In 1952 the famous Australian aviator P G Taylor made the first Trans Pacific flight in a Catalina called Frigate Bird. In 1951 TEAL inaugurated their Coral Route service from Auckland to Tahiti using a Short Solent Aranui. This simulator flight partly renenacts those flights using information provided by Bruce Kennewell (downloaded from avsim.com). For the first leg from Sydney to Auckland I used Canopus, although in reality it does not have the range. The Coral Route was flown in the Solent and the remainder of the journey to Chile I used the Sandringham but did not follow the original route as I wanted to visit Pitcairn Island. The flying boat models are by Jens Kristensen also available on avsim.com.

I have long been fascinated with the story of The Mutiny on the Bounty and Pitcairn Island it was therefore with pleasure that I was able use this as a stopover on this trip. Many years ago I met a RAF guy who had served for a year on Pitcairn. His story was that he was there to maintain a generator but I thought that there was more to it than that, having flown over the French Nuclear Test sites at Mururoa and Totegegie and realising their proximity to Pitcairn seems to confirm my opinion that his presence was something to do with that.