The Vintage Air Rally departed on 12 November 2016 from Crete
If it hadn’t been a world-first, the Vintage Air Rally Crete2Cape would still have been destined for astonishing things, not least the arrest of all the teams in Ethiopia, requiring the intervention of John Kerry, United States secretary of state.
This rally of mostly World War II-era planes began in Crete on November 12. Twenty vintage aircraft from 18 countries are participating in the 100-hour journey spread over 35 days, ending in Stellenbosch on Saturday.
As was bound to happen, there was political drama, four aircraft didn’t make it (because of crashes and mechanical failures), a pilot and aircraft went missing (subsequently found) and fuel shortage scares.
This week the planes touched down at the Baragwanath Flying Club, the world’s longest-running club, on Johannesburg’s West Rand.
An array of local and international aircraft – some from the 1930s, replete with open cockpits, bright colours and wooden propellers – lined the runway to welcome the rally’s participants and show off some of South Africa’s aviation capability.
Since taking flight, the pilots’ feats include a landing 500m away from Egypt’s Great Pyramid of Giza and landing several planes on the rim of the Ngorongoro Crater in Tanzania.
Before that, a diplomatic row ensued when the pilots, crew and planes were detained at a small airport west of Addis Ababa in Ethiopia for two-and-a-half days towards the end of November, apparently because their documentation was not in order.
“As soon as we landed, these guys with military uniform and big guns surrounded our plane. They took us into the terminal and seized our cellphones and all electronic devices,” said Nick Oppegard, a Team Alaska pilot flying a plane built in 1928.
“Of course, we managed to keep one of the phones and alerted the senator’s office in Washington, DC, because 12 US citizens are taking part in the rally,” he said.
The rally’s press secretary, Jeremy Martin, said the team was kept inside the terminal and barred from speaking to other people. They were made to sleep on concrete for two nights.
Kerry was eventually roped in to secure their release. He contacted a senior government official in Ethiopia. “Kerry informed them that they had violated international law by holding citizens of another country in custody without alerting their embassies within 24 hours,” Martin said.
Rally director Sam Rutherford added: “And, after Kerry called, within a few hours we were back up in the air.”
Oppegard said the trip was marked by thrilling moments of suspense and awe, including the “magnificent landscapes of the wild bush in Africa”.
Co-pilot Lita Oppegard said: “One of my favourite moments was when we touched down in Tanzania and a young boy, about 15 years old, looked up at us sitting in the cockpit and, because of the way it looks I guess, asked us, ‘But where are your weapons?’ I just said we don’t need them.”
Most of the pilots described the two-hour flight over the Mediterranean Sea with single-engine aircraft as the most nerve-racking experience of the journey – and the constant fear that they would run out of fuel. To avoid this, the route was mapped carefully and rest stops took place day by day.
“On one occasion, the distance from the stop in Tanzania to the next one in northern Zambia was too far and the planes wouldn’t make it,” said Puma Energy spokesperson Zohra McDolley-Aimone. The company sponsored the fuel for the rally. “So we sent our scouts out into the bush and eventually found a farm with a small airstrip and got clearance to land. We had all these planes flying into this remote area to a farm in the middle of nowhere,” she added.
Then there was the time that Brit Maurice Kirk disappeared for 40 minutes near the border of Sudan and Ethiopia in his 1943 Piper Cub plane, Liberty Girl II. The rally’s technical team described the panic that prevailed as they searched high and low for the pilot, who struggled to navigate his way to the meeting point across the thick jungle that lay far beneath him.
The Alaskan team’s plane bears the US flag on its tail and is steeped in history. In 1931, just two years before prohibition came to an end, the plane was confiscated and sold on auction and its pilot convicted for smuggling alcohol from Canada into the US.
Another plane rich in history is a Tiger Moth, a pre-World War II training aircraft used by the apartheid-era military. Owned by Swede Thierry Plojoux and flown by South African Kenneth Cloete, the military-style plane has crashed twice – in the Kruger National Park and in Johannesburg.
“Crashes are not uncommon but we basically had to rebuild the plane. The crashes were caused during training flights, but luckily there were no injuries or fatalities,” Plojoux said.
The rally organisers said four aircraft would not complete the journey because of crashes or mechanical faults. One of them, the Steerman plane piloted by a British team, made a crash landing in the bush in Kenya after its engine failed. Other pilots described how the plane flipped over and was almost destroyed after touching down in the bushveld on ground that was too soft. The pilots walked away without a scratch.
From Johannesburg, the rally will make its way to Bloemfontein, Plettenberg Bay and finally Stellenbosch on December 16, where an airshow will be held to showcase the majestic aircraft in flight.