Activities of the Royal Aero Club of South Australia
Clip 1: A flight in a Tiger Moth
2 min 28 sec (
skip to teachers’ notes)
Taken from the home movie Activities of the Royal Aero Club of South Australia (c1935)
Original title classification not rated – this clip chosen to be G
Availability of the complete title
Please note: this clip is silent
Curator’s clip description
A Tiger Moth is prepared for flight at the Adelaide Parafield. Chief pilot of the Royal Aero Club of South Australia Jack Buckham, locks the wings of the plane into position. The plane is filled with fuel. From a view inside the cockpit, John Mack films a flight over parts of Adelaide including the oval at the showgrounds.
Teachers’ notes
provided by The Le@rning Federation
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This silent black-and-white clip shows a Tiger Moth plane in action in the 1930s. In the first scene the plane is shown side-on and then with its wings in the transport position being wheeled out of a hangar. The wings are then moved into the forward secure position and the plane filled with fuel. After an intertitle, ‘Let us “take-off” for a quick flip’, scenes filmed from the cockpit show the runway as the plane hurtles to take-off and then bird’s-eye views of Adelaide. An intertitle, ‘Gaining altitude we arrive at the Pilot’s paradise’, introduces the final scene.
Educational value points
- The Tiger Moth, probably seen here in its DH82 version, is the most famous training biplane in the history of aviation. A favourite of aero clubs and selected as the training aircraft for the Royal Air Force (RAF), for the Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF) and for the Empire Air Training Scheme, in the mid-20th century almost every Australian and British pilot, military or civil, spent some time at the controls of a Tiger Moth.
- As revealed in the clip, the Tiger Moth is only a small aircraft – 7.29 m long, 2.68 m high, with an unfolded span of 8.94 m – about the same dimensions as a modern double garage, but its size made it ideal for training. It is generally believed that another reason for its success as a trainer was that it was not as easy to fly as some of its competitors, showing up and magnifying faults in piloting technique without allowing them to become dangerous.
- The Tiger Moth was a very popular plane before, during and after the Second World War (1939–45), with 9,059 DH82s and DH82As built, about 1,080 of them by de Havilland in Australia, mostly for the RAAF. Altogether, 861 Tiger Moths appeared on the RAAF register during the War, including 21 civilian Tiger Moths pressed into service. The plane seen in the clip was possibly one of those.
- Basically a trainer, the Tiger Moth couldn’t fly very far (about 485 km), climb very high (4,145 m) or travel very fast (175 km/h) but, as seen in the clip, flying in it was an exhilarating experience. The noise of the wind in the wires, the roar of the straight-out exhaust and the feel of the slipstream in the open cockpit all contributed to the experience. Aero clubs, then and now, raised money by offering joy rides in their Tiger Moths.
- The clip offers an aerial view of the city and surrounds of Adelaide, South Australia, as they were in the 1930s and of the facilities of Parafield Airport, including the hangar built by the Royal Aero Club of South Australia in 1927. The flight over Adelaide reveals the planned design of the city and the surprising number of multistorey buildings in the city centre.
- Much of the historical value of home-movie footage like this lies in its eye-witness record of times past and its narrative of personal interests and enthusiasms. Although amateur, the cinematography and editing are not unskilful, particularly the aerial work. Numerous angle shots are used to add interest to scenes such as filling the plane with fuel. The intertitles are shaky, but they nonetheless reveal the filmmaker’s joy in flying.
