Simmonds Spartan

[sixtiesrelic]

 

This Simmonds Spartan was the most hated dog of a thing in New Guinea in the thirties.

 

It crashed and was rebuilt and crashed again and again to become one of the longest serving planes in pre war New Guinea. The Japs murdered it in the end.

 

Nearly every pilot detested it and one bloke on being shown it as the first plane he was going to fly on his arrival in N.G. said to the boss, "I was employed to fly a Moth (It had crashed a couple of days before and the Spartan had been found and cross hired) NOT a bloody Spartan" , packed his bags and returned to the ship he'd arrived on to sail back to Australia.

 

Another pilot, Tiny Messenger, who was a bit of a lad, sat so high in the cockpit, (he was over six feet tall) that he probably slowed the thing down quite a bit, had a load of spuds to carry up to miners.

 

He told the natives to empty the bags into the other cockpit ... could get more in that way.

 

Off Tiny went bouncing along the Lae strip for rather a longer time than normal, with spuds bouncing out and rolling along the strip after the retreating aircraft. Tiny coaxed her into the air and oozed along our into the bay and then it fell down.

 

She was dragged out and rebuilt.

 

Many years later a Catholic Priest tried flying wounded out to Mt Hagen when the Japs were getting close, but the poor old Spartan and her engine wasn't up the the job of actually climbing to six or so thousand feet and was hidden in a banana patch and left by the retreating blokes.

 

After the war no one could find any evidence of her.

 

I asked an old friend who was an engineer up there before the war why it was such a maligned aircraft.

 

He said the wings were cambered on upper and lower surfaces... good for aerobatics but crook for real performance.