The Saga of Sunetra Devi -Part 1
Guest column by Roger Thiedeman
When Sri Lanka’s first national carrier, Air Ceylon, ceased operations in 1979 it boasted a fatality-free flying record. But one of its aircraft came close to putting paid to that claim — twice — before the airline was two years old. This is the story of that airplane.
Air Ceylon started flying in December 1947 with a modest fleet of three Douglas DC-3 Dakotas. One of them had begun life in 1943 as a C-47 military transport, performing wartime duties first with the United States Army Air Forces (USAAF), then Britain’s Royal Air Force (RAF).
At war’s end, after service in the Middle East and India with the RAF type name ‘Dakota’ and military serial (registration) FL566, it joined the huge stocks of war-surplus aircraft ripe for picking by the multitude of new airlines taking wing in a global, post-war, commercial aviation boom.
Air Ceylon was one such enterprise, and in early 1947 the former RAF Dakota joined two other war-surplus Dakotas to form the nucleus of Ceylon’s nascent national carrier.
Befitting its new status as a commercial airliner, FL566 was reclassified as a DC-3 Dakota (‘DC’ standing for ‘Douglas Commercial’), received the Ceylonese civil registration VP-CAT, and was given the fleet name Sunetra Devi (sometimes spelt Sunethra Devi).
After Air Ceylon’s inaugural flight on December 10, 1947, operated by another of the trio of DC-3s, Sunetra Devi commenced duty on the fledgling airline’s domestic and regional network.
Upon receiving independence from Britain on February 4, 1948, Ceylon’s new government sought to make progress in various fields of endeavour. One was the purchase of a purse seine fishing trawler, the MV Halpha, for the Fisheries Department. But the boat was in Sydney, Australia, posing the ‘minor’ problem of how to move it from there to Ceylon.
Ceylon’s new-found confidence provided the answer. The country’s embryonic naval force, the Ceylon Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve (CRNVR) — later titled Royal Ceylon Navy (RCyN) — would send a crew to take delivery of the trawler in Sydney and sail it over an 8,000-mile voyage to Colombo. And what better flag-flying mode of transporting them to Australia than the new national airline?
Air Ceylon at the time only had a small route network of relatively short sectors; and was nine months away from commencing long-haul international services in collaboration with Australian National Airways (ANA). The naval personnel too had little experience of navigating vessels over vast expanses of ocean. But that wasn’t going to stop the new government from showing the country, and the world, what “our boys can do”.
Presently, on Sunday, May 30, 1948 (by which time a fourth DC-3 had augmented Air Ceylon’s fleet), with Captain Peter Fernando in command Sunetra Devi took off from Colombo-Ratmalana Airport destined for Sydney. Its complement of naval passengers was headed by Lt. Cmdr. Carl Ohlmus, with other senior officers, NCOs (Non-Commissioned Officers), and lower ranks making up the numbers.
The flight would prove longer and more arduous than anything the DC-3 or its crew had previously undertaken. VP-CAT would create history by becoming the first airliner flown by an all-Asian crew to land in Australia. The charter flight was also the first non-scheduled service of any overseas airline to land at an Australian airport other than Darwin. But fate would come perilously close to preventing those ‘firsts’ from happening.
Flying over water in a twin-engine aircraft such as a DC-3 was not an option. Therefore VP-CAT was planned on a circuitous route (see map) around the Bay of Bengal and then across the Timor Sea to Darwin, on Australia’s sparsely populated Northern territory.
The first stop was at Madras (now Chennai), to refuel, before overnighting at Calcutta (Kolkata). The following day Sunetra Devi continued to Rangoon (Yangon), capital of Burma (Myanmar), for another routine ‘technical’ stop, then departed for its next destination, Singapore.
Leaving Rangoon at 9.30 am, Capt. Fernando and his crew expected to reach Singapore at around 5.30 pm. But after several hours aloft, with the Singapore ETA (expected time of arrival) approaching, weather conditions began deteriorating unexpectedly and rapidly. Dense clouds and rain reduced visibility to almost zero, forcing the pilots to rely only on their instruments to keep the DC-3 on course.
Lightning-induced static began interfering with radio communications and adversely affected the airplane’s navigation equipment. Lacking reliable information, the pilots could no longer determine whether Singapore still lay ahead, or if they had overflown the ‘Lion City’. To put it bluntly, they were lost.
While the DC-3 floundered in the stormy skies, the crew caught only occasional glimpses of the sea and hills through breaks in the cloud. Sunetra Devi was in imminent danger of flying into a rain-shrouded hill or crashing to earth or ocean after running out of fuel.
With precious fuel and time fast running out the pilots tried calling Singapore for guidance. Finally, Singapore Air Traffic Control (ATC) responded, telling the Air Ceylon crew that an RAF aircraft was being despatched to locate the disoriented DC-3 and provide directional assistance.
At last, thanks to instructions from the airborne but unseen RAF ‘angel of mercy’ to use a radio beacon they were unaware of, Sunetra Devi reached RAF Changi at 6.25 pm in the gathering dusk and gloom. Everyone’s sense of relief was compounded when it was discovered that the DC-3’s tanks held sufficient fuel for only another 30 minutes of flight.
Two days later, VP-CAT resumed its journey to Australia. Traversing Jakarta, Surabaya and Kupang (the latter in West Timor), they landed in Darwin. After having flown over 6,000km, they had just reached the coast of Australia. The outback’s harsh, endless landscape was still ahead of them though, with another 5,000km and five stops en route, to Sydney. Sunetra Devi finally arrived at her destination on June 5 at 12.40 pm and earned a footnote in history.
The disembarking navy men were probably looking forward to returning home by sea, an element that was, to them, far more familiar and reassuring than the dangerous skies they had recently encountered.
VP-CAT landed back at Ratmalana on June 17, and the Air Ceylon crew were hailed as heroes. Their brush with death over Singapore was little more than a dim memory. For the ill-fated DC-3, however, another appointment with danger was not far away.
Part 2is here and will conclude the story of Sunetra Devi’s career at Air Ceylon.
