The Indefatigable Parer

Two Australian aviators aboard an ex-World War One reconnaissance bomber, with the letters “PD” emblazoned on its sides, had climbed their ‘old bus’ to 7,000ft on an easterly course to cross the coastal mountains of Burma. An unending panorama of dense green jungle slowly unfolded before them, broken only by the sight of the majestic Irrawaddy River pointing the way south to Rangoon. The young crewmen looked ahead with some trepidation for they had heard that this steamy landscape was the home of tribes, rumoured to be cannibalistic.

Ray Parer

Whatever thoughts were crossing their minds, they were suddenly shattered by an explosive backfire from the Siddeley ‘Puma’ engine. Lt Raymond Parer’s thoughts immediately flashed back to a similar moment in Italy when the carburettor had caught fire, and again when the same problem had forced them down in the Syrian desert. He might have known that Murphy’s Law would have the engine fail here. To say that the engine was unreliable was putting it mildly; congenital would have been more accurate. Their second-hand DH 9 was one of hundreds built for the Royal Flying Corps during 1917 – and mass-produced despite the fact that its Puma engine was renowned for its unreliability.

Pilot, Ray Parer and ex-army officer, Scottish-born observer John McIntosh had paired up to join an air race from London to Melbourne, aiming to win a prize of £10,000 offered by Prime Minister “Billy” Hughes. For various reasons, Parer and McIntosh did not leave England until the race-winner (Ross and Keith Smith in a Vickers Vimy) had already won the prize. Their entrance fee was returned to them but they set off on the long journey regardless.

The flight took them a monstrous 237 days and became an epic adventure of mishaps and engine failures. And here, over impenetrable jungle, was yet another emergency. The engine had now stopped completely and Parer was facing a crash in the river or smashing the DH 9 into the jungle. Settling into a glide, he scanned around. He couldn’t believe it. There, in the middle of a small tributary of the great Irrawaddy was a small diamond-shaped sand strip.

To quote from his memoirs: “I thought if this was firm enough, we might just possibly get down in the space. As we got a closer view, I was worried to see it was soft. On one side of the river there was a high vertical bank, on the other a low flat. The machine touched its wheels just at the beginning of the island in about three inches of water, and ran practically its full length, which was only about 200 yards, the soft sand, fortunately, preventing us running into the river”. It was a brilliant piece of airmanship.

The pair climbed out and immediately set about diagnosing the problem. As they disassembled the carburettor McIntosh heard a shout from the river bank and, turning round, said to Parer “By Jove look at this!” Huge numbers of tribesmen were emerging from the jungle and were wading across the river. Soon they were surrounded by hundreds of excited, chattering near-naked men, armed with curved knives.

To survive such a forced landing was remarkable enough but it was nothing to what followed. Amazingly, one of the tribesmen knew a little English and over the next few hours was prevailed upon to get the tribesmen to make a raft of rush mats, put the aeroplane on it, push it across the river to the flat where head-high elephant grass had meanwhile been cut down by other members of the tribe. The old plane was manhandled to the make-shift airstrip. The pair started her up and, as a gesture of thanks with the only thing he had available, Parer handed the Chief his packet of sandwiches, climbed aboard “PD” and after a hazardous take-off arrived in Rangoon two hours later.

Of course, there was still a long way to go and more forced landings to come over the twenty or so stages they still had to fly. Eventually, after a nail-biting six-hour stage across the Timor Sea, they arrived in Darwin (with no petrol left in the tank) to become the first single-engined aeroplane to reach Australia.

Then they had to fly the long haul to Melbourne to deliver a bottle of whisky to Prime Minister Hughes, a gift from their sponsor, whisky manufacturer Peter Dawson. Yet more incidents followed until their disreputable “PD” – partly covered in brown paper because of so many tears in its fabric, was finally grounded north of Melbourne. It was put on a train at Albury for the final stage to Melbourne where, to the delight of the huge crowds who welcomed the pair as heroes wherever they went, the Government awarded them £500 each.

So ended a historic pioneering flight. It was a marathon effort and a fitting tribute to Ray Parer, a courageous, self-reliant and physically tough Australian, a man who was also self-effacing about his amazing achievement.

The DH4, the most successful day-bomber of WW1. From it was developed the DH9 flown by Ray Parer.