One of the first animals KLM ever carried was the famous Nico the Bull. The bull doesn't look like a very mature one but still. If I remember well the story was that it had to go to Paris. But some disease in Belgium (foot and mouth?) made it impossible to use surface transport. So it was flown on the H-NABR, a Fokker F.III. The empty weight of this aircraft was 1,200 kgs. With a maximum take off weight of 1,905 kilos, a little over 700 kilos was left for fuel, the pilot and Nico. A one year old bull weighs approx 400 kilos. I still wonder how they kept the animal quiet. Calculating all the weights there was hardly any payload left for a passenger. And I don't suppose the pilot, who was seated next to the engine, had an opportunity to act as an animal attendant. But they arrived in Paris safely.
|The PH-DSK 'Middellandse Zee', a Douglas DC-7C.|
|The Schiphol apron is being repaired just after WW2|
The aircraft in the background is the NL-208, a Douglas C-47A. It was operated by KLM but officially part of the N.G.A.T., the Netherlands Government Air Transport. This set up was necessary because immediately after the war civil air carriers were not yet allowed to use (military) airports. Later this aircraft flew as PH-TCA until the end of 1946.
|The Danish King on horseback in Copenhagen in 1939|
In earlier posts I did explain that all these pictures have been saved by two colleagues. All photos came from a Copenhagen KLM office. So it is not a coincidence that both the picture above and the shot below have a Danish component.
|One of the first horse powered aeroplanes.|
With no more animal pictures being available, this post is concluded with the remark that all aircraft information is obtained from the site of Herman Dekker.
* I have been unable to trace the exact location of Farod but in view of the name of the hotel it can hardly be anywhere else but in Denmark.
Update: Pia (KLM Copenhagen) discovered that that the hotel was situated in Fanø which is on an island off the coast near Esbjerg. Please see her comments.