Silver wings across the Channel

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by Michael Ware:
Taking your car to and  from the Continent from the United Kingdom has for a number of decades been easy with drive on, drive off ferries and then the Channel Tunnel. It seems quite odd to us today but, back in the 1950's and 1960's it was quite common to fly your car to the Continent.

Up until WWII if you were thinking of travelling around the Continent you had to have your car loaded as deck cargo on a ferry or freighter.  Loading and unloading was by crane and I am sure damage to the car was not unknown.  The Dover Harbour Board's first car ferry berth was opened in 1953.  The first drive on, drive off ferry, the SS Dinard was converted from a conventional ship built originally  for the  Southampton to St. Malo route.

Prior to this however,  an air company called Silver City Airways run by Air Commodore "Taffy" Powell experimented with car transport across the Channel using a Bristol Freighter.  He was an enthusiastic motorist in his Armstrong Siddeley Lancaster and loved European travel.  On the 15th June 1948 he took his Armstrong Siddeley by Air from Lympne near Hythe in Kent to Le Touquet in a Bristol Freighter.   This proved successful and the first public flight was a month later.  At first it had to be run as charter flights but in May 1959 they were granted a licence to run scheduled services.  What I had not realised until I started researching the subject was how vast this business was, even when later is was competing with proper drive on, drive off ferries.

Larger Bristol Superfreighters were brought into service to satisfy the demand.  Soon it was realised that the grass runways at  Lympne were unsatisfactory for these larger aircraft.  So Silver City built their own airport  near Lydd close to Dungeness.  Called Ferryfield it opened in the summer of 1954.

The figures are staggering, in 1960 for example, they carried 90,000 cars across the Channel along with 220,000 passengers, which amounted to aprox 40,000 ferry flights,  At one time Ferryfield was the UK's busiest airfield!   There was also a flourishing trade in taking cyclists across the water!

In 1962 the Company sold out to P & O who had also bought up rival companies in the same business such as Channel Air Bridge and British United Airways. Though the name was then  dropped car ferrying continued  as British United Air ferries. The last car ferry flight from Ferryfield took place in 1971.   The high cost of running short haul routes and continual price cutting have been given as the main reason for Silver City's demise, and of course the much stronger competition from the sea-crossings.

My thanks to the Silver City Association and Dover Transport Museum for help

(Words and archive pictures Michael E. Ware)

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