Scania is ‘the bomb’ when giving the Douglas a lift to PNG

In-depth

5 July

Written By Graham 'Kermie' Harsant

Scania heavy haul operator John Irwin has plenty of military transport experience behind him, but in all his years moving big gear, he’s never had an aerial bomber on the back of his truck.

Until very recently.

“This was the first time for me having a low-flying bomber behind me,” he said with some relish.

“I have spent a lot of time with army tanks on the back, as well as in recent years transporting the Bushmasters, but this was a new experience,” the owner of Irwin Logistics reports.

While the payload was no challenge to the high torque Scania 770 R V8 driven by John, he reckons the smoothness of the truck with its accurate steering and airbag front end played a crucial role in the safe transit of the load through some pretty hairy experiences traversing the A2 and A7 in Queensland.

The aircraft in question is a Douglas A-20 Havoc bomber, dubbed ‘Hell’n Pelican II’, weighing 8-tonnes, that comes with a fascinating history behind it. The Douglas was operational in WWII in Papua New Guinea in 1944. It was not shot down but had to make an emergency bad weather crash-landing in Madang after running out of fuel, and then the captain and gunner trekked 15 days behind enemy lines through the jungle to escape.

The plane was one of two salvaged from PNG in 1984, winched out of the jungle by a Chinook, and brought to Australia where the heritage centre at RAAF Base Amberley painstakingly put them back together over a ten-year restoration. The second plane is in display at Point Cook in Victoria.

In 2025, the Douglas is set to return to PNG to be displayed by the National Museum and Art Gallery to celebrate the country’s 50 years of independence. However, the ship to collect it was in Townsville. Enter John Irwin.

“So, an aircraft is not particularly heavy, but it is wide, even with the wings removed. Oversized movements is our game, but 10 metres wide is big even for us, probably double the width of anything we have hauled before.

“The trip to Townsville from Amberley was quite slow and frustrating in parts. It took us seven hours to get to Dalby, which is only 200 km. Some of the roads we were able to get up to speed and get going. We had a team of four pilots and two police cars with us to clear the route and mostly people were ok about pulling over to let us through. It’s not every day you see a 10 m wide plane coming at you along the highway.

“There was one young fella in a ute who almost took the driver’s side engine off the plane, just didn’t see us coming, if you can believe that,” John said.

The trip to Townsville took three days in all, and aside from leaving at night, most of the driving was done during daylight hours. Naturally the route was pre-checked by a team to spot height and width issues, although there was some miscalculation in Dalby where the 10 m wide load had to shuffle down a 9.5 m wide section crab-like.

“In Dalby we had street furniture and overhanging power lines, and I had about 9.5 m to play with, and the load was 10 m. So, I would go through on one side, reverse back and pull the truck over to the other side, get through that side and vice versa,” John said. “When we got to Emerald, we used the old bypass and were able to squeeze through with about 20 cm either side of the railway line.”

Despite the stress of the driving, John found time to snap off a few images of the warbird on his truck, including shooting at night using only the moonlight and the stars for illumination, resulting in some hauntingly powerful images.

“I didn’t have a flash or any gizmos to take the shots, I just lay on the ground and took some long exposures with a steady hand,” he says. “The paintwork on the Scania really popped.”

John’s blue 770 V8 is the latest Scania V8 to join his fleet and has racked up 90,000 km heavy hauling in just the first six months. Normally it is tasked with carrying big gear on the quad low-loader for the Department of Defence, such as dozers, and it’s been returning impressive fuel figures for the South Queensland-based business of around 2.4 km per litre, a result that John is pretty pleased with.

“The 770 is fitted with the CR23 extended cab, so there’s plenty of room inside. It’s got a big bed to go with the big motor,” John says. “The most impressive aspect of that big V8 is the pulling power coming up the Range. We can have the big gear on the back, but the truck just marches up the Range at a steady 50 km/h, leaving the other big trucks for dead.

“She starts getting into those hills and she'll just drop down. She'll find her gear and she'll just sit on that speed. I’ll have a bonneted American truck behind me, driven by a subbie with the exact same load on, probably 6-tonnes lighter overall, and he can only get up at 40 km/h.

**The Douglas being offloaded from Scania to ship.**

“The other huge advantage of the 770 V8 is the front end is on airbags. I will never buy another steel spring truck again. The Scania airbag front end is a complete game changer. You just don’t realise how different they are on air. In my Scania 580 with parabolic springs, I'd get up to Goondiwindi and I'd have to pick up from the passenger footwell all the stuff that I had on my dash when I left Brisbane, like my souvenir beer mats, ball caps and paperwork, etc.

“On this truck with airbags, nothing falls off the dash. Makes the truck much better to drive and at the end of the day reduces the fatigue.

“So now I have a Scania 660 V8 on order bringing the Scania fleet size up to seven, and that will get a new quad super tilt trailer behind it, so the fleet will have three super tilts and two low loaders. We’re that busy the new truck is needed to cope with the workload,” John said.

“But as for planes, I think that’s it for a while.”