1942 was a busy year for General Tojo, Chief Conspiring Officer of Greater Nippon Airways. He’d dislodged QANTAS Empire Airways from its signature Singapore route, amongst many, many other things. But rather than ground the airline in an absolute hissy-fit, QANTAS founder Hudson Fysh got together with BOAC to operate a clandestine ~5600 km passenger/mail service direct from Perth in Western Australia to Kogalla Lake in southern Ceylon (modern Sri-Lanka) using a bunch of lend-leased British BOAC flying boats. Overloaded with fuel and stripped of all but the most essential of essentials (wings.. check… engines… check… shortened pencil… check, ok, good to go…), they could carry just three passengers and a light-weight cache of microfilmed mail. The aircrews ran the gauntlet of enemy-patrolled airspace south of occupied Sumatra and Java in freezing temperatures in the depths of night at a sedate 100 knots- radio and lights turned off and navigating sublimely by the stars alone. In fact the five aircraft were named after significant stars in the nautical almanac. The men couldn’t talk about their duties while on leave - for obvious reasons- so the existence of this special route was not widely known… even after the war. In two years from mid-1943 the Catalinas made 271 secret crossings between Perth and Ceylon and carried a total of just 648 passengers. The passengers who warranted this “express” ticket to and from Australia were given a certificate when alighting stiffly from the plane- inducting them into the “Secret Order of the Double Sunrise.” They’d been aloft in a Catalina long enough to see the sun rise TWICE! Finally, at the end of hostilities, all five aircraft were towed out to sea, in accordance with the terms of the lease agreement, and given to the fishes. Think about that the next time you see a Catalina in flight! Assets I seem to have a bit of a catalina thing going on here. “Altair Star” is represented here using the Digimation Catalina. Not exactly sure about the camouflage (photographs I’ve found are all B&W). So I’ve borrowed RAF Catalina colours.