a warbird thanksgiving turkey story no tbm avengers involved

[tom d. friedman]

in 2002 i wrote a 2 part magazine article in air classics magazine about the ortner air service, which was based here in wakeman ohio from the 1950's to 1973. they operated the largest non scheduled air freight service east of the mississippi river. they operated a slew of ww 2 warbirds, with the curtiss c-46 commando as 1 of their key work horses. they flew everything cargo wise from A TO Z. this excerpt from my article has a thanksgiving flair to it & i thought it was worthy of sharing with the wix gang at this all american holiday. the article excerpt is as follows....... "in the early 1960's the ortner brothers took a freight hop contract to fly 30,000 turkey chicks from new england to the nelson rockefeller ranch in arkansas. with a little foresight & first class jury rigging, ortner chief mechanic tom sawyer designed a temporary ventilation system by cutting inlets into the fuselage of the c-46 commando for ducting fresh air in, & expelling hot air out, as the live poultry in the quantity of 30,000 generated high body heat. the turkey chicks were loaded aboard 30 minutes prior to departure. in flight, the crew watched the turkey chicks for the duration while regulating the air flow via the ad hoc ventilation system. being originally farm boys, the flight crew knew if the turkey chicks were cold, as they would huddle together. if they were too warm, they would spread their wings. on arrival at the rockefeller ranch it was found that under ten of the turkey chicks had died.. the contractor must have been ecstatic". gobble gobble!!! happy thanksgiving to all the gang here on this awesome site.

[TAdan]

Nice story.

A great example of the variety of things that warbirds were used for after their time in the seervice.

[tom d. friedman]

thought i'd ratchet this back up to the 1st page, as after today it's lost & means nothing. happy holidays to all.