C.O.C.A. Times

Blitz of 1940 from the months of September through
December, over 13,000 Londoners were killed and
another 18,000 seriously wounded by these aerial
bombardments. The citizens of London responded
with unparalleled courage. The Royal family refused
to abandon Buckingham Palace and the country fought
back with everything it had. The Royal Air Force
defended London with such heroism that Winston
Churchill uttered those famous words, "Never has so
much been owed by so many to so few." Denied an
outright victory, Germany then attacked Britain with the
V-1 "buzz bombs" and later, the V-2's. The Americans
entered the war in December, 1941 but it was not until
1944 and the "D" Day invasion that America and her
allies began the final crushing of the Axis machine in
Europe. Things in the United Kingdom were still very
grim in July of 1943.
I see "Khyber Pass" as a rallying cry to the British.
It says, "Remember the past and remain true to your
nature. Courage and fidelity will win out and victory
will be ours!" Oh, really? Do you see this in the game?
Take another look. With "Khyber Pass," the physical
layout of the game is an important clue to the message
offered. The playfield is unusual and unique for a
Whales game. Whales was a prolific manufacturer of
allwins, producing thousands
of machines. Almost all his ..--....
games had a standardized
playfield. In the vast majority
of his games, the gallery where
the ball would be "won" or
"lost" was a single horizontal
shelf with the traditional
five "win" holes flanked by
the two outer "lose" holes.
(See Photo "B" for a typical
example.) Occasionally, he
would diverge from this and
instead place single "win" cups randomly around the
playfield. That was about as original as Oliver Whales
got.
Now take another look at
the playfield of "Khyber Pass"
(Photo "C".) You see an elegant
"V" gallery with the name
showcased in the center. Center
stage is a picture of a valley with
a stream running through it. What
you cannot see is the interior
mechanism of the game, now
as the workhorses of the arcades. For the most part,
the backflash artwork tended toward utilitarian and
somewhat unimaginative. There were exceptions as
you shall see today.
Equal to the difficulty of determining the manufacturer
of a game is the challenge of determining the date a
British game was made. Most help here comes from the
small publication by Paul Braithwaite entitled Acrades
and Slot Machines with A - Z of British Manfacturers
1870 - 1970. While not claiming to be exhaustive,
author Braithwaite provides the only real in-depth
information about the British game industry, listing
the manufacturers plus the names and dates of the
games they produced. The section on Oliver Whales,
catalogues 76 games. "Khyber Pass" is not one of
them. Fate has smiled upon me here. Stamped on both
the inside door of the machine as well as the interior
case is an inked box that says this game was made by
Oliver Whales and tested July 14, 1943 by workman
"H Smith." I have over two dozen Whales games
and I have never seen this stamp. Was it a wartime
requirement? I have no idea. Whatever the reason,
this dating spotlights a game that otherwise might have
missed critical identification. Cast as a wartime soldier,
"Khyber Pass" takes on completely new meaning at
multiple levels.
Khyber Pass has special significance to the British.
During the British Colonial Period of the 19 th Century,
Afghanistan acted as a buffer state between the Russian
Empire and British India. Shifting alliances by the
Emir of Afghanistan between Russia and England
led to three separate wars between the British and the
Afghans. In each of these wars, Khyber Pass was a
strategic target of critical importance. The Pass is a
narrow passageway through the Hindu Kush mountains
connecting the cities of Peshawar, Pakistan and Kabul,
Afghanistan. In all three of these conflicts, the British
entered Khyber Pass in order to attack Afghanistan. The
party dominating Khyber Pass effectively controlled
access to the battlefields of consequence. On more
than one occasion, the British suffered grievous losses
either traversing Khyber Pass or trying to maintain their
control of it. From Khyber Pass arose British stories
of bravery and heroism. Dandy, you say, but how does
any of this relate to a game made by Oliver Whales in
the summer of 1943?
World War II took a horrible toll upon the British
people. The early years of the war saw nightly raids
by the Luftwaffe that rained bombs down on London in
an ungodly marriage of terror and carnage. During the
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