Over the Atlantic

The flight back from Old Blighty was enjoyable and interesting.  My dad flew left seat on our excursion to the Shetlands but he had me fly most of the time, including take-offs and landings.  He was evaluating my piloting skills, determining whether they had eroded, and

I didn't land like this! The old man lies!

my ability to still handle the big tail-dragger, especially in crosswind landings, and even just in taxiing: the Beech has a reputation for ground-looping if you let it get ahead of you. It has a non-steerable, castoring tail wheel.  You steer with differential braking and throttle -- carefully!  You lock the tail wheel for take-off and landing, otherwise you could totally lose the airplane.  I read an accident report of a Beech 18 crash at Van Nuys where the pilot lost control while taxiing and slammed into a hanger. The plane exploded and burned killing all on board and also burned down the hanger, destroying the three  planes inside.  So taxiing the 18 is nothing to be casual about.

As part of our preparation for the Atlantic crossing, we checked out our survival gear: a life raft, immersion suits and an EPIRB for the raft. (The ELT would go down with the plane if we ditched.)  I also bought a PLB when I bought my immersion suit in Glasgow.  Dad and the crew had already bought theirs in Gander. I hadn't even thought about the need for survival equipment when I let the two big oafs talk me into letting my little boys fly with them across the North Atlantic.  If I had, and genuinely realized the extreme danger they could face, I would have screamed No!  But I never thought about it.  The next time I want to know what an idiot looks like, I'll go find a mirror.

We left Glasgow at night, with me in the left seat as PIC and the popster as co-pilot.  The decision to depart at night was mine, as I wanted to arrive in Iceland in the morning with the sun behind us, and I wanted to have the full day to settle into our hotel in Reykjavík and get the Beech refueled and serviced.

The Beech has positive stability around all three axes and is very easy to fly, even in turbulence.  Trimmed up, you can even fly hands off, and it's very friendly for instrument flying.  As the engines droned steadily and the hours passed not much was happening.  My dad began to doze so I suggested he go back into the cabin and lie down on the couch and nap.  He did that without protest, which I thought a good sign of his confidence in my piloting abilities.  Soon enough he was snoring like Don Ameche in "The Bickersons," the old radio comedy routine.  It sounded like he was sawing through a steel pipe with a hacksaw.  And just who was Gloria Gooseby anyway?

So I had the airplane and the vast canopy of stars all to myself, the drone of the engines a comforting background noise that I soon didn't even notice -- I would only have noticed it the sound stopped.  I put the plane on autopilot when I went back to the little girl's room and when I fixed myself something to eat, made fresh coffee or just to stretch my legs, otherwise I enjoyed the feel of the plane through my feet and hands.  I kept a dead-reckoning plot of our position which I compared to our GPS reading, so should our electric gizmos go on the fritz I would have some idea of where we were and where I should point the scareplane.  I was please to see how closely my dead reckoning positions matched what the GPS was telling me. 

Overlaying the tension of flying hundreds of miles across the North Atlantic at night, I felt a sort of contentment, for want of a better word, sitting in the cockpit alone with the soft glow of the instruments and the blackness of the interior of clouds, broken suddenly by the startling emergence into starlight, auroras and meteors as the clouds fell away, tumbling down like a snowy staircase in the starlight and the light of the waning crescent moon soaring up behind and to the right of us as it rose after midnight.  Some of the meteors streaking across the night sky left persistent smoke trails, clearly visible. Others popped like flashbulbs at the end of their runs. The auroras shimmied across the sky in wavering curtains of aqua blue and green. I felt like I was seeing things a human being was not meant to see.  The overwhelming impression I got was indifference: the earth, the entire universe, was wheeling through an eternity measured in billions of years while we puny humans measured our brief lifespans in tens of years.  If we existed or didn't exist it was nothing to the universe. 

I did not land like this. Don't listen to that old geezer!

Approaching Reykjavik, dad was still sleeping.  He seemed really tired and I thought this whole trip must have taken a lot out of him.  I was pleased that he felt so comfortable with me driving that he could completely relax and let his poor old body get the rest it needed.  Of course, he had taught me to fly, as he did all his chil'ens, so he knew I could handle the plane no matter what situation might develop.  I decided to let him sleep as I got on the horn with Keflavik, Reykjavik's international airport. I dropped through some broken clouds but otherwise flew through a beautiful, clear morning (CAVOK), eased the Beech onto Runway 1 with a 19-knot crosswind (070 degrees).  Piece of cake. Well....   the demonstrated 90-degree crosswind component of our model Beech 18 is 16 knots so I definitely sat up straight and paid attention as I sat that little puppy dog down on the centerline and held it there.  Really not a big  deal: at our weight I came in over the threshhold, windward wing down, a little faster than I normally would have at 95 knots and, with a long runway ahead of me, didn't drop the flaps (they reduce rudder authority), set it down on first one main, then the other, and eased forward on the yoke to plant them firmly -- you don't continue to flair a taildragger like you do a trike; if you do, the plane will go airborne -- and added a bit of differential power and some rudder.  When we slowed to 60 knots and the rudders began to lose effectiveness, I dropped the tail with no delay, as I wanted to get that locked tail wheel down on the ground quickly to help maintain tracking, and pulled the yoke all the way back.  At the end of the run, I unlocked the tail wheel to taxi, using braking and differential power to steer. All routine for this airplane: no fuss, no muss, no rough stuff. But it's definitely no Land-O-Matic Cessna.

 Dad didn't wake up until I parked and shut down the Wasps.  The sudden silence brought him bolt upright, groggy but ready for action.  
"Relax, pop, we're here." 
"You should have wakened me and let me help you." 
"Nah, you were pooped and no help needed.  And look!  Such a beautiful day in such a beautiful land.  We made it!"
"Well, hallelujah, so we did.  Will wonders never cease?"

Truth be told, I was enormously relieved to have crossed what in my mind had been a vast and forbidding sea without incident. My ear had been attuned, hour after hour, for the slightest change in the sound of our engines. I stared hard at the instruments, never letting more than a few moments pass before I checked them again.  The immersion suit I was wearing was a constant reminder of potential disaster.  And why were we wearing our immersion suits?  Because should we need to ditch, there would be no time to put them on.  I rehearsed again and again in my mind what I would do in case of a ditching, opening the rear door, or if that wasn't possible, kicking out the escape hatch, grabbing the raft and manhandling it into the water -- I could do that, couldn't I?  I would have to.  What if dad were injured, could I get him out before the plane sank?  What if I were injured? What if we were both injured?  What if -- ?

But nothing happened at all.  The Wasps are long-proven, very reliable engines, with a failure rate of 11 per 100,000 hours according to the NTSB, and the Beach 18 itself was designed when they weren't sure how strong they needed to make an airframe for it to be safe, so they made it as strong as they could.  So the airframe, like that of a DC-3, has no lifespan. 

The folks at immigration thought it quite charming that a father and daughter had flown across the ocean together in their own plane, and such an old-fashioned one at that.  So we had a nice, if brief, chat.  Ground crewmen had also come over to check out the old bird -- the airplane, not my dad!  They promised to take special care of it.

We got a hotel a short walk from the terminal and next to a car rental place. I wanted to drive around the island a bit and see what it looked like and do a bit of shopping in the city, which I was told was about an hour's drive away, but dad said he would see to the airplane and get it ready for the flight to Greenland, then sack out.  Apparently, you had to make a special request to get a bowser of avgas rather than jet fuel, and there were other issues to deal with, from getting the right grade of oil to pulling the engine cowlings and going over everything to make sure nothing was loose, cracked, worn or leaking.  Dad was nothing if not careful and he didn't trust anyone but himself to either do what needed to be done or supervise those who did it.

We had dinner in the hotel that evening and chatted about the flight from Scotland and discussed plans for the crossing to Greenland.  A couple of men at the next table overheard us and joined our conversation.  It turns out they were British Airways crew and had seen our Beech 18 come in.  They complimented my father on the smooth job he had done landing the big tail-dragger in that strong crosswind -- they knew the reputation of the 18 for making fools of indifferent pilots on landing -- and when he said he was actually asleep in the cabin and that his little girl (meaning me, lol) had set the plane down, they were dumbfounded.  I don't think they really believed it.  I didn't care if they did or didn't.  My vanity is not tied up with how well strangers think I can or can't drive an airplane.  Okay, I was annoyed a little bit, but then I saw the funny side of it and under my breath began to scat sing "Anything You Can Do, I Can Do Better," the Irving Berlin tune from the musical Annie Get Your Gun.  My dad gave me a sideways glance.  I stuck my tongue out at him.  The Brits had no idea.  

Thereafter I sat back and let the menfolks chat about their various astounding adventures.  Dad let the bus drivers do most of the yarning, and, boy, could they tell some tall ones. I felt like saying, hey, pop, tell them about the time over Haiphong and ... or that time in the Gulf of Sidra when ... or in the Straight of Hormuz when those ... or over Baghdad the time that .... but nah.  If I had, dad would have shrugged and said they were just typical days at the office.  You'll never get anything out of him about that stuff.  He's not interested in impressing other men.  He's interested in seeing if other men impress him.  If they do, they might be worth getting to know and be friends with.  The rest?  Just part of the passing parade.

Très sexy, non?

 Addendum: El jefe wanted to take some retro 1940s-style plane-and-dame "cheesecake" snapshots with the Beech.  I didn't bring anything that would work for that, not expecting to be posing like a Petty girl.  We went shopping for some Forties-looking glamor rags but the would-be Ewing Krainin wasn't satisfied with anything the local shops offered. The closest get-up I could put together was cut-off jeans and a tee shirt. I hadn't brought any heels so had to buy a pair and the only size that fit from the limited selection available was not something I would have chosen if I had my druthers.  Jef had me pose standing leaning against the fuselage with a hopefully seductive, come-hither look (rather than appearing like someone who's about to  sneeze),  then wanted me to lie down on the wing and do the same, and while trying to do that I almost lost my balance and fell on my heinie.  Ah, the things we do for love.

Art originally on an Okinawa-based B-24.

Of course, the usual hanger flyers were lounging around the aerodrome and moseyed over to gawk as jef clicked away.  They opined freely on what we were doing.  The kibitzers good-natured comments made me smile, sometimes laugh.  I enjoyed basking in the male gazes of some half-dozen members of the patriarchy, loafer division, 3rd class. Alas and alack, they were more interested in the bodacious Beech than my bodacious bod.  They all wanted to climb aboard and go for a ride -- in the Beech!

Reprobates and scoundrels!

And here we have two of the grand instigators and culprits of this mad adventure, both looking innocent and happy as clams.  And ready to do it again.  My mother brought the boys home safe and sound and wildly excited to tell their mom everything they had seen and done, from firing a Spencer carbine light-loaded by a park ranger at a Civil War battlefield to gazing at an erupting volcano in Iceland to visiting the dungeon in the Tower of London.  They also saw the Spirit of St. Louis at the Smithsonian, toured the USS Constitution, took a boat ride on Loch Ness and visited the Normandy D-Day landing beaches.  They had so much fun and did so many things without me that I regretted turning down the offer to go with them.  I was happy for them but also began to feel kind of sad, realizing what a memorable part of their lives I had missed.  It was a portent of the days ahead when they, invested in their own lives, will forget to send mom a Mother's Day card and will want to be with their own families on Thanksgiving and Christmas and they'll promise to come and visit next year, for sure.  Oh, well.  Just another dumb decision to add to the ever-growing list. But maybe I am being selfish.  Maybe my original decision, that the boys should spend time with men doing man things, was best -- for them, if not for me. And, on that note, I shall close for now and write about the rest of the trip later.

      

         

 

 

 

 

Next:  On to Greenland

 (To be continued...)