CAA Dakota

From Great North Road

VP-YNH was one of the Dakota's operated by CAA. After that it became Ian Smith's 'personal' aircraft. It was purchased from someone in Zimbabwe (I can't remember who) in late 1983/early 1984 by an air charter company in Zambia. It was then put on the Zambian register under the registration 9J-DAK. It was sold sometime in late 1985/early 1986 to a company (Sunbird Aviation I think) in Kenya.

When it was here, it flew a lot of charters for the Bank of Zambia, moving money around to the various provincial centres, and was also used to fly gold that was mined here down to Jo'burg for processing. It also did a number of flights moving Angolan refugees away from the border areas and flights on behalf of British Airways from Lusaka to Ndola and back again. On one of the flights, one of the cylinders in one of the engines disintegrated. Luckily this happened just as they were coming in to land at Ndola and when the aircraft slowed down, flames started coming out of the engine. The co-pilot had to run down the aisle, grab the fire extinguisher, jump out of the door and deal with the problem. After it was repaired and brought back to Lusaka, bees decided to inhabit the wings of the aircraft. They tried to smoke them out, but without success and even after flying to wherever the charter was and back again, the bees would still come crawling out drunkenly.

This particular aircraft was manufactured in 1944, and on the 50th anniversary of the DC3 in December 1985, the charter company got ZNBC out to film the aircraft and took the press up for a quick flight. As luck would have it, they couldn't get one engine started and when it did eventually catch, there was another streak of flames from the engine and all of it was captured on film and subsequently broadcast (I have the video if anyone wants a copy). The plane was eventually sold just before a Check 4 was needed. The Check 4 entailed removing the wings and replacing/rehabilitating the fuel tanks. One of the pilots who flew it in Zambia had over 20,000 hours of flying time on DC3's, having flown them in Biafra and various other places as well.

Contributed by Heather Chalcraft.

July 12, 2001