The history of Nigerian aviation will be
incomplete without the mention of Maiduguri
and Kano city, where the first aircraft landed in
Nigeria on November 1, 1925.
It is exactly 90 years since the historic flights,
involving three De Havilland DH 9A aircraft belonging
to the Royal Air Force, RAF.
Vincent Orange’s book, the “Coningham: A Biography
of Air Marshal Sir Arthur Coningham”, vividly
captured the expedition.
The air trip, led by the then Flight Lt. Coningham,
began from Helwan (a town in Egypt) to Kano, with
several stopovers with Egypt, Sudan and N’Djamena –
then known as Fort Lamy.
Excerpts from pages 44 to 46 of the book revealed
details about the journey, including how the pilots
played polo with Emir of Zazzau, Ibrahim Kwasau and
how Shehu of Borno Sanda Kura offered them rams.
“By 1925, interest was growing in the problems and
possibilities of opening up the African continent to
civil aviation. The French and Belgians had plans for
their own territories and Britain did not wish to be
left behind. In September, the Air Ministry
announced that three DH 9as of 47 Squadron
(stationed at Helwan, near Cairo) would fly from
there to Kano in Nigeria ‘for the purpose of gaining
experience in long distance flights over tropical
countries, where few facilities in the way of the
ground organisation required by aircraft exist, and
with the object of allowing Nigeria to see the
capabilities of British aircraft’.
“The venture would be led by Squadron Leader
Coningham. His major problems would be navigation
and engines. Although there were wireless
telegraphy stations at some points along the route,
the aircraft carried no transmitting or receiving
equipment and had to rely on compasses and on
maps which were nearly useless. The engines,
reconditioned American ‘Liberty’ engines of 400 hp,
had an unreliable record, so Coningham decided to
run them gently, reducing the DH 9a’s normal
cruising speed from 90 to 80 mph.
“The aircraft took off from Helwan at 7 am on 27
October, waved away by a large gathering of soldiers
and airmen and landed at Wadi Haifa – 644 miles
south of Helwan – after eight hours and twenty
minutes in the air, all three pilots aching in arms and
chest because, as Coningham frankly admitted, he
had misjudged their weight distribution and they flew
tail-eavy. Fortunately, this first day of their journey
was both the longest and hardest of the sixteen they
spent in the air. At Wadi Haifa, Coningham boldly
reduced the load carried and, taking off at 4.50 am
next morning, they reached Khartoum at noon. With
a lighter, better distributed load, it proved a faster
and more comfortable journey.
Air Marshal Sir Arthur Coningham
“En route due west to El Fasher, a ‘considerable range
of hills’ soon appeared and perturbed Coningham,
for it was not marked on his map. Believing El Fasher
lay east of such a range, he looked for it in vain and
then decided to press on towards another range,
some twenty-five miles farther west, which was
marked. After fifteen anxious minutes, the town
appeared and the flight landed safely (despite three
punctures), everyone much relieved. Refuelling
began at once, ‘assisted by the officers, who had
cancelled their polo, and the men of the garrison’. It
was while in El Fasher that Coningham again
contracted the malaria that would plague him at
intervals during the rest of his life.
“’The country from this point onwards,’ he wrote, ‘had
never been traversed by aircraft.’ Visibihty as far as El
Fasher had been ‘phenomenal’, but westward fires
had been deliberately started to trap game ‘and at
times it was so smoky that at 4,000 feet one was now
and then taken unawares and compelled to make
sure that nothing in the machine was burning’. For
some time after leaving El Fasher, they were able to
follow a well-worn camel track, used by Muslim
pilgrims making for Mecca, until it ran into
mountainous country. After an overnight stop at
Abecher, they flew over the landing strip at Fort
Lamy, for Coningham had intended to press on to
Maidugari, but noticing that more smoke than usual
was coming from Herbert Rowley’s exhaust, he
decided to turn back. At Fort Lamy, he learned that
Rowley had lost most of his fuel: had they kept going,
‘he would have crashed in rather thick forest twenty
miles beyond’. Not surprisingly, Rowley remembered
the incident vividly, as we shall see.
“It was not until 10.20 next morning that they were
able to leave Fort Lamy and French territory for
Maidugari in British Nigeria. ‘Crowds had been out
on the main road from Maidugari to Kano from dawn
looking up into the sky,’ he wrote, ‘and people
assembled in the towns on that road, coming in from
considerable distances north and south.’ Coningham
landed to apologise for not having arrived the night
before, but soon regretted his generous impulse
because all three machines got stuck in soft yellow
earth on the landing strip and it took forty-five
minutes to free them, by a combination of engine
and muscle power, and run them on to a harder polo
ground. More harm was done to the engines during
those minutes than would normally occur during at
least twenty hours of flying time.
“The flight had been expected to arrive at Kano about
10.00 that morning and would have done so but for
Rowley’s faulty carburettor. The Resident
Representative in Kano of the Government in Lagos
told the huge crowd which had assembled that the
aircraft would now arrive about 5 pm. It was a rash
promise, but Coningham redeemed it, landing on a
polo ground outside Kano’s ancient walls at 5.10 pm
on 1 November 1925, the sixth day of the journey.
The Resident, greatly relieved, afterwards told
Coningham that ‘we had saved their prestige’. The
machines were carefully roped round to prevent
damage and the whole airfield completely
surrounded by troops holding back a crowd of at
least 20,000 people. The airmen had flown the official
distance from Helwan – 2,904 miles – in thirty-six
hours and fifty minutes, but the actual distance
covered, ‘allowing for finding the way’, was well over
3,000 miles at an average speed of about 83 mph.
“Throughout the journey, Coningham closely
observed the character of the country over which
they flew and concluded that good landing grounds
were few and far between. Distances and the time
taken to cover them impressed him deeply. If a
machine had come down near Lake Fittri, for
example, the crew would have had to sit tight near
the crash, living off what they could shoot or buy
from the natives until rescued – and that would have
taken at least forty-five days from Fort Lamy or
Abecher: a distance the aircraft covered in two and a
half hours. However, there was no possibility of a
successful landing between Kaduna and El Obeid,
except for a short stretch west of Abecher. ‘The
knowledge of this,’ wrote Coningham, ‘becomes a
cumulative strain.’ And yet, flying sometimes seemed
to him the slowest means of transport. ‘At 3,000 feet
with visibility up to 150 miles, a hill comes into view
quite two hours away. You know that your destination
is some way beyond. There is no sense of speed and
for hours the hill seems never to get any nearer.’ The
temptation to hurry, to risk damage to elderly
engines, became difficult to resist towards the end of
a long day, especially when an airstrip lay in view for
up to an hour.
“Flying from Kano 130 miles south-westward to
Kaduna on 6 November, the airmen were met by
‘everybody in full dress’, taken to Government House
and ‘lived in the greatest comfort’ until the 10th. ‘A
special grand- stand had been erected and the
preparations were such that the natives were
convinced that the Prince of Wales liked Nigeria so
much that he had come back … I was again given two
days very good polo and well mounted.’ Coningham
took up the Emir of Zaria, Flight Lieutenant Humphrey
Baggs took up the Sergeant Major of the Regiment
and Rowley the Sergeant Major of the Police, a
Hausa. ‘He looked slightly thoughtful as he clambered
into the machine,’ wrote Rowley, ‘but once in the air
he broke into a great smile and then sang at the top
of his deep voice until we landed.’
“’The Qualities of a Senior Officer’ the machine,’ wrote
Rowley, ‘but once in the air he broke into a great
smile and then sang at the top of his deep voice until
we landed.’
The three aircraft left Kano for Maidugari on the first
leg of their journey home at 7 am on 12 November.
They flew at 1,000 feet for much of the way ‘to give
the people a better view of the machines’. Having
flown low over the native town, they landed or the
same soft yellow sand as before, only this time
making sure to run on to the polo field before
stopping. The airmen were presented to the Emir of
Bornu, who presented Coningham with two huge
white rams, which he accepted with an enthusiasm
made all the warmer by his knowledge that the
Resident’s staff would have to find some means of
hiding them until long after he had gone.
“They retraced their outward course without incident
(except for strong head winds and punctures at every
landing) until arriving safely at Helwan on 19
November 1925. Coningham and his men had flown
on sixteen of the twenty-four days spent on the total
journey, covering a distance that he estimated as
about 6,500 miles. Exactly eighty hours were spent in
the air (apart from a few courtesy flights) and all
three of their much-maligned engines ‘ran faultlessly’
throughout, a fact that greatly pleased the crews for
‘fifty-three successive hours were spent over country
ordinarily called impossible’. The Air Ministry proudly
announced two firsts: the first east-west crossing of
Africa by air and the first appearance of aircraft in
Nigeria. That same journey, ‘by the normal methods
of rail, steamer, camel and bullock transport’, would
take about six months,” wrote Orange in the book.
However, Kano residents only saw plane again ten
years after the Coninghams’ departure when Imperial
Airways aircraft landed during the reign of Emir
Abdullahi Bayero in 1935.
Coningham was presumed dead on January 30, 1948
when the airliner he was flying, G-AHNP Star Tiger, to
Bermuda got missing off the coast of US. Coningham
remains one of the unsolved mysteries of the
aviation history as his whereabouts remains
unknown till date.
Source: www.howng.com/how-and-where-first-aircraft-landed-in-nigeria/

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