I love a story with a happy ending
Con-Pilot. While the forum is called Accidents and Close Calls, it seems to me the forum so far has failed to attract much interest in the two subjects.. It may be because the relating of accidents and close calls are sometimes regarded as a line shooting exercise and most pilots tend to shy away from that.
It would be a great pity to see fine contributors such as yourself eventually fade away from the forum (I sincerely hope you don't). It is all too easy to get discouraged from writing amusing anecdotes that yet have a serious side, when one sees few other contributions coming into the forum.
Your delightful story of the former military Colonel that you flew with, brought back to me memories of similar characters with whom I flew. In my case the Royal Australian Air Force.
I called the following story THE AMBERLEY FREIGHTER RUN and it is about flying the Avro Lincoln heavy four engine bomber; the advanced version of the well known RAF wartime Lancaster. The era was the 1950's
The Lincoln bomb bay had capacity and hard points for thousands of pounds weight of bombs. Freight could be carried instead of bombs or torpedoes. The strangest load that I ever carried in the bomb bays, was three tons of roofing tiles inside special large canisters hooked up to the normal bomb attachment points. These roofing tiles once graced the roofs of the living quarters of the RAAF base at Momote in the Admiralty Group of islands a few hundred miles north of New Guinea.
In the early Fifties, Coca Cola had not yet reached the shops of Far North Queensland. Brisbane in Southern Queensland had Coca Cola and so did the Officers Mess at Amberley. There was plenty of Rum at the Officers Mess at Townsville, and as we all know, Rum and Coke go together like a horse and carriage. And so it was decided to lay on a Lincoln at tax payers expense to slip down the road from Townsville to Amberley (around 600 miles) and return with fifty or so, crates of coke from the RAAF Amberley Officers Mess.
Amberley made a healthy profit from flogging its coke and to pick up the drinks we enjoyed a low level jaunt at 500 feet through the beautiful Whitsunday Islands along the Great Barrier Reef. Flight time around four hours each way.
We would leave Townsville at 0700 with a crew of seven, the navigator would lay a course to Cape Bowling Green 30 miles to the south-east (the last point of departure from the FNQ coast), then fly sedately following the coastline until approaching the Whitsundays. Then it was down on the deck at 50 feet above the Barrier Reef to flash (165 knots?) over yachts and occasional coastal ships. Photographs would be snapped from a huge F51 hand-held camera, smoke floats would be dropped as the navigator ordered three-drift winds, and a lovely time was had by all. There was a serious side to all this, of course.
New graduated young navigators would be posted to the squadron at various intervals throughout the year and as the war mission of the squadron was anti-submarine searches and shipping convoy escort, they had to gain experience at this specialist navigation. There was nothing more boring than flying hundreds of miles out into the Coral Sea just to turn back and come home again, so the Coca Cola runs were a perfect excuse to give the navigators continuation training, and the rest of the crew, ship identification practice. All shipping sightings and position reports were flashed back by High Frequency radio to Headquarters Operational Command (HQOPCOM), at Penrith near Sydney.
Depending on the type of navigational exercise scheduled, the route to Amberley might be via a turning point several hundred miles out to sea. The navigator would use a sextant to take bearings on the sun in order to establish his position, while the pilot needed to fly a steady heading for several minutes to ensure an accurate position line. There would be much bitching from the nav if the pilot flew inaccurately. The navigator’s charts and calculations were assessed by the squadron senior navigation officer after the aircraft returned to base and poor flying by the pilot could ruin an otherwise flawless navigational exercise.
These ocean flights were not as popular as the coastal runs, mainly because the bar might be closed by the time the Lincoln got into Amberley in the evening. Although the average age of the Lincoln crew could be only 23 years old, I cannot recall ever having been lost during these long range flights. Where bad weather or cloud cover prevented use of the sun or the stars for position fixing, the navigator relied on deduced reckoning until he could pick up a long range radio bearing from high frequency (HF)military radio stations.
I had just recently obtained my command as a maritime captain when I was scheduled to fly a coastal maritime exercise to Amberley. Another Lincoln had taken off an hour earlier to fly direct to Amberley to undergo a major inspection. It was planned that we would land a few hours later, keep the engines running while the other crew climbed aboard, and then return direct to Townsville. The other crew had been briefed to pick up crates of coke from the Officers Mess and load them on our aircraft. This was cost efficient exercise guaranteed to satisfy the most eagle eyed accountant officer.
The crew of the first Lincoln included the squadron’s most hardened drinkers. The captain was Flying Officer Wally, a former wartime Lancaster pilot. His copilot was Sergeant Bill who many years later served in Vietnam on Canberra bombers and I am unable to recall the name of the navigator. The signaller was a Warrant Officer called Joe. As we taxied in at Amberley, Wally and his (merry) men were waiting on the tarmac with a jeep loaded with crates of coke. As it was going to be a long trip home, they had bought some bottles of rum to go with the coke. Merry being the operative word, they lost little time between dropping off their Lincoln for maintenance and getting into the rum and coke.
Amberley was the home base of No 1 Bomber squadron which also operated Lincolns, and several of Wally's wartime colleagues were based there. There was nothing that RAAF aircrew enjoy more than to meet old friends from days of yore and enjoy a few beers in the Officers Mess. Because of this, Coca Cola runs were generally planned to stay overnight at Amberley, and a late departure made the following day to allow time to sober up. Wally was no exception and it was soon clear that he was determined to stay overnight.
After heaving their parachutes and Mae Wests (life jackets named after a full breasted blonde film actress of an earlier era), into the back of the Lincoln, Wally and his crew made themselves comfortable on the hard metal floor behind the signaller’s position. The crates of coke were stored unsecured throughout the length of the long fuselage. The wheel chocks were removed and we taxied to the run-up bay. Now, the Lincoln is not a pressurised aircraft, is very noisy, and has an intercommunication system which requires the use of microphones fitted into the crew oxygen masks. Pilots wore leather or cloth helmets and goggles were optional.
One should keep in mind that it was an operational bomber, not a passenger transport. If the intercomm system is inoperative, then messages are either passed by hand – or by shouting into someone’s ear – or by a hard tap on the shoulder in order to gain instant attention. It was the last named that got my instant attention while I was engaged in running up all four engines to test them.
While checking the magneto switches at high power, I became aware of the odour of alcohol seeping into my oxygen mask. Unlike Dakota aircraft, the Lincoln was not equipped with the luxury of an alcohol operated de-icing system for the windshields or propeller blades. We had nothing to combat icing in bad weather. I was bemused therefore to smell what seemed to be an alcohol tainted breath. When the apparition that appeared behind me hit me hard on the shoulder and demanded that we taxi back to the tarmac, I realised that Wally was going to cause a real problem on this flight.
Wally had left the crowd drinking rum and coke down the back and crawling past the now irate navigator, was leaning over between the copilot and myself watching the run up procedure. He had no helmet, therefore no means of communicating except by shouting into my ear. As the starboard inboard Rolls Royce Merlin engine was at high power less than fifteen feet from the cockpit, Wally had to shout very loud indeed. He was also well on the way to getting drunk. To make my day, he thought he could detect a non-existent rough running of the engine we were testing, and so redoubled his attempts for us to abandon the flight so that he could enjoy another hard night of drinking at the Mess. .
There was nothing wrong with the engines and so I asked him politely to leave the cockpit and let us get on with our job of flying His Majesty’s aircraft back home to Townsville. Fortunately he understood that as captain of the aircraft I had full authority to run the show, despite that I was a low rank Sergeant while he was a commissioned officer.
In the event, Wally vanished, only to reappear some hours later demanding that I stop flying in severe turbulence as it was interfering with the drinking activities of his crew down the back. ..Granted, it was bumpy, because we were threading our way between heavy clouds and as weather radar was not available in those days, it was inevitable that we would run into the odd thunderstorm or two.
This was bad enough for a sober crew, but understandably damned annoying if you were trying to have a civilised drink down aft. Keep in mind the Lincoln had no seat belts other than for the crew. Despite doing our best to avoid the turbulence I became the target of much abuse from Wally, co-pilot Bill and Warrant Officer Joe. They thought I was flying into cloud purely to upset their party. While that was patently untrue, I admit I was keen on logging more cloud flying hours towards gaining the prestigious Green Card instrument rating and so perhaps they had a valid point.
We landed at Townsville four hours later with the freight load diminished by half a crate of rum and coke. Flying Officer Wally and his crew practically fell on to the tarmac and weaved unsteadily towards the crew room under the base of the control tower – there to divest themselves of parachutes and sundry other flying regalia. The odd chunder was heard. Meanwhile Wally sought out the Commanding Officer and demanded that I be put on a charge for deliberately flying into heavy clouds and upsetting his party.
The CO’s reply, on seeing the dishevelled Wally, was unprintable, and he was ordered home to sober up. That was the end of the matter.