Music for an Aeroplane

It was a modern age of wonder.
Things once impossible were now ordinary.
People flew across the sky in powerful machines.
The sound of voices and music traveled over invisible air waves.
Mankind attained an incredible new perspective
with the invention of airplanes and radio.

It didn't take long before
someone imagined combining the two.

How about a music concert
inside an airplane moving faster than a locomotive
and broadcast live over the radio?
How cool would that be?

 

 

 

This large 8" x 10" photograph shows about 16 musicians, dressed in winter overcoats and hats, crowding onto a precarious wooden stairway to board a large airplane, all while playing their instruments—accordion, guitars, trumpets, trombone, saxophones, double bass, and drums. They seem to be directing their attention to a man standing underneath the airplane which is marked Heracles, Imperial Airways. 

The back of the photo provides an explanation along with useful names, date, and place.

 

JACK HYLTON"S BAND BROADCASTS

FROM AN AEROPLANE                            15.12.33.

 

   Jack Hylton and his famous band played up in an aeroplane over
London today, and the programme was picked up by the Post Office
receiving station at Baldock, Herfordshire, and sent from there
by land line to Faraday House, and then to the Post Office
Exhibition in the Strand, London.  This musical experiment was to
test a new Post Office transmission apparatus.
O.P.S.     Jack Hylton and his band entering the air liner
               at Croydon.
                    HHS/S Keystone.

 

 

The photo was distributed by the Keystone View Company of Fleet Street in London. The band's comical pose boarding the aircraft was to promote their special radio broadcast for the B.B.C. This show would use a new wireless system that would transmit a live music concert over the radio airways as the musicians were literally traveling through the air. This press photo of the event ran in several British newspapers over the next few weeks. The man standing left was the band's leader, Jack Hylton. He and his orchestra were used to attracting attention as they were then one of the most poplar music groups in Britain.

 

 

London Daily Telegraph
15 December 1933

Jack Hylton (1892-1965)
Source: Wikipedia

Jack Hylton, born John Greenhalgh Hilton in 1892, was an English pianist, composer, band leader and impresario whose music became popular in Britain during the 1920s and 30s. He developed a light high society dance music that combined elements of popular songs with a British interpretation of American swing jazz. In 1930 it was estimated that of the 50 million records sold in the UK in the previous year, 1929, between 4 and 5 million discs were recorded by Jack Hylton and his orchestra.

 

By 1933 his orchestra had already made several successful tours of Britain and Europe and were recognized for their recordings and live radio broadcasts, mainly over the British Broadcasting Corporation, the BBC, which established Great Britain's first national radio network in 1922.

 

Handley Page H.P.45 'Heracles'
Source: ipernity.com

The aeroplane that they were embarking on was named Heracles, a Handley Page H.P.42/45, manufactured by the British aviation company Handley Page specifically for Imperial Airways, one of the first commercial long-range airlines that operated from 1924 to 1939. When this bi-plane aircraft was introduced in 1931, it set a record in its first years of service as being the largest airliner in the world with a wingspan of 130 ft (40m) and a length of 92 ft (28m). It was designed to carry 24 passengers with a crew of 4. Each of the four  9-cylinder air-cooled radial piston engines generated 490 hp which was sufficient for the Heracles to reach a maximum speed of 120 mph and a cruising speed of 100mph. Only eight H.P.42/45 airliners were ever built, with the model HP42 designed to carry lighter loads over longer distance to places like Egypt or India, and the HP45, which was the Heracles model, modified for heavier cargo over shorter distances in Britain and Europe.

 

 

Kingston ONT Whig-Standard
11 January 1934

This aeroplane stunt was successful but did not attract much interest in America, perhaps because Jack Hylton and his orchestra had not yet toured there. However Canadian newspapers picked it up and reported a few more details. 

 

The flight lasted about an hour and a half and the live concert was devised as a test of a new type of radio apparatus for the General Post Office which was then in charge of Britain's radio system. Every member of Jack Hylton's band took part except the pianist and the harpist–whose instruments were too big for the plane–and the flutist. whose flute was broken just before the band left Croydon airport.  The main tune they played was "I'm on the Telephone Now."

 

 

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The interior of the Heracles aeroplane was clearly not very spacious and Jack Hylton's musicians must have felt cramped to play their instruments during the flight, not to mention suffering with the engine and wind noise. Nevertheless Jack Hylton and his orchestra performed at their scheduled time and were heard over a few radio stations around London. The photo gives us a sense of scale of this adventure but not of the music. But fortunately there was a movie camera filming the action for a British Pathé newsreel short, On The Air - In The Air! With Jack Hylton And His Band and through the magic of YouTube we can watch and listen to this historic occasion.

 

 

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As I was searching for newspaper accounts of this 1933 BBC concert, I happened upon an article that mentioned an earlier radio concert from the air that was attempted in November 1925.

 

 

London Weekly Dispatch
8 November 1925

This concert would involve male and female vocalists from London's theatres accompanied by a small ensemble, the Savoy Orpheans. They would be flying at 10,000 feet in another earlier Imperial Airways airliner, a Vickers Vanguard Type 170. 

 

 

 

Vickers Type 170 Vanguard, circa 1924
Source: The Internets

This aircraft was also a double wing design developed towards the end of World War 1. It had a wingspan of 87 ft (27m) and length of 54ft (16.5m). It was powered by two Rolls-Royce Condor III water-cooled V12 engines, each capable of 650 hp. The Vanguard had a maximum speed of 112 mph and could reach an altitude of 16,400 ft (5,000 m). Like the Heracles, the passenger cabin was enclosed, but the pilot's cockpit was open. It could carry 22 passengers with a 2 man crew. This airliner was originally planned for service between London and Paris, but later included a route to Brussels and Cologne.\

 

Leicester Mercury
10 November 1925

The "concert from the air" was scheduled for 6:45 on 10 November 1925, following a short performance of the Royal Air Force Band at 6:05, a talk by Capt. Douglas Sinclair from the Air Ministry on the civil aviation wireless system, as well as a demonstration of "direction finding from an aeroplane." The concert was supposed to last 15 minutes. The date was important as this was the evening before the seventh anniversary of the end of the Great War. The Prince of Wales would be giving a special Armistice Day message and there was music from several military bands.

 

Unfortunately heavy ground fog in London forced a cancellation and the concert was rescheduled for a few days later. The details were reported in the 25 November 1925 edition of Wireless World, a weekly magazine for British radio enthusiasts. This journal was in its 13th year of publication and rivals the geekiest magazines of our computer age, as it was filled with articles like "Measuring Anode Potential" and "Thermionic Rectifier for Battery Charging"; detailed comparisons of radio tubes and crystal sets; and countless mathematical formulas, graphs, and wiring diagrams.

 

Wireless World
25 November 1925

On page 737, Capt. A. G. D. West described how this was not the first broadcast made from an aeroplane, as two previous wireless transmissions had been made while in flight. But those had been microphones picking up only speech. This exercise was attempting to broadcast music at nearly studio quality level. 

The first tests of the in-flight radio equipment had to overcome the issue of electrical power, so a wind-driven generator supplying 1,500 volts was installed on the aircraft. This introduced another problem because noise from the aeroplane's engines interfered with the sound from the musicians. Situated on either side of the fuselage the big Rolls-Royce engines  were so loud that voices had to be just inches from the microphone to be audible. This issue was tolerable if the engine power was reduced and the plane "glided", but that diminished the air speed, thereby lowering the voltage output of the generator below what was needed for the radio transmitter. Engineers found a solution by finding a place in the cabin for a separate electric motor generator powered by large batteries. 

 

Wireless World, vol. XVII, no. 22, p. 738
25 November 1925

 

 

The final plan was to take the Vanguard up to 10,00 feet, cut down the engines to one third maximum speed, and use the other generator to run the radio transmitter as the plane descended. Considering that the aeroplane would be carrying 20 people, a piano, other musical instruments, and all the heavy equipment for the radio equipment, the scheme limited the concert to only about 15 minutes duration before the pilot would have to return the engines to full power. 

 

I'll let Capt. West finish the story.

 

 

"Arrangements were made that during the concert the various artists and musicians should be as close as possible to the microphones. One microphone dealt with the orchestra , the other one with the artists and the piano. The various parts were balanced up as far as could be done.

It is interesting to note that during the concert in the air it was impossible for any one else to hear actually what the announcer was saying or to hear the artists singing. Mr. Yearsley, of Messrs. Dix, Ltd., who provided the artists for the transmission, kept time throughout by signs; even the musicians themselves heard no other instrument but their own. It was really astonishing that under these circumstances any music at all was received at Keston and re-transmitted; but it was received well, and what was more, the engineers at Keston even sent it on to London in a better condition than they received it, as by the careful use of a form of a filter circuit, they were able to cut out a good deal of the engine noise and thus to purify the music that they received... Listeners on the ground had a much better idea of the music that was going on inside the machine than anybody actually there. It was therefore surprising that the re-transmission was so good."

 

 

 

Though the broadcast in 1925 did prove that music could be made in the air, I don't know if the BBC ever tried another "concert from the air" before repeating the concept with Jack Hylton and his orchestra in December 1933. The two aeroplanes were similar enough in cabin features that I think the in-flight entertainment was equally challenging for performers and radio audience to hear.

 

Both musical flights were genuine experiments in radio technology and aviation that revealed a number of problems and obstacles that would require many years, if not decades, to overcome. I don't believe these "concert from the air" were really expected to generate ticket sales for Imperial Airways or wireless radio sales for the BBC. But they did introduce a new perspective for the world that continues into our modern times whenever we take our seat on a 747, buckle up, plug in our earbuds and switch on the in-flight entertainment video screen to search for something to distract us for a few hours.

 

 

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I can't resist including one last video of the Heracles, Imperial Airways Handley Page H.P.45  preparing for flight operations at Croydon Airport in about 1935. Looking at this ungainly two-wing airliner from the vantage point of 2022 leaves me wondering if I would have had sufficient courage to climb on board the Heracles to play a concert in the air. At the very least I would have demanded double pay. Those were some brave musicians back in the day.

 

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 This is my contribution to Sepia Saturday
where the conductor will always hold the bus.