Page 32 - Twin and Turbine September 2017

I thought about it maybe all of four seconds then casually told him, “Yeah, I guess so.”
My family immediately began begging me to change my mind. Friends thought I was insane. This was in 1965, remember, 51 years ago. Lindbergh’s New York/Paris flight was still a subject of current conversation. “Lucky Lindy” he was called, for the extraordinary feat of conquering the wild Atlantic, killer of sailors and aviators. In 1965 the Atlantic still maintained its malevolent reputation as near unconquerable. Airlines, in their four-engine Lockheed Connies and DC-6’s had established Atlantic service, but our Coast Guard maintained an ocean station midpoint to report weather and to assist flights in distress. Hardly a week passed without Page 1 headlines about a flight that had limped into Greenland with an engine out or after encountering staggering amounts of ice or fierce headwinds on the east-to-west crossing.
But young journalists in pursuit of a byline are fearless, right? I threw an extra pair of shorts in my kit and was off to Europe. It was just about that fast. Miller wanted to demonstrate his radios at a big aviation event in Hanover, Germany within two weeks, so no time to engineer and install long-range tanks, assemble maritime and artic survival kits or even discuss it with my life insurance agent. Ten days later, Miller and I were over far north Canada at 19,000 in his new Aztec en route to Goose Bay, Labrador. We were on top of a thin strataform layer. We could see ice crystals skittering across the wing now and then, and sometimes through holes, a view of the world below.
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Snow everywhere, nothing but miles and miles of snow in every direction that early spring day.
About a half-hour before Port Menier, the final NDB fix before Goose Bay. without so much as a hiccup, the left engine died.
Miller looked at me; I looked at him. “What do you think?” he asked casually. “Don’t know,” I answered even more casually.
“Anything you want to do?” Miller asked.
“No,” I lied.
For want of anything better to try, Herman pulled the left manual alternate air knob. At which signal the right engine also died. Since we’d already run out of ideas, he pulled the right manual air on, and we waited. After about 60 days (it seemed) the left engine spun up slowly to normal, followed eventually by the right. (Later we discovered that each alternate intake auto door was being jammed by a slightly too long bolt. And that’s why pros recommend that you have 50 or 100 hours on an airplane, in all sorts of weather, before starting to Europe in it.)
Goose radar had us 150 nm out and at 130 nm began letting us down without our asking. We broke out on a perfect downwind. (A good thing, since we were down to under an hour on fuel.) During rollout, Goose Tower told us that under no circumstances were we to turn left. “Repeat, do not turn left! Turn around to the right and back-taxi to the terminal.” That seemed odd, as we could see that left was the American side and right was Canadian.
As the engines were shut down on the ramp a Canadian soldier ordered us to follow him up to the tower. That was ominous. However, after a dressing down by a Canadian captain for not sending a message we were coming (most early spring arrivals made that mistake he admitted) the captain arranged for our aircraft’s servicing, a free oxygen top off and directed us to the Canadian mess where we had the finest T-bone I’ve ever had. Nice people those Canadians, By the way, while servicing our oxygen the Canadian corporal revealed why the excited instruction to not turn to the left to backtrack on the runway. The left side is U.S. Air Force and back in 1961 when an airplane was pointed at them they either shot it down or impounded it forever.
We were up at 5 a.m. the next morning for the longest over water leg of the trip and one with no alternates. No big send- off. No one was at the airport, except a pair of tower operators. Weather was by phone. Flight plan was filed on a direct line to Gander. We simply drew a straight line on the map, Goose to Narsarsuaq, Greenland; then figured ETAs to 55 deg. W/ 56 deg. 45 min. N, 50 deg. W/59 deg. 15 min. N (compulsory reporting points), to Narsarsuaq, then to the alternate at Sondrestrom (high up on the west coast of Greenland, the closest legal alternate), phoned it in and left. No one got nosey. No checks of equipment, or signing of waivers, or anything. We might as well have been checking out of Hoboken en route to Hooterville.
Goose runways were like JFK that morning. Canadian fighters swooshed off the west runway, U.S. F102’s off the north and finally we putt-putted off the east one and continued straight out. We went on instruments eight minutes after takeoff; broke out on top two minutes later. With turbo-charging, weather is not what it might be without turbos, at least not at FL210 on that day.
30 • TWIN & TURBINE
September 2017