White Water Landings

Africa, 1937. 22 year-old Geoffrey Pett watches as the Empire Flying Boat sinks lower, lower in the sky, until it meets the sea in a huge spray of water, landing and taxiing to the moorings he'd laid down just days before. The Imperial Airways Africa service is operational! The romance of pre-war air travel meets the romance of a man and a woman separated by war in this memoir of 1930s commercial aviation. Geoffrey recalls his early days, his recruitment into the Commercial Trainee scheme for Imperial Airways, and his adventures in Brindisi, Egypt, East Africa and Equatoria. Just how difficult was it for a young man to run a stopover rest-house for the rich (and sometimes famous) as they travelled between London and Durban? What would have happened if he hadn't worked out the bad weather routine for flying boats at Lindi? What was the biggest danger to the flying boats at Juba? What really happened to the flying boat Corsair, which crashed in the Congo? And how did he get around the red tape put up by his boss to prevent him getting married? There have been many accounts of Imperial Airways and of the flying boats themselves, but none provides the background to the people and places so well as this view from the ground, the view of the station superintendent as he was posted from one hotspot to another. Written by Geoffrey's daughter and based in large part on his taped memoirs, this book gives a unique insight to a time at the end of British colonialism, a world which was lost forever after World War 2.