THE feats of two Border-origin pilots in New Guinea during World War II have been saluted in a new book by a former Border Mail cadet journalist.
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Courage in the Skies examines the role played by Qantas in helping defend Australia from the Japanese.
Jim Eames, who became a specialist aviation journalist and worked for Qantas after his four-year cadetship at The Border Mail in the late 1950s, wrote the book.
“Over the years the war nearly saw the end of Qantas for several reasons – it had such a massive impact on what was to be the future of the airline,” Eames said.
The run-ins of Qantas founder Hudson Fysh with civil aviation authorities over his airline’s role in the war are central to the book along with the individual feats of pilots.
They include Catholic missionary John Glover, who was ordained in Albury in 1932, and Corowa-born pilot Bob Gurney.
Glover, who learnt to fly in the Riverina, was crucial in evacuating people from the New Guinea highlands, organising risky flights into Mount Hagen.
Gurney was seconded from Qantas to the RAAF for the war and commanded a Catalina squadron at Port Moresby before a crash landing in a bomber.
“Five crewman down the back survived the crash but when they reached the cockpit they found Gurney had been killed instantly,” Eames wrote.
“As a tribute, a few months later the main airfield at Milne Bay was named Gurney Field in his honour.”
Eames said he had been pondering the feats of the wartime pilots since the 1960s when he first visited New Guinea and learned of the Book of Wrecks outlining planes lost in the conflict.
Courage in the Skies is Eames’ second book about the national airline following The Flying Kangaroo: Great untold stories of Qantas….the heroic, the hilarious and sometimes plain strange which focused on passenger services.
“It’s (war effort) is an essential part of the airline’s history and I would imagine when they go to celebrate 100 years of Qantas in 2020 that it would play a very small part, but it was critical,” Eames said.