The muscle-man of the skies

Jun 24 2009 Hounslow Chronicle

AS A fully-paid-up member of the Breguet Deux Ponts fan club, I have an apology to make.

When I wrote the other week that the Airbus A380 was not the first twin deck civil airliner, I mentioned the Boeing Stratocruiser, but forgot to include one of my favourite planes of all time - the Deux Ponts, known by Air France as the Universel, who also operated them under the class name of Provence.

For those of you not familiar with these leviathans of the air, let me tell you they were the quirkiest, most bizarre aircraft I've ever seen - and, believe me I certainly saw, and heard, them.

They came roaring out of Heathrow at the same time every day in the 1960s, so low that the four Pratt and Whitney engines made the window panes rattle in our house in Staines.

There was certainly no fear of confusing them with any other aircraft. Big, powerful, chunky machines, they were probably as close as any plane has ever come to looking muscular.

Certainly, if they were human, they would have been playing in the second row for Toulouse.

They had other distinguishing features - a twin tailplane with an additional whale-like central fin and a pointed 'snout' of a nose, and they

wore that classic Air France livery of the 1950s and 1960s.

They even had on-board elevators between the two floors and winches to deal with particularly heavy and awkward items of freight.

I wrote about the Deux Ponts/Universels a couple of years back and was pleased to hear from many ex-Heathrow staff who recalled them with enormous affection, including several who didn't even work for Air France.

Derek Wheatley, from Isleworth, a BEA load control clerk at the time,

used to see them on freight turnrounds at Heathrow and later in France recalls seeing the occasional retired Deux Ponts parked as 'gate guardians' at airfields, particularly at Evreux, en route to Deauville.

Another reader, former freight clerk Stan Wilkinson, recalled that the Air France giants operated a direct service from Heathrow to Marseille, mainly carrying newspapers.

My first view of one of these mighty aircraft was on television, an early edition of Animal Magic, when

Johnny Morris went to Africa and brought back a lemur, which subsequently featured in the show every week. (I can't remember the creature's name - can any other sad, trivia-obsessed person help?)

The programme showed Johnny, spouting his usual amusing anthropomorphisms, boarding a strange-looking plane at a desert airfield in North Africa.

It was, I later discovered, a Deux Ponts, in the days when they were still used to carry passengers, before being converted into freighters.

In that guise, they continued rattling the window panes around Heathrow until 1971, the final service departing on March 31 that year. [25cf] Ian Allan Aviation Tours have contacted me about their fascinating-looking 2009 series of trips to foreign airports and air shows, including such diverse destinations as Siberian airfields and the Confederate Air Force Show in the US.

For a brochure contact them on 01932 255627 or www. ianallantravel.com/aviation tours.