I am not a freight pilot but I do remember ("in the 70s") when a French Dc 3 /C47declared an emergency at Liverpool (Speke). When he landed and the side cargo doors were opened out popped a lot of LIVE LOBSTERS that had got loose and in the rear hold and onto the flight deck. These were being freighted to Paris and the lobsters obviously did not want to go :eek::eek::eek:?

There was a similar incident to the Great Lobster Escape
at Luton involving EELS from Ireland, and an Autair Lizzy.
Eels were popping up everywhere for weeks after.
Stronger crates were needed.:O

Rhyspiper wrote:
 

The secretest secret load with extra secretness

Stuff so secret that if I told you what it was 50 million ninjas infected with HN-51 (who also happen to be freemasons) hired by the same arm of the CIA that blew up the WTC would absail from black helicopters with no lights on and they would all simultaneously give you the touch of death and then you would be dead and no-one would ever know that you existed because they would erase your identity.

That is how secret this was, and it was even more secret than all the other stuff that other people on here have "claimed" is so secret that they can't tell you about it or verify it for that matter.

As I previously posted we hauled Coca Cola "concentrate" on a DC-6 in the early 80's. I never saw so many cops (armed) and undercover etc. than any other flight Ive done including a plane full of prisoners, top secret military stuff, money, diamonds etc.

Things go better with Coke :E

This sounds like a fairy tale to me. First, nitroglycerine is in liquid form, very sensitive. In explosives or pharmaceutical factories (it is also used as a medication for heart conditions, e.g. nitrolingual), it is usually made in a remote bunker, away from other factory installations, and then transported in polyethylene cans of 10-20 liters at one time to the mixing building (where it is being mixed with other components, like wood pulp and ammonia nitrate for ammonia nitrate dynamites) to desensitise it.
Frozen nitroglycerine is extremely dangerous, much more than the liquid stuff, when frozen, it forms little cristalls, which can go off at the slightest touch.
Not for nothing is handling frozen dynamite considered one of the most dangerous operations in blasting. Many commercial dynamite type explosives use a mix of nitroglycerine and nitoglycol, which has a lower freezing point.

BTW, I did my national service in a heavy rescue engineering unit of the German civil defense and was trained in demolitions and blasting, so I have a bit of experience (theoretical as well as practical) with explosives.

Kabooooom
 

Wow I'm really impressed by all that info MD11engineer!
Had we known all that back in '66 I'm sure none of us
would've bothered to turn up!
I'll know better next time. Thanks.
But , Seriously , That's the way it was then.

Greenbacks, lots of them
 

About once a month there is a flight from FRA to Libya with about 1 metric ton of brand new $$$, delivered from the Federal Reserve Bank in the US.

Worth just shy of 100 million, but dyed red, so no thief could speculate on spending it...:ugh:

loadsamoney
 

Why dyed red? Why was it being flown around like that?:{

:=ah, come on!
1. "brand-new"
2. 100 million
3. bucks dyed red
4. to Gaddafi (Lybia)?
5. monthly

very hard selling story

Box of advil from NBO to a lodge in Northern Kenya in a C310.
Total cost:$1200

2500Kg of Pork to the middle East

Strange?
 

Flew from Kennedy to Colonge in a MD-11 with just one box. It was full of Russian Art worth 60 million.. And the person they sent along to watch the cargo was the hottest Russion girl Ive ever seen. Well, all I can say is that "I" flew the whole flight (and the auto pilot) cause the captian was to busy telling war stories to her...HA HA I guess its good to be the Capt!

Norway
 

I flew a Superpuma helicopter from Stavanger, Norway, to an oilrig 1.5 hours offshore to deliver a floppydisk. Never asked about using the internet.

Later that same year I flew barrels of oil out to that same rig:D

Strange Cargo
 

2 tons of earth worms.
1 million honey bees.
frozen frog legs.
frozen sheep intestines.
used whiskey barrels (wow, do they smell great!).

TMM - talking meat missiles - aka skydivers , they're pretty strange ...

One more from SOAF
 

Sultan of Omans Air Force Seeb, mid 80's. At the end of Ramadhan the Sultan shipped, by air, live goats and sheep to outlying townships and villages so they could be slaughtered for the Eid celebrations.

They mostly went on Skyvans to the small dirt strips, but one C130 full of sheep and goats went to Masirah Island and Thumrait for the troops to celebrate Eid. On this occasion a dump truck turned up at the air cargo hangar full of goats, so I asked the Pakistani driver how we would get the goats out of the dump truck so they could go into their crates which were then palletized for loading in the Herc. "No problem sir" was the response as he yanked the lever that made the dump bed rise in the air. Result? All the goats slid to the back and fell through the unfastened flap and promptly scattered far and wide.

Seeb airport was then closed for about two hours while we rounded up the goats like crazed herders. We got most of them, but some of my cargo handlers had liberated goats jammed in the back of their cars ready to celebrate Eid in fine style.

I remember a sign outside Liverpool airport which used to read 'Welcome to Liverpool. A nuclear Free City', whatever that was supposed to mean!
I was rather surprised considering I was taking spent nuclear fuel rods from Sellafield (which had arrived overnight by truck, through said same streets!) onto their rather odd destination!
But it was the early 80's!

Heavies
 

13 White Rhino to various destinations in Europe.

The challenge was that we had to load 40T of Fish ex. JNB on the same -400F, tricky, managed and glad to get them off again.:ok:

The strangest thing I have ever carried in my airplane was a 20 ibs box with a heart in it. I flew it from LAX to Montgomery field. I had the permission from the chief pilot to bump up the power if I needed to get there on time.

It was fun,,,,:ok:

In this morning's post:
6 boxes of live lobsters
1 bucket of live worms, type unspecified.
2 boxes medical samples.
1 box Fresias (apparently it's a plant)
Breakfast anyone?

Oh, and some post.

car engines...
 

whATdo you think'bout 4 Volvo car engines on 4 PMC pallets on our 742F completely empty maindeck from vbs to orebro sweden?????

that's why oceanirlines failed down....:mad:


i don't trust commercial dep.

Unusual freight
 

The underdeck of a DC-9-62F fully loaded with new dustbins
Palmtrees to the Gulf
Full cargo of sand to the Gulf

Unusual cargo
 

Not involved but witnessed:

A spark plug, repeat only one spark plug for a lawn mower delivered by a USAF C-124 Globemaster

Hunting Falcons
 

VIP DC-8-72, Ferry Dhahran - Medina (a week or so earlier, ferry Houston - Dhahran.....), pick up 2 Falcons and 1 Handler and deliver to the 'fellas' in Algiers for an outing. Ah, what's 30,000+ gallons of Jet A anyway.....? (oh, late 80's, no problem....)

500 gallons of avgas in a very old and used bladder in a very old and used DC-3 up in Northern BC Canada. The Captain and I were sitting up front with the windows open and both smoking cigarettes when the bladder started leaking real bad. We very carefully put the smokes out, turned off the nav lights cause the gas was pouring out of the tail cone and through the tail light. We landed a short time later and finished our smokes. We lost a couple hundred lbs of gas though.:}

In 1970 - a 93 year old passenger (SLF on his first airplane ride) returning back to his homeland in Colorado on a UAL B-737 LAX- DEN.

His original outbound trip from Colorado was via a CONESTOGA WAGON train, back when he was 12 yrs old in 1889.

(as relayed to me about a neighbor's grandfather).

Colonel Gaddafi's dead cousin...

Serious money!
 

108 metric tons of new Euros from Zurich to Athens.

We were told the day before we would be carrying "specialty bank paper".

I figured it out when we were met by several police vans full of guys dressed in black carrying awkwardly shaped gym bags.

They filled four trailers and drove off in a convoy.

12t potting soil, stones and palm trees to Luanda from Johannesburg in DC8, last week.

serious money ???
 

Did the 108T ship in one aircraft ??

Curious :ok:

Why not?

108T normal payload for a 747 :ugh:

Our company have flown such payloads in 747s before.

Hardly a long route for a 747, ZRH-ATH.

108T
 

Relax guys.

I just conjured up an image of having to dump some cargo (as it happens in movies .. ) to reduce weight ... :} wonder what the natives would think of a shower of currency

I am not contradicting.

Cheers :ouch:

??T

2003, BSG-BCN, a (thankfully heavily sedated) Rhinocerous.

Had to dump cargo once in a DC-3 between Agadez( Niger) and Tamenghest (Algeria) because we had lost a motor and we were way overweight. We had a motorcycle raceing team from Begium onboard originally but left them behind to get home on a different aircraft. We also had the old engine that I had changed in Agadez, on board as well as the raceing teams equipment. I had to throw out ( while in flight ) everything from generators, tools, drums of oil, motorcycles and parts. After I had everthing out the door we were barley able to maintain altitude so I was going to start taking the engine apart and throw it out too but...I had already threw out the ships toolbox.:ugh: The folks on the ground were probably very excited to see all this free stuff raining down on them.:}

dumping cargo ???
 

But what an arrogant attitude, dumping cargo like that .. :E White man has no consideration for natives .. :}

Wonder what the natives were thinking of the metal god's gift .. :mad: :mad:

(a replay of "gods must be crazy")

> Hope it is not considered thread drift .. (just adding a note of pun)

America is friendly with gadaffe now. They're united in the war on terror so maybe beleivable.

How about a MG sportscar on a KC97
 

In the mid 50's our squadron was TDY to Upper Heyford in the UK and after 116 days we returned to the states. Our CO had bought a MG and found that our tanker was almost empty of strap down cargo so against all regs it was loaded at night and returned to Kansas. If Lemay ever found out we would have all been in deep you know what.

Monkeys
 

Working at LHR 1970 or 71 when the PanAm Round the World flight PA1 was still a 707 (so no containers) I had the fun of helping placate the London terminating pax in the Customs Hall who were waiting for a VERY slow delivery of bags.

What the pax couldn't see was, on the far side of the wall, everyone else from the PA Station Manager down, frantically trying to clean VERY smelly monkey pee and poo from the (usually) expensive luggage that had been unfortunate enough to be loaded before Istanbul where the thoughtful loaders had placed a shipment of a number of cages of (apparently) incontinent monkeys directly on top of said bags!

The effects could not all be erased :uhoh: and some quite expensive damaged bag claims followed.

CAA inspector - does that count!! :p

Lions to Africa...
 

Picked up three caged male lions around 1997 in AMS on loan from the AMS zoo to the Joburg zoo. FE went down into the front belly to look at them and came back white as a sheet. Apparently, he got very close to a cage and one bounced off the bars roaring at him.