Warbird Information Exchange

Heres another one I just thought of, we were at an airshow with the Tracker and the engines are running, we just demonstrated the wing fold so of course all the crowds attention is now focused on us, I signal the pilot to close the bomb bay doors but they don't close (they move about an inch and nothing more). So I signal him again and still nothing, after the third time I decide to go into the plane and check the emergency dump valve to make sure it wasn't inadvertently activated, which it was fine. Finally I exit back out of the plane and go into the bomb bay to find the door locks were still in place . For some reason or other, once they were removed the doors closed just fine. Thank God we did an airshow departure.

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Col Craig Duck
Life Member CAF
Life Member YAF
Life Member EAA

We were at Culman, Alabama with the CF A-26 My Mary lou. She was going to meet her Korean war time crew chief wearing her own wartime colors. His daughter Katrina had sat for a picture to duplicate the wartime noseart. She was good lookin', and the plane looked pretty good too !

Well, they had this party on Friday night, they had an open bar.... We had a great time, especially with the bikini contest,... but I digress.

The morning after the party and before the show, I was really hurting, I had taken 3 different headache remedies. I climbed up the outside crew ladder to get on top to start setting up for fuel and oil. For those of you who have never been around an A-26 let me describe this crew ladder setup. This is an airplane that wants to be a fighter, it requires you to climb up on to it in order for you to open the clamshell canopies and then drop down into the cockpit. To start this climb you press a button and a two rung ladder drops out of the fuselage, you then proceed to put your right foot ( very important to start with your right foot ) in the bottom rung, then you start to climb up the side of the airplane. When you run out of ladder you are looking for steps built into the side of the aircraft with your toes, as you reach the top you now reach across with your left hand and grab a handhold on top of the airframe. You are now stretched across the aircraft and clinging to the side looking much like Spiderman ( but without the fancy underwear ). At this point you are required to place your left foot on TOP of the wingroot and in one smooth motion simply step up onto the wing. This all goes very smoothly unless you miss the last step with the right foot, at that point the unfortunate soul nursing the headache proceeds to slide down the side of the airplane all the way to the ground. I'm told that it looked like it all happened in slow motion, just like in the cartoons! Oh, yeah, this is all happening about 13 feet above the ground ! No broken bones ensued, the headache eventually went away and we had a great weekend !

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"You cannot invade the mainland United States. There would be a rifle behind each blade of grass..."
Admiral Isoruku Yamamoto

Not quite embarassing as worrying how to explain it...

I was on exchange with the RAF & we were on a trip to Akrotiri Cyprus doing work with the SAS. That weekend, was RAF AKrotiri's open house & one of the events was the HALO jump of the RAF Falcons (their jump demo team). Now there's normally a Herk crew that's assigned to them for a year & get to go to all the airshows & open house good deal trips, but they were broken somewhere, so the Falcons came to us as they knew the SF boys were all HALO qualified.

We agreed to drop them & my nav asked about the flyby. Now I'd never seen the Falcons, but apparently, there's a timed fly by of the Herk after the jumpers have landed where they all turn & salute smartly. So we sorted out the timing of it all & figured out where we needed to be to get the best speed of our four engined whisper pig & nail the timing.

Now the loadmaster, being a good loadmaster, acquired some of the Falcons' extra smoke cannisters & somehow attached them to seat rods. When I asked what he was doing, he advised me that there were some things it was better if I did not know about...

On our high speed pass, we flew a bit lower & faster than I'd have gotten away with in the USAF and the loadmaster & crew chief had these seat rods with smoke cannisters hanging out the paratroop doors spewing this awful orange smoke. We zoomed down the runway at about 280kts & 20' or so, stood the mighty herk on it's tail & climbed as near vertical as she would for all of about 3000', pushed over & departed.

We had to run a hydraulic pump over to Crete for a broken F3. We ran into a couple nasty thunderstorms on the way & I managed to put the C130K down in the worst crosswind I've ever experienced (35G40 direct cross) w/o tearing anything up.

But imagine my surprised as I learned all about the airflow around the back of a Herk when I spotted the horrendously bright two foot wide orange streaks on olive drab green going from the troop doors, wrapping around & underneath the ramp, and up & out the center of the tail! That was going to be hard to explain when we got home the next day!

I've never before or since actively looked for rain & thunderstorms to fly through, but we did our best to rinse off the plane. When I got home, there was a message from the squadron commander for me to call him. Fearing the worst, I reported in in the most military manner I could muster. He just looked at me for a little while then said, "You look a wee bit frightened, Ernie. What's the matter chap?" I told him nothing, but it's always unnerving to get called at home by your commander after a week on the road - nothing good can come of that. He just smiled & said, "I received a call from the base commander at Cyprus." He paused for effect as he no doubt noticed the blood drain from my face. "Apparently, that was the best flypast he's ever seen from a Hercules. Well done, lad."

As I thanked him & excused myself he shouted down the hallway, "Don't worry about the stripes, they'll wear off eventually!"

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Daddy always said, "If yer gonna be dumb, you gotta be tough" and I'm one tough sonofagun!

Now that's a good one Ernie. I've heard a few good Herk stories from the resident drivers at LNC, but that's the best one yet!

That's nothing compared to most of their own stories! They operate the Herk a bit more "aggressively" than we do!

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Daddy always said, "If yer gonna be dumb, you gotta be tough" and I'm one tough sonofagun!

Oh, I've heard of that as well. Most of the stories I've heard from C-130 guys are mostly pre-Desert Storm (and a lot pre-Grenada) when some of that "hot sh*t" stuff was still allowed if only because the commanders just looked the other way most of the time...

Brought my Mother!

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"Hindsight is usually 20% off!"

Should be on YouTube by now.

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What is that mountain goat doing way up here in the clouds?

After a couple of years of boasting, "I haven't gotten speared on a pitot tube (yet) or whacked by a prop, but if it's got a hangie-down oil cooler I'll find it with my head," I finally bonked a prop blade. Last November at Lone Star's Fly Day we were tugging way too bright and early and I stood up right into a prop on the T-50. ding dong!
Marty just looked at me and asked if I had forgotten that airplane was there. It got the top of my cap right at the rear of the bill and sweat band so I didn't go home with a shiner.
The scary part is that somewhere out there is a pitot tube with my name on it! yikes!

Canso42

Don't worry, Canso, we don't even consider someone part of the Phantom crew unlees it's drawn a little blood. She'll bite you real hard if your not paying attention, but most of the time it's only a little nip !

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"You cannot invade the mainland United States. There would be a rifle behind each blade of grass..."
Admiral Isoruku Yamamoto

try an F-104. That wing takes your head right of if you're not carefull

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Magister Aviation
It's all in my book