Ralph Barker - Bill Lancaster: The Final Verdict: The Life and Death of an Aviation Pioneer

First published in 1969 by George G. Harrap & Co. Ltd, London
Published in 1971 by St Martins Press Inc, New York
Reprinted by Fontana (the paperback imprint of William Collins Pty (Ltd), Sydney, 1986

Reprinted in this format in 2015 by
PEN & SWORD AVIATION
An imprint of
Pen & Sword Books Ltd
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Copyright Ralph Barker 1969, 1971, 1986, 2015

ISBN: 978 1 47385 583 0
PDF ISBN: 978 1 47385 586 1
EPUB ISBN: 978 1 47385 584 7
PRC ISBN: 978 1 47385 585 4

The right of Ralph Barker to be identified as Author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

A CIP catalogue record for this book is
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Contents

Prologue

THE three heavy trucks which comprised the motorized platoon of the Groupe Saharien Mixte du Touat had turned off the trans-Saharan motor-track at Bidon Cinq in the central Sahara two days earlier, on February 10th, 1962. The patrols purpose was to carry out a reconnaissance of the area in the region of Signal du Tanezrouft, one hundred miles west of Bidon Cinq, in the heart of the Tanezrouft desert. This was the parched, forsaken plain three hundred miles south of the French atomic station at Reggan over which the first French atomic bomb had been exploded two years earlier.

The platoon bivouacked for the night of the tenth, reconnoitred the Signal du Tanezrouft area on the morning of the eleventh, found nothing but a few prehistoric tombs, and then turned north, striking across the flat, featureless desert, on a course roughly parallel with the trans-Saharan motor-track a hundred miles to the east. After motoring eighty-five miles north of Signal du Tanezrouft they bivouacked again for the night.

The Tanezrouft, the very core of the Sahara, is a desert within a desert. Waterless, trackless, bereft of all plant and animal life, shunned by travellers, dreaded by explorers, it is avoided even by the Saharas own nomadic tribes, who call it the Land of Thirst. Here the desert is absolute.

The adjutant and mharistes of the motorized platoon carried their own food and water; the dry, dehydrating, desiccating heat demands at least two gallons of water per man per day. To start walking in the Tanezrouft at sunrise without water is to be dead by nightfall.

On the morning of February 12th the patrol was ready to abandon the uncharted hinterland of the Tanezrouft and return to the reassurance of the motor-track north of Bidon Cinq. But between them and the track lay an area of fech-fechsoft sand which even their heavy-duty tyres could not safely negotiate. They therefore continued their progress due north, hoping the sand to their right would improve.

They had travelled a further twenty-five miles when the fech-fech gave way to hard sand. Shortly afterwards they turned due east to pick up the motor-track. Otherwise the terrain was unchangedflat and featureless as far as the eye could see.

They had travelled exactly a hundred kilometres due east when they noticed a tiny black speck in the distance, very slightly off their course, and they steered towards it. In the Sahara, and particularly in the Tanez-rouft, every isolated feature deserves to be investigated, its nature recorded, and its position charted, as a possible future aid to navigation.

The shape of the object they were peering at was difficult to define. It was not until they were less than two kilometres from it that they realized it was a crashed aircraft.

At once they thought of the bomb. Perhaps, unknown to them, a plane had been lost at that time, forced down by the explosion, or by radiation.

When they were about a hundred yards from the wreck, the patrol adjutant ordered his platoon to draw aside so as to avoid any risk of contamination. Then he got down from his truck and approached the plane on foot.

From what he could see of it, it was a small, single-engined biplane, lying on its back, buckled and skeletal, its fabric covering perished. The nose of the plane, its propeller blades broken off at the shaft, was pointing towards the east, as though the pilot had been trying to reach the road. Perhaps, after the crash, he had done so. Yet it seemed from the wreckage that he must have been badly hurt.

Before the adjutant could attempt any closer study of the wreck his eye was held by an object which lay under what had been the lower starboard wing. It was the object he had been looking for. It was a human skull.

The body was lying on its left side, partly covered by a thin layer of sand. The state of preservation was good, and in the light of the discovery that the adjutant was about to make, extraordinary. Those parts which had been exposed to the air had become mummified in the dry desert atmosphere; they were like parchment. The right arm was slightly bent, with the fingers clutching upwards, perhaps towards the throat, in what must surely have been a dying gesture. The injury the man had received in the crash was clearly visible as a scar above the right eyebrow. The clothes were ragged but recognizable.

On the wings of the plane the dead pilot had tied his principal belongings. They included a thin metal case holding his passport and other documents, and a large waterproof envelope into which he had fitted his aircraft log-book. A glance at the log-book revealed that aircraft and body had lain undisturbed for twenty-nine years. The date of the flight that had ended in tragedy was April 12th, 1933.

After the crash, while he waited first for rescue and then for death, the pilot had kept a diary, using the empty pages of his log-book. It told a great deal about the man, and about the flight on which he had crashed. But above all it told of his love for a woman.

It was a love that had taken him away from wife and children, a love because of which, less than a year before his disappearance, he had stood trial for murder in an American court. It was a love which had buoyed him up with hope and courage in his last hours. Yet it was a love which, in the eyes of the world, had destroyed him.

Now, with this chance discovery by the French motorized platoon, the truth about this man, and about the woman he loved, might at last be known. His name was Bill Lancaster.

CHAPTER I

The Man without Fear

THE party in the Baker Street studio was generating a frenzy of chatter and animation. The open windows that allowed an attenuated echo of the din to escape into the street admitted just enough of the June night air to save the smoke-laden atmosphere from becoming suffocating. Presently the volume of sound ebbed as the vibrant notes of a grand piano struck an introductory chord. Then all was silence save for the music. The voices that sang were the most famous voices in London: the year was 1927, and two of the guests at the party were the black American singers Layton and Johnstone.