A "Wizard" Pilot

By R. W. Robson

rE announcement that Orme Denny was among those present when Aus tralian fliers picked up the Sepik River party on a remote airfield in the Ramu country, and when other commer cial planes maintained communications with the Australian force which trapped the Japs in Milne Bay. does not surprise me. All commercial pilots who survived the early days in New Guinea had to have a “bump of locality; but Denny’s capacity for finding his way in and out among those fog-wrapped mountains and deadly gorges amounted to sheer wizardry.

I always shall cherish a memory of 10 years ago. I was in Wau, and I was to proceed to Moresby by the trans-moun tain air-service—then so new that it made us jittery.

Orme Denny was the pilot. “I’ll see

you on the drome here at 6 a.m.,” he said. “OK,” said I, and kept the appoint ment.

A little Fox Moth was ticking over merrily. Denny appeared promptly. “All ready?” he asked. “Then hop in.”

“My God!” I wailed. “We aren’t going over the top to Moresby in that thing!”

“Well, you don’t think I’m going to take the big bus over for one passenger, and him half a dead-head,” said the pilot, summing up my press status pointedly. “This is a good little plane— take it anywhere. Fine morning, too.

Hop in.”

It was glorious, up there high over the Owen Stanley Range; but I knew too much about engines to be happy. I listened to every beat of that motor, thought of all the little gadgets which might break and precipitate us into those awful, jungle-choked gorges, and ignored the scenery.

We sailed out over the top-most peaks; and the whole prospect changed. From the mountains southward, Papua lay under a thick blanket of fog. We flew on.

There was not a thing to be seen—we soon were flying through clouds which appeared to press in on us from every side. The motor, to my straining ear, seemed to be firing irregularly. I glared at Denny. He grinned cheerfully. I was not comforted —I knew enough about him to know he would grin cheerfully if we were headed into hell.

It went on that way for some time, hours it seemed to me. Then, suddenly, the earth turned over. I found myself scrambling frantically—practically stand ing on my own ear. When I got myself twisted around, we were flying low over a placid coastline and an attractive island.

“Yule Island,” bawled Denny, com placently. He had flown very high and then, by dead reckoning, had dived down to seek Yule Island —and there it was, right under his nose.

He was a Guinea Airways pilot then, and they told me he was always like that —he could take a plane of any size through the most baffling country, and set it down on some little pocket-hand kerchief of a jungle clearing which most other men could not even see from five thousand feet.