Tripoli, Libya to Cairo, Egypt with Jerrie Mock in 1964 · · PAGE 6.

April 1, 1964:  The second blue flight path on the right side of this map is from Tripoli to Cairo.

It was a routine flight with some of it over the sea not too long after departing Tripoli.  The flight across the Gulf Of Sidra (Sirte) began near the town of Misrata and ended when Jerrie flew over Benghazi, Libya.  The direct flight over the water saves about 30 minutes of flying time if the coastal route over land is followed.

This is a view of the Gulf as seen from about 9,000 feet flying over the airport near Misrata.  At this point, everything north of her course line is considered the Mediterranean Sea.  The Gulf of Sidra is the water to the right (south) of this course line.  She is flying EAST and that is good!

At the other end of the route across the Gulf of Sidra is Benghazi seen here from about 9,500 feet MSL.

This old air base is the airport serving Tobruk, Egypt just under 230 miles East of Benghazi.  There is mostly desert sand along that route.

I draw these RED course lines on Google Earth maps to follow the route Jerrie describes in each chapter of her book.  When I got to the Mediterranean shore in Egypt, these rugged cliffs caught my eye and I "flew" down low to get a closer look.  The tops of these cliffs are about 380 feet above the water.

This is the view Jerrie saw as she flew past this location.  From this view point from 9,500 feet above, it becomes apparent the erosion at the cliffs is from rain water, not from the tides on the shore.  When it rains in a desert, there is nothing to stop the surface water from running wild.  This is the kind of thing that happens in Las Vegas, Nevada when it rains there.

After a short hop across water, there is more desert to cross to reach the airport at Mersa Matruh, Egypt on a charted airway Jerrie was following heading for Cairo.   She had to avoid some restricted airspace near Alexandria by flying to a point about 29 miles north of the city out over the Mediterranean Sea.

This is the view from that waypoint 29 miles north of Alexandria, Egypt as seen from 9,500 feet MSL. This is part of the detour north of Alexandria over the Mediterranean Sea to avoid some restricted airspace.  The city of Alexandria is near the sandy shore at the right edge of the image.

Jerrie described this approach to Cairo by airplane based on what was on her charts of the Nile Delta.  The end of the red line is at Inchas air base.  OOPS!   I had a similar image here when I first created this page.  I have been working on the Google Earth flight tour project and today I reached Cairo.  I was reading page 94 that described her arrival path to Cairo.   She referred to the EASTERN edge of the Nile delta and that was the previous image that was below this paragraph.  The previous RED line went over to Port Said and I wondered why.  I read her arrival description about flying over the town of Rosetta, now called Rasheed.  (This was where they found the "Rosetta Stone" that was the key to deciphering ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics.)  She came in from the Mediterranean Sea where Rasheed is 8 miles from the sea on the western branch of the Nile River.   With her approach via a beacon at Zifta, she saw an airport with runway 5 on it and landed there instead of the Cairo International Airport which also has a runway 5.

The landing in Cairo would be in the afternoon, but there was a surprise when she mistakenly landed at a "secret" military airport (Inchas, chapter 11) that was NOT on the aeronautical chart.  I will leave that story for you to read about in the book.   The newspaper clipping seen in the book gives the military airport information wrong on purpose to protect its secrecy.  Here is how the "secret" air base appeared in 2014.

This is the runway where she landed at the Air Force Base in 1964. It is depicted above by the yellow line as she described her landing.  The RED line above was apparently the runway and departure turn to the right to get her going toward Cairo International Airport after it got dark.

The air base was only 14 miles from the Cairo International Airport not 200 miles.  They would not let her takeoff from that air base until after dark so she could not see anything but the lights of the city as she departed.  At 1000 feet up she could see the Cairo airport and confirmed it was the right place by using her VOR receiver on the frequency of 112.5 MHz.  I wonder why she did not think of that earlier instead of landing at Inchas, and held as a guest in a palace.  Read all about it in the book.

The image below shows the Cairo International Airport as it appears in 2014.  There are THREE parallel runways here today and one cross wind runway.  I would bet the two runways at the south side of the field were not there in 1964.  I found an older Google Earth photo dated 1972 when the first parallel runway was under construction.   It shows up in year 2000 as a well-used runway.  In 2009, all three runways are completed.

Compare this runway approach with the one at the Inchas Air Force Base seen above.  She had a night landing at Cairo and could only see the runway lights and the terminal buildings up ahead on the right.  Google Earth does not put in the runway lights (sorry).

Of course the story had a happy ending as she continued the flight into the history books.  Here is her arrival at Cairo after the short flight from the military airport which was about 14 miles away.  This is the pandemonium when she landed at night at the Cairo International Airport.

After the crowd at Cairo was moved away, this solo photo is the real pose with her hair combed for the newspapers.