Day queen's flight from Kenya was most-tracked

As the world mourns the death of the world's longest-serving monarch, visitors to the British Airways museum at Waterside, London, will be reminded of one of the most important flights that not only changed the course of history but forged close ties between Kenya and Britain.

For Jim Davies, the tour guide at the museum, memorabilia associated with the queen's maiden flight are among the most treasured in the gallery.

On January 31, 1952, young Princess Elizabeth Alexander Mary and her husband Prince Philip were bid goodbye in London by a high-powered entourage that included her father King George VI, mother Queen Elizabeth, later known as the Queen Mother, Princess Margaret, and Prime Minister Winston Churchill.

The princess was embarking on an extensive world tour covering 30,000 miles in four continents to represent her ailing father. The tour was to take her to far-flung Australia and New Zealand. Unknown to the princess though, that farewell at the airport was the last time she was to see her father alive.

The couple's first stop was Kenya where they had intended to have a short bush experience before proceeding with the rest of their journey. The fifth day of February found them on the picturesque Treetops Hotel in the Aberdares, an outfit that had been developed by Eric Sherbrooke Walker as a platform for game viewing to please his wife Lady Bettie.

The following day, word reached Princess Elizabeth that her father had died during the night. According to The Mail Online, news of the King's death was conveyed by Granville Roberts, a journalist who worked for the East African Standard and had been detailed to cover the royal visit.

The couple abandoned the tour and returned to England to assume her new role as the Queen and head of the Commonwealth.

Former Aberdares resident hunter Jim Corbett penned the famous words that catapulted Treetops to world acclaim: "For the first time in the history of the world, a young girl climbed into a tree one day a princess and after having what she described as her most thrilling experience she climbed down from the tree next day a queen."

However, it was not only the fortunes of the 25-year-old girl or those of the hotel that had changed overnight. According to pictures and documents at the British Airways museum, the flight that conveyed the new queen back to England from Kenya gained a celebrated status.

The British Overseas Airways Corporation Argonaut plane christened "Atalanta" had changed from a civilian carrier to a Royal flight in an instant.

First, the new queen was flown from Nanyuki to Entebbe where the plane was waiting. At the time, Embakasi Airport, the forerunner of Jomo Kenyatta Airport had not yet been built while the then-existing airport at Eastleigh was unusable during wet weather. A logbook at the museum shows the plane was the most monitored in the 19 hours and 43 minutes it was on air. It logs the departure time from Entebbe as 2047 GMT on February 6.

Less than two hours later the record shows the plane flying 214 kilometres northwest of Entebbe at 11,000 feet above sea level. In the next half hour, it climbed to 16,500 feet and by half past eleven in the evening it was flying 17 miles southwest of Juba, South Sudan.

By 3 am, the Argonaut had logged 1,434 miles and was then on schedule 325 miles southwest of Wadi Haifa. Having flown 2,260 miles of its journey, the aircraft landed at El Adem, Libya, to refuel nine hours and 25 minutes after taking off from Entebbe.

The log went on until the plane reached London at 19 minutes after four in the afternoon of February 7.