Looking for fun Northwest-themed backgrounds to use on video chats? You’ve come to the right place, as your editor has plenty of time to sift through his photo files…
Zoom Backgrounds – April 2020
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“The Way North” – Documentary on Captain Norm Midthun
You may recall our story about Capt. Norm Midthun and his 39-year career with NWA from the Dec. 2014 edition of REFLECTIONS.
Norm’s family have created a cinematic documentary movie release about the Captain’s adventures as a teenager flying for Norway against the Nazis in WWII, and his time there post-war helping the Crown Prince rebuild the country.
This film was supposed to hit the festival circuit, but due to the coronavirus’ impact on those gatherings, they’re launching it directly on Vimeo today. It’s an uplifting story in many ways and more appropriate for our current situation than ever. Click this link to visit and watch the film.
REFLECTIONS Extra – How NWA helped Japan Air Lines get off the ground
Expanding on the lead article in March 2020’s REFLECTIONS, Northwest played a crucial role in re-starting commercial aviation in Japan. At the end of World War II, local aviation of any kind was forbidden in the country while matters of resettlement, reconstruction, reparations, and government reformation was undertaken. As Japan’s industrial and financial base started to regain its footing, and its transportation infrastructure was brought back on-line, General MacArthur’s administration issued its order SCAPIN 2106 in June 1950 to authorize the creation of a new domestic airline.
Foreign carriers who had been flying into Japan since 1946 were invited to form a new joint-stock company. BOAC and QANTAS declined to participate, but Northwest, Pan American, Canadian Pacific, Philippine Air Lines, and Civil Air Transport – Taiwan created a ‘study group’ named JDAC – Japan Domestic Air Corporation.
We can infer the meetings of JDAC did not go well, as there was no movement on financing, staffing, facilities, or aircraft for the whole back half of 1950. Northwest certainly had been studying the country’s airfields and traffic potential with an eye for both transpacific and intra-Asia commerce; Pan Am was working its connections back in Washington to bottle up Northwest’s Asian traffic rights and had no desire to let NWA gain any more ground on what Juan Trippe considered his exclusive territory. PAL and CAT had their own unique struggles at home while also trying to extend links to California. And Canadian Pacific was busy on two fronts trying to establish itself as a true domestic competitor to Trans-Canada as well as extend its impressive overseas network. Faced with the lack of international cooperation, the Occupation amended its order on January 27, 1951to permit Japanese investment in JDAC.
Local financing and seats at the table broke the logjam. JDAC used Northwest’s network study to form the operational plan; JDAC would arrange aircraft leases and Northwest would supply pilots and pilot training. The aircraft would be from NWA, but to assuage the interested parties’ competitive concerns, would be sold or leased to Orvis Nelson’s Transocean Airlines (TALOA) and then put in service for JDAC. TALOA would also provide the maintenance and relevant training, although Northwest ended up providing some training as well.
Northwest was happy to get the Martin 202 off its property after the airframe’s defects and string of crashes. Between August and October, 1951, seven of the Martinliners were sold outright to TALOA and another eight leased to them. Of the leases, seven ended up being sold to Pioneer in Texas (with the eighth being a hull loss in New Mexico in November 1951.) The remaining five 202s went to California Central in the fall of 1951.
Japan Air Lines’s first flight was October 25, 1951, with routes from Tokyo-Haneda southwest to Osaka and Fukuoka, and north to Sapporo. JAL’s fleet started with three of the Martinliners and added two more in early 1952. JAL also leased a DC4 from TALOA in November 1951.
There was a Martinliner crash on April 9, 1952 onto the mountain of Oshima Island, along the Haneda-Osaka corridor, killing all 37 aboard. This experience as well as Northwest’s unfortunate history with the type may have influenced JAL’s decision to standardize on the DC4.
On October 25, 1952, JAL purchased its own aircraft for the first time, an ex-Northwest DC4, and by the end of 1952 had returned all the Martinliners to TALOA, having six DC4s in its fleet. It took longer for the pilot corps to rebuild from scratch, understandably, and it was not until September 1955 until all domestic flights were crewed by Japanese nationals.
WordPerks – March 2020
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REFLECTIONS Extra – Passages: Narita Opening 1978
What would have been lengthy coverage in Northwest’s house newsletter as well as mass media worldwide in April-May 1978 was quickly interrupted by the carrier’s four month long pilots’ strike. Passages had a delayed publication date and in August published only a two-page spread about Narita opening, with no celebrating… Read the coverage below:
REFLECTIONS Extra – Narita route history in maps
From its opening in Spring 1978 to just before Delta’s exit in March 2020, here are maps showing the extent of Northwest’s passenger network through NRT every five years:
REFLECTIONS Extra – Atkins Light demonstration on the Today Show
Soon you’ll be seeing this same model, restored by Jim Striplin, at the NWAHC Museum in Bloomington, MN.
REFLECTIONS Extra – NWA advertising on Hong Kong trams in the mid-1970s
The NWAHC Archive holds dozens of storage boxes and file cabinets’ worth of photographs from across the history of the company. We recently received several pages of slides taken in Hong Kong in 1973-74 documenting the painting process performed on one of the island’s iconic double-decker trams to create a full wrap-around advertisement for Northwest Orient and its new 747 service there. We’ve printed some of these in the December 2019 edition of REFLECTIONS, and are showing even more here at larger size. Click on the image to enlarge.
REFLECTIONS Extra – Memphis hub historical gate diagrams
In researching this season’s feature article, I came across a number of gate maps from NWA and Republic timetables, as well as in WorldTraveler Magazine. I scanned unique ones and have assembled them here for your trips down memory lane…
REFLECTIONS Extra – Republic Express promotional flyers from Saab Aircraft
We’ve never seen scans of these documents up on the Web before – sales and marketing brochures prepared by Saab in 1986 to promote the SF340 to Republic Airlines customers as well as to prospective airframe buyers. The center spread of “Republic Expression” has a nice ramp shot at Memphis, and in smaller photos there are ramp and gatehouse shots from Jackson, Mississippi as well. Aircraft-interior shots are in both documents, showing off the grey, burgundy, and dusty rose color scheme.
These are large, European-sized documents – click on the links below to open them in PDF form.
REFLECTIONS Extra – Republic Express write-up in Professional Pilot
Supplementing our September 2019 issue of REFLECTIONS, we’ve found some contemporary articles in aviation journals for extra insight. Here’s one from the September 1985 issue of Professional Pilot magazine:
Professional Pilot granted reprint rights to Express I / Republic – we are republishing under Fair Use doctrine. We’ll give a plug, though – to subscribe to the magazine, go to https://www.propilotmag.com.
REFLECTIONS Extra – Republic Express write-up in Aviation Week
Supplementing our September 2019 issue of REFLECTIONS, we’ve found some contemporary articles in aviation journals for extra insight. Here’s one from the July 29, 1985 Aviation Week & Space Technology:
AW&ST granted reprint rights to Express I / Republic – we are republishing under Fair Use doctrine. We’ll give a plug, though – to subscribe to Aviation Week, including access to their 100 Year Archive, go to https://aviationweek.com.
