Elcano Squadron Route to the Phillipines - April 5th, 1926
I saw a fantastic documentary about this in Spain while visiting my family over the winter holiday and I knew I had to recreate this when I got back to the States.
Here is some information about this milestone in Spanish Aviation.
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The First to the Philippines - Great Moments in Spanish Aviation History
The "Elcano Squadron", named after the famed Spanish navigator Juan Sebastian Elcano, departs Cuatro Vientos Aiport (Madrid) for the Philippines (Manila), on the 5th of April, 1926, to open up the Spanish air routes to the east. Consisting of three Breguet XIX airplanes, the Elcano Squadron, arrived at Manila 39 days later after flying 17,000 kilometers. The flights took a total of 159 hours and 25 minutes, with stops in Algiers, Tripoli, Bengasi, Cairo, Bagdad, Buchir, Bender-Abbas, Karachi, Agra, Calcuta, Rangún, Bangkok, Saigón, Hanoi, Hong Kong, Macao, Luzón and Manila.
The Spanish Air Force honored the 75th Anniversary of this historic flight in April of 2001 with ceremonies at Cuatro Vientos airport in Madrid. During the ceremonies, two commemorative plaques dedicated to the Elcano flight and the Spanish aviators were presented. The plates were placed in the historical tower of the air base and was followed by a land and air parade and the symbolic takeoff of a C-295 airplane -which will recreate and fly, in the month of July 2001, the historical flight to the Philippine capital.
The objective was to fly to the Philippines in a route without precedents in Spanish aviation. Three airplanes, each with a pilot and a mechanic, departed Madrid, but only one arrived at Manila. The Elcano Squadron was composed of captains Eduardo González Gallarza, Joaquin Lóriga and Rafael Martinez Esteve. The three Breguet XIX, number 4 with Esteve and Calvo, number 29 with Lóriga and Perez and number 30 with Gallarza and Arozamena, entered the Mediterranean and two hours later landed in the Maison Blanche, 20 kilometers to the south of Algiers, thus beginning this historic flight.
In 1926 there was no air line opened from Europe to the Far East. France and Great Britain were studying lines to connect the metropolis with their colonies in the Asian Southeast. Briton RAF inaugurated a postal route between the cities of Cairo and Bagdad the 23 of June of 1921. In Spain, in 1926, the Latécoère company, that had changed it's name in 1921 and the Compagnie Générale, flew out of Toulouse to San Luis of Senegal, with stops in Barcelona-Alicante-Malaga-Casablanca, until Senegal. In 1924 they opened the Alicante-Orán section with seaplanes and by land Casablanca-Fez-Ora'n-Algiers was covered.
The protagonists of the Madrid-Manila flight had justified their proposal thus: "The Philippines, last archipelago of our lost colonial empire, with a great Spanish population, and a greater number of Spanish origin and a million natives who still feel the affection to Spain, deserves the visit of our most important aviators".
The fuel capacity of Breguet XIX, of 900 liters, gave it a reach superior to 1,500 kilometers with one payload of 220 kilos. Weight that was to be distributed between pilots, food (for five days), some basic tools and some essential spare parts, as well as some arms. The fuel was distributed in two oval deposits of 360 liters each in the sides of the fuselage, a tank under the pilot's seat of 235 liters in the inferior part and 30 liter tanks in the upper wings.
It is important to emphasize that on the 30 attempts of European flights to the Far East, only 12 had been succesfull, in which the greatest difficulty resided in the harsh demands of the airplanes and the pilots and mechanics. In the Spanish adventure, weary that the motors would not last the entire trip, two additional motors were sent to Calcuta, located at the one third portion of the route, in case it was necessary to replace a motor.
Of the three airplanes that left Madrid, only number 30 would arrive at Manila. On the 11 of April, the airplane of Esteve and Calvo was damaged out of Ammán and was lost in the Egiptian desert. It took 16 days before they were both rescued by the RAF, after one hard adventure in the desert. The following loss would take place the 1 of May when the the airplane of Lóriga and Perez lost it's radiator and was unable to be fixed.
Finally, the 13 of May Gallarza and Lóriga covered the 450 kilometers of the last stage that separated them from Manila. Halfway there they received an escorting squadron of American planes that flew with them to the Phillipine capital, where they landed at 11,20 hours before a great crowd. Arozamena the mechanic arrived at Manila via boat to be reunited for the planned festivities on the 16th, while his companion Perez, who had contracted a fever, had to remain for ten days in the hospital of Macao. Lóriga left for Macao the 27 May, where he met with his mechanic, Perez, disassembled the airplane, packed it and they both embarked in the steam ship Claudius Lopez for Spain. Gallarza and Arozamena embarked with their airplane disassembled in the merchant ship Legazpi and arrived in Spain in 35 days, five less of those than they needed to make the flight.
The Breguet XIX was a biplane two-seater of cabins opened in tandem with a circular fuselage section. The rest of the airplane was covered in fabric.
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ABOUT THE FILES
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This tour really takes you through the "old world" and is a fantastic example of the early adventures of "old skool" flyers. They flew this with nothing but a compass and the usual old instruments.
The tour is recreated in full in the accompanying documents. There is a map with the route traced on it. Three different printable versions of the route legs and distances. Flight plan in NAV3 format. Flight plan in ACS-GPS format. Flight plans in FS2002 format. Flight plan in FSNav format. That should cover everybody!
Simply use the plans to recreate this historic tour with the included Breguet plane. Or if you want to do a more contemporary thing, you can use any modern plane that you wish!
In the additional stuff folder, you will find additional information regarding the tour and the Breguet XIX plane. There is a historic photo of the squadron getting ready to leave Cuatro Vientos airport. A link to an article in a spanish newspaper (you can use Babelfish or Google to translate it, if you wish.) And other various goodies.
A situation is included which places the Breguet on the active runway at Cuatro Vientos airport on April 5, 1926, the day the tour started. Simply move the flight and weather file to your "flights/myflts" folder in FS2002, and select the flight from the in-game menu.
