1942 SOUTHERN AFRICA TRAVEL FILM “CONGO FLIGHT“ SOUTH AFRICA TO BELGIAN CONGO SABENA AIR XD48154

Want to support this channel and help us preserve old films? Visit Visit our website Shot in January of 1942, “Congo Flight“ presents a rare look at southern Africa during WWII. This silent film shows a trip from South Africa to the Belgian Congo aboard a Lockheed Model 18 Lodestar. The airplane was operated by the Belgian airline SABENA (standing for Societé anonyme belge d’Exploitation de la Navigation aérienne) and flown by a pilot who escaped Brussels when the Germans invaded. According to notes that came with the film, it has rare views since, a short time after it was created, aerial photography was prohibited in southern Africa for the duration of the war. The notes also explain that “The journey starts in Cape Town, takes a route through Bloemfontein, Johannesburg, the Rhodesias, Congo, and ends with a return to Cape Town.“ Since it was wartime, the notes (among other things) mention that the “enormous native populations numbering many milli