VH-UVO de
Havilland D.H.60M Moth
(c/n 1496)
This Moth had an 'out-of-sequence'
registration, the 'VO' being requested from DCA for the
Vacuum Oil Company.
It was first registered to that concern in May 1930 (the
rest of the
VH-UVs would not be
issued until 1936). The above shot comes from the
John
Hopton
collection and shows
the aircraft on a stage at the Regent Theatre in Melbourne where it was
displayed for some kind of
Vacuum Oil Company event The aircraft
was named 'Plume'
being the
description of the company's logo .
In 1931 it was fitted with balloon type tires
known as
'doughnuts' to experiment the cushioning effect of such gear in
operating from rough
country strips. The photograph below, from the
archives of the Civil Aviation Historical
Society files
shows it at Mascot with Major de Havilland, D.S.O., Managing
Director of de
Havilland Australia Pty Ltd, and
Mr. F.W. Haig, Chief Aviation Officer for the Vacuum Oil
Co. along with their
technical support bloke, having just fitted said tires. When sold to the
Australian
Aero Club (Tasmanian Section) at Launceston in May 1936, I suspect the
balloon
tires had by then been replaced with standard gear. . VH-UVO was
written off in a crash
on
18 May
1939. The newspaper clipping shown at the foot of the page, and
extracted from
the
Launceston Examiner for 20 May 1939 by Graeme Parsons, shows the
wreckage.
