Some people should not be pilots.
The dumbest thing I ever did was to volunteer to fly with Sid Kennedy. But first, a bit of background. Sid Kennedy was trained as a pilot in the US Navy and he completed flight school just before the war (WW II) was over. He was discharged from the regular Navy but stayed in the reserves. After his discharge he went to divinity school and became a Christian Minister. With the outbreak of the Korean conflict the US Coast Guard advertised for ex US Navy pilots. Sid Kennedy came into the Coast Guard as a senior Lieutenant. They were checking him out in the various aircraft on our base. When he finished his checkout on the JRB (Beech D-18) he was sent to Cleveland from our base in Traverse City, Michigan. His mission was to pick up some high-ranking officers and civilians and bring them back to Traverse City. The day after bringing them to our station he was to fly them over all of the major aids to navigation on Lakes Michigan and Superior. As plane captain of the JRB I was asked if I wanted to fly with Kennedy. Sadly I replied in the affirmative. I slid into the right hand seat and we were off. Just after take off he removed his glasses and put on sun glasses telling me to remind him to put on his glasses just before landing. Right there, I should have known something was wrong.
He picked up a direct heading to Cleveland, which placed us out over Lake Erie. I asked him if he had a green card (Instrument ticket) and he said no. (He only had 172 hours in the Navy and about 20 as a CG pilot.) I told him that without the green card he had to back track and head over Detroit to Toledo and then to Cleveland. When we got to Toledo we were informed that the weather over Cleveland was deteriorating rapidly and I suggested we land at Toledo pick up some fuel and wait out the weather over Cleveland. He kept heading for Cleveland.
By the time we got to the airport the place was socked in. The GCA was inoperative but that didn’t matter because he was not checked out for GCA landing. The had us do a RADAR controlled approach and he must have made three or four attempts at which time they told him to land or they would shoot us down. We had to land because we were running low on fuel. I was so busy looking for other traffic that I forgot to tell him to put on his glasses. At about 45 feet or so he pulled the throttles back and we hit the ground so hard I expected the landing gear to punch through the engine nacelles. When we hit we bounced and then he remembered to put in some flaps. Normally when flaps are extended or retracted you would check to see that the landing gear didn’t move because the flaps and gear were operated by the same motor. I didn’t check because there was no time. Luckily, the gear did not retract and we ballooned down the runway and eventually stuck to the ground. They had to send a follow me tractor to lead us in and then he asked me why I didn’t remind him to put on his glasses and I told him I was involved in looking for other traffic. I asked him why he needed glasses during take off and landing and he told me that he had poor depth perception. He was supposed to wear corrective lenses at all times while flying.
On the way back we had two Captains and three high ranking civilians as passengers. The flight back was uneventful until at about 10,000 feet on a clear day we were jumped by two USAF F-89 Scorpions because Kennedy had failed to file into the ADIZ. Instead of letting down gradually, he made a big hole approach pointing the nose down like a dive-bomber. I along with several of the passenger had severe pains in the area of our mastoids and upon landing I was taken off flight status for several days.
Needless to say another pilot finished the trip. Kennedy performed equally as bad in his checkout on larger aircraft and he was eventually sent to Alaska where all of the work was off of water and a lot of fog was thrown into the mix.
Last edited by Lu Zuckerman; 4th Jun 2002 at 02:31.