Midnight Landing

As my readers have already guessed, cropduster types are often not like your average everyday folks.  They don’t seem to easily fit into any category. One pilot I have known like this was Donald Shoemacher.

I met Don shortly after I became a pilot myself.  He was flying for a company in Lewiston, Idaho.  He had served in the U.S. Marine corp during World War II and saw a good deal of combat in the Pacific theater, participating in some very bitter battles. Places like Iwo Jima, and other Japanese-held Islands. During these battles, he decided the Air Force was where he should have been instead of hitting the beaches as a ground pounder.

He made it home in one piece and soon learned to fly. He became a flight instructor, did charter type work and other general aviation flying, as well as bush flying in the outback of Idaho's wilderness areas. 

A good part of the state of Idaho is made up of tall mountains, deep canyons, all covered in big timber and much of it owned and managed by the U.S. forest service. As I have stated in earlier blogs, there are quite a number of landing strips scattered over these mountains and forests, most of them along the rivers and creeks in the bottom of the valleys and canyons. Many of these strips are short and are what is referred to as one-way strips, meaning you can only land going one way and there is no missed approach. Consequently, it requires a good deal of experience to access these little landing fields safely. 

Most of these strips are used and maintain by the Forest Service. They are used to bring in supplies and equipment to Forest Service personnel who are stationed in the outback. There are very few roads to these stations and what roads there are aren't very well maintained because of the rugged country.

One of Schumacher’s duties was to fly into these places with all kinds of stuff like mail, groceries, animal feed, small freight, as well as passengers at times.  Also, if a Forest Service person stationed in the back country was hurt or became ill it was a quick way to get them to a doctor. Because of the position of many of the strips, the weather was definitely a major factor. If the wind was wrong or there was limited visibility because of rain, snow or fog etc., one must use good judgment, extreme caution and extraordinary skilled airmanship to negotiate a landing and take-off at one of these strips. There are times when even an experienced pilot must say "No I ain’t going in there."

Anyway Don became very skilled at flying the out-back. A few of these strips were owned and operated by private individuals such as hunting lodges, summer homes, small ranchers, etc. Don became acquainted with many of the back-country folks and was much like the country mail carrier, he knew them by their first name as well as their family.  You know, as an example, "Well today I've got to go out and take Mrs. Jones a list of groceries."  He would then go into town and buy the beans and tatters and bags of flour and all sorts of other stuff and load it in a four-place plane and haul it into their strip.

One of these isolated customers had a strip near their home deep in Snake river country near the mouth of what was called Hell’s Canyon. Their only contact with the outside world was a very rough narrow dirt road carved out of the wilderness. It was a day’s drive just to get to a paved road. They kept in touch with civilization by two-way radio.

One night around eleven o’clock, the man sent a message to Shoemacher that said he had a medical emergency. His wife had had a heart attack. The man asked if him if he could fly into his strip at night and get her to a doctor. He said he would have bon-fire going at the strip for him.

Now this was a short one-way strip lying in a nook of the fairly broad area of the canyon. The strip lay perpendicular to the Snake river. To land there, one had to fly up the river and round a bend, make a ninety degree turn to the left, and about two hundred yards from the river, make a landing. The approach end of the strip was at least a hundred feet lower than the opposite end. A very tricky bit of maneuvering even in day time. I couldn’t imagine doing this as night.

Don wasn't sure he could even find the strip at night, but said he would give it a try.

According to his report, he took off from the Lewiston airport just before midnight and headed up the Snake river canyon. He could see the river below because of the reflection of a faint moonlight. He stayed directly over the river so as not to collide with the dark slopes rising on each side. Don had flown up the river many times in daytime, so he had a general idea of the area. He knew that the strip he was looking for should appear at a certain time.

Sure enough, as he rounded a bend in the river he saw the bright blaze of the fire that the owner had torched when he heard the plane approaching. Don knew full well that he would get only one shot at the strip and there would be no second chance if he missed. He reached the point of no return, left the river and turned toward the fire. 

He said he could not see the strip but knew it had to be just beyond the big fire so he made his approach directly toward the fire. When he reached a point within about fifty yards from the fire, he could just make out the near end of the strip. He chopped the power and touched down almost in the fire but quickly got on the brakes and rolled to a stop with only about twenty feet of strip left. His friend and wife were there anxiously waiting for him.

Without ceremony they quickly loaded the woman in the plane as soon as it stopped. Don quickly wiped the sweat from his face, swung the ship around and poured the coals to her and took off in the opposite direction that he had come. He related that the takeoff was as tricky as the landing.

He headed for the fire and manage to become airborne before he reached the fire. He said it was like diving into a black hole but manage to pick up the reflection of the river in a few seconds. Don said he stayed low over the middle of the water as he came down river.

He had given instructions to a ground crew to have an ambulance waiting if and when he returned. The woman was conscious during this scary ordeal and survived because she received the necessary medical treatment thanks to a brave and nervy pilot.

Don went on to become a cropduster pilot and eventually owned his own company, Shoemacher's Ag-Air. I flew for his company for some ten years.

Don't Meet in the Middle

I was working for Arrow Aviation, east of Lewiston, Idaho, applying dry fertilizer to winter wheat. About 2 miles away on another make-shift air strip two of my friends were doing the same thing for a competitor.

I guess I should change the names to protect the guilty. One friend was Fats Hughes and the other was named Germania Gene.

When flying on dry fertilizer it only takes a few minutes to apply a full load of fertilizer if the field you are fertilizing is close by. So it was this day for my friends. As one pilot was out applying his load to the field, the other one was on the ground being loaded. As soon as the load was pumped into the plane on the ground, the pilot quickly swung the plane around and headed down the strip for a takeoff. Shortly after he was airborne he would head for the field being treated and usually pass the other plane returning for his next load. 

Nothing complicated about this, most crop-dusting crews did this regularly. Generally, you would hit the ground about every 15 or 20 minutes. Very monotonous. Up and down, back and forth, get a load, takeoff, fly it on the field and return for the next load, all day long.

The strip that my friends were working off was located in the middle of a pea field. It had a sizeable hump in the middle so much so that when you started your takeoff run you could not see the opposite end of the strip until you topped this hump. Still, it was a smooth strip and the hump presented no problem to experienced pilots. 

You started your takeoff going up-hill, you topped the hill and started downhill and were soon airborne. Same thing in reverse when landing. It was a steady rhythm. 

For some reason, Fats Hughes had a problem and came back to the strip early. He landed on the down-hill side of the hump. Germania Gene didn’t see Fats land. He received his load, swung around, and poured on the coals to the old Pratt Whitney and went roaring up-hill for his takeoff. 

You guessed it. They met at the top of the hump. 

Fortunately, each was off center of the strip, each was a little to his right. They passed each other and sheared off the upper and lower wings on the left side of both Stearman biplanes. Gene said they passed close enough that he could have reached out and slapped Fats as he went by.

Of course, they filled the air with the debris of chopped up airplane wings. Gene, who was taking off, had up a head of steam as they collided. His plane was going fast and before he could shut it down, it careened around to the left, making an wide circular path out through the pea field, and headed back toward Fat’s plane. 

Fats’s plane slewed around, went off the strip, and quickly came to a stop. Whereupon Fats, seeing the other plane circling and coming back in his direction, bailed out and started running. 

Later he explained, "Well, h***, he made one pass at me and I shore wasn’t gonna sit there and let him make another one." 

Fats was a tobacco-chewing feller and said it was enough to make him swaller his chaw!

Fog vs the Bossman

Back around 1963 or so, I was flying for American Dusting Company of Chickasha, Oklahoma. My unit was based in the town of Pecan Gap Texas. Pecan Gap consisted of a small restaurant, a service station, a feed store and about fifteen private residences. The town was surrounded by thousands of acres of cotton fields. 

My airport was owned and operated by a man named Weldon Briscoe who was also my boss. The landing strip was in the middle of his 160-acre place. Being a carpenter in the off season Briscoe asked me to build a hanger for him, which I did. It was large enough to hanger two planes - both Stearman biplanes that were once military trainers and had been converted to ag aircraft.

For the benefit of the unlearned, commercial aircraft, even crop-duster types, have to be inspected every 100 hours of flying time by a federal authorized mechanic. To get this inspection each time I reached one hundred hours, I had to fly to Chickasha where American had their headquarters and did all the maintenance on the planes.

One morning Boss Briscoe said, "Roberts, your time is up. Take the plane to headquarters and get the danged inspection."  Whereupon I looked all around and observed that there was pretty heavy fog enveloping us. Briscoe allowed that we were located only a few miles from the Red River, and fog forms along the river at this time of year. "If you can take off, you will be out of the fog very shortly since it just hangs along the river area."

The fog wasn’t very thick, I noticed, because I could see the big red ball of the early morning sun through the fog.

So I mounted my trusty steed and, keeping my eye on that big red ball, departed for Oklahoma. Sure enough, I soon came out of the ground-hugging layers of fog and viola! It was a beautiful clear day on top of the fog. 

I continued to climb, thinking if I got high enough I could probably see that the fog was just local. I climbed and climbed and climbed. At ten thousand feet all I could see in all directions was the brilliantly white cottony fog; no holes, no openings anywhere.

I wasn’t too worried though, I figured I would take up a heading to Chickasha and no doubt would leave the fog behind after a bit. As I said, it was a beautiful spring morning and I was enjoying the flight thinking how lucky I was to be flying on such a glorious day. 

I flew for about an hour and very slowly two thing began to crowd into my consciousness. One, the fog was not any local thing at all and two, my fuel gauge was getting nearer and nearer to the empty point. The fuel tank located in the top wing of the biplane directly in the middle of the center-section. The fuel gauge was a glass tube attached to the bottom of the tank directly in front of my eyes. It was placed there for a reason.

This airplane was originally designed for a 225 hp Lycoming engine which consumed about 10 or 12 gallons per hour. The tank held about 46 gallons of fuel which would give one about three and a half hours of flight. But...when the plane was converted to crop-dusting configuration a 450 hp Pratt Whitney engine was added. This engine burned about 20 gallons of fuel per hour of flight, meaning I only had about 30 more minutes of flight before I ran out of fuel. 

Still no sign of the ground anywhere. I became alarmed and began to make desperate plans.

I decided I would have to go down through the fog. I would slow the plane to the slowest speed that it would fly and still have control, and take whatever came, be it good or bad. Just before I did this suddenly I saw a small hole in the white layer below me.

As I circled the hole I could see the ground and there was a strange pattern on the earth. I could not imagine what it was. Whatever it was, I was about to find out. 

I rolled into a tight turn and cut my engine back, beginning a corkscrew descent into this cloudy well of an opening. Nearer and nearer came the ground. When the altimeter showed that I was only about a hundred or so feet above the surface suddenly - I was in the clear. Thank God, there was a clear space between the bottom of the fog and the earth! 

The strange pattern I had seen was a fish hatchery. It was a small lake with dikes running parallel across it, spaced about twenty feet apart. I had not remembered this landmark though I had flown this way several times in the past.

Of course, I rolled out of my tight turn into level flight and stopped my descent. However, I was still as lost as a goose. I took up a heading to the northwest anyway and figured, "At least I can land in a pasture or field."  

Then I suddenly came to a highway. "That is where I will put this flying machine down," I determined. I turned so I was flying along parallel to the pavement, expecting to hear the engine stop any moment. Then up came a sign that said "Duncan 10 miles." This was going to be my first fuel stop. Within minutes I was on the runway and taxing into the gas pit.

I pull up to the fuel pump and shut the engine down. Needless to say I was a bit sweaty. The small airport fuel boy came sauntering out and looked at me and then up at the low ceiling, shook his head and said "What in God’s name are you doing flying in this stuff?" I wondered the same thing.

The gas boy filled my tank and it took 45 1/2 gallons. As I said, the tank was a 46 gallon tank. 

Moral: I was stupid for taking off in the fog no matter what the bossman sez.

Soldiers of Fortune: Downed on the Beach

When I first entered the strange world of agricultural flying, better known as cropdusting, I soon learned that it was peopled with some very odd, interesting and often very peculiar-type pilots. At that time a good many of them were more or less soldiers of fortune, each having his own personal value system. Here is a glimpse of one of them. 

Ken Nighting was a Texan, an ex-military pilot, ex-airline pilot, ex-company pilot, and quite a few other "exes." Before we met he had been flying for an ag-company that, after finishing the season in Texas, flew their planes down to Nicaragua and worked there until that season was over as well.

The first time Ken was to fly his Stearman to Nicaragua, he was to go with two other pilots in their planes. One of these pilots whom I will call Smutch, had made the trip several times before and knew the way. The other pilot whose nick-name was Drunken-Duncan, like Ken, had not made the trip before. Ken and Duncan had no maps, no radio for communication, and since neither had made this trip before, the plan was for them to follow Smutch. 

Sounds like a good plan, right? What could possibly go wrong?

They did just fine until they got into a bit of cloudy weather over lower Mexico. Smutch's plane was a wee bit faster than Ken's and Duncan's and he slowly moved off into the misty haze and left them. As Ken told me, all he knew for sure was that he was somewhere over southern Mexico. 

Not knowing where the next refueling stop was he decided to turn toward the coast, knowing that the lower part of the country was relatively narrow. So he turned eastward and hoped he could find some stretch of beach to land on before he ran out of fuel. He reached the coastline... but no beaches. He turned south along the coast and hoped. All he could see was jungle with no clearings at all. All this time he thought Drunken-Duncan was following him but no... he was not. Drunken-Duncan had too disappeared.

As Ken anxiously watched his fuel gauge creep closer and closer to empty he noticed several miles off shore was what appeared to be some islands. He headed in that direction hoping to find a beach to land on. He reached the islands and spotted a stretch of beach just as his engine quit for lack of fuel. He landed dead-stick and rolled to a stop.

Of course he was very glad to be on the ground in one piece. He hardly got his seat belt unfastened when beside his plane appeared two Indian men and a kid or two. They had come out of the jungle to greet him. They didn’t speak English but fortunately Ken was fluent in Spanish which the Indians spoke as well. They welcomed him to their village and treated him as a special guest.

Ken lived with these sea-fairing Indians for two weeks. He said their main diet was turtle eggs and goat curd cheese. He said he insisted on boiling his eggs but after a while he was eating them as the natives did: open the leathery shell, throw your head back and empty the content into your mouth and swallowed them raw. (gag)

Meantime the two pilots were missed by the company but no one knew where either one was. The company was sending more planes down there a couple of weeks later and the pilots were told to keep an eye out for the missing planes. One of these pilots whom I’ll call Hershel was instructed to fly along the coast because the company figured that was probably the most like route the lost pilots would follow.  

Sure enough, Hershel spotted Ken's plane sitting on the beach of one of the islands. He landed beside the fuel-less plane. Of course Ken was more than happy to see him. Ken looked pretty bad, with two weeks growth of beard and no change of clothes - and he smelled of turtle eggs and cheese. After greeting Ken, Hershel climbed back into his one-seater cropduster and said, "Well at least we know where you are, Ken. I’ll send someone back here to pick you up."

Ken later told me, "I hopped up on the wing walk and shoved my .357 revolver up under Hershel's nose and said, "It's like this Hershel, ole buddy—You ain't leaving here without me." Hershel looked at the pistol and then saw the look in Ken's eye and decided, "Maybe we can toss the seat cushions out and you sit in the seat and I will sit in your lap and fly the plane." 

Thus they made it back to civilization.

It was some three months before they found Drunken-Dunkin. He had found a small village with a small clearing in the jungle and tried to land in it. He wrecked his plane but was not injured, so not to worry. 

Duncan was a very adaptable individual. He liked living with the Indians, especially after taking up with one of the women, and they had plenty of cerveza and frijoles. He decided he liked the simple life, to heck with flying. 

I do not know for sure how it came to pass that Duncan was rescued. I saw Duncan some time later at an ag-meeting, so I know he made it home. Some of the pilots I knew said that the company sent an expedition down there and got him drunk. While he was drunk they tossed him in a vehicle and brought him home. Maybe...who knows? 

With cropdusters, one is never sure and the truth is often stranger than fiction, as they say. I got the story straight from Ken and two other pilots, so am pretty sure it was true.

Stealth Cropdusters

Many years ago I was employed by an ag-flying company or as some would call it, an agricultural-air application company, based in Oklahoma called "American Dusting Company."  It was quite a large company with dozens of planes and pilots, one of the largest in the U.S. The company divided its planes and pilots up into units of two, three, or more. Each unit had a manager and these units were scattered all over the southwest. The main base and maintenance shop was in Chickasaw, Oklahoma. I became acquainted with many of the pilots during the three years that I flew for American.

Of course all pilots have flying stories: Some true, some true but "embellished," and some out-right LIES. One of the true ones I shall pass along because I thought it very interesting. This story I believe to be authentic because it came to me from several different sources and they all told the same tale.

Back in the middle 20th century there was an outbreak of a certain kind of beetle that infested very large areas of forests of the northeastern states of the U.S. A group of companies got their heads together and made plans to gather up as many ag-planes and pilots as they could lay hands on and get them organized and attack the devilish little creatures that were doing great damage to the forests.

The word went out all across the fruited plains of agricultural America that there was much money to be made by this armada of bug-fighting flyers. American Dusting Company was contacted and agreed to send six of their choice birdmen to join this effort. This detachment was to be led by one of the owners, Mr. Bob Smith (not his real name), who was a former Lt. Colonel in the U.S. Air Force and was still a member of the reserve.

The planes to be sent were PT 17 Stearmans converted to ag-plane configuration, including a 450 hp Pratt Whitney engine. I might also add that none were equipped with a full panel of flight instruments, just the bare bones of a primary panel which had a magnetic compass, an altimeter, an airspeed indicator and engine instruments such as RPM gauge, manifold pressure gauge, oil pressure gauge and possibly a engine temperature gauge. If you were lucky some of these still worked. At cruise speed the Pratt Whitney burned around 20 gallons an hour and the gas tank held 46 gallons, which gave approximately two hours of safe flying between refills.

Plans were made, routes were selected, bags were packed, and one fine morning the intrepid gaggle of beetle battlers left Chickasaw for the great state of Maine. Oh, did I mention - the planes had no radios for communication. All would be following their fearless leader Mr. Bob. Oh, and did I also mention - the planes had no running lights or any other kind of lights either.

Of course many fuel stops were made along the way which made for slow progress across the country. Nevertheless they made their way without mishap to the state of Maine where weather began to be a factor. It was getting late in the day and the overcast was getting lower and lower. Their next gas stop was a small town airport. The pilots began to get uneasy because dark was fast approaching. Eventually the only way they could see each other was by keeping in sight of the long blue blaze of flame from the exhaust pipe. Of course they were over strange country and one could not even see their maps. They were just following Mr. Bob, who was reading his map by flash light.

Then when it seemed that disaster was steadily gaining on them they saw some very strong lights on the horizon. As they got nearer they could make out that it was runway lights at an airport. Each pilot was thinking, "I don’t care what Mr. Bob or any of the other pilots do, I am going to land at this airport, come hell or high water."

And so they did.

One by one, Mr. Bob and all the pilots landed on the big, wide, long runway and breathed a sigh of relief as they taxied into a tie-down area on one side of the field. It seemed there was a airport terminal on one side and what appeared to be a military base on the other side. Anyway, they all got out of their planes and were laughing and congratulating themselves on their good fortune as they strolled inside the terminal building.

When they entered the building the clerks behind the desk looked at them in surprise and then all hell broke loose, as one pilot told me later. A clerk picked up a telephone and they noticed he was wearing an Air Force uniform. 

Within minutes a military vehicle pulled up to the door and half a dozen soldiers with submachine guns came charging into the room. They were quickly hustled into an adjoining room, searched and told to stand against a wall. Of course this was all a big surprise and they could not imagine what was going on. Mr. Bob approached the officer in charge of the soldiers and demanded an explanation. When the officer heard that Mr. Bob was a reserve officer in Air Force his attitude immediately changed.

The officer explained that this was a SAC (Strategic Air Command) base and on this night they were on a practice high alert. Suddenly it all came clear. This group of cropdusters had inadvertently stumbled in to a bad situation. The base was on alert and yet six low-flying aircraft with no lights had managed to land unseen on the base. They were flying too low for the radar to pick them up. They had taxied in the dark to a tie-down area, parked their planes and entered the terminal - all totally unseen until the a clerk saw them and wondered what the sam hill was going on.

The men at the base knew that General Curtis Lemay, who was the overall commander of the Strategic Air Command, many times did such things as this to test the base’s security operations. They were sure this was another of those tests.

It took a lot of explaining but finally the officer in charge of security became convinced that it was just a weird happenstance. However, he knew that if the story got out that a flight of six airplanes had snuck into his base without detection, his job would be on the line. His main aim was to prevent this. 

Consequently he had the unlucky cropdusters placed in a military truck and escorted under guard to a hotel where they spent the night. No one was allowed to talk to them. The next morning they were returned to the airbase and their planes were fueled. The officer in charge said, "Now, you boys get in your planes and get the h--- out of here and DO NOT SAY A WORD ABOUT THIS TO ANYONE OR I WILL HAVE YOU UP ON MORE CHARGES THAN YOU CAN POSSIBLY IMAGINE."

The American Dusting company pilots did as ordered and that was pretty much the end of the story, as far as the Air Force was concerned. The pilots proceeded on to New Brunswick and fought blister rust beetles until the outbreak was under control.

But there's no way a story like that can be kept completely secret. One of the pilots in this group was a friend I knew well and he was the first to tell me, under a request of secrecy of course. I've honored his request and changed the names to protect the "guilty."

The Never-Fail Turbo-Prop

Aircraft engines made a radical change with the advent of the turbo-prop engine. The old engines were classified as reciprocating engines, similar to what we have in automobiles. The turbo-prop engine worked completely differently. It had a small turbine as the power generating source, similar to a jet engine, except the turbine turned a propeller. These new engines were smaller, lighter, had more horsepower and were supposedly much more reliable.

We ag-pilots were anxious to try one of these new-fangled engines because with the light weight and extra power we could increase the "payload" and thereby do more work in a given time. Plus we liked that the engines were said to be much less likely to fail.

My first opportunity to fly an ag-plane with this type of power plant came when I hired out to an ag-operator located in the Gulf Coast. It was in rice growing country near the small town of Katy, Texas.  

Before I was cleared to aviate with a turbo-prop at the pointy end of the airplane, the insurance company insisted that I be sent to school so as to know how to handle this here highly complicated and tremenjusly complex apparatus. Even though I had years and years of experience and thousands and thousands of hours flying back and forth over the vegetables, it made no difference to them. 

So they sent me to Hartford, Connecticuty, where the Pratt-Whitney Aircraft Co. had a school for beginners to be learnt about these jet fuel burning engines. I spent a week in classrooms listening to some young, self-important individual spout off, displaying his vast knowledge of turbo-prop aircraft engine. Mostly his talk was giving high praise of the reliability of the PT6-E turbo-prop engine. He assured us that our days of engine failure were over. THIS ENGINE DOES NOT FAIL. IT WILL GO 6000 HRS BETWEEN OVERHAULS. THIS ENGINE DOES NOT FAIL.

I came back to Katy with about the same amount of knowledge that I left with, except I knew that the turbo-prop engine DID NOT FAIL. Yeah, I had that phrase ringing in my ears. Me and my partner went to work and I was enjoying flying with the comforting new knowledge that there would be no more flight interruptions due to engine failure. I had launched myself into the future of ag-aviation feeling safe and secure. 

About the third week and somewhere around 80 hours on the new engine, I was working off a dirt strip surrounded by rice fields - some dry, some flooded. I had a hopper full of liquid fertilizer, about 300 gallons as I recall. I had just broken ground when I noticed that a couple of puffs of smoke came out the exhaust pipe on the left side. 

At the next instant I noted that my engine rpm was decreasing and I could feel the loss of power. I reached the end of the strip and slapped the dump gate lever open and the load was dumped instantaneously. Lighter of wing, I swung the Ag-Cat out to the right with the intention of making a 180-degree turn to the left and landing back on my landing strip. Nothing around me looked favorable for an emergency landing.

The engine continued to lose power (a new word - "unspooling" it was called). About half-way around the turn I realized I wasn’t going to make it. I leveled the wings and prepared to make contact with a newly plowed rice field. I sat it down as smoothly as possible and held the stick back so hard that the tail wheel touched first. As soon as the weight of the Ag-Cat settled on to the main landing gear, the wheels quickly sank into the soft powdery dirt of the recently plowed field. Up came the tail and down went the new engine into the soft dirt and over the plane went on its back. I slammed down hard upside down. Thankfully, the Ag-Cat being a bi-plane, the upper wing held the fuselage off the ground high enough that the cockpit enclosure wasn’t crushed.

It is very disconcerting to find oneself upside down even though strapped securely in the seat. Believe it or not the danged engine was still running. Of course the prop was not turning. The blades were bent back at a 90 degree angle. But since in this particular type engine there was no mechanical connection between the power section and the propeller, the turbine was still going. How strange. 

I had to shut it down. I unbuckled my seat harness and as I had done at other times, fell on my head. I managed to open the exit window/door and wiggle out on to the powdery earth. I wasn’t injured in any way, but my poor engine didn’t fare so well. Black smoke began to issue forth because the oil in the engine was draining into the hot combustion chamber. There wasn’t much chance of a fire,but it did put up a nice plume of black smoke. I had to hand it to the Pratt-Whitney person who said the engine didn’t fail. Even after it had quit producing power, it was still running!

To make a long involved story shorter, the Pratt-Whitney Co. sent a tech-rep out to collect the engine and take it back to some place in Canada where they analyzed it and pronounced the cause of the engine failure was fuel contamination. Sure, sure. Fuel contamination is the only thing that wasn’t covered in the warranty.

Whatever the cause, it ruined my day and demolished my confidence in turbo-prop engines. My conclusion was that any mechanical contraption can fail PERIOD! 

Someone who saw the plane go down and start smoking called the fire department who then called for ambulances. And along the way a crowd collected of (I'm guessing) newscasters, TV reporters, environmentalists, save-the-whales folks, vegetarians, a couple of couple of local preachers, a pair of politicians, and the county sheriff.

Fortunately, there was a farmhouse nearby. I walked over there and even though I was a bit dirty, they welcomed me in, gave me a cup of coffee and a piece of fresh baked pie, and promised not to tell a soul where I was. I managed to hide out until my boss came looking for me. How he found me, I don’t know. 

Here is a picture of my dead AG-Cat lying on its back with its feet in the air... but as you will notice, I am not in it.

Fast Money

In the cropdusting field, military surplus planes eventually began to be replaced with newly manufactured aircraft that were designed especially for ag-flying. Piper came out with the Pawnee, Cessna Aircraft Co. started producing the Ag-Wagon, Grumman got into the action with its Ag-Cat. The Leland Snow Company developed the Snow Aircraft, later to be called the Thrush. These planes were much more efficient and productive than the old converted military types, but they were expensive and not necessarily as tough as the old military trainer. We still had engine failures from time to time.

I was proud to be sitting in the middle of a brand new Cessna Ag-Wagon one day and it was noon. I usually carried a lunch bag with me and ate in the plane so I didn’t have to stop. This particular day I had eaten my peanut butter and jelly sandwich and was chomping on an apple as I took off of a muddy strip with a load of dry fertilizer to be spread over a wheat field.

I climbed up to about two-hundred feet or so and as I leveled off there was a sudden silence. The only noise I heard was me chomping on the apple. The engine had shut down as if I had turned the switch off. 

I quickly turned to the right toward an open field and at the same time hit the dump lever and pulled full flaps, preparing to land in the mud. It had rained the night before. The field I had chosen was a wheat field that lay up the side of a hill. I hardly got the flaps down when I touch down and my wheels were sinking in the mud. 

Fortunately, I landed going uphill and the hill was steep enough that it kept the plane from going over on its back. But the wheels were hub-cap deep in the mud and I went up the small hill plowing deep tracks. I arrived at the top of the hill and there was a fence. I stomped on the left brake and full left rudder and the plane slewed around just shy of the fence and stopped. 

I was so rattled that I forgot I had opened the dump gate to get rid of the load of fertilizer. The problem was dry fertilizer does not dump out as quickly as a liquid. The stuff was still pouring out of the hopper and when I climbed out of the plane, I saw I had a huge pile of fertilizer beneath the belly. Oh well, at least the plane didn’t end up lying on its back.

My boss had taken off right behind me in another plane and had seen the whole thing. He landed, got in his pickup, and drove up to get me. It turned out that my practically-new engine had shut down because a small shaft in the air intake had broken and fallen out, closing off the engine. Cessna soon changed the design after we filed a Malfunction & Defects report with the FAA.

As I climbed into the boss's pickup truck, he stuffed a hundred dollar bill in my shirt pocket. Surprised I looked questions at him. "That’s for not bending my new airplane," he said. The thought went through my mind, "Hmmm, that’s the fastest money I ever earned... but I don’t believe I want to do it again!"

Rolling Runway

I do not pretend to know why, but it seems to me aviation has always attracted some interesting, peculiar, kooky, dingy, nutty, or brilliant characters - whatever you want to call them. I guess that is the one of the reasons I was attracted myself. I have a list of these folks I've met along the way and thought y'all might enjoy reading about some of their antics.

Near the top of the list is a fellow I met in Lewiston, Idaho, named Rex Yates.

Rex was what I would classify as an airport bum. I was a youngster when I first became aware of this guy. He was in his early forties, medium height, neither skinny nor fat, and most would say as homely as a mud fence. He had bad teeth which cause him to emit bits of saliva if he talked too fast - which he always did. He also gesticulated vigorously with his arms and hands as he spoke. It was good practice not to stand too close to him, especially if he was excited and talking fast.

The first impression I had was that he was just a slouchily dressed, goofy, blowhard and I tried to avoid him. But if you were an airport nut like myself, this was impossible to do. Sooner or later you would find yourself in the wrong position and being spit on as you were being bombarded and assailed with whatever was on Rex’s mind at the time. Or if there happened to be a group of airport types gathered ‘round discussing any particular aviation subject, Rex would magically appear and insert himself in their midst to hold forth with his opinions, usually spraying everyone with his knowledge and spit.

In spite of the obnoxious presentation of himself and his offensively liberal use of vulgar, obscene, and profane language, I began to sense he was not as stupid as I first thought. In fact, I eventually discovered that he was a veritable walking encyclopedia of aviation lore and the very epitome of aviation enthusiast. Mention any event, incident, or historical happening concerning aviation and he could give you all the particulars. Name the airplane and he could give you the entire history of the ship including its strong points, its weak points, and the flight characteristics. 

Some of his information was from reading (he was an avid reader), some of it stuff he had heard from other pilots and mechanics, but a surprisingly good bit of it was from personal experience. He had owned quite a number of airplanes including Taylorcrafts, Cessnas, Luscombes, Stinsons, Beachcraft Bonanzas, Ercoupe, Aeronca, Bellanca, several different Piper aircraft, and about a dozen of other general aviation fixed-wing types, as well as helicopters, gyrocopters and balloons.

Are you beginning to get the picture? Little by little we became friends. If he was not such an obnoxious character and had gone to the trouble of getting a commercial license, he probably could have made his living as an aviation type. But alas, he usually settled for a very mundane occupation and these lasted just long enough for the employer to find out he was some sort of a nut.

But anyway, he had many many entertaining aviation adventures and here is one of them.

Rolling Runway
When I first met Rex, he owned a Cessna 190. It was in a shop being repaired after a strange encounter. It seems that he and a friend were intending to land at the small landing strip at Orofino, Idaho. The landing strip lay alongside, but not quite parallel to, the main highway. 

His friend was piloting the plane and as usual was in the left-hand seat. As the plane was making the final approach, it crossed over the highway at a slight angle and very low. Unbeknownst to his friend, a cattle truck was speeding down the highway going generally the same direction as the plane. As they crossed paths neither pilot nor truck driver were aware of the other vehicle. 

Consequently, the plane’s landing gear became entangled in the high side-boards, or cattle racks, on the left side of the cattle truck. The truck, being the heavier of the two, more or less took control of the plane’s direction of flight. 

Of course, the pilot was stunned (to put it mildly) when he felt the lurch and heard the noise of the collision. Likewise, the truck driver, being totally taken a-back, could not imagine what was happening until he glanced in his rearview mirror and saw an airplane wing, the engine, and spinning propeller--not to mention he suddenly heard thrashing as that propeller chewed into the cattle racks on the left side of the truck! 

The pilot managed to keep the plane on an even keel by more or less flying alongside and just above the truck as he was dragged down the highway. But as the truck slowed down, the plane lost flying speed and the left wing settled and began skidding along on the wing tip as both vehicles came to a stop. One can imagine the shock and dismay of both the truck driver and the plane occupants when they discovered that they were locked together.

Fortunately, no one was injured, but the plane’s propeller, the left wing, and the landing gear suffered considerable damage. The cattle racks on the truck sustained substantial damage as well. As far as I know neither party was cited for any violations.

This strange collision made national news. Poor Rex became the big looser, having to pay for the major repairs of his plane. He didn’t seem to mind very much though because it gained him a moment of fame. Everyone hearing about it roared with laughter and agreed, “Nobody but Rex Yates could have become involved in such a weird and unbelievable accident.”

I could only imagine Rex climbing out of his airplane, excited and talking as fast as an auctioneer, and spitting on everyone in the crowd that soon collected as he explained what happened.

Barnyard Landing

One day I left the landing strip with a full load on board this old battered and beat-up Stearman. I was flying about the average ferry altitude of a couple of hundred feet, headed out to spray a field of cotton. The tired old engine made a muffled cough, backfired and quit cold. 

 Now a loaded Stearman without power has a glide angle like a brick with a feather tied to it. Within 10 or 12 seconds I was on the ground. I didn’t even have time to turn parallel with the furrows. I hit the hard dry dirt doing about 85 mph across the furrows of a newly harvested maize field. Bumpity, bumpity bumptiy, enough to rattle your teeth. It seems that the engine had decided it didn’t like the impure fuel we were using.

Not all my flight interruptions were caused by engine problems though. Sometimes there were other causes. About four days later while flying for the same operator near small town of Brownfield, Texas I took off at dawn and headed for my assigned field when I noticed the tips of my propeller was making little contrail rings. 

It was early fall. We had had a cool air mass move in the night before and this was a warning that temperature and dew-point were getting too close together, but I figured I would at least have time to get my load out. 

I arrived at my field and made several passes across it when fog began to form around me. I thought, "Uh-oh, I had better get this bag of rags on the ground pretty soon."  I pulled up and headed back to the strip, but before I got there I found fog banks closing in on me all around. 

I saw a newly mowed alfalfa field directly in front of me. I quickly decided to put the plane on the ground - and just in time. Before I could bring her to a stop I entered a thick fog bank. I rolled to a stop and I kicked the tail around.

As I peered into the mist I discovered that I had stopped about 15 feet from a small barn or tool shed. I shut the engine down and just as I did so a back door on the shed flew open and a Mexican hired hand stepped out. When he saw me his eyes bugged out and he threw the hoe he was carrying up in the air and lit out like the devil was after him. I had to laugh but can’t say as I blamed him. Who would expect to step out of the barn and suddenly see this big biplane rolling toward you out of the fog?

I was very pleased to be on the ground. Eventually I was able to hitch a ride with a passing farmer and he took me back to my base. 

When I walked in, my bosses eyes got as big as the Mexican’s and he said, "Roberts, this is the second time within week you have returned without you airplane." He was vastly relieved to learn that his plane wasn’t damaged and admitted, "I’m pleased though that you are on the ground and not on top of this pea soup milling around up there looking for some place to land."

Blowing A Jug in Midair

Several of my emergency landings were the result of engine failure. In my early years of ag-flying, we were flying mostly military surplus airplanes. Some of them were not in good shape to begin with and received very poor maintenance as well. The same went for the engines.

Not only that, but we were running them at well over what was called "METO power" all day long. (METO is short for Maximum Except Take Off.) We also ran them with heavy loads and high manifold pressures and high temperatures all day long. Needless to say the engines didn’t last long. 

They were never designed to be used like that. However, the owners/operators didn’t care because they were cheap and plentiful. When complaining to my employer one day about this engine abuse he nonchalantly growled, “Well don’t hurt yourself.” In other words, “Don’t tell me your troubles, I got troubles of my own.” I found that most owners/operators in that day were not that concerned for the pilot’s safety. In his mind, we were just overpaid farm hands with more guts than brains.

Consequently, from time to time my engine would have a cast-iron fit and fling parts here and there and cease to internally combust. The prop ceased to propel, resulting in a flight interruption which often ruined my day. 

Sometimes there was a warning, sometimes not. 

One day I was spraying rice on the edge of the Gulf of Mexico and the engine went pow-bang-cough-cough and made other vulgar noises. I was pretty certain that I had blown a jug. ("Jug" was slang for a cylinder, so called because of its resemblance to an old-fashioned jug.) I was on my last pass so finished it, pulled up and headed for a county dirt road which I had passed on the way out. I was steadily losing altitude, which I didn’t have an abundance of to begin with. I soon decide I was not going to make the road and would have to put it down in a rice field that was lying fallow. Just to make it interesting and tax my landing skills, the field was muddy and had several levees (some call them terraces) running across my intended landing path.

This was not the first time and I had learned the hard way that I should make a three point landing and hold the stick hard back in my lap, keeping the tail wheel firmly on the muddy ground. Otherwise I would once again find myself dangling from my seat belt/harness in a upside down configuration. 

I touched down at about 60 mph. I was hoping the engine would continue to run until I got it on the ground but when I reduced the throttle, the old Pratt Whitney wheezed and the engine died. Even then it would have been relatively easy, except each time I crossed a levee the plane would jump back up in the air a few feet and the tail would go higher than the previous crossing, then slam down pretty hard. Since I had no power I could not blow the tail down. I repeated this maneuver at each levee. The last one I crossed, the plane had slowed considerably and I was sure that the main gear would sink in the mud. Then the tail would go up and over we would go.

Sure enough the main gear hit the levee, jumped a bit and plowed into mud on the other side of the levee. Up came the tail almost to the point where the prop would strike the ground. It stopped there and remained there a few seconds while I was screeching "NO, NO, NO!"  

It slowly fell back to earth, Kersplat in the mud. Lucky me. 

I climbed out and looked at the engine. My guess was right. The head had popped off a cylinder.

Who Needs Gas to Land A Plane?

I was flying an old worn-out Stearman, applying dry fertilizer to wheat fields. The fuel gauge was stuck but the boss said, "I will keep track of your loads and after every fourth load you fly, I will gas the plane."

Fine. No problem. I worked all day and finished the job. One of my flagmen, a fellow name Rex Yates, wanted a ride back to our home base in the fertilizer hopper of my plane. 

These hoppers were large enough that a man could sit in them comfortably. Rex was a talker and if you were standing too close in front of him while he was spewing out words right and left, right side up, some crossways and some upside down you would probably get spit on. He had a hot date that night and it was some 45 minutes back to the base by pickup truck. He wanted to get there faster, so he climbed in the hopper of my ship and sang out, "Take me to the airport, big guy, and don’t spare the horses. I'm in a hurry."

I gave him a nod and poured the coals to the Pratt Whitney and we headed home. When I made the final turn at the home airport, the engine went silent. Out of gas. 

The boss had obviously gotten distracted and had not refilled the gas tank and I was not watching that closely and assumed he had done so. No harm was done because I was only about 200 feet from the approach end of the runway and easily made it with room to spare. I greased it on so smooth there wasn’t even the slightest bump. 

Before the plane stopped rolling the lid to the hopper popped open. Rex was letting me hear from him. He was looking daggers at me and spit all over my wind shield as he hurled all kinds of invective, cursings and nasty expletives at me. 

"I had no idea you were going to run the blinking blanking plane out of gas! Any idiot knows they won’t run without fuel! You blink-de-blanking fool pilot! It is your responsibility to be sure you have enough gas to git where you are going before you leave the ground! Especially if you have passengers on board!! Idiot fool pilots anyway! You could have crashed landed in some trees or some other bad place and I didn’t even have a seat belt! I’ll never ride with you again!" 

He was still cursing and spitting as we walked to the hanger to tell the line boy to go gas the airplane so I could drive it to the hanger. "I ought to punch you in the nose and by golly if you weren’t bigger than I am I would. Everybody sez you are a good pilot but as far as I am concerned you ain’t worth a damn!"

"Oh calm down, Rex," I offered. "Think about that hot date tonight."

Illegal Landing

Hopefully you've read my intro about Emergency Landing Prep. That will give you background on this first in my series on emergency landings.

In the early days of aviation, emergency landings were common, mostly because of the unreliableness (new word) of the engines. As time passed and engines improved, the unplanned landing became less common, though still a distinct possibility even to this day.

My first experience of this alarming event was shortly after I learned to fly. I was flying a Piper Cub on my way from Ft.Worth, Texas, to Lewiston, Idaho. I was about halfway between Colorado Springs and Denver, Colorado, when my engine begins making funny sounds and losing a bit of power. I immediately went through the check list and found when I switched from both magnetos to the left magneto, the engine nearly quit altogether. I quickly switched back to both and kept my eyes peeled for a likely landing place.

I had been flying about a thousand feet above the ground and now little by little I was losing altitude. Fortunately, the engine kept producing some power until I made it to Stapleton Airport at Denver. Denver is something over 5,000 feet above sea level and when I arrived, I could just barely maintain 5,400 feet, which was well below pattern elevation for Stapleton. Not only that, the engine was beginning to misfire.

In those pre-radio days, controlled airports - that is, airports that had a control tower - used a system of light guns. A tower person would aim his light gun at the airplane and by the use of different colored lights he could signal instructions to the pilot. The receiving pilot would waggle his wings in acknowledgement. I knew how to read the light signals, but I was so busy trying to keep my little ole plane in the air until I reached the runway that I just ignored the steady red light aimed at me - a signal that I was not to land at this airport.

I only had one thing in mind and that was to get this cotton-pickin’ aeroplane on the ground at the nearest runway. What I didn’t know was that it was prohibited to land at Stapleton unless you first had radio contact.

I had no radio.

I also didn’t know that they had two parallel east-west runways. One was for departing airplanes and one was for landing aircraft. I was a very young feller, a rather new pilot still wet behind the ears, had an ailing engine on my hands, and I didn’t stop to check what was legal and what was prohibited.

I plunked my little Cub down on the wrong runway where some airline-type airplanes were waiting to take off. I figured I would be bending the rules a bit, but I didn’t care. I was just glad to be safely on the ground.

That evil person in the tower followed me with that blasted light gun, giving all kind of signals that I didn’t understand. I still had enough engine power to taxi up to one of the large hangers where I could see some tie-down ropes located. I shut down the nearly dead engine, opened my door, and slipped out on the pavement. My knees were a bit wobbly, but at least I was safely on the ground and glad to be there.

As I was walking toward the office of one of the fixed-base operators there, a fellow came to meet me and said, “You are wanted on the telephone.”

How strange. I didn’t know anyone here. How could they be wanting me on the phone?

I said, “O.K.” and began telling him I had a sick plane and would he have a mechanic look at it. He sort of grinned and said, “Yeah, we can handle that, but I think you had better answer that phone. It’s one of the tower operators and he sounded a bit hot.”

I picked up the phone and the voice on the other end nearly blew me away! He gave me a dressing down that I remember to this day some 62 years later. He blistered my ears like a Marine D.I. He was talking loud and fast and using words that I had never heard. He kept repeating something about writing me up and that he was going to have my license not only revoked, but burned!

Finally he stopped yelling and ranting long enough for me to tell him, in a quivering voice, that my engine was sick and was just barely keeping me in the air and I didn’t have time to make proper arrangements for a legal landing. He seemed to calm down a bit and asked how old I was. I gave him my age. He said, “I want to talk to that mechanic that’s with you.”

The mechanic had opened up the cowling on my plane and was peering inside and shaking his head. I told him the Tower Man wanted to speak to him. He took the phone and I could hear the conversation.  The Tower Man asked him if there was something wrong with my engine. The mechanic answered, “Yeah, I’ll say there is!” He chuckled and added, “I don’t know how he got here. One of the magnetos has come completely off the engine and is lying in the bottom of the cowling. The other one is loose and would have soon fallen off too.”

The tower man asked to speak to me again and this time he was more professional sounding and said, “O.K. kid, I am not going to press charges on you because it sounds like you had an emergency situation. But when you get ready to leave this airfield, be d--- sure to call me on the phone so I can direct you safely out of here. And by the way, don’t come back here unless you have a radio in the plane!”

I answered “Yes Sir! You can depend on it.” I felt like I had been talking to God. He put such a fear of Tower Types in me that I avoided airports with a tower for years afterwards.

I have had many, many emergency landings since that long ago day, but few have stuck in my mind as firmly.

Happy landing!

And as we used to say, may your takeoffs and landings be of equal number!

Emergency Landing Prep

When a person goes to a flight instructor and puts his money on the barrel-head and asks, “Can you learn me to fly like a bird…a buzzard…a pelican….or perhaps a dodo chick?” it usually follows that you will get a nod of the head. If he is hungry enough, he will answer, “I’ll try.”

You will be handed a stack of books containing pictures of airplanes and chocked full of important information about aerodynamics, air density, FAA regulations, navigation stuff, weather forecasting, the constant struggle between lifties and draggies, and proper pronouncements of aeronautical terms such as ailerons, altimeters, artificial horizons, and magnetic deviations, carburetor ice, gremlins and what not! He knows full well that you aren’t going to hang around and learn this stuff unless you are put in an air-type-ship and given a demonstration of the fun of flying that gets you solidly hooked on this new and wonderful adventure.

You will be placed either in a plane with tricycle landing gear or a plane with the conventional placement of wheels on the bottom side of the air machine which, as you have learned, is called a Tail-Dragger. He will take the plane up in the air a ways and make gentle turns and shallow climbs and shallow dives, all the while giving forth with a rattle of explanations of how an airplane flies and how to control it. He will usually then let you place your feet on the rudder pedals and grasp the stick or the steering wheel and feel what it is like to control this noisy flying contraption.

All this is an introductory flight, so-called. After this flight, the real flight instruction will begin. If all is going smoothly and according to plan, within a few flights you will be able to crank the engine, taxi to the designated runway, do what is called a run-up which is where you will check the magnetos, the carburetor heater, set the altimeter and give the other instruments a look.

If the airport has no control tower, you look both ways for traffic and, if all is clear, you will taxi into position on the runway. You then look at your instructor and when he gives you a nod, you will push the throttle forward, keep the ship going straight down the runway with your agile toes on the rudder pedals, and when the plane begins to feel light on its feet - or wheels as it were - you lift it off the ground and fly away into the wonderful wild blue.

You already know to climb to 400 feet and make a 90-degree-turn to the left because that is the prescribed flight pattern for this airport. Just as you start a bank to left for the turn, the instructor suddenly pulls the throttle back to idle and hollers in an alarming voice, “This is an engine failure emergency! Where are you going to land?”

Of course, the whole exercise is to introduce to you the possibility that at some time in your future, this might actually happen and you need to be prepared for this eventuality. Usually after a short time, during which you will think OH GOOD HEAVENS WE ARE GOING TO FALL OUT OF THE SKY, he will push the throttle forward again and you resume normal flight.

Now while he has your undivided attention, he will launch into a series of actions that you must learn and practice so you will do the right things instinctively in case this sort of emergency should arise. Things like:

• Don’t panic
• Continue to maintain control by placing the aircraft in a normal glide attitude
• Immediately begin looking for a likely place to land such as a nearby road or an open and level field or pasture or a sandy beach 

While you head for the chosen landing place, you learn to quickly scan the instrument panel to see if you can fix the problem. Maybe you need to switch gas tanks or maybe you need to introduce some carburetor heat. You might even try to re-start the engine if you have enough altitude. Again, above all, do not panic.

Keep cool. Fly the dang airplane!