What began as a tale about a Devon of its own accord peregrinated about like a wombat with a sore nose on a meandering path into a sort of filibuster about aviation things heterogenous... we begin with Devon...

This is a Dove. A Brown Cuckoo-dove no less and not related to a Devon.
Devon is a county in south western England; a processed luncheon sausage... dished out back in my younger days to long suffering Kiwi and Australian kids for school lunches... these days children have sliced Argentinean rare beef, Madagascan mustard, Mongolian roquette on a gluten free sourdough baguette... moving on... where were we... Devon... oh yes; its also an aeroplane. Dove is a bird first made famous by Noah; it’s also an aeroplane; or I dove headfirst into a lake. It is absolutely inconceivable to devon head first into a lake.

A line up of three RNZAF Devons at Wigram in 1968. NZ 1808 and the two behind it were navigation trainers having an astrodome in the roof behind the cockpit. Harvard NZ 1085 parked beside was the aircraft I did my first solo in.
Devon's and Doves to me are the same aeroplane... Maybe Devon was the military model and the Dove was civilian. De Havilland produced the Devon in the mid 1940’s (and the Dove) and sold around 500 of them to many places around the world. The RNZAF bought about 30 of them as transport aircraft, as well as for pilot, navigator and signaler training. De Havilland produced many famous aircraft including the Tiger Moth, Mosquito (which my father flew in WWII), the Vampire (which I flew) and the Comet.

Concorde at the Yeovilton Naval Museum in the UK. Thanks to everyne for pointing out the DH Comet is in fact a Concorde... must have been one of those moments... which means this photo has nothing to do with the story... but it's a nice photo anyway!
In my last year at school I was gazing skywards one weekend... as you do... and a Tiger Moth flew over our house. My father said he had fond memories of buzzing around in Tiger Moths over Auckland when he was learning to fly during the early months of WWII. Anyway, at that stage of my schooling I was thinking of becoming a lawyer, a hippie or a geologist... pretty much the same thing... anyway, why don’t I become a pilot I thought.... I applied to the air force the following day.

DH Tiger Moth flying past Darwin City. This Australian Tiger Moth - A17-640 (VH NMD) painted in RAAF training colours would have been very similar to the ones my father learn to fly in NZ and prompted me into in aviation.
My first flight in a DH Devon was on the 26th September 1968 at RNZAF base Wigram in NZ 1821 as part of my pilot training for the Kiwi air force. I was a member of Number 50 aircrew course, where a small number of teenagers were made into pilots and navigators in the space of twelve short months... I might clarify here that the months in 1968 were no shorter than their equivalent months today. The short months simply imply that maybe twelve months was too fugacious a time to produce aircrew members from a bunch of barely coherent adolescents who had only just started wearing long pants. Anyway... the first three months were officer training and aviation theory which left nine months to learn to fly. In those days the Royal Air Force still recruited aircrew from the colonies and began their training in NZ. The RAF students spent those first three months with us kiwi air force colonials learning to march and to eat with knives and forks before leaving for the UK where presumably British pilots already knew how to march and eat with knives and forks.

RNZAF Devon NZ 1804 at RNZAF Base Wigram in 1968. Harvard NZ 1091, with a "Red Checkers" nose cone, either running a little rich or having it's smoke generator tested.
Flying training back then comprised of basic training in the Harvard followed by advanced flying in the DH Devon. We moved on from all the fun things we had done in the Harvard; like aerobatics, low flying, formation flying and weapons delivery... if you can call an 8 lb bomb a weapon... to concentrate on more mundane multi-engine handling and instrument flying in the Devon.

NZ 1802 at Woodbourne. The tail fin in the Devon is too small to balance the trust when on one engine until well above take-off speed.
The Devon had two Gipsy Queen inverted six cylinder engines equipped with a feather-able props. Vmca is not the date of Caesar’s birthday but an aviation abbreviation that means something about being able to control a multi-engine aeroplane with one, or more engines not doing their job which is to produce lots of power to get as far away from the ground as possible as quickly as possible. Vmca, essentially is a control speed which in the case of the Devon (unlike all modern aeroplanes) was above take-off speed which meant that if you lost an engine (See technical note below for explanation of a lost engine) shortly after take-off there wasn’t enough rudder control to balance the asymmetric thrust of only having one engine working and to stop the aeroplane from doing an uncontrollable turn and an inevitable interesting landing of an unplanned nature. The general idea was not to have an engine failure at least until after the Devon had accelerated with both engines well and truly making loud noises to going faster than Vmca when there was sufficient airflow over the rudder to keep the aeroplane straight.

The Woodbourne base Devon was painted in VIP colours taking off from its Marlborough home in 1970.
However, having been lucky enough to get faster than Vmca the problems were not all over yet because, although you might just be able to keep it straight enough, the aircraft was so underpowered on one engine it was in the lap of the Gods whether you could keep it airborne anyway. The ensuing flight path at best was a slow interminable climb that relied mainly on the curvature of the earth falling away to stop colliding with a tall tree, a church spire or anything else poking its head above the landscape like a giraffe.
Technical Note: I might explain to non-aviator types who read my blog that when pilots say that they have lost an engine it doesn’t mean they cannot find the engine because they have misplaced it somewhere and can’t remember where they put it like their car keys, wallet, sun glasses etc. It’s most unusual, but not totally unheard of, to be flying along fat, dumb and happy and suddenly look out on the wing and find the engine is no longer part of the aircraft and has completely vanished from sight and is not there any more. If this was to occur the pilot would be in a state of mild consternation! Pilots are usually stating when the say they have lost an engine that the engine has lost it’s power.

On a cold winters day at Wigram... was there any other sort... Bell demonstrated an early model Huey Cobra and a Jetranger. Snow flurries weren't the only things flying during this 1968 occasion.
Navigation equipment consisted the Mk I eyeball and for when we were in cloud, real or simulated, an ADF and sometimes a pre-Cambrian version of a DME. The ADF loop aerial was in the roof of the cockpit so that it could be manually rotated with one white kidskin gloved hand by the student... me... if the automatic system didn’t work, which was quite often.. so as to listen using our antiquated helmets for the null which gave the bearing to the station and home; all the while attempting to display some semblance of flying the aeroplane on instruments with the other white kidskin gloved hand; with one engine failed and without the autopilot working because there was no autopilot in the Devon. This required the mental powers of a nerd (which hadn’t been invented in those days) and the dexterity of a glass blower, attributes in which I was sadly lacking.
However, once airborne and high above the ground and both engines humming away sweetly the Devon was a nicely balanced and smooth aeroplane and I enjoyed flying it. We flew it all the way up and down New Zealand and never got lost once. Somehow by the grace of God and sympathetic instructors I got my wings and became a real pilot.

10th December, 1968. Two Devons at Oamaru Airport on a navigation exercise. Not an instructor in sight. Both Devons were crewed by the four remaining student pilots on No 50 Course.
Having prattled on about engines going belly up I thought I might attempt to explain the technicalities of why aeroplanes do what they do seeing us birdos are prone to go off flying to exotic corners of the earth blissfully ignorant of the intricacies of aviation. So here’s a not too technical description of why your common-or-garden airliners have such tall tail planes and why runways are soooooo long: You will have probably seen that aeroplanes always seem to take-off and finish their landing roll well before the end of the runway...

Air Asia X art gallery featuring tall buildings, toucans, treking, scuba diving, monkeys all landing recently at Melbourne Airport.
So why are runways so much longer than they seem to need for normal take-off and landing? Well, each time an aeroplane takes off the pilot calculates what’s known as a V1 speed which is determined by a bunch of variables such as the length of the runway, wind, temperature, weight of the aeroplane and a few others which we wont go into.
What V1 means to the pilot is that should the aeroplane have an engine failure during take-off before attaining V1 speed the pilot will reject the take-off and bring the aeroplane to a stop before the end of the runway which is good. V1 is calculated so there is just enough runway remaining to come to a complete stop with the nose hanging precariously over the end of the bitumen or what ever the runway is made. If the pilot attempted to stop when faster than V1 airspeed the aeroplane will overrun the end and crash into the fence, sea, canal, trees or what ever happens to be there, which is not good. As you can imagine it takes some considerable distance to stop a heavily laden aircraft, so that’s one of the reasons why the runways have to be so long.
However, should it suffer an engine failure once the aeroplane thunders on past V1 speed, noting that at V1 speed the aeroplane is still well and truly on the ground, the pilot is committed to continue to take-off using the power from the remaining engine or engines. The aeroplane has to continue to accelerate, albeit at a reduced rate until it reaches its take-off speed and then become airborne. The aeroplane needs to remain on the runway almost to the very end before it has accelerated sufficiently to reach its take-off speed. It’s all calculated so that the aeroplane will be just 10 metres above the ground when it finally passes the end of the runway... which is the second reason why runways are so long. Provided the pilot calculates the take-off figures correctly these are guaranteed performance calculations bringing happiness to everyone on board should an engine fail during take-off.

Qantas Airbus 380 taking off at Sydney. The tail needs to be extra large to counteract the thrust of the outboard engines if an engine failed on take-off.
So why are the tails of airlines so tall? Well, not all are, however aeroplanes that have their engines mounted on the wings, which is the majority of them, have very tall tail planes. Building a large tail is quite structurally demanding and adds a lot of cost, weight and complication to the whole shebang. The reason for the whacking great tail plane is because if one of the engines fail the aeroplane has more thrust or power from one side of the aeroplane than the other... its called asymmetric thrust. Uncorrected this could cause the aeroplane to enter an uncontrollable turn. It’s generally regarded as unsatisfactory to have a Boeing 747 or an Airbus 380 wandering around the sky out of control. The pilot therefore balances the aeroplane by using the rudder on the back of the tail fin to keep it flying in the proper direction. Modern aeroplanes have such powerful engines that they need very powerful rudders to control the asymmetric thrust. The most critical stage of flight is on take-off when the asymmetric effect of a failed engine would be at its greatest. This is because the engines are at very high power and the airspeed is low, so the tail and rudder are much less effective.. So the reason why the tail plane and its rudder need to be very tall is to control asymmetric thrust following an engine failure on take-off. If you ever get to fly in an aeroplane such as a Boeing 717 or rich enough to own a biz jet you may notice that their tails are less tall. This is because the engines are mounted on the back close to the centre line of the fuselage and therefore suffer from much reduced asymmetric thrust.

A rather fuzzy Air Niugini F28 landing at Goroka Airport in 1980. The engines are mounted on the rear fuselage and requires a smaller tail fin because assymetric thrust is less should and engine fail.