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city with leaflets on behalf of the Red Cross. The mail flight was repeated on the 26
October and again on the 2 November, one bag of cards being carried on each flight.

Era 3: The Development of Civil Aviation in the Cape 1919 – 39

By the end of the war there were, worldwide, thousands of redundant aircraft and
thousands of trained pilots whose skills and experience had no market. In a world where

civil aviation had yet to emerge numerous manufacturers of warplanes went into
liquidation and demobilised airmen returned to previous occupations, or sought employ-

ment in other fields.

However, long before the end of the war the outlines of peace-time civil aviation were

being drawn up. Already in May 1917 the Air Council of the United Kingdom had
appointed the Civil Air Transport Committee to consider likely trans-continental routes

that would further the objects of Imperial trade and Imperial defence, and bind the

various dominions of Empire more closely to the Mother country. In particular, it was
hoped that the weekly transportation of mails, in one-third of the time taken by steamer,

would guarantee the commercial viability of such air routes. One of the many routes
foreseen was the so-called All Red Route – because it would pass wholly through

Imperial territories – from Cairo to Cape Town. It would follow closely the route of the
Cape – Cairo railway line along which fuel and spares could be moved efficiently to the

chain of air depots that would have to be established at 400 - 500-mile intervals. In

January 1919 the British Air Ministry sent out three survey teams in converted Handley
Page bombers to reconnoitre and test the feasibility of using the corridor. The shorter

west coast route across the Sahara was thought to have possibilities in the future when
planes became faster and more development along that route might make it

commercially attractive.

The commercial logic of inter-continental air transport was believed to be applicable

also in a large country like South Africa, and so surveys of possible corridors were
commenced. Cape Town’s early aerodromes, first Young’s Field and later Wingfield,