The term Good Airmanship is rarely used in official documents nowadays. Certainly not in ATSB reports where only facts are published and no opinions aired. In fact with the reliability of today’s modern aircraft and their systems, we rarely hear of occasions where the pilot has displayed an example of good airmanship.
So for the benefit of readers who have never read about good airmanship, the following story is a good example of its meaning. Permission was received from Macarthur Job to use extracts from his book Air Crash Volume 2. Due to space restrictions some minor editing was needed before being presented on Pprune.
In February 1940, an Australian National Airways DC-2 (forerunner of the DC-3) was flying from Essendon to Adelaide. It had just undergone a major service at ANA’s Essendon workshops. In command was Captain Norman Croucher with First Officer Arthur Lovell in the right hand seat. There were eleven passengers and one air hostess, Mavis Matters.
10 miles NE of Horsham, Aeradio officers at both Essendon and Nhill received a transmission from the crew that they were experiencing engine trouble and were “going into Nhill on one motor.” The aircraft requested the direction and strength of the wind at Nhill. This information was transmitted to the DC-2 but it did not subsequently land at Nhill and no further transmissions were received from it. Later it was discovered the DC-2 had forced landed in a wheat field near Dimboola and that neither crew nor passengers had sustained any injuries.
The circumstances leading to the forced landing were nevertheless highly dramatic and the margin by which the horrifying airline catastrophe was averted was very slender indeed.
The trip was certainly normal in every respect until about an hour out of Essendon when, in cruising flight on the autopilot at 6,000 feet, there was an unusual noise – something like a distinct bump. The F/O went back to the passenger cabin to investigate. He could find nothing wrong, but as he returned to his seat the starboard engine suddenly lost all power. Both pilots then saw that the fuel pressure warning light had illuminated and the corresponding fuel pressure gauge reading had dropped to zero.
Believing the engine driven pump had failed the F/O used the hand operated wobble pump to try and restore fuel pressure, then opened the cross-feed cock to enable the port engine driven pump to supply the starboard engine. But even though the starboard engine was windmilling, the action had no effect in restoring fuel pressure to the starboard engine. The emergency gave the crew no real anxiety. The aerodrome at Nhill lay only 40 miles ahead and with plenty of height in hand (the DC-2’s three bladed Hamilton controllable pitch propellers did not feather), the captain expected no difficulty in making a single engine approach and landing. At this stage therefore the crew simply called Nhill and reported their intentions.
Soon after, the air hostess came into the cockpit to report a strong smell of petrol – something most unusual in the well insulated cabin of a DC-2. Again the F/O went back to investigate. Still worried, he returned to the cockpit and glancing at the starboard engine was shocked to see orange flames and black smoke streaming from around the engine’s ring cowling. “It’s on fire!” he yelled to the captain.
Though unable to see the fire from the left hand seat, Captain Crowther immediately throttled back the live port engine and threw the DC-2 into a steep, side slipping descending turn to the left to keep the flames away from the starboard wing fuel tank which was situated between the engine and fuselage.
As it happened, the aircraft had just passed over the town of Dimboola, a regional centre in the heart of Victoria’s Wimmera wheat belt. Below the DC-2 as it turned back in the direction of Horsham, stretched a vast area of flat farming country, at this time of the year much of it freshly harvested stubble paddocks. The only trees were those separating some of the fields as wind breaks.
Keeping the side slipping descent as steep as he dared as the fire intensified, Croucher quickly selected the nearest area that offered an ample landing run between one line of trees and the next. The paddock fences in between he ignored; with the fire streaming around the metal wing, every second counted – it was vital to get the DC-2 on the ground in as short a time as possible. The undercarriage meanwhile had lowered itself. The undercarriage mechanism of the DC-2 incorporated no “up” locks, the gear being held in the “up” position entirely by hydraulic pressure. As the fire burnt through the hydraulic lines in the starboard nacelle, releasing hydraulic pressure, the undercarriage simply fell into the extended position. Dimboola townspeople who happened to glance up at the aircraft passing over on the normal daily service were awed to see smoke suddenly pour from its starboard engine. One witness described tongues of fire mingling with the smoke as the aircraft swung around in a steep bank over the town, dropping swiftly.
Up in the cockpit, the increasing urgency of the situation was becoming alarmingly evident to F/O Lovell. With flames now streaming back behind the trailing edge of the wing as far as the tailplane, the entire starboard engine and firewall gradually drooped as the nacelle’s two upper longerons were affected by the intense heat, then abruptly fell forward into a horizontal position as they gave way altogether. Supported now only by the two lower longerons from the centre section spars, the engine and propeller was actually hanging directly in front of the lowered starboard undercarriage – an appalling prospect for their imminent landing.
Still holding a sideslip with hard left aileron and opposite rudder, Captain Croucher was exercising superb judgement as he guided the rapidly descending DC-2 towards the open area he had chosen. A line of trees loomed up but no sooner had the DC-2 skimmed over the trees when, at a height of about 100 feet, the starboard nacelle’s remaining supports finally succumbed to the heat and the complete engine, firewall and propeller fell from the aircraft, striking the tailplane as it did so. The aircraft lurched momentarily, straightened out, then touched down fast but smoothly on its main wheels in the stubble paddock.
With hydraulic pressure for the brakes gone also, the captain almost immediately had to give the port engine a burst of throttle to swing the aircraft clear of a lone tree in their path. This, coupled with the fact that no braking was available, precluded any hope of stopping within the confines of the paddock. Still rolling fast, the DC-2 burst through its far wire fence ‘snapping like string” as one passenger put it later.
As the aircraft finally slowed to a stop about a mile from where the fallen engine had come to rest, the captain shouted to the passengers to “Get out quickly.” They did so, the men gallantly remaining in their seats until the women and the child passenger were safely out. With the complete engine gone from the starboard nacelle, the fuel shut off, and no slipstream to fan the flames, the intensity of the flames subsided. The crew were attempting to douse it with the aircraft’s portable extinguishers when the Dimboola Fire Brigade arrived and quenched the remaining flames.
Examination of the wing structure in the area of the starboard nacelle showed that it had been badly damaged and weakened by the fire. Indeed, with the weight of the aircraft supported on the main undercarriage, the starboard wing outboard of the nacelle was drooping slightly. Pending the removal of the wings to transport the aircraft back to Melbourne by road, the captain considered it prudent to support the starboard wing to prevent any further damage through bending and distortion. For this purpose, the farmer on whose property the DC-2 had forced landed, cheerfully carted dozens of bags of wheat to the scene stacking them under the wing at the pilots’ direction.
The loss of a wing in flight – with all the tragic consequences such a catastrophic failure would have brought – was clearly averted by a frighteningly small margin. It was suspected that, with the aircraft just out of a major servicing at Essendon, a fuel line union might not have been fully tightened. Subsequently working loose, it might have simply fallen off in flight – a theory which the airline engineering people refused to discuss, even with the aircraft’s crew.
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Side slipping as a training exercise is rarely taught at today’s flying schools. Yet it was the effective use of the sideslip manoeuvre that saved the day in the above incident. Readers may also recall the Air Canada Boeing 767 that ran out of fuel during cruise flight near the town of Gimli in Canada. The captain made a successful dead stick flapless landing on a short runway used for drag racing. He was able to sideslip to lose height on final approach.
So there you are. Two examples of superb flying skill and good airmanship.
