DC3 TALES

[Fantome]

Back in my greasy-three days with some of the
Daks we wore round the traps . . rain-making . . .
fodder dropping when the floods came . . . . all
manner of perverse exploits .. . . ropeable berry
fruit farmers ready to murder the
cloud-seeder (just doing his job) after losing their entire
crops to hail.

. . . old hand (teeth cut on Ansons & Hudsons)
with Eanie Weanie
called Toby who demonstrated
out at 'The Lake' a short short fielder
to a newish chum in the R seat. Over the fence at 70 . .
. power right off . . .
... the mains contact . . . Tobe, his backside
sliding up the seat back goes hard on the anchors . .
hauling back back back
further to counteract the . . . . SH** OH DEAR!!! .. .
too much Tobe . .. . props plow up the field a bit
before tail drops back with a wham . .. . himself,
face like a plate of condemned veal taxies to the shed . .
bent blades sounding like a mini typhoon approaching
. .. . . . they didn't sack him . . . that time.

(or ever . . . just froze him out . . much later . . RIP Tobe)

[Milt]

Fantome

Did you do rainmaking out of RAAF Richmond?
If so please remind me of the name of the Sqn Ldr CO of the unit. I relieved him for some weeks whilst he was on leave and had a ball seeding growing Cumulus and watching them rain about 40 minutes later. Too bad we lost an aircraft east of Sydney. Presumed to have broken up in severe turbulence in a CB.

[sixtiesrelic]

We had a similar racket coming from a DC-3 prop.
The old boy with millions of hours in big round engines shouted ... he always shouted... (loud big round engines)... "Sounds like an exhaust gasket's blown".
He stopped her. I got to jump down and check the engine and found a peice of celophane paper from a lolly had been caught on the leading edge of the prop, with half over the front and half over back so it stayed there flapping.

Pretty loud for such a small thing but then have you blown a gum leaf whistle?

[GANNET FAN]

sixtiesrelic, yes all the time as a kid when we lived in Huskisson in 1948!!!

Sorry, bit of a drift.

But I do remember a very long BEA flight in a Dakota from Malta to Northolt when aged 9. I remember on a visit to the cockpit, the pilot stuck his hand out of the window, not quite sure what he was demonstrating but it stuck in my memory!

[Wiley]

Max Collins, (the man many of a cetain age will remember as the best trumpet player in the world who didn't need a trumpet) used to, pre flight, note at what window the most likely passenger was sitting. He had a small skeleton on a piece of string, the string carefully marked so he'd know when the skeleton was directly over the chosen one's window.

I understand it got some rather amusing results in the cruise - but I never worked out how he kept the skeleton or the string from fouling the #1 prop.

[sixtiesrelic]

You have to really try to hang something out as far as the prop tips. Slipstream tends to keep things close to the airframe.
I held a video camera out to take footage back along the airframe and I needed two hands and not very far out either.

[Mach E Avelli]

Hoskins 1967. I was a green F/O but had been taught the art of the three pointer well during my endorsement and on the line with a very accomplished ex Fleet Air Arm skipper.
Flying for the first time with a particular Captain - we will call him Jim. Anyway his leg, he wheels it; my leg I three point it, and the inevitable debate about which is best for short slippery strips ensues.
His leg into Hoskins and I rib him gently, suggesting it was real slippery yesterday, so why not three point it "Garn Jim, you can do it" and all that. CRM had not been invented back then ! So he decides to prove a point and wheels it on down slope towards the beach and gets on the anchors. I look out my side window and note that the main wheel has locked up, so call out something to the effect of "we are skidding". At least it was straight, so his side must have been locked up as well. When it becomes obvious we are soon to go off the end and into the water if we don't do something, he gives it a boot of rudder and a burst of power and around we go through nearly 180 degrees. It slides off the end but only just. After we get out and get the punters off, a couple of Landrovers and some ropes around the main gear haul it out of the dirt and we are back in business.
Needless to say, I got the rest of the flying that day and no more comments about three pointers.
And he bought me beer for a very long time after to buy my silence.

Re the skeleton on a string trick - later when I got my command I had a teddy bear set up with a fishing reel and used it to good effect on North Sea operations when the boys off the oil rigs had too much to drink on the way home. As soon as one of them sighted Teddy, the hostie (who was in on it) said she could see nothing, so no more drinks for you my boyo.

[Ex FSO GRIFFO]

Thanks for the 'memories'....
As a kid we used to live in Cairns and fly every year or so to SY for the family gathering at Christmas......

Who can forget the 'Flight Log' which was duly filled in by the Flight Crew, in pencil, and passed from seat to seat, recording something like

'VH-AEU, Over Hinchinbrook Passage, at 6,500ft, with a tailwind of 12 kts, estimating arrival at Cairns at xxxx,.......

I actually have one...somewhere...I'm looking.....it WAS a 'Fair' while ago,....

Cheers:D

[Animalclub]

I wondered why I never had my paper back books returned from one particular DC3 Captain... until I flew with him as a cabin attendant. After he'd finished reading them he tore the pages out and threw them out the window during flight.

In those days you didn't question a Captain!

[xgjunkie]

Anyone know anything about a ex RAAF pilot flying DC3's years ago who struck a yacht mast with his wingtip and I believe dismasted the yacht?

[Avgas172]

As a kid we used to live in Cairns and fly every year or so to SY for the family gathering at Christmas......



Warning: Thread drift....

Gees Griffo you must have been in the wealthy mob in Cairns, I can remember doing the same Christmas trip each year from about 1959 but we got seats on the 'Red Rattler', for a few years then went upmarket on the Sunlander & Brisbane Limited to Syd (maybe how come I ended up a Train Driver)

[4Greens]

Recruited for Qantas in the '60s for my jet experience. Due to a delay to the start of our 707 course, sent to Narromine for six hours on the DC3. One of our course had a lot of difficulty as he had been all through jet trained as was the new system in the RAF.

Enjoyed the experience but never found out why we did it.

[Fantome]

Cloud-seeding out of Richmond . . .. . different mob, I think. All my time was with Maslings. Plenty of input from CSIRO all along. The DC3 lost without trace off Sydney - are you thinking of the Airlines of NSW training flight one? (3 POB as I recall.) It was definitely a 1960 occurrence.

The demasting of a yacht off Darwin by a RAAF Dak occurred early to mid sixties. Must be someone round here who recalls how what when and why.

(ummmm . .. . why? . . . well why not? In a word. . . lairising.)

[Tmbstory]

Fantome:

I cannot remember a search for a DC3 off Sydney in 1960, I was at the Royal at Bankstown in those days.

Rainmaking with Maslings started in 1965. If any was done at Richmond, would it have been with the two Cessna 310's out of Tamworth.

Tmb

[Ex FSO GRIFFO]

G'Day AvG......

My Dad worked for 'generous' SY based company after the war, and it was 'a condition of service' that we got to see the respective families annually....

Took the '3', CNS - TL, then to BN. Then sometimes a '4' to SY.
As I remember, I didn't like the '4' too much, the windows were too small and too high from the seat for a kid....
And usually the '3' Captain would allow a kid into the 'holy of holys'......
NEVER happened in the '4'......

The things that just stick in yr mind....:ok:

[pulse1]

The late Reg Lewis from: http://www.pprune.org/military-aircrew/329990-gaining-r-f-pilots-brevet-ww11-35.html See Post 691

Flying for what eventually became Air India just after the war:

"On another occasion the stewardess would come into the cockpit to take the two empty plastic coffee cups from the pilots. Unlike modern pressurised aircraft, the DC3's side windows could be and frequently were opened. Once as she leant across the Captain to open the window to throw the cups out, he knocked her hand away and shouted "Don't ever do that. Can't you see that the other window is open ? If you had opened my window there would have been a terrible vacuum and we would all have been sucked out of the cockpit " Later on, the Captain put the aircraft on "George" as the automatic pilot is affectionately called,
opened both the windows, pressed the stewardess call button then he and the First Officer, hid amongst the bags in the baggage just behind the cockpit. The poor girl came up to find an empty cockpit, both windows open and the aircraft flying serenely along on it's own . Hysterics were usually the outcome of that one.
Another favourite was the "Toilet Flush". Remember this was India were only "Untouchables" cleaned toilets. On her first flight the Captain would ask a new stewardess if she had been briefed on flushing the toilet. Absolutely horrified" she would answer "No" The Captain would point to a large lever across from the side of his seat. "Whenever a passenger comes out of the toilet, you must come up here and pump this lever twenty times to flush the toilet " he would gravely tell her and the unlucky girl would come up every ten minutes or so , blushing furiously, hiding her face and pump away at what was the hydraulic lever, used to boost the system and used for emergencies."

[LeadSled]

4Greens,

Why did you do it ----- because everybody joining QF had to do their time on -EDC or -EDD.

The prevailing wisdom, at the time, was that if you couldn't fly a Dak, you were undoubtedly a poofter, a dunce and Yetti 3rd Class, and certainly not a real pilot.

For blokes who had never flown a tail wheel aircraft before, we generated some lovely rubber marks on the runway at Tamworth, off the edge and back on the runway a bit further down.

And, as even ex-military pilots discovered, your performance on the Dak. determined whether you were assigned to the DC-4, Electra or straight to the B707.

Tootle pip!!

[Stationair8]

So how did you go flying the DC-3 LeadSled?

[jas24zzk]

he never moved off it MUHAHHAHAHA

either that or went straight to the 707 for 'computer' assistance ROFL


soz

cheers big ears :ok:

Jas

[Checkboard]

$100,000 will get you 7 of the things on Ebay these days ...

7 DAKOTA DC3 AIRCRAFT FOR SALE (http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/7-DAKOTA-DC3-AIRCRAFT-SALE-HUNTER-JETS-/290615165428)

(Well, bidding closed today, and the $100,000 was just the starting bid - no takers though!)

[LeadSled]

Staionair8,
Loved it, already having plenty of tail wheel time made it easy, compared to the blokes who had never been near a piston engine, let alone a tailwheel.
I made the acquaintance of one chap in PNG who had accumulated something over 32,000 hours on Daks, went straight from RAAF basic to the then brand new aeroplanes, was still flying them right up to the time Air Nuigini ---- about 31,940 hours more than I managed at the time.
Actually got my hands on a DC-2 in US about 15 years ago, just a few circuits --- that one had Wright engine, also had some time lined up on a DST (model between the DC-2 and DC-3) but fate (aka Scheduling) stuffed the chance to be able to say I had flown all three.
Tootle pip!!

[LeadSled]

----or went straight to the 707 for 'computer' assistance

You would have been hard pushed to find a computer on a B707, until the last couple of years of service in QF, where several remaining aircraft had the doppler removed and Carousel IV fitted.

Tootle pip!!

[Chimbu chuckles]

Puters in a 707!!! - one of the highlights of my teens was accompanying my father on a Mauritius trip in 1975 in EB something. From Perth to Mauritius, and return a week or so later, I spent almost the entire trip up the front...the Navigator, Gerry Geary, teaching me how to use the bubble sextant to reduce star shots. I was already a reasonable hand at an ordinary sextant and sun shots from the east coast ocean racing scene. Lovely man...and VERY funny out on the piss:ok:

Gerry had been Dad's bomb aimer on Lincolns, 1 Sqd, in the late 50s during the Malayan Emergency - bombing the fck out of the Malay Peninsular.

Quite a sight for your average 14 year old...your, hitherto, terribly 'square' father and an old mate ****faced on the floor of your room making low flying hands and singing 'The RAF were flying Lancasters at zero thousand feet...." :uhoh:

[sixtiesrelic]

Lead slead ... who... Old Drama? He spent quite a few hours keeping in formation and bombing Germany in his early days and monstering F.Os in his latter days before he moved down to Oz.

[LeadSled]

relic,
Don't thinks so, this chap was home grown, spent his war in the western Pacific, and from about 1946 to retirement in PNG.
Lovely bloke, liked a cold beer on a warm day ---- has there ever been a cold day in the land of greenies and brownies ---- and where greenies have nothing to do with Bob Brown and his mob of watermelons*.
Tootle pip!!
* Green on the outside, red on the inside.

PS: Chimbu --- you must have experienced the ritual of waking up the Chinese store at Plain Magien at 4.00 am or so, to swap all the empties from the outgoing crew, for the tonsil tonic so necessary to re-hydrate the incoming crew.
Indian Ocean crossings then were always at night, not enough fix's in daylight.
The navs. were a tribe of their own, far more fun than Doppler or INS.

[Chimbu chuckles]

Yup - a little store on one of the old WW2 era taxiways that was now a road on the way to the Grande Hotel on Blue Bay(?) - where, from memory, 8-10 crates of empty Tiger Beer bottles (large) were exchanged for a like number of the icy cold variety.

I also remember going to a party at Curepipe at the house of a QF CSM based in Muaritius - Rick Warnicky?- and driving back, pissed, across unlit mountain roads in a rental Morris 1100...Gerry was driving...Dad and I dying just a little bit on every corner. There was a room party going on when we staggered into the hotel...well what to do:E

It were an eye opening trip - first time my disciplinarian and most assuredly uncool/square father (14 yr old's perception) let me drink - on a what happens down route stays down route basis - the next time I got drunk was on muck up day at the end of year 12..I got locked outa the house until I sobered up and cleaned up:ok:

[trashie]

People don't believe me when I tell them my instrument rating included a single engine aural null homing on limited panel.

Sorry I will not reveal who took the mast of the yacht only that it wasn't me

[greybeard]

An Aural Null, YES into Kalgorlie, always your Line Check.

Then there was the 11 sector day, 3 crew, Morawa, Yalgoo, Magnet, Cue, Meekatharra, Wiluna, Sandstone, Magnet, Yalgoo, Morawa, Perth.
As the F/O, worked the books, checked the mail, sold tickets, balanced the load sheet and if realy good got some fun flying.

Then there was Perth, Magnet, Meeka, ???, Newman, Roy Hil, Nullagine, Marble Bar, Hedland.

AND Geraldton, Carnarvon, Learmonth, Onslow, Barrow Island, Karatha, Roebourn, Hedland, up one day back the next.

Would do it again tomorrow if it was on.

:ok:

[LeadSled]

Chimbu,
Good memory for a young lad. Must have been a rather abstemious crew if the order was only 10 crates.
Rick W finally retired about 9 years ago.

a single engine aural null homing on limited panel.But how many of us can say we have done a letdown on an MF range, not that modern VAR thingey ---- and for me it was single engine and limited panel, because the conveyance only had a single engine and a "limited" panel.

At least where I was then, if it all turned to custard, we were never more than about 40 minutes from somewhere, where we could get a GCA to touchdown, CAT III with just a VHF radio. And all the fun and games when the A was switched out of the ADF, hand crank the loop.

Tootle pip!!

[mustafagander]

Ah Chimbu,

How the memories flood back about Isle Maurice. Now, the hotel was Le Chaland and it was on Grande Bay and yes, the ride home from Curepipe with a suitable "lubricated" driver in a rented Morris 1100 was the stuff of nightmares when you sobered up. Calling into the Chinese store on the way in from PER for more beer was a no-brainer, the deposit on the beer bottles was expensive! I can't remember the brand but I'll bet it wasn't Tiger. There were usually 4 computers on a B707, we had one each about 7" in diameter.

I was a mere youf of a F/E and spent plenty of time on the run to SA via MRU. Speaking French was a distinct advantage. I used to keep the ski boat running for a couple of years but it was really dangerous with all the coral about. Having good mates based there as engineers meant that I could borrow a toolbox to get the boat sorted.

Flying with the Navs was an eye-opener. Most of them were very lightly connected to reality! Bob S and his sea serpents, the Digger and his cheap bars world wide, Lofty B, Dave-the-right-size, Racehorse Brown, the list goes on!! The laws of libel forbid further names!!

There's a very good chance I flew to MRU with your dad at least once. Damn, I loved the place because the locals were very friendly and it was such a laid back trip.

[mustafagander]

Oh yes, 1000 apologies for the massive thread drift.

[LeadSled]

Mustafa,
To keep the thread drift going!!

A slight correction, the pub was on Blue Bay, Grande Bay was further up the coast, past Mahebourg.

Grand Bay's claim to fame is that it wast the site of the last victory of the French Navy over the Royal Navy, back in the 18somethings. Both flotilla commanders were injured in the battle, and wound up in adjoining beds in the Dutch hospital in Mahebourg.

A story about the Little Digger: He was a nav on Mosquitoes for most of WWII, only once did a German aeroplane hit his ---- and Ray actually made the acquaintance of said Me110 pilot, by then a very senior Lufthansa Captain, at La Chaland.

We all wondered if we were going to see WWII, part II, but they became great friends --- giving a whole new meaning to swapping war stories.

Tootle pip!!

PS: Mustafa , any relation to Bunny Lee's two great mates in Bahrain, Mustafacrap and Mustafapee.

[mustafagander]

Oops!!

LeadSled is right, Blue Bay is the correct one. About Grande Bay though, I can't find it on my Caltex road map of MRU which I used often to roam about the place. There is a Grande Baie up near Trou au Biches, only on the opposite side of the island about as far away as you can get!

The memory obviously isn't what it used to be!

I flew with Bunny Lee quite a bit but my handle didn't come from his two "friends". Our Bunny certainly had lots of "couth", most of it "un"!! His words, not just mine.

[Fantome]

tmbstory

Found the one you were wondering about -



Date: 12 DEC 1960
Type: Douglas C-47A-5-DK (DC-3C)
Operator: Airlines of New South Wales
Registration: VH-INI
C/n / msn: 12252
First flight: 1944
Crew: Fatalities: 3 / Occupants: 3
Passengers: Fatalities: 0 / Occupants: 0
Total: Fatalities: 3 / Occupants: 3
Airplane damage: Written off
Aircraft fate: Written off
Location: off Sydney, NSW (Australia)
Phase: Unknown
Nature: Training
Departure airport: Sydney-Kingsford Smith International Airport, NSW

The DC-3C had departed Sydney for a pilot training flight, but failed to return. Some floating wreckage was found and recovered off Sydney.

[Tmbstory]

Fantome:

Thanks for that information, all I can think of is that I must have been working hard to have missed the publicity.

Regards

Tmb