance of 272 nm. This is unsatisfactory in several respects and I have not decided how to proceed. One option is to continue the IAW service to Singapore, which was served by PAA every two-weeks but by that time the Empire routes were pretty much closed to commercial traffic because of the war. I cannot find any evidence that PAA visited Singapore except for proving flights before 1941.

Haikou -> Hong Kong, China. Direct 254 nm. There is a rolled back, war time Kai Tak airport somewhere out there with a nasty runway and some terrain issues during approach, which sounds about right.

So thanks for the encouragement and the input, I welcome any more thoughts on this hair-brained scheme.

As for the yardwork, the dry summer has pretty much taken it out of the picture during the day and as I tell SWMBO, flying keeps me away from the pub...

Cheers,

Chris