Freight DogsFinally a forum for those midnight prowler types who utilise the unglamorous parts of airports that many of us never get to see. Freight Dogs is for pilots and crew who operate mostly without SLF.
Approx 12 tonnes of US embassy material headng for Russia (cross load from a 747F to DC-8F).....not so strange but had a US guard.....due to 'allegedly' an incident that happens many years ago between Russia and the US..
That 'incident' wouldnt be commonly known as the Cold War, perhaps?
Well, it was for sure not smelling rose, but still fine. Each box was packed of 100 "Day Old chicken"..(not "chikens of 100 days Old"!! hehe ) It was written on, even if I actually think they were a litle older than "one day", they already had nice yellow fethers..
Somehow as soon as we were at top of climb with a cabin altitude of 9,500 feet, they became totally silent...(but still stincky, for sure!)
Was speaking to some of the lads here on the IL76 (to whom I am most grateful for the tour I got), and the stragest they had was a cargo of 300 Rwandan SLF. Seems they felt better about being 3 deep in the freight hold than 3 deep in the grave - cant say I blame them.
Air NZ Freigher ( Atlas B744F) Carried them from YMML, Melbourne Zoo - YBBN, They were trucked from Brisbane to Sunshine Coast ( Australia Zoo)
As for Day old Chicks, we handle them nearly nearly every second week in YBBN.
They come in from NZAA on NZ, tarmac transferred to PX for AYPY, on Pax aircraft, so down in the hauls.
24,000 lbs of golf balls on a Herc, flown to the Canadian high arctic to regain control of circulation in a gas drilling operation. The balls were pumped down the hole, then along came the next Herc with a load of peanut shells.....funny thing...it worked.
Approx 500lbs of cow dung from the outbound load of cattle.Was chewed out for not manifesting it inbound and not including on the wt.&bal!
A 450ib. horney gorilla
A noah's ark flt. to s. america with an handler who's last name was Hogfart.
Just a few.
47 tons of gold from Saudi to Switzerland.
Michael Jackson's stage gear including one large replica tank and a wardrobe sized container with a sticker on saying "Mikey's hair care".How big is a tub of hair gel ?
Disagreeable guys blindfolded and in orange jumpsuits.
1 ton of heoin.
Ostriches, an AN124 full of 'em from Afica to Belgium, not a sound from any of them the whole trip.
I'm just SLF, but I remember flying on a Comet to S'pore in 1953 there were several trays of day-old chicks in the galley (the hold not being pressurised or heated), and the older, skirted chicks told me that they regularly carried radioactive isotopes (for medical equipment) in special containers in the wing tips.
And when I had a car accident in Sierra Leone in 1963 a friend brought a complete front wing for my Ford Taunus from Monrovia, Liberia as carry-on baggage on a Viscount.
Then of course there was good old Aden Airways with mixed configuration 'DC3s' actually ex C47s (with original cargo doors) where you might be sitting next to a box of 0.303 ammunition or a spare bulldozer blade. My girl friend (great at chatting up the Agent) once got two Brit Govt passengers turned off, with their seats, to make room for the Arab chest she had just bought.
The saddest story was of the Cathay Pacific DC4 (their only 4 engine aircraft at the time) shot down by the Communist Chinese in 1953 because it was carrying French Government gold to the French Colonial govt in Saigon (to pay for the war) on their regular weekly service, just before Dien Bien Phu.
And of course there is the whole story of the huge airlift into Biafra during the Nigerian Civil War 1968-70. Everything imaginable was carried in, but only at night. We shipped in drums of bitumen for the runway at Uli-Ihiala, but I watched case after case of Heinekens being loaded alongside the CSM.
The only time i've seen an Aeroflot stewardess in tears was when their brand new Il18s were loaded with a cwt sack of flour on each seat in the Congo airlift Accra-Leopoldville (aka Kinshasa) in 1960.
200 porcelain toilets in a C130 RAF Masirah to RAF Salalah! 140T Turbine PLUS 45T of spares for a Hydro project in Phoenix, AZ from Linz, Austria in guess what? A clue ....... not the C130!!
We recieved a load for a MD-11 of steel bars about 4" in diameter and more than 20 ft long. The bars were stacked in sets of 6 and elevated with 2 or 3 stacks to fit male/female. It took us more than 12 hrs to get the load on.
After it was all locked down I thought of the possibility of these bars getting loose on landing and probably killing us all. The loadmaster agreed and demanded about a hundred more cargo straps to ind the load to the airframe and its self. It looked like a spider web when we were done.
After T/O I went back in the currier area and found the Loadmaster staring at the load through te net. The whole load settled and we spent the majority of the rest of the 7 1/2 hr flight from VCP to MIA tightening the load back down. It took the crew in Miami about 24 hrs to off load the aircraft. This was WOA, if you could fit it in we would fly it...
Our customer wanted to get their bang for their buck shipping pigs, picked up a load of pigs in a MD-11 stacked on top of eachother. The pigs generated soo much heat the aircraft could not overcome it and it was about 100f in the cockpit. Half the load died. That crew threw out everything including their luggage. I picked up the jet 3 legs later and still had to wash my clothes 3 times to get the stench off.
I am SLF but when in the RAF I used to Hitchhike in uniform to and from Airshows.
One occasion in the 60s I managed a lift out of Coltishall after an Airshow.
Making may way home to the West country where I was then Stationed
It is still very sensitive so I will generalise on some aspects.
The A/C was an Argosy, static at the show but on return to the UK from a
Training stint around the Med.
Come the time to depart after the show as was the "practice"!!!! along with other departing aircraft the Pilot decides to show off with a max rate steep climb out .
Not a good idea as strapped down in the back, nexr to where I was seated was the Pilots private Car!!!!!!!!!. Road ready!!!!!
Very very much against Regs., the crew used it to run around at the ports of call.
So max tatical take off .steep angle, , pressure differences, result......
Petrol from the fuel tank overflows via the filler overflow outlet.
I then informed the loadmaster of Petrol swilling around the Cargo floor. ,and the smell of Petrol fumes filling the hold.
I had never seen someone go pure white with fright until then.
Talk about Panic. Full emergency routines inside the Aircraft, absolute minimum electrics etc..Unable to declare to ATC the "Situation"
So there was your truely .an undeclared passenger not on the Manifest.
sitting in a flying "Bomb" ,to say I was cra**ing myself was an understatement.
The hairiest moment I felt was on deployng the Landing gear, as I imagined sparks/static or what ,could blow us to hell and back.
Suffice to say we landed ok and the Loadmaster took me to one side and
forcibly told me that there never was a "Situation" and on pain of death to
keep quiet about it for years to come.
45 years have now passed so I feel I am safe to relate this tale.
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