Biscuit-Bomber 1949

By N. C. Plant

“T IKE to come on an air-lift?” 1 a “What’s it all about?”

“Oh, the Department’s sending up some rations to the mountains. They want some volunteers to heave them out of the aircraft. Pretty hard work mainly, but it should be an unusual trip.”

So it came about that the following morning we were gathered on Port Moresby’s air-strip in the early hours of sunrise, eyeing somewhat bleakly a large pile of rice bags, and the open door of a Dakota which was standing nearby.

However, our enthusiasm for physical exercise was shortly revived by the arrival of a gang of labour boys, who had the first load stowed in quick time.

She carried something over one hundred 60 lb. bags per trip, sewn in double bags, one inside the other, on the theory that the inner bag would burst on hitting h h o ld gr °The Ces h wlre h la?d te o r n o the W floOT rone 1 net rCraft ’ seCUred with a h6aVy lope lieu.

The door of the aircraft was left off.

This enhanced the feeling of acceleration at take ofS, and it was interesting to note the difference between watching the ground fall away through the open door, and looking at it through the windows. Strange how a mere sheet of glass can give such an illusion of comparative security.

The weather was perfect. It was a much more beautiful and cooler day in the'air than down below, for the country beneath looked flat, baked, parched and drab, relieved only by occasional muddy rivers winding their tortuous ways to the even more lifeless green of the delta swamps. Only beyond was there anything to look upon with animation; on the one side the blue of the Gulf, picked out by the sparkling white sands of occasional green islets, while on the other the immense jagged spine of the Owen Stanleys, rearing like some monstrous prehistoric beast against the blue sky and the sun.

This impression of the primeval was soon accentuated. In a moment, we were among the foothills—or, rather, the

mountains and foothills were among us.

Great knives of razor-backed ridges sheered up from the depths: impossible pinnacles of jungle rose out of a maze of tree tops; a cataclysmic landscape grew ever more chaotic as we proceeded, The effect was deepened by wisps of white cloud trailing like smoke from distant peaks, reminiscent of Disney’s version of “The Rites of Spring, At the scene of the drop the terrain was positively dizzy. Taipem station was seemingly glued onto the curve of a mountain top, which fell away below it in a grassy precipice whose scale seemed immensely magnified thereby, curving down in a swathe of green until it was lQ st ln the |9 r e be !° w v .P 1 ® gorge rose a high peak at the end of a spi i r ’ 11 ?!: n ?v,i t i an( * up the gorge that we had to ap P Bythls time, the first score of bags had were secm-ecf whh *ong °safety belts, ami the wor k was hot, so we were not con scious 0 f anything more than wildly sliding landscape at the first run.

It as a mas terly effort. We all crowded door wa tch the goods fall bang on target, and a moment later, we felt we could have touched the grass as we skimmed at tree-height over the top.

Then we stac k e d bags madly again while the pilot took her round the spur, behind the peak, and sideways down the gorge, so that we climbed from below the green precipice. Again the signal, a mighty heave all together—and away wen t another issue.

Then the grass and the tree tops once mo re, and the deep abysses beyond, The open door had ceased to have any uneasy fascination by this. Possibly, that slipping down the gorge had made me too giddy. All one could be conscious of t hen was of trees sliding past at a dizzy spe ed, and at an impossible angle. Pos sibly, it was not startling to the pilot— but j f or o ne, admired his nerve, Six of these circuits and dumps cleared our load. There were five trips, one of which finished m Lae when the weather closed down.

—Out over Moresby.