Open the window son.
Yeah the sliding window, what a beauty.
You could lean right out and wave to the girlfriend in flight … best on short final when she could clearly see you. Also great to lean out as you passed over war wreckage near aerodromes and try and get good photos.
Wasn't any good for clearing the cockpit of bloody cigarette smoke. It all streamed out past your nose.
I hated flying with Bloody old Captain Trembles... he lit the next one from the last.... there was no way of escaping the stink.
One FO used to torment Captain Drama by doing his AIP amendments while flying along. He'd open the window for each superseded page’s disposal, flick it forward from between pointer and big finger and it’d go fffuppp as it suddenly changed direction and shot out. He’d then slam the window shut.
Each time it shut, there’d be a sudden change in pressure in the cockpit, which painfully stabbed Drama’s ear drum, so he flinched. He wouldn't admit it... old soldier!
The senior F.Os could do things like this to get the old bugger back for his definite WW2 bomber pilot attitude to ham fisted, totally useless F.Os who were only good for hanging onto her in the cruise (No auto pilot). We junior blokes just accepted the crap he heaped on us, because if you could stuff up, it would happen with Drama and prove him right.
I was recently told a story by a retired captain at a reunion. Like a bloody dill I didn’t write his name down… “I’ll remember, no problem … then I had lots more rums.
Waaay back when he was a junior F.O. he was flying along out west and made a number of mistakes on the flight plan, so it was looking pretty bad with overwriting and crossing out.
TAA made the crew pin ALL the paperwork together at the end of the day… plans manifests, progressive load summaries, that started off with a zero and had to end with a zero.
It had all the loads (mail, pax, baggage, cargo,) uplifted and dropped off at each of the ports for the day, entered in the hundreds of boxes and columns.
"The boy" told the Captain he was worried about what would be said about the flight plan when it was examined.
Crusty Capt. (obviously a good bloke) said, “Showus”
Examined it and reckoned it was a bit of a disgrace, so opened his window and … oh dear! … then, resignedly shut the window.
Young bloke sang his praises from them on.
Some months later, Senior Route Captain (Later known as “The abominable NO man) … my old man… saw sprog passing by in the traffic office and said, “I want to see you in my office”.
“****! What have I done now” thinks one thin bar wearer.
The old man pulls a government envelope from his desk and empties the much creased but straightened, somewhat faded document on the desk and with THAT look asked, “What’s the meaning of this?”
Some ringer, riding by weeks after the accident, saw a paper on the ground and not being used to litter, dismounted and retrieved it.
Seeing that it was an important looking manuscript he felt it better be handed in to the authorities, so folded it and bunged it in his buttoned shirt pocket where it'd be safe.
Next time he was in town he visited the police station.
Cop agreed that it must be important and posted it off to TAA.
At the time of being told this tale I had recently been in the Commonwealth Archives, sorting through the five inch thick file that was the records of investigation of my old man’s, older brother’s, fatal Guinea Airways Lockheed 14 crash south of Darwin during the war.
Because it was a war crash and more so, because it was a magnificent documentation of buck passing, inter service rivalry and a chain of easily avoided links that ended in ten Yank communications blokes’ and two Aussie pilot’s deaths, it had been hidden away for sixty years.
I knew the old man had done some of the searching for the aircraft on his daily Adelaide Darwin trips (Took six weeks to find the wreckage … and that was only after as bush fire)
Amongst the many papers was a very incomplete, not very tidy radio log that looked suspiciously like the old man’s writing.
Boxes to have crew names weren’t filled in, sloppy writing, not staying inside the boxes… a terrible effort. (Something to do with the between 12 and sometimes 24 hour flight times in his logbook)
It DID have the date and rego so I photographed it … just in case.
Yes, on checking his logbook, the old man had been the FO on that flight.
Wanted to email a copy to the “teller of the tale” to show him the boss was once a sprog and not perfect, but can’t remember his name.
Often pilots tossed the food they didn’t like in their lunch box, out the window.
Same old salad, made at 5 AM got nice and warm by lunchtime. Tomato got to taste like asparagus, cheese sweated oil. Something green wilted in the bottom. Ham … yuk! Cake and crackers were OK … individually packaged.
Often sad asparagus or tomato would slide down the outside of the aircraft because it was so limp and wet. Difficult to chuck limp stuff hard… tends to disintegrate and coat the inside of the cockpit. Embarrasing to explain that to engineering
I had an apple once that I didn’t want.
Tried chucking it with considerable force and see if it’d get chopped by the prop.
Missed the prop and sailed into the engine nacelle where it bounced about for the rest of the flight. Props only go at 1050 RPM
Went quiet for a while. Do I fess up to the Capt. Could it dry out and become a fire hazard.
I kept an eye on it and it danced about happily for the rest of the flight.
Engineers found it or maybe one of the Bois who’d have eaten it. Never heard any mention of it afterwards.
Should have saved it for ammo and chucked it at the dear little black kids who hurled rocks and sticks at us as we passed close by on final.
Little black boys weren’t the only ones who tried assaulting aeroplanes on final.
Had a school mate who told me they used to make pipe canons with thripenny bungers and a marble and tried denting the underside of planes. They lived near Essendon and would ride their bikes out and ask the engineers if they could go and look at the planes parked away from the tarmac.
They know the rego of targets they’d shot at and examine them very carefully.
Haven’t times changed.
Pressurisation and computers, refrigeration … more comfortable but… Boring!