Flight Travel Necessities 1930s Style

On longhaul flights today passengers often get 'amenity kits', usually containing things like an eye mask, toothbrush and paste, socks, a freshening up wipe and blanket. This is not a recent phenomenon. When I was repacking some of our Imperial Airways archives on Mondays, I found the objects on the left all packaged together in what seems to be an 'amenities kit' from the 1930s.

The packet appears to be a flannel still in its wrappings. In addition there is a luggage tag, matches (smoking was only banned on most UK flights in the mid 1990s), a pencil, lavender smelling tubes from 'Boots', and eau de cologne. An insight in to what the passengers below on an Imperial Airways HP-42 (Hengist) would have had when flying? In fact, you can see a few of the passengers smoking, so the matches would have been useful!

Olley Air Services and Geoffrey Keating

Captain Gordon P. Olley seated at his desk

The photograph to the right was taken by Geoffrey Keating, staff photographer for The Daily Sketch, in 1937. The Society's archive include a letter from Keating accompanying the photographs to Captain Gordon P. Olley. They were commissioned to promote Olley's new airline Olley Air Services shortly after it began business. The photographs below give a wonderful view of air travel in the 1930s and, among other things, passengers on a Olley Air Services' plane; a passenger being weighed at check in; Captain J.F.D. Scott reading the weather; a pilot preparing for take off; the Misses Boakes (sisters) cleaning the plane.

Academic Symposium on Croydon Airport in the 1930s

The first academic symposium on Croydon Airport (that we know of anyway) is going to be held on 16 April 2016 at the original Aerodrome Hotel (Croydon Hallmark) next door to the airport. We are very excited about this as it is an opportunity to explore the history of the airport across lots of different areas with expert minds.

At the Museum of Croydon

Today a volunteer Ian (our faithful courier) and myself delivered the Croydon Calling pop up exhibition to the Museum of Croydon where it will be on display until Saturday 9 January 2016. Museum Opening times are Tuesday to Saturday 10.30am to 5pm and they are located in the centre of Croydon in Croydon Clocktower on Katherine St - see the website for more

The model of Hengist

information. The exhibition itself is in the research room and around the museum area rather than in the actual museum itself.

The Museum of Croydon does boast a model aircraft hanging from the ceiling to represent Croydon Airport and its importance in the local area in the 1920s and 30s. The model is that of Imperial Airways Handley Page (HP) 42 Hengist. These aircaft (HP 42) would have been seen regularly flying to and from Croydon Airport on the European (or West) route and the African and Indian (or East) routes for Imperial Airways Limited. There is more about the HP42 in this post from August.

Visit the Soviet Union 1937

Croydon Airport Society's archives often throws up surprises and sometimes ones that have very little to do

with Croydon Airport itself. I certainly was not expecting to find a tourist brochure to the Soviet Union, let alone one dating to 1937. 1937 was the start of one of Stalin's most terrible political purges, known as the Great Purge or Grea Terror, in which it is estimated (depending which historian you read) that 690,000 to almost 2 million people were executed.

Pictured to the left is a travel brochure in the Monk Collection at Croydon Airport. Produced to commemorate the 20th anniversary of the October Socialist Revolution, the brochure gives a guide to improvements achieved in factories, leisure, education, agriculture and more across the Soviet Union. Unsurprisingly this brochure makes no mention of the mass arrests, internments and shootings but promises that 'the Soviet Union offers something of interest to every type of traveller'.

Captain Franklyn Barnard Catalogued (almost)

Photograph of Barnard after he had won the Kings Cup in 1922

Further to our last post on Franklyn Barnard, our intrepid volunteers Graham and Malcolm have almost finished recording all the material in the Barnard File. The excel spreadsheet now reads like a strange biography of the pilot's life from World War One to his death in an accident in 1927. Items such as cufflinks, his pilots logbooks from 1916 to 1927, a vast array of photographs, newspaper clippings, letters and poignant letters of condolence to his widow have now been recorded.

Newspaper cuttings include: Front page of Daily Sketch with headline "Airman's Devoted Dog." Account of motor accident at Waddon. Picture of Brownie and Mrs Barnard (1921); pilots of Imperial Airways at Croydon  singing "Auld Lang Syne"

after a stike had been settled (date unknown; and a Daily Mail article on Sir Samuel Hoare, British Air Minister, flying to India to inaugurate the air service between Cairo and Karachi (1 January 1927) - see image left.

One letter from Barnard records his frustration with getting newspaper headlines and public acclaim for winning the Kings Cup, but hardly any attention at all for systematically carrying passengers safely from further afield place to place. Barnard embraced civil aviation and, unlike many pilots, was an advocate for the safety features of radio plotting and signals that would become standard but were first trialled by traffic Control at Croydon Airport. The material in the file gives an insight into this World War One pilot who became a record breaker and a pioneer in safe civil aviation.

Captain Raymond Hinchliffe and Seances

One of the pilots' log books that Croydon Airport Society has in its collection has a strange final entry. The log book is a copy of Captain Raymond Hinchliffe's original logbook which was published by his daughter in 1986. The last entry is in the handwriting of Mrs Emilie Hinchliffe, his wife, dated to 13 March 1928 at 08.35 with himself and E. Mackay as a passenger. It comprises messages received through Mrs Garrett, spiritualist medium, and Mrs Egerton: