Old planes

North American FJ-3 Furies.

 When I found the album with photos from my New England grandfather's life, I also found a packet of photos from my Navy grandfather's time in the service, most seemingly from the early to mid-1950s.  They were photos of naval aircraft of that era, at least some of which my grandfather had flown if the comments jotted on the back are any indication.

As I've written about before, he began his career flying Grumman F3Fs

Convair R4Y. Douglas ADs in the background.

before Pearl Harbor, was flying Brewster F2As when the Japanese attacked, switching to the Grumman F4F at the end of that December.  He engaged in his first air combat flying that plane in February, 1942, then flying it through the Solomon Islands campaign before his squadron was equipped with the Grumman F6F, which he flew for the rest of the war.

Immediately after the war he flew the Chance-Vought F4U, which, from the few comments of his I've read about it, he didn't think much of, calling it "the hose nose" and "the pig." His first jet was the McDonnell F2H Banshee but transitioned to the Grumman

McDonnell F2H Banshee.

F9F which he flew on a Korean cruise in 1951 (about which I've written).  His job was flak suppression for the  F4Us and Douglas AD ground attack planes. I guess that was because the jet was faster and so less susceptible to being hit by AAA.

After Korea, he flew several different aircraft, including the Banshee again, which he seemed to like.  It was a time of rapid evolution of carrier fighters, most of them ranging from being not very good to flat-out dangerous -- the Chance-Vought F7U was one of the latter, my grandfather almost losing his life trying to trap in one. Rather than chance another try he was ordered to land at a shore base.

Beech SNB (Twin Beech) flying over a Lockheed C-130.

Aside from assorted aerodynamic dysfunctions, a serious difficulty with these early jets was the engines, which were very slow to spool up so if you dropped below the glide path and needed to add power quickly, you couldn't, and a ramp strike was assured.  It was not until the McDonnell-Douglas F4B and variants came along that the Navy's jets had enough immediate power on hand to eliminate that danger.  Even the Chance-Vought F8E that my grandfather flew in the early days of the Viet Nam war, the last before he retired, had the slow spooling problem.

Anyway, scattered in this post are a few of the photos I found. Looking through them, I couldn't help spotting the Twin Beech in the photo above. It seems like that airplane has been around forever.  The company built 9,000 of them, only ending production in 1970, a run of 33 years, and hundreds are still flying, a number still in commercial service of one type or another.  The C-130 it's flying over in the photo has also been around seemingly forever.  I flew in one in Afghanistan from Bagram to Leatherneck and also on a trip from Futenma, Okinawa, to Iwo Jima.

Lockheed T-33B

I always liked the look of the T-33: simple and clean (like Utada Hikaru's song!) lines, no angles and bends and protuberances. I read somewhere that the nose is that of the P-38, reused when Lockheed engineers designed the original P-80, the fighter the T-33 trainer was derived from.  Save a buck where you can, I guess.  Richard Bong, the Army Air Force's top ace in World War Two, was killed test-flying a P-80.  The main fuel pump failed on take-off from Lockheed Field in Burbank and he had forgotten to switch on the auxiliary fuel pump, even though it's an item on the pre-flight checklist. Instead of remembering, oh, right, the aux, and flipping it on so the engine would restart, he rolled the plane upside down and dropped out (I guess the early P-80 didn't have an ejection seat).  The plane crashed at the intersection of Satsuma and Oxnard in North Hollywood.  Bong was too low for his parachute to open and he was killed.  I'm not writing that to say what a moron Bong was.  I'm sure he was a vastly more capable pilot than I will ever be, but he just got a little bit careless one time, and one time is all it takes. Sometimes when I climb into the left seat, impatient to get going, I remind myself that if even Richard Bong could screw up, what are the chances dumb old me will? So I settle down and methodically go through the pre-flight procedures.

North American FJ-3 Fury

I also like the clean look of the FJ-3 Fury.  It was the Navy version of the F-86. My grandfather did fly these for a while and apparently considered it "a pretty good flyer"; at least that's what's written on the back of the photo to the left; I assume it's his handwriting.  He added "the engine is crap." I wonder what experience he had with it that led to that comment. 

I remember a story my dad told me about gramp's carrier landings in the pre-Vietnam-war era. In those days, a white flag was raised at the landing signal officer's platform to indicate "ship into wind and deck ready" so landings could commence.  Then and only then were you supposed to begin your landing approach.  But gramps would lead his squadron over the fleet at 20,000 feet and when he saw the wake of the carrier and its escorts begin to curve into the wind, he would throttle back to minimum power, pop his dive brakes and wing over into a 70-degree dive toward the ship, his squadron's planes following at 30-second intervals.  Before the carrier had completed its turn he would whoosh past the boat close aboard the starboard island. Then he would haul up into a chandelle, dropping his landing gear and hook, then flaps as he banked into a constant-rate descending turn to the left, straightening out in the groove and getting the "cut" signal from Paddles just as the white flag went up, catching the number two wire.  His squadron would come in behind him boom, boom, boom and all 16 planes would be aboard in eight minutes.  The amazing thing about this is how he timed every move so that at the earliest possible second he got the cut.  Not one second was lost in delay.  Now this may seem like hot-dogging, but it wasn't because gramps could remember the early days of the Pacific war when planes would have to come in fast when the carrier was under immanent threat of attack, refuel, re-arm and launch again just as fast as they could to lessen the risk that they could be caught on the deck by enemy planes or the carrier be torpedoed by an enemy submarine while it was sailing a predictable, steady course into the wind.  So he was making sure his squadron could do that while providing an example to every squadron aboard.

Here's a Wiki photo of F9F-8s.

I was looking for a photo of the F9F, gramp's favorite I think, but didn't find one in this batch. Maybe next time I dig around I'll find more photos.  Anyway, here's a note he copied into his his journal (which I've excerpted from extensively before) about the handsome, swept-wing Cougar: "The F9F-8 came pretty close to being the best all-around jet fighter during the mid to late '50s.  An excellent dogfighter, with good payload and range, very reliable, docile and cooperative, well-armed with four 20mm cannon as well as the ability to carry Sidewinders, it was only pushed aside by the mad rush to develop  Mach 1 and Mach 2 fighters, a capability that, it would turn out, was not used during the Viet Nam War."  I get the feeling gramps would have rather faced MiG-17s in an F9F-8 than in the F8E that he did, the legendary "last of the gunfighters" though it may have been.

I trust I'm not boring you guys with all this airplane stuff, but I'm not doing a lot worth writing about these days, just taking care of the newest member of the family,  the Poopster, the Partaker of the Fountain of the Boob, heir to all the riches of a mighty civilization. 

I hope.

___________________

Update:  El jefe informs me that the plane I identified as a C-130 is in fact a Douglas C-133.  Okay, but I ain't changing what I wrote about the C-130 and I don't have anything to say about the C-133, never having heard of it before, although it seems to have had an impressive history. I looked it up and it went into production in 1957.  Tying that in with the fact that the F2H pictured above it belonged to VC3, which was disestablished in 1956 (I looked it up!), that suggests the date of these photos is 1957ish .  But anyway, now you know the photo is of a C-133.  And so do I.

Someone else's memories

 I spent some time the other day digging through a couple of old boxes of family junk in storage and came across some things that caught my attention and made me wonder a little bit.

C-54 undergoing maintenance.

I've written about my New England grandfather, as I call him, who was in the Army Air Force in World War Two, left  the service after the war but got called back in for the Berlin Airlift and then the Korean War, deciding to stay in and flew B-47s in the Strategic Air Command. Well, I found a bunch of photos in an album from his Berlin Airlift and Korea days.  He flew C-54s in the Airlift and Douglas B-26s (not the Martins) in Korea, where he also was deployed as a Forward Air Controller.

Rhein-Main, I think.

Apparently, the Berlin Airlift was very challenging as the planes had to fly in all weather conditions, fog, rain, snow, icing, making the  primitive GCA landings at maximum gross weight pretty perilous. The crews flew non-stop except for brief breaks to catch some sleep and eat something.  Otherwise it was fly, fly, fly.  Crews also had to fly in strictly enforced air lanes, the enforcement done by the Soviet Air Force, who would shoot you down if you strayed off course.  And there was a lot of traffic in those air lanes and in the pattern at Tempelhof and Rhein Main,  so much so that no go-arounds were permitted. You landed that puppy dog however you could or crashed in the attempt.

Interior of a C-54 loaded with rations for Berliners.

After the Berlin Airlift, my grandfather was stationed in Japan flying the B-26 and when North Korea invaded the south, he flew some of the first bombing missions of the war and was then assigned as a Forward Air Controller.  I'm guessing that he may have gotten that job because he flew P-40s in the Fifth Air Force during the early days of the Pacific War, serving in Australia and New Guinea, a theater in which Major General George Kenney boasted "here the artillery flies!" emphasizing the close cooperation developed between ground and air units.

War on the ground in Korea.

Whatever the case was, he was whisked away from a comparatively plush life flying missions from Japan and going home every night to serving with the ground pounders, calling in air support missions to hammer the oncoming Chinese who vastly outnumbered the American GIs.  It was from this time that, as legend has it, a private asked, "Sarge, how many hordes in a Chinese platoon?"

American air power played a major role in stopping the Chinese onslaught, but at a price.  In the album I found several photos of downed planes.  Here are a couple of a P-51 that was able to belly in on an open spot of land.  You can see

Same plane.

from the bent prop that it was still spinning, the engine producing power, when the plane touched down, and it doesn't look like it was on fire.  Maybe the pilot was wounded and opted to set down near American troops while he could still control the aircraft. Or maybe the cooling system was hit and the engine would stay running for not much longer so the pilot set the plane down while he still had power to choose a suitable spot.
 

Downed P-51. Note bent propeller.

In the album I also found a paper napkin from the officer's mess at Pease AFB, where my grandfather was stationed in the late 1950s, flying, as I said, B-47s. I've written about that a couple of times before.  Looking at it, I wondered why it was so carefully preserved in a photo album.  It must have had some significance, but whatever it was is now lost in time.  Was it a special date?  At a mess hall?  I don't think so.  How about an award ceremony?  Or ....  Well, who knows?  It's a memento of something important from another life and a long gone time.  But here it still is, a fragile bit of ephemera almost 70 years old.

On the album page opposite the napkin was a small American flag, carefully taped to the page. It had 48 stars, so it predates the admission of Alaska as a state in 1959.  Again I wondered why was this flag preserved?  It looks like an inexpensive item such as might be handed out to wave at Fourth of July parades or some other patriotic event.  Did it have some connection to the napkin? I asked my mother and she had no idea. I called my cousin that I had met last summer in Portsmouth, N.H., and he didn't know either, but he did want the album so I am going to mail it off to him along with some other items that belonged to my grandfather that he might like to have.

 

 

Just right

Some days are like this --

I hope...

Well!

 

 

Ah, nuts!

"Science, freedom, beauty, adventure: what more could you ask of life? Aviation combined all the elements I loved. There was science in each curve of an airfoil, in each angle between strut and wire, in the gap of a spark plug or the color of the exhaust flame. There was freedom in the unlimited horizon, on the open fields where one landed. A pilot was surrounded by beauty of earth and sky. He brushed treetops with the birds, leapt valleys and rivers, explored the cloud canyons he had gazed at as a child. Adventure lay in each puff of wind."
~ Charles Lindbergh  

I read recently a post by a woman who said, "Men have natural advantages over women when it comes to piloting.... I should know, b/c I have 2 summa cum laude engineering degrees, in aerospace & mechanical. When I was an intern at Boeing, they took me out to fly the 6 DOF flight simulator. It was really frustrating to me, because I just could not get a feel for how to manipulate the controls to produce the result I wanted."

It seems to me that this woman was embarrassed by her inability to operate the simulator and blamed her inability not on herself but on the fact that she is female. So she could believe it wasn't her, personally, who was inept. (And having engineering degrees is irrelevant to whether or not you're a klutz.)

Louise Thaden in her Beech C17R

I'll juxtapose her comment with that of Louise Thaden, who, along with Blanche Noyes, won the the Bendix Trophy race the first time women were allowed to compete (Laura Ingalls came in second), outpacing all the male pilots, setting a new world record in the process.  She also won the Harmon Trophy. She later had an extensive career in aviation. Thaden said women were "innately better pilots than men."

Olive Ann Beech

Let me note that Thaden won the race flying a Beech C17R.  Beech Aircraft was co-founded by Olive Ann Beech, an accomplished pilot herself, who was also the company's president and chair. Jackie Cochran set world speed and altitude records in a Beech D17W. Noel Gourselle won the Reno Air Races T-6 class in a Beech G17S.  I could go on.

But is either the statement by the Boeing intern or by Louise Thaden objectively true? Or is it just that the Boeing intern is an uncoordinated nerd and Thaden was a highly capable pilot, and both extrapolated their personal situations to whole sexes?

Estrogen prevents women from using one of these--not!

I also read a post by a woman who claimed that women could not be good pilots, basing her assertion on something she read in Joseph Henrich's book The WEIRDest People in the World.  You know what struck me about these people who said that women couldn't be competent pilots?  That none of them were pilots themselves.  They seem to think that pilots fly by flapping their arms and since men have greater upper body strength than women, they can fly better.  Or something equally asinine.  Phooey.

Honestly, I get so tired of this crap.  I'm with Ralph Waldo Emerson when he said, "I try all things; I achieve what I can."  That's basically it.  Man or woman, you achieve what you can, if you are interested in trying to achieve it. Why make more of it than that?

Oh, here's a link to the 6 DOF Flight Simulator.  Kids love playing with it.

And here's a fun video to remind you that women have been flying planes for a long time. It's not a new thing.  The history of women in this country is not what it is often alleged to be. The history of race, too. Eight minutes of yarning. Take a look.

Don't be careless

 

My father taught me that every time before flying to check everything, engage, cycle, verify functionality. I've written about all that I do before getting airborne. You may sit in the run-up area for a few extra minutes while doing this, but those few minutes could save your life and the lives of any passengers you have aboard. 
To the left is an example of what can happen if you don't make sure everything is in working order.  The pilot of this Twin Beech didn't bother to verify that the propeller feathering system operated correctly before taking off with eleven passengers.  On take-off the left engine failed, the pilot tried to feather the engine's propeller, but it wouldn't.  The asymmetrical drag caused the plane to stall and crash.  All aboard were killed.  From the accident report:

AFTER TAKEOFF, THE AIRPLANE WAS SEEN AT LOW ALTITUDE TRAILING SMOKE FROM THE LEFT ENGINE. WITNESSES SAW THE WINGS 'TIPPING' BACK AND FORTH, THEN A WING DROPPED AND THE PLANE HIT THE GROUND. EXAMINATION REVEALED THAT A SUPERCHARGER BEARING HAD FAILED IN THE LEFT ENGINE. THE LEFT ENGINE HAD BEEN RECENTLY INSTALLED BY NON-CERTIFICATED PERSONNEL AFTER BEING INACTIVE FOR 18 YRS WITHOUT PRESERVATION. THE AIRPLANE HAD FLOWN ABOUT 184 HRS SINCE THE LAST ANNUAL INSPECTION; NO RECORD OF SUBSEQUENT 100-HR INSPECTION. THE LEFT PROP BLADES WERE FOUND IN AN INTERMEDIATE POSITION BETWEEN THE OPERATING RANGE AND THE FEATHERED POSITION. THE LEFT PROP WAS CHANGED SEVERAL WEEKS PRIOR TO THE ACCIDENT. THERE IS NO EVIDENCE THAT THE LEFT PROP HAD EVER BEEN SUCCESSFULLY CYCLED TO THE FULL FEATHER POSITION. THE OPERATOR AND PILOTS WERE NOT AWARE OF HAMILTON STANDARD SB 657 RECOMMENDING FULL-FEATHER CHECKS EVERY 30 DAYS. LEFT PROP FEATHERING MOTOR RELAYS NOT RECOVERED. ALL 11 PARACHUTISTS WERE FOUND IN CENTER PART OF FUSELAGE; NO EVIDENCE OF RESTRAINT USAGE.

Probable Cause: INADEQUATE MAINTENANCE AND INSPECTION BY THE OPERATOR WHICH RESULTED IN AN ENGINE POWER LOSS DURING THE CRITICAL TAKEOFF PHASE OF FLIGHT. IN ADDITION, THE PILOT DID NOT, OR WAS UNABLE TO ATTAIN A FULL-FEATHER POSITION ON THE LEFT ENGINE PROPELLER, WHICH WOULD HAVE MOST LIKELY ENABLED THE AIRPLANE TO SUSTAIN MINIMUM CONTROL AIRSPEED.

 Reading the report, I was baffled by how any flight operation could be so careless, incompetent and stupid.  What they did, and failed to do, is unbelievable. And caused the deaths of 12 people.

Just the other day, two experienced pilots tried to take off in a Lockheed 12A, one of only eight flyable examples in the world, with the flaps down.  The 12A is equipped with split flaps, meaning they cause drag only, no lift, and the airplane will not fly with them extended.  Making sure they are raised is on the pre-flight checklist.  Yet they took off with the flaps extended.  They managed to get about 300 feet in the air before the plane stalled and spun in, exploding when it hit the ground, killing both pilots.   

Then a couple of days later an experienced pilot and copilot landed another Lockheed 12A without locking the tailwheel, an item on the pre-landing checklist.  The tailwheel castored when it touched the ground, throwing the plane into a groundloop. It ran off the runway and smashed into a tree, wrecking it and sending the three occupants to the hospital. 

Not long  after that incident a Cessna 172H flew with carburetor heat off on a day with humidity and atmospheric conditions conducive to carburetor icing.  The carburetor iced up, the engine quit, the plane crashed, both passengers were severely injured and the pilot was killed.  He apparently tried switching fuel tanks, thinking there was a fuel problem, but didn't think to turn on carb heat.  If he had, the engine might have restarted in time to avoid the crash.

I could list example after example of similar accidents caused by pilots failing to strictly adhere to requirements that help ensure safe flying or simply doing the wrong thing -- wrong in retrospect.  I read accident reports to learn what can go wrong and to remind myself  to do everything right and not ever forget to follow each step in the flight process to help lessen the risks inherent  in flying.  I fear one day doing something careless or stupid that I know better than to do or just not doing the right thing when willing myself to stay calm in a sudden emergency -- I try A when I should have tried B.... 

How can I avoid screwing up when pilots much more experienced and capable than I am do so?  One thing I do is not only verify each item on the checklist, I look at the item and reach out and touch it, then say out loud the checklist item.  Read, look, touch, say.  And I will not rush.  And although procedure says you only need to check something the first time you fly on a given day, I check everything every time I fly.  So if I fly in the morning, land and refuel, I go through the entire checklist again before taking off. 

I'm reminded of how Charles Lindbergh was viewed by the fighter pilots of the 475th Fighter Group, "Satan's Angels," that he flew with during the Pacific War.  The 475th flew P-38s and were a mob of heart-breakers
and life-takers if there ever was one.  While the pilots of the group were initially in awe of Lindbergh, they began to regard him as a stick-in-the-mud, a slow poke.  They began calling him grandpa (he was 42).  That was because while they were kick the tires, light the fires and pull streamers hot dogs, Lindbergh was a very methodical, careful pilot who thought about what the airplane was doing and how to make it perform better.  This showed up during combat missions when everyone else had to break off and return home when their fuel ran low while Lindbergh was able to linger longer in the target area yet return with more than 200 gallons of fuel remaining in his tanks.

Lindbergh explained how he achieved this: flying the engines "over-square"; that is, lower rpm, higher manifold pressure.  The 475th's pilots flew every mission on auto-rich, props at 2300 rpm, manifold pressure 30 inches.  Lindbergh taught them to fly in auto-lean at 1600 rpm, manifold pressure 32 inches.  When they worried this would wreck their engines, Lindbergh said that this procedure was recommended to extend range in the operator's manual, something none of them had done more than flip through when they were first introduced to the P-38.  He was actually advocating a more extreme engine management technique than the manual recommended, but he knew from experience that it worked, and he also knew these guys had never read the manual, or, if they had, they'd forgotten what was in it. Lindbergh, the careful and methodical pilot, who had never flown a P-38 before, had read the manual and not only did what it told him to do to fly the plane the way it was intended to be flown, he added in his own decades of experience in engine management to make the plane perform as it could at the hands of an expert aviator rather than with a shake-and-bake pilot at the controls.

I guess I am a Lindbergh-style pilot, careful, methodical, do everything by the book plus what my own experience has taught me and what others have taught me from their experience.  For example, on decent in the BE-18 I use 24 inches MP rather than the normally recommended 20 inches. That puts less stress on the cylinder heads and lessens the risk of head failures.  I also adjust the carburetor intake air temperatures using manifold heat to provides optimal fuel vaporization and the best fuel: air ratio according to the P&W R-985 engine manual, which probably not that many 18 drivers have read. So I can get better fuel economy while flying at higher speeds than is typically expected from the Wasp Junior, and with less stress on the engines.

Well, anyway, so far so good.

Fingers crossed.

 

I should make a placard of this to mount in the mighty Beech.