Otto M. Schwarz

The Air Race

In 1934, the city of Melbourne celebrated its centenary and marked the occasion with the MacRobertson International Air Race. KLM's entry was its first DC-2, PH-AJU 'Uiver' (Stork), which took off on 20 October 1934. Shortly before the finish, the plane had to make an emergency landing due to poor weather conditions. The following morning, the entire town turned out to dig the aircraft out of the mud, enabling to resume its flight. Nonetheless, the distance was covered in three days, 18 hours and 17 minutes: a winning performance! This programmatic piece tells the story describing the start of the engines in bar one, the flight over the clouds, the thunderstorm, theemergency landing and many more scenes!