2010 07 tarpa topics

JULY 2010 ISSUE 98

TWA ACTIVE RETIRED PILOTS ASSOCIATION

SCOTTSDALE 2010NOT TOO LATE

TO COME ABOARDSEE PG. 7

PLANE #1019 COMES HOME PLANE #1019 COMES HOME

JULY 2010 ISSUE 98

TWA ACTIVE RETIRED PILOTS ASSOCIATION

TARPA

TOPICS

JULY

2010

SCOTTSDALE 2010NOT TOO LATE

TO COME ABOARDSEE PG. 7

PLANE #1019 COMES HOMEPLANE #1019 COMES HOME

PAGE � ... TARPA TOPICS

EDITOR Jeff Hill, Sr. 9610 Hidden Lane Woodstock, IL 60098 (815) 338-3551 [email protected]

EDITOR EMERITUS John P. Gratz 1646 Timberlake Manor Pkwy. Chesterfield, MO 63017-5500 (636) 532-8317 [email protected]

INTERNET WEBMASTER Marc Brecy 18 Allee de la Tournelle 60128 Mortefontaine, France 33 (0) 3 44 54 34 95

[email protected]

PRESIDENTGuy A. FortierBox 6065 Incline Village, NV 89450 (775) 831-3040 [email protected]

FIRST VICE-PRESIDENT William A. KirschnerBox 3596 State Line, NV 89449-3596 (775) 721-4386 [email protected]

SECOND VICE PRESIDENT Dusty West4700 Pinnacle Drive Bradenton, FL 34208-8497 (941) 538-0729

[email protected]

SECRETARY/TREASURER Ed MadiganP.O. Box3565 Incline Village, NV 89450 (775) 831-1265 [email protected]

SENIOR DIRECTOR Robert C. Sherman21145 Cardinal Pond Terrace MT-222Ashburn, VA 20147 (571) 291-2760 [email protected]

PAST-PRESIDENT Charles L. Wilder 122 Wild Dunes Way Jackson, NJ 08527-4058 (732) 833-2205 [email protected]

DIRECTOR OF HOSPITALITY Robert W. Dedman3728 Lynfield Drive Virginia Beach, VA 23452 (757) 463-2032 [email protected]

EDITOR Jeff Hill, Sr.

9610 Hidden Lane Woodstock, IL 60098 (815) 338-3551 [email protected]

EDITOR EMERITUS John P. Gratz 1646 Timberlake Manor Pky., Chesterfield, MO 63017-5500 (636) 532-8317

[email protected]

OFFICERS/DIRECTORS

FLOWN WEST COORDINATOR John S. Bybee

2616 Saklan Indian Drive #1 Walnut Creek, CA 94595 (925) 938-3492

[email protected]

EDITORIAL STAFF

PAGE � ... TARPA TOPICS PAGE � ... TARPA TOPICS

PRESIDENT'S MESSAGE

Well...one more time...a quote from Yogi..."IT AIN'T OVER TILL IT'S OVER"...makes good sense to me. This is my last message as your President...by the time the November issue rolls around you should have a new President as a result of the 20 Convention...Capt. Bill Kirschner.

Again, we will be playing "musical chairs", and when the music stops, only one person will be without a chair...Capt. Charlie Wilder, who I will replace as Past President. I want to take this time to thank Charlie, on behalf of the Board of Directors and all members of TARPA, for his many years of service, in a variety of jobs, including President from 2003 thru 2006. We all look forward to many years en-joying Charlie and Helen's participation and company at TARPA events. He will stay busy serving TWA Seniors as President of the N.J. Garden State Chapter.

Our proposed new Board member will be Capt. Mike McFarland, who has volunteered to be our 2ND Vice President selectee, subject to the election at the 20 Scottsdale Convention...I'm sure a welcome aboard is in order for Mike, and his wife Cyble.

As I mentioned the 20 Scottsdale Convention...I hope you are all making plans to join us at this event, which is shaping up to be one of our best get togethers in the past several years. Vicki has completed plans for the various tours, which are repeated in this issue, along with the neces-sary enrollment forms and agenda. The welcoming reception on our first night... (Sunday) hosted by the Cottonwoods Resort and your Board of Directors, followed by the spectacular Monday evening Pig Roast and hosted cocktail party, at our "La Hacienda" hospitality suit , will be great kickoff events.

Sooo...it's up to you...don't let yourself miss out on one of the outstanding events we have ever of-fered. Fill out the registration forms in this edition and send them in.

Finally, it is time for me to thank you all for allowing me to be your President for the last four years. It has been a highlight of my TWA career, and forty-six year associations with all of you. The last eight years in TARPA, from the 2003 Reno Convention, to now have seen good times and not so good times...but TARPA is in great financial shape, and will serve it's membership for many years to come. I especially thank my fellow Board members, who have made this job seem easy, and al-ways enjoyable.

See you all in Scottsdale...it'll be a PARTY!!

Cheers,

The TWA Active Retired Pilots Association


SECRETARY/TREASURER REPORT April 1, 2010

As of April 1, 2010, the membership is as follows:

(R) Retired: 555 Active: 17 (E) Eagle: 365

(H) Honorary: 174

TOTAL: 1,111

There are also 28 subscribers to Topics and 13 who receive complimentary copies. We have added ten new members since the last Topics. They are listed later in this issue.

Following is the financial report for the period from December 1, 2009 thru April 1, 2010:

Opening Balance $72,922.21 Income $21,272.34 Expenses $14,613.33 Cash Flow $ 6,659.01

Balance 4/1/2010: $79,581.22

As mentioned above we have ten new members, but would like more. Please contact your TWA pilot friends and ask that they join us in future events. They can contact me or go on the web site at www.tarpa.com to get an application. Hope to see you in Scotts-dale.

Don’t let your TARPA Membership expire. Check your mailing label

If it reads “2009”, then it’s time for you to renew. .

Respectfully Submitted,

Ed Madigan



NEW MEMBERS

CLARENCE ABELL (CAROL) 1409 E. SUNVALE TERRACE OLATHE, KS 66062-2106

ALLEN ADAMS (IRMA) PO BOX 2708 CARSON CITY, NV 89702

LEWIS “VAN” BARKER 953 S. YEARLING RD. COLUMBUS, OH 43227

ART DANLEY (JUDY) 116 BLACKBERRY LANE WINTHROP, ME 04364

CARL KOBOSKY (KATHLEEN) 117 LIBERTY AVE. BELLE VERNON, PA 15012

DONALD LUEKE (ROSINE) 5203 NW 84TH PL. KANSAS CITY, MO 64154

DAVID “DENNIS” MOODY (SUSAN) 7979 TIGER PALM WAY FT. MYERS, FL 33966

SCOTT E. RICHARDSON (GAIL) PO BOX 651219 VERO BEACH, FL 32965

JACK SELBY (PATRICIA) 2888 LA CONCHA DR. CLEARWATER, FL 33762

ED TANN (NIKI) 11300 N. VIA RANCHO NARANJO ORO VALLEY, AZ 85737-7223

WELCOME ABOARD!



TARPA 2010 Convention Scottsdale, AZ

Welcome to Scottsdale, Arizona. Experience the beauty and excitement of the desert in Arizona. With world class shopping, fine art galleries, a charming and vibrant Old Town and renowned restaurants, our 2010 convention in Scottsdale promises to be one of the best in the decade. Include a great hotel, fabulous tours, and lots of time to spend with our TWA friends the event is surely not to be missed!

We have selected a fabulous property with lovely accommodations. The Scottsdale Cottonwoods Resort is unique in that the accommodations are all large private casitas within a beautifully landscaped property overlooking Camelback mountain and the Sonoran desert. Add to this the incredible room rate of only $94.00 per night, a complimentary breakfast and hosted cocktail party each evening, we truly have the best value you can find in Arizona!

Each of the “must see s in the Scottsdale/Phoenix area are included in our schedule of events. We plan to visit the Heard Museum, the Desert Botanical Garden, Frank Lloyd Wright’s Taliesen West, Pinnacle Peak Restaurant, the Commemorative Air Force Museum, and a spa day for the ladies. There are so many fabulous opportunities in Scottsdale we couldn’t include them all. You might want to hit the links for 18 holes, experience the Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art, the Scottsdale Center for Performing Arts, the Scottsdale Zoo, or even the Pueblo Grande Museum and Archeological Park.

With all of these fabulous tours, a great room rate, and wonderful opportunities to connect with your fellow TARPA members, we certainly hope we have enticed you to join us this fall in Scottsdale.

Complete details and the registration forms are included in this issue of TARPA T . See you in Scottsdale!


2010 ConventionScottsdale, AZ

Group Activities & Tour Information

In a true western style, the 2010 Convention will be “casual” for all functions. No ties, no party dresses and no formal attire required. You are encouraged to be casual and comfortable at all functions including the final banquet dinner. Our theme will be Tommy Bahama casual! Of

course if the ladies would like to dress, please do. We love to see those pretty legs.

Sunday, September 5, 2010

Welcome Reception – La Hacienda - Hospitality Suite Scottsdale Cottonwoods Resort 5:00pm – 6:00pm

Enjoy a hosted welcome reception at the La Hacienda which will be our Hospitality Suite for the week in Scottsdale. A one hour hosted reception followed by dinner on your own at a choice of fabulous, renowned restaurants in Scottsdale.Tour Cost: Compliments of the Scottsdale Cottonwoods Resort and your TARPA Board of Directors.

Monday, September 6, 2010 (Labor Day)

Desert Botanical Garden Phoenix, AZ 9:00am – 2:00pm

Join us for a day of rejuvenation, exploration, and inspiration. Centrally located in the beautiful Papago Park, the Desert Botanical Garden is a wonderful and captivating way to experience the beauty of the desert without leaving Phoenix. The Garden is a living museum with a collection of over 20,000 catalogued plants representing many rare, threatened and endangered species of desert plants in the world. Discover saguaros, prickly pears, agaves, and desert wildflowers along the trails. The Garden’s docents will tour you through the Garden’s trails and entertain you with stories about what makes these plants so unique to the desert. To help you better connect with nature, please wear comfortable shoes and light clothing, hat, sunscreen, and sunglasses. Be sure to bring a camera to capture the memories and fun! The tour includes round trip deluxe motor coach transportation, escorted tours, and a delightful spinach salad topped with grilled chicken and with raspberry vinaigrette dressing for lunch. A cash bar will be available.

Tour cost: $64.00 per person



Monday, September 6, 2010 (Labor Day)

Welcome to Arizona Scottsdale Cottonwoods OK CorralOpening Reception 5:00pm – 8:00pm

Our 2010 convention will begin with a scrumptious Latin Roasted Pig Dinner at the OK Corral right on property at the Scottsdale Cottonwoods Resort. The corral is attached to the “La Hacienda” our hospitality suite for the week and has an incredible view of the Sonoran Mountains as a backdrop. Picnic tables, music, a roasting/bar-b-que pit and all of the fixings of an outdoor festive dinner will be included. Golf carts will be available to take you to and from your casita. Join us for what promises to be a great way to greet all of our old and new friends at the 2010 TARPA Convention. The dinner will feature a whole roasted suckling pig carved to order, exotic fruit crab salad, star fruit with black bean salsa, Cuban style black beans, Mercian salad of mixed baked vegetables, tri-color tortilla chips and ice cream!

The first hour, 5:00pm-6:00pm will be a hosted cocktail party provided by the hotel. Following dinner the La Hacienda will be open until 8:00pm with cocktails provided by TARPA and the Hospitality Committee.

Tour Cost: $55.00 per person

Tuesday , September 7, 2010

The Heard Museum Native Cultures & Art Tour and Luncheon 9:00am – 2:00pm

Since 1929, the Heard Museum is one of the best places to experience the cultures and art of the Southwest Native Americans. The Heard was initially established by newspaper magnate Dwight & Maie Bartlett Heard and has grown to be internationally recognized for its’ American Indian art collections, educational programming, and festivals. Today, it is a private, non-profit museum recognized for its’ thorough and sensitive representation of Native cultures and heritage. Your escorted tour will include a 90 minute “highlights” of the

10 exhibit galleries featuring over two thousand of works of art by Southwestern American Indians of the past and today. They tell fascinating stories of home, land and community for American Indians. The tour will include a group catered luncheon in the historic Monet Vista Room.

Tour Cost: $74.00 per person


Tuesday , September 7, 2010

The Pinnacle Peak Restaurant Cowboy Steak Dinner & Dancing 7:00pm – 9:30pm

What better place to kick up your heels than a place with great memories and great fun; The Pinnacle Peak.Many of us experienced the unique Western atmosphere, great food, and lots of laughs at the Pinnacle in our flying days. Join us for what will be a memorable evening at one of “The Valley’s Best Restaurants” by Phoenix Magazine. The event includes deluxe motor coach transportation, one of the west’s best mesquite grilled New York Steak and ¼ Chicken Combo, salad, desserts, and a specialty brewed beer, the best you’ve ever tasted! We’ll have dinner, dancing, and lots of fun.Tour costs: $56.00 per person

Wednesday , September 8, 2010

Frank Lloyd Wright Taliesin West Experience Scottsdale, AZ 9:00am – 2:00pm

Often acclaimed as the greatest architect of the 20th century, Frank Lloyd Wright discovered the Arizona desert in the late 1920’s.By 1937, he built a permanent home, studio, and architectural campus on 600 acres of magnificent, rugged desert in the McDowell Mountains in northeast Scottsdale. One of Wright’s greatest masterpieces, Taliesin West showcases Wright’s brilliant ability to integrate indoor and outdoor spaces. From the beginning, this remarkable set of buildings astounded architectural critics with its’ beauty and unusual form. Wright and his apprentices literally created Taliesin West “out of the desert”. Gathering rocks from the desert floor and sand from the washes they built this desert masterpiece by hand. Taliesin West is a National Historic Monument and visiting this incredible facility is particularly meaningful since the buildings are used for the purposes for which they were designed; the site still serves as a living, working, educational facility. The day will include transportation, a 90 minute guided “Insights” tour, time to enjoy the gift shop, and then a private lunch at nearby Maggiano’s Little Italy. Lunch will be served family style including appetizers, salads, lasagna or pasta, and dessert.

Tour costs: $78.00 per person

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Thursday , September 9, 2010

Ladies Event – Dolce Spa and Ladies Luncheon Borgota Mall & J. Alexanders9:30am – 2:00pm

The 2010 Convention just wouldn’t be the same without some good girl fun! Once again we will have a special day just for the ladies in Scottsdale. There is a lovely full service spa located immediately across the street from the front desk of the hotel. We have negotiated a special rate on all services for the TARPA ladies. Choose from a facial, message, maybe a pedicure or a manicure, a body wrap, or all of it! Costs for spa services are on your own and can be charged to your hotel room. We’ll get to see the fabulous results at our Ladies Luncheon to be held at 12:00 noon at J. Alexander’s Restaurant located at The Borgata of Scottsdale Mall adjacent to the hotel. Remember to bring your gift with a value of $15.00. This event includes the Grilled Ahi Salad luncheon, dessert, champagne, tax and gratuities.Tour Cost: $38.00

The Commemorative Air Force Museum – Falcon Field Tour & Luncheon, Mesa AZ 10:00am – 3:00pm

The Commemorative Air Force Arizona Wing Aviation Museum is located in nearby Mesa, Arizona and displays and fly’s a variety of aircraft from WW I to Vietnam. Included in the collection is the B-17G Flying Fortress Sentimental Journey, B-25, C-45, SNJ, F4 Phantom, Migs and other warbirds. Experience a flight back with a warbird ride in the B-17, SNJ or C-45. On display are authentic artifacts and memorabilia from WWII-Vietnam. Our unique facility boasts 30,000 sq.-ft. surrounded by combat aircraft from WWI-Vietnam plus gift shop. We’ll have lunch at Anzio’s Italian Restaurant right at Falcon Field overlooking the Boeing Apache Helicopter Center. Tour includes deluxe motor coach transportation, guided tour of the Museum, Anzio’s Sausage & Meatball Sandwich or an Anzio Burger, house salad, fresh baked garlic roll, and wine or beer.

Tour Costs: $58.00


Banquet Dinner & Dancing Scottsdale Cottonwoods Resort Convention Center 6:00pm – 10:00pm

Join us for a truly fun evening right in our own back yard at the Scottsdale Cottonwoods Resort Convention Center. The evening begins with a hosted bar from 6 pm to 7 pm and will include a fabu-lous dinner, entertainment, wine and dancing. Remember we are cas-ual this year in Scottsdale. Bring your dancing boots and enjoy our final evening together in Arizona.

Dinner Cost: $ 80.00 per person

See you in Scottsdale in 2010!

Handicapped: All of the tours and sites listed are accessible for handicapped or those with limited mobility. If you will require assistance or have mobility issues please make a note on the comment section of the registration form

PAGE �� ... TARPA TOPICS PAGE �� ... TARPA TOPICS

Schedule for TARPA 2010 Convention Scottsdale, AZ

Date Depart Return Event

SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 5, 2010 Noon 5PM Registration Room Open - Sonora Room 3PM 5PM Board Meeting – La Hacienda 5PM 6PM Welcome Cocktail Party – La Hacienda 6PM Board of Directors Dinner

MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 6, 2010 (LABOR DAY) 8AM 9AM Breakfast – Sonora Courtyard

9AM 4PM Registration Open - Sonora Board Room 9AM 2PM Desert Botanical Gardens & Lunch 5PM 6PM Hosted Welcome Reception – Cottonwoods "OKCorral" 6PM 8PM Welcome to Arizona Barbeque & Hospitality Suite Open

TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 7, 2010 8AM 9AM Breakfast – Sonora Courtyard

9AM Noon Registration Open – Sonora Board Room 9AM 2PM Heard Museum & Lunch 5PM 6PM Hosted Cocktails – La Hacienda Suite

6PM 9PM Bus departs Pinnacle Peak Restaurant – dinner & dancing

WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 8, 20108AM 9AM Breakfast - Sonora Courtyard 9AM Noon Registration Open – Sonora Board Room 9AM 2PM Frank Lloyd Wright’s Taliesen West Experience

Lunch at Maggiano’s Little Italy 5PM 6PM Hosted Cocktail Reception – Poolside Dinner on Own

THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 9, 2010730AM 9AM Breakfast - Sonora Courtyard 830AM 10AM General Membership Meeting Noon 4PM Registration Open – Sonora Board Room 10AM 2PM The Commemorative Air Force Museum – Falcon Field

Lunch at the Anzio Landing, Mesa AZOpen AM Optional Ladies Spa Day at Dolce Spa Noon 1:30PM Ladies Luncheon J. Alexanders

The Scottsdale Borgata Mall (adjacent to hotel) 5PM 6PM Hospitality Open – La Hacienda Suite 6PM 7PM Farewell Reception – Hosted Bar 7PM 10PM Farewell Banquet Dinner, wine, entertainment Cottonwoods Convention Center Facility



SCOTTSDALE COTTONWOOD RESORT

For Hotel Reservations call the Scottsdale Cottonwoods Resort 480-991-1414. Re-quest rooms in the TARPA room block at a special group rate of $94.00 per night, plus applicable room tax. Note: This room rate will be honored three days prior and three days following our convention if you’d like to spend a little more time in Scottsdale.

The hotel is providing complimentary Super Shuttle to and from the Phoenix Sky Harbor airport (this an $80.00 value per couple!). More information will follow on the transportation.

The hotel is also offering a complimentary breakfast each morning and will be hosting a one hour cocktail party each evening. These events have been incorporated into our schedule of events.

Remember you must pay your TARPA annual dues to attend the 2010 Convention.

Send your dues in today!

Please submit the following registration form and payment to:

TARPA Convention 2010 Attn: Captain Ed Madigan P.O. Box 3565 Incline Village, NV 89450

A DIFFERENT KIND OF EXPERIENCE.



Scottsdale, AZ September 5 – September 10. 2010

Convention Registration Form

Last Name_____________________________________First*___________________________

Spouse/Other__________________________________First*___________________________

Address______________________________________________________________________

City, State, Zip Code____________________________________________________________

Phone___________________________E-mail_______________________________________* Please provide your name as you would like it to appear on your name tag.

Self Spouse/Other Total

All Attendees Must Register TARPA Members & Guests Fee $60.00 $________ $_________ $_________

OPTIONAL TOURS (See attached pages for complete descriptions)

Desert Botanical Garden Fee $ 64.00 $________ $__________ _________Includes lunch

Welcome Reception/dinner Fee $55.00 $________ $__________ $_________

The Heard Museum includes Fee $74.00 $________ $__________ $_________unch

Pinnacle Peak Dinner & Dancing Fee $56.00 $________ $__________ $_________

Frank LloydWright’s Taliesen West Includes Lunch Fee $78.00 $________ $__________ $_________

Commemorative Air Force Museum Includes Lunch Fee $58.00 $________ $__________ _________

Ladies Luncheon Fee $38.00 $________ $__________ $_________

Final Banquet Dinner Dinner, Dancing & Wine Fee $80.00 $________ $__________ $_________

GRAND TOTAL $_________



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Scottsdale, AZ September 5 – September 10. 2010

Convention Registration Form

Last Name_____________________________________First*___________________________

Spouse/Other__________________________________First*___________________________

Address______________________________________________________________________

City, State, Zip Code____________________________________________________________

Phone___________________________E-mail_______________________________________* Please provide your name as you would like it to appear on your name tag.

Self Spouse/Other Total

All Attendees Must Register TARPA Members & Guests Fee $60.00 $________ $_________ $_________

OPTIONAL TOURS (See attached pages for complete descriptions)

Desert Botanical Garden Fee $ 64.00 $________ $__________ _________Includes lunch

Welcome Reception/dinner Fee $55.00 $________ $__________ $_________

The Heard Museum includes Fee $74.00 $________ $__________ $_________unch

Pinnacle Peak Dinner & Dancing Fee $56.00 $________ $__________ $_________

Frank LloydWright’s Taliesen West Includes Lunch Fee $78.00 $________ $__________ $_________

Commemorative Air Force Museum Includes Lunch Fee $58.00 $________ $__________ _________

Ladies Luncheon Fee $38.00 $________ $__________ $_________

Final Banquet Dinner Dinner, Dancing & Wine Fee $80.00 $________ $__________ $_________

GRAND TOTAL $_________



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2011 Convention – Eastern Caribbean Cruise Royal Caribbean Cruise Line

Freedom of the Seas

April 10, 2011 – 7 nights – departing – Port Canaveral, FL

All prices will include cruise fees, taxes, port fees, gratuities, and four hosted cocktail

parties. Prices are based on double occupancy for the 7 night cruise

Inside cabins are priced at $875 per person. Ocean view staterooms begin at $945 per person Balcony staterooms begin at $1,195 per person

Deluxe Balconies are $1,245 and Suites begin at $1,710.00

Registration forms are available now on the TARPA website www.tarpa.com, or contact our meeting

planner:

Vicki McGowen of McGowen Marketing [email protected]

775-849-1377 (office)

775-722-2811 (cell)



The Demise of the Cairo Domicile By

After selling my twin-engine Cessna T-50 in the late summer of 1955, I was out of the airplane trading business—at least for now. [See TRAD-ING PLANES, July 2009 TARPA TOPICS.] Moving from Michigan to New York, I leased a furnished house for $150 a month at Asharoken Beach on the North Shore of Long Island. Not long thereafter, when checking the bulletin board at the TWA hanger at La Guardia Airport, I noticed a Relief Pilot vacancy at the Cairo, Egypt, domicile. I rushed home and asked the better half if she wanted to move to Egypt. The answer was emphatic, “NO!” So I immediately grabbed the phone, called Western Union, and bid on the vacancy. Guess what? I was successful! That surprised me, as Egypt was a very senior domicile and I only had slightly more than two years with the company. I think the tension between England and Egypt over the Suez Canal had something to do with it. Anyhow, we were going to move to Egypt come hell or high water, lease or not! Actually, we had the high water as a hurricane put six feet of wa-ter in the basement. The hell came later. Since I was renting a furnished house, I didn't have any furni-ture so by checking out the want ads, I was able to pick up a few things which I transported to the Seven Santini Brothers warehouse in Brooklyn. On our departure date, a snowy December day, I drove my new 1955 Ford station wagon to the warehouse and took a taxi to Idlewild Airport.

TWA would not allow my German Shepherd on a passenger flight, so Captain Bill Youngblood, who was flying cargo flights, offered to take the dog with him to Frankfurt a couple of days before we left. Incidentally, when I bought this dog, since he was a German Shepherd, I thought he should have a Ger-man name, so I named him Rommel after German Field Marshall Erwin Rommel who was in com-mand of the Afrika Korps in WWII. Rommel was known as the "Desert Fox" but he was "out-foxed" by British Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery who trapped his army between El Alamein and the Qat-tara Depression in Egypt and whupped him good. Rommel was later forced into suicide for his alleged part in the failed assassination attempt on Adolph Hitler on 20 July 1944. (See the movie Valkyrie [Tom Cruise, MGM, 2008]). Back to the dog. I neglected to teach him the German language which caused some problems with the cargo personnel at Frankfurt Airport. We departed IDL on a snowy (required de-icing) December day and caught up with the dog in FRA. The dog was overjoyed to see us and the cargo handlers were overjoyed to see him go. We lucked out here as TWA would now allow "Rommel" to go with us in the front passenger compartment on the 749A Connie. So off to Cairo we go, with a Rome and Athens stop, arriving in Egypt on Christmas Day 1955.

Going through the Cairo customs was a breeze for myself, my wife, 7 month old son, and "Rommel", but the 12 cases of Gerber's baby food plus my firearms and ammunition didn't make it. I had brought along a Winchester Model 70 Super Grade rifle in caliber .270 and a .22 caliber Beretta pistol which I had purchased in Bari, Italy on my Navy cruise. We managed to retrieve the baby food in a few days, but it took a couple of months to retrieve the firearms and ammunition.

TWA did not provide accommodations on this assignment so we were on our own. Christmas night was spent at The Heliopolis Palace Hotel, dog and all. The next day F/O Cal Strouse and his wife, Rita, graciously offered to let us stay with them until we found our own housing. (Cal was later terminated for trying to smuggle gold into Ceylon (now Sri Lanka). Cal and Rita lived in El Maadi, a former Brit-ish settlement, about 10 miles south of Cairo along the Nile river.

About a month later, we rented a partially furnished two-story villa with garage, patio and landscaped grounds…. The master bedroom was air-conditioned. All this for $150/month, about twice as much as the locals would have paid. (I always liked the address -Villa 10 Road 11, as I later flew the L-1011).


My salary for this assignment was regular pay plus $75/month overseas override. In addition, a monthly cost-of-living differential (CLD) was provided-payable in the local currency (Egyptian pound) which amounted to about $100 a month. The CLD was supposed to offset the higher cost of living in a foreign country. All in all, I was raking in about a grand a month. [Nearly $11,000 in 2009 dollars]

Labor was quite reasonable. I had three servants for a total cost of $60/month. (Full time cook, $30, full time nanny, $20 and part time gardener, $10. who also washed my car). The nanny was a teen-age girl from Sudan and her name was Adeika. My (first) cook's name was Mohammed, (What else?) and he was a good cook, but I had to let him go because he was getting into my liquor pantry and would be half snockered when it came time to prepare dinner. My second and last cook's name was Mahmoud, but everybody called him "Jackson." He was a jolly fellow and a great cook but he was always hitting me for extra money for hysterectomies for one (or more?) of his three wives.

My household goods arrived in a couple of months but we had to go to Alexandria-about 100 miles northwest of Cairo-to pick up my Ford station wagon. We took the train up from Cairo. Driving back, we decided on the desert road, which was faster than driving along the Nile and going through all the little villages. However, we got caught in a sandstorm (Khamsin) which blasted off most of the paint on the passenger side of the vehicle. The insurance company had it repainted in Cairo.

The living was good in Maadi. American movies were ten cents and there was a sand golf course. Also, as expatriates, people living away from their homeland, we would be invited to parties at the U.S. Em-bassy. This would never happen in the U.S.

Occasionally, we would drive the Ford downtown to do some shopping at the Khan-el-Khalili Bazaar. When doing this, I would fold the back seat down on the Ford station wagon, crack the rear windows open a little and leave my now 9 month old son there with Rommel, my German Shepard, to guard him. When we returned from shopping in an hour or so, there would be a crowd of people around the Ford watching the baby and the dog. I never bothered to change the Michigan plates on the Ford and finally, the Police caught up with me and I was required to "nationalize" the Ford.

My favorite flight was the one to Ceylon. We would arrive in Colombo in the evening and stay at the Mt. Lavinia Hotel, an old British Colonial hotel with high ceiling fans and on-demand gas fired water heaters in the bathroom. When it lit up, one could really hear it and know that hot water was on its way. Since the hotel was on the Indian Ocean, we would usually go for a swim as the water was nice and warm. By the way, the runway at Colombo was outlined by placing flares alongside each side. That was okay unless a rain-squall passed over the field as you were about to land.TWA had the smallest hostess domicile of any airline in the world at Bombay (Mumbai) India - ONE hostess. Her name was Verna Leaddley. She was a very attractive Indian girl who would fly the flight from Bombay to Colombo (about 4 hours in a Connie) and back the next day. She would do this twice a week. What if she became sick and couldn't make the flight? I became a hostess once between Cleve-land and Columbus on a Martin 202 when the hostess didn't show up. The airport at Bombay was named "Santa Cruz" and the Cairo based crew members would have their mail sent there from the States. The reason for this is that the Egyptian authorities censored our mail and if there were any checks they would confiscate them. Also, some of the crew members were in the money changing business so we would mail our checks to our stateside banks from here in payment for Egyptian pounds.

About every two weeks, I would go the Egyptian Customs to see how my firearms application was do-ing. This involved drinking a lot of tea and paying some "bakshish" [gratuity]. After a couple of months, my application was finally approved and I had a "license to kill" which is exactly what I did. I would go into the desert and shoot these mangy, wild dogs with sores and scars on their bodies, four or five at a time. Also, at my Villa, cats would raid the garbage can next to the kitchen, which caused


quite a commotion. Rommel would go after them but he could never make the 180 degree turn on the slippery kitchen floor to do any good. So I would run to the kitchen with my .22 caliber Beretta pistol and shoot at them from the kitchen window. I usually missed but once I killed one that made my nanny, Adeika, very sad [because cats are considered sacred by many Egyptians].

Another of my pastimes was hiking up the pyramid Cheops, (Khufu), usually with visiting crew members. Of course, the favorite nightly thing to do was see the Belly Dancers - Egypt's top entertainers. It was quite an honor for a girl to be the a belly dancer in Egypt. And since I was also a NAVAL aviator, I felt it was my duty to closely check out their NAVELS. This was easily accomplished when she per-formed her exotic dance right at (or on) your table. With a little Stella beer or an “s.b.” (sufferin' bastard) from the [bar at the] old Shepherds Hotel) one could have a pleasant evening.

We also did a little extra flying in our spare time (which was quite often) only this time, it was in glid-ers (sail planes) instead of airplanes. The Egyptian Government encouraged their youth to learn to fly by subsidizing training in gliders and they would also let us use their equipment. The price was right, only 5 piasters (about 15 cents U.S.) for a tow and if you stayed up more than a half hour, it would cost you another 5 piasters. They used an old Ford pickup as a tow vehicle instead of an airplane. The glid-ers were mostly British made. One of my favorites was an open cockpit model with side-by-side seat-ing. After the old Ford pickup got you in the air, you would look around to see where the buzzards were soaring, as that's where the updrafts would be, and then go and fly wing on them. According to my logbook, I made a total of 74 flights with 11 hours and one minute of time, and three cable breaks. Longest flight was 50 minutes and highest elevation 5400 feet AGL. I received an "A," "B," and "C" certificate from the Royal Aero Club of Egypt. A "Silver C" certificate required a distance objective which I did not have a chance to accomplish because of the Suez crisis.

Vacation time was approaching and I lucked out with a three week June-July (1956) vacation; my first summer vacation with TWA. F O Bob Zimmerman had just ar-rived, and with no place to stay, he cared for our Villa while we were gone. I, my wife and 13 month old son flew up to Rome and stayed at the Massimo D'Azeglio Hotel - a crew hotel with great food and right across the street from the Mediterraneo Hotel, another crew hotel. The next day, we had our son, Gary, blessed by the Pope [Pius XII] at the Vatican. This was arranged by a semi-nary student friend of ours and cost a carton of U.S. ciga-rettes! I then rented a little Fiat 600 car and we headed north ending up in Switzerland. The scenery was beauti-ful and the price was right. Substantial meals were just a few dollars and nice, clean hotel rooms for under $10/night. Also, with a child along, you received a lot of extra attention. It was a great trip. We left our faithful little Fiat 600 car in Geneva and flew TWA back to Cairo. In September (1956) my wife and son departed for Stateside as she was pregnant with our second child and wanted to deliver in the U.S. Since Bob Zimmerman and I were now "batching" it we decided to take a little trip. We fired up the Ford and with my cook, Jackson, Rom-

F/O Lou Lovelette (R) & his flight instructor

“Towing a glider behind my 1955 Ford S/W”


mel and my Winchester rifle; we were off for the Southern end of the Suez Canal. With a right turn we worked our way south along the Gulf of Suez. We usually over-nighted at rest houses. These were owned by the government or, occasionally, by oil companies. With a business card one was usually welcome. The price was right - no charge but a little bakshish was appropriate for the caretaker. Jack-son and Rommel would sleep in the car. Sometimes we would run across the Camel Patrol, whose job it was to apprehend drug smugglers. They would invite us in to have tea (thank God for the British)

with them as they were eager to have some company to offset their lonely job. An-other time, we came upon a policeman who carried a British Enfield rifle in cali-ber .303 with iron sights. I then showed him my Winchester rifle with a Weaver telescopic sight. He was amazed. I saw a buzzard perched on a rock cropping some distance away. I took a pot shot at it and darned if I didn't hit it. A lucky shot! The policeman was even more amazed now. He is not allowed to shoot his rifle unless he is going to shoot someone - no target practice allowed. All cartridges have to be accounted for, no selling them on the black market.

After going about halfway down the Eastern Coastline of Egypt, we made a right turn at Bur Safaga on the Red Sea and followed the wash (wadi) through the mountains to the Village of Qena on the Nile River. Another right turn and we followed the Nile back to Maadi. This was slow going as there were many villages to drive through and constant people and animal traffic on the road. Jackson was in his glory here. It seemed as if he knew everybody in Egypt. He would stay with his friends at night and show up the next morning. One village we drove through, all the vehicles were 1937 Chevrolets, both taxis and personal. They must have made a good deal on them.

Another time, I and Relief Pilot Don Peters, who was on temporary assignment to Cairo, his wife Nancy, both of whom were staying in my Villa, and my cook, Jackson, fired up the Ford and drove up-river to Asyut for an RON and then further upriver to Luxor where we visited the nearby Valley of the Kings. A general strike was on at this time and it was mak-ing Jackson nervous. He kept my Win-chester rifle near at hand. We had no prob-lems, though, and returned to Maadi safely.In October, 1956 all hell broke loose as Egyptian President Gamal Abdul Nasser took over the Suez Canal by force. (The British had been operating it.) This ticked off the British (and French) to say the least. They sent warships our way and soon we saw airplanes overhead dropping bombs on various military installations.

Continued on P.

Egyptian pilot license

“Don and Nancy Peters and my cook, Mahmoud (Jackson) on our way up (south) the Nile to Luxor.” October 1956


[Part of article in an Oct. 1956 issue of the Providence (RI) Journal]

STORY AND PICTURE BY CLIFFORD SMITH

Events in the Middle East have been as close as the telephone during the past three weeks for a young mother in Cranston. Since Oct. 19 when her husband, Edward, returned to his job as a relief pilot for Trans World Airlines in Cairo, Mrs. Carmella Kuball has received three assurances of his safety. The first was a four-word cablegram last Sunday which said, "Enroute Naples everything okay." On Monday, a fellow pilot called from New York and told Mrs. Kuball that her husband was unharmed. And, in a phone call both brief and static filled from Naples Tuesday, Edward said he was well and would probably make two more flights from Rome to Cey-lon before returning to the States Mrs. Kuball and her l7-month- old son, Gary, ar-rived in Cranston a month ago and both still own bronze tans after their eleven months in Egypt. Leaving behind a car, furniture, clothing and a German Shepherd dog, mother and son accompanied Dad, evacuated the Egyptian capital Oct. 12 in the last of three planes sent by the airline company for

its dependents. They departed with a warning from the Egyptian government that any more planes send for such purposes would be shot down. ...Of her homecoming, the 27 year-old mother said, “it’s funny the things you can crave.” She explained an 11-month wait for a couple of items very foreign to Egypt – hot dogs and ice cream. Landing at Idlewild Airport, Mrs. Kuball had the hot dog and Gary the ice cream, a kind of gesture to their absence from their native shores. American food, she said, was practically impossible to find, and Westerners depended on imports from Holland, Australia and England for staples such as butter, cheese and powdered milk. Egyptians had an. abundance of tea and rice, she noted, but the old standbys like meat, potatoes and vegetables were available only during seasons, each at different intervals. Even so, all native food had to be boiled in chemicals and vitamin pills became a habit because of the low food value of the homegrown vari-ety. The people all looked as if they were starving Mrs. Kuball pointed out and recalled groups of twenty or more eating from a single dish on Cairo’s streets. "Natives didn't eat at home,” she explained, "because they don't have the utensils." "We're really lucky to be living in the United States,"' she said with feeling, after telling of the poverty of the masses, who live in mud huts without furniture and sleep on dirt floors. The Kuballs, like other civilian, government and service personnel, lived in a nine-room villa in Maadi, a former British colony 15 minutes by car from Cairo. These homes, which only wealthy Egyptians could afford usually had a household retinue of a cook, nurse and gardener. ...Sightseeing was one of the few forms of recreation enjoyed by the Kuballs and American movies were non-existent. They had visited the Red Sea, the Suez Canal and the pyramids about 100 times because every time a new pilot came in from the States he'd ask us to show him the favorite tourist attractions, she said. The 100-degree heat had little effect on Gary's good-nature and energy as he romped around the room. “I was glad to get him home,” Mrs. Kuball smiled, “because his nurse spoke Arabic to him and it was get-ting to the point where I’d have to take him aside and force him to speak English.” At that, she said, he still mumbles incoherent words which, as far as she is concerned, may or may or may not be Arabic….


The Egyptian military had installed anti-aircraft guns on the roofs of some of the apartment buildings and they would bang away at an airplane that you could barely see. They rarely hit anything but it gave great psychological boost to the people's moral. They would be hollering, shaking their fists and jumping up and down for joy – and we were right along with them. When one lives overseas, one sees world events from a different perspective and most of us were cheering for the locals. After all, whose sweat built that canal!?

All during this time, TWA management was strangely quiet, not a word about what their plans were, if any. We couldn't fly out as the airport was closed to civilian traffic, so we looked to the U.S. Embassy for clues, as they seemed to have a good handle on the situation. They set up a convoy to Alexandria for expatriates. We would store our vehicles there and be evacuated by a U.S. Navy vessel. Not all expatriates accepted the offer, including TWA F/O Bob Zimmerman (since flown west) who later convoyed up the North African Coastline and was then flown out by TWA. He wrote about this adventure in a previous issue of TARPA TOPICS. [July 2000, P. 72 see it online at http://issuu.com/tarpa_topics—Ed.] I then left the Villa in charge of Jackson and gave him my .22 caliber Beretta pistol with instructions to take care of Rommel and shoot anybody trying to forcibly enter. That was the last I saw of the Beretta.

The convoy drove up to Alexandria via the desert road and the vehicles were stored in a large garage. We left our keys with Embassy personnel, after which we boarded a large U.S. Navy transport vessel that was loaded with U.S. Marines and their motorized equipment. They were ready (and eager) to have

gone ashore to rescue us if the need had arisen. Some of the non U.S. foreign nationals were complaining about the accommodations. Here the Marines were giving up their bunks so we would have a place to sleep and they were expecting the Queen Mary, not to mention the fare which was free.While still anchored in Alexandria harbor, I managed to take some photos of British planes bombing the Alexan-dria Airport. I was using a 35 mm Zeiss Contessa camera but I did not have a telephoto lens so the pictures would-n't be that great. However, Life Magazine, which had missed all the action, at a later date asked all who had taken pictures for their film. I gave them my roll. They never used the pictures, but mailed me a check for $50 anyway.After leaving Alexandria we cruised northwest to the Is-land of Crete where everybody transferred to a U.S. Mili-tary troop transport ship, which took us to Naples, Italy. A couple of days of relaxation was welcomed, I even had time for a tour of Mt. Vesuvius and Pompeii. TWA then flew the employees back to New York. Upon arrival at

(L-R) Don Peters, Lou Lovelette, Bud Kubal and Bob Zimmerman atop the pyramid of Cheops at Giza 1956

Americans are evacuated from Egypt by U.S.N.


Idlewild Airport, TWA Capt. Orm Gove was waiting with a fistful of money for anybody that needed a short-term loan to tide them over. TWA gave me my choice of domiciles and I chose San Francisco over New York. (Wasn't it Horace Greeley who said, "Go west, young man!”?) In the meantime I made a short trip to Rhode Island to see my wife and son who had been staying with relatives since their de-parture from Egypt. Then it was off to San Francisco where I rented a furnished house in Los Gatos and brought my family out.

About four months later (February 1957), TWA gave the okay for all former Cairo domicile crew members to return to Cairo and settle their affairs. After more than a decade of operations, TWA de-cided to close the Cairo domicile and stage the crews out of New York.I returned to Cairo and everything in my Villa at Maadi was intact. Rommel and Jackson were glad to see me, and I, them. Jackson said that he "lost" my Beretta pistol. TWA would have shipped everything back to the U.S. But most everybody, including myself, had "open house" sales and sold off everything piecemeal. TWA would also ship my 1955 Ford back, or a new one from Europe, but I decided to sell it. An Egyptian National purchased it for $2400 U.S. - the same price I had paid for it almost two years earlier. However, it was a good deal for him as there was a 100% duty on imported cars. He gave me a check on a local bank in Egyptian pounds, but when I went to cash it, the bank refused (how rude!) to honor the check because I was not an Egyptian Na-tional. So, what to do? I gave the check to Dick Kimber, who was TWA's Industrial Relations Manager in Cairo, and he had TWA deposit "$2400" in U.S. Funds in my U.S. Bank account. Problem solved. I've always wondered what TWA did with that check. Crew members also had to pay Egyptian Income Taxes before the government would okay our departure. What a drag!

TWA also gave me a special authorization to let my German Shepherd, Rommel, fly back with me. He may not be going first class but at least he won't have to swim. I have a picture of him sitting in a pas-senger seat and looking out the window. At the various fuel stops I would take him over to a grassy area and let him do his business. The hostesses would provide him with water. This is a real flying dog. He has flown in my Seabee and Cessna T-50 plus TWA DC-4s and Connies. We arrived in SF0 with no problems.

So, this is the story of the demise of the Cairo Domicile. My contract with TWA was for a 2 ½ year minimum stay but I ended up being there less than a year. What a shame as I (we?) really enjoyed liv-ing and working there.

P.S. When I bid for that Cairo vacancy, I said, "We were going to move to Egypt come hell or high water, lease or not?" Well, after relocating to Califor-nia, the Long Island land-lord sued me for back rent and hurricane damage (the high water). I ended up pay-ing the back rent but the hurricane damage was chalked off as an “act of God".

The great pyramids of Giza—Bud Kuball 1956


1946


[From Capt. Buck Pratt:] I want to give credit to Capt. Dave Haase for this picture. Dave was kind enough to share it with me recently. Dave had apparently clipped it from an aviation periodical … and saved it so that others could enjoy it later. Capt. Bill Sonnemann was a talented and gifted individual with great vision … he accomplished great things on his watch. As you probably already know, it was Capt. Sonnemann who was the prime mover in making TWA the first across the pond in twin engine jets. He and Capt. Walt Grayum, along with Relief Pilot Capt. Norm Fausett, flew the inaugu-ral which paved the way for the industry to follow. Today, twenty five years later, everyone is doing it with a wide variety oftwins. He had United and AAL heads spinning at the time. I believe that he was at one time Central Air Safety Chairman for TWA ALPA.


EXCERPTS FROM MEMORIES—PART II By Captain Wes Ament

In the March 2010 TOPICS, Wes told of his growing up in pre-war Los Angeles and his early efforts at getting into the field of aviation. After soloing and begin-ning to build flying time, he was accepted into the Boeing School of Aeronautics and the beginning of what he believed would be a long flying career with United Airlines. However, the War changed all that and he found himself in the Army Air Corps, eventually flying “the hump” in the CBI theater. One of Wes’ sentences sums up that operation, “The night of Jan. 6, 1945 was the worst night they had ever had over the route; sixty four aircraft were lost, twenty three from our base.”

Now Wes tells of his years with TWA along with his adventures in manufacturing and marketing a suc-cessful line of fishing gear, various general aviation enterprises including exhibition flying in air shows and the design and construction of experimental aircraft—Ed.

Finding myself

Garland Pack and I had many discussions on ways to improve the efficiency of gasoline engines. He had started a project to develop a prototype and asked me to contact him when I got back. He lived in Dixon, TN with his parents where he had set to work on the project. I bought a surplus Harley David-son motorcycle and for the rest of the year and January 1946 commuted to Dixon [from Memphis] once a week to work on the prototype. During that time we completed a proof of concept prototype of the engine. The concept was to salvage ½ of the heat wasted in a normal engine converting it to steam. We were able to do this by a system of pre-heaters and boilers running a steam turbine connected directly to the crankshaft. I won't try to go into further detail other than to say that the concept proved to be vi-able. I was able to interest the Army at Wright Patterson AFB and they took it for further studies. Un-fortunately (for us) all R&D efforts were focused on development of jet propulsion. Our project kept getting shoved further back on the back burner until it fell off the back of the stove. I decided I better start thinking about getting a job to take care of my family.

Bettye and I packed up the babies and what belongings we had into the ‘41 Chevy and set out cross country to Long Beach, CA arriving in mid February. We moved in with my folks and I knocked around the local airports thinking I might set up a fixed base operation. My dad and I made a trip to Reno to look at an operation, it was a small airport located where John Ascuaga's Nugget now sits. We almost decided to buy it when Nat noticed a mark on the wall of the office that said, "high water mark 1936". That did it, we returned to Long Beach and I put in applications with several airlines.

United refused to recognize my pre-war seniority, so I accepted a position as First Officer with Western Airlines. I spent a month in training and made my first trip on May 22, 1946. Western awarded senior-ity based on the grades achieved during training. Being totally familiar with the equipment flown, I led the class and was awarded top seniority in the class. Western was a great airline to fly for and one of the captains I flew with was an old timer who like me, had given up a top seniority number to take an-other job elsewhere and come back to start over with Western. His name was John Barchard. We struck up a close relationship and he had me assigned to him personally. We flew together most of the time I was with Western. He kept bugging me to take the test for Airline Transport Pilot which I had been too young to qualify for while I was in the service. Finally, I set up an appointment to take the written test so I would know what to study when I failed it. As luck would have it I passed it the first time by a large margin so I had this hurdle out of the way. It only remained to take the flight test when the time came.


On the morning of Feb. 6, 1946 while we were still living in Long Beach, I woke up one morning and reached over to the bed table for a cigarette. I had left two there the night before. They were gone and I didn't remember smoking them. I said, that is it, I don't need this and vowed to quit. I had a half a pack in my shirt pocket which I carried there for nearly a month before I threw them away. I have never had a single puff since, to this day. It was more than two years before I could honestly say that I never had a craving to smoke. Now just the smell of someone smoking is extremely offensive to me. Hoodecheck and I had started smoking at the same time, we were 18 years old. I continued to smoke heavily until I quit, up to three packs a day and cigars to boot. Hoodecheck continued to smoke heavily until it finally resulted in emphysema and an early demise at too young an age.

Things at home were getting a little strained living with the folks so we started looking for a place to move to. With the help of my father we bought a nice three bedroom home in Hawthorne for $10,000.00. The relationship quickly smoothed out with contacts limited to visits back and forth. Nell and Nat adored the kids and frequently had them visit for as long as we would approve.

We had some great neighbors. Buster Sutherland and his wife Wilma lived across the street. They had a little girl about Peggy's age named Perry. Buster was a football coach and Wilma an athletic director. Next door to them were Bob and Margie, (hard G), and their two little girls, Gail and Linda. On one side, were Mrs. Cuthbert and her daughter Janice. Janice frequently entertained us with her voice les-sons and practice. On the other side, a really interesting clan, The Lambs, straight from the Ozarks, they only needed a still in the back yard to be complete. They had Stomp parties that shook the houses on both sides. One night the matron put her husband's head through the wall during one of their parties. They had a small boy about five or so with a speech impediment. I think he was bright enough other than the problem speaking. His mother used to yell at him in a voice that could be heard on Mars. "Danny Horlan, you come over here whir Ahm at!" I expected the pigs to start running into the yard.

Bob Murphy and I had some great times together. He was a mechanic for TWA at LAX. He had a "Whizzer" bicycle which was an ordinary bike with a small gasoline engine. He rode it to work some-times. I said to him one day, "let’s hop that engine up a little". He agreed so I ported it, polished the ports and put an intake valve in that was about twice the size of the stock one. It ran great and had all kinds of power. He was riding it down Lincoln Boulevard one day when a car pulled up next to him and rolled down the window. The guy said "do you know how fast you are going"? “How fast?”, said Bob. The guy said, would you believe 75 miles per hour. He sold it later and the new owner called him up wanting to know what that ring around the intake valve was. I guess the seat I had put in had come loose. Bob later became a flight engineer [1958—1986] and we had occasion to fly together many years later.

I continued to fly for Western until December 1946. In ‘46 they said that they were going to have to furlough some of us for the winter months. I had heard that the Flying Tigers were getting a military contract to fly the pacific. I went over and talked to them and they offered me a job as Captain. I re-quested a leave of absence from Western which they granted willingly. I was given a quick check ride to get my Airline Transport Pilot rating on Jan 6 and took out my first trip on the 13th from Travis AFB. We had stops at Honolulu, Johnson Is., Kwajalein, Guam, Iwo Jima and Tokyo, with layovers at Honolulu, Kwajalein, Guam and Tokyo. We made one round trip a month which took about 12 days and had the rest of the month off. In February I had a call from Western to come back. I just couldn't bring myself to give up $1,000.00 [about $11,000 in 2010 dollars] per month flying captain to go back to $380.00 [about $4,000] flying co-pilot so I quit, once again giving up precious seniority for greener pastures.

Japan in those early post war years was a burgeoning economy under the wing of General Douglas MacArthur. The people were prosperous, happy and seemed to honestly welcome our presence. As I mentioned earlier in the text, we felt perfectly comfortable anywhere we went. We were billeted in the


old German Consulate residence called Meisener House. It was only a short train ride into downtown Tokyo so we could enjoy wandering through the shops. All in all it was one of the most pleasant flying jobs I ever had.

The flights went disgustingly routine for the most part. I only had one incident worth commenting on. I arrived in Tokyo one morning when a fog bank closed in the entire south end of the island. Our only alternate would be Iwo Jima and it was going to be very tight getting back there. The approach system in use by the military was GCA [ground controlled approach]. This was a system where the entire ap-proach was conducted by radar under the direction of a ground controller. It was an excellent system with a competent ground controller and most of them out there were superb. The approach was con-ducted in two phases, initial positioning and a final controller taking over about two miles from touch down. The pilot was completely dependant on the final controller for directions. He controlled position both laterally and vertically. The pilot simply followed his instructions. Typical instructions during ap-proach would be, "no further acknowledgments required, steer heading 282 start a normal decent, you are drifting right of course turn left 280, correcting nicely turn right 281, you are drifting below glide slope decrease sink rate. On course on glide slope you are 200 feet AGL on course on glide slope etc.” He called out 50 ft, 30 ft you should see the runway now, voila! There it is. We landed and stopped waiting for someone to come out and lead us in.

The GCA approach never really gained favor in the civil airway system [where it was called PAR for “precision approach radar”]. I don't think the pilots ever felt entirely comfortable putting their fate into the hand of someone sitting comfortably in a room looking at a radar screen. I have made a number of landings through the years that were zero, some of necessity, some for convenience and some just for practice. The technology has advanced now in the system to the point that the procedure is routine though minimums are specified for safety reasons. For the most part, they say that you must see some-thing before you touch down, a far cry from threading the needle in China with the old ADF. Many of the old procedures we used in the early days are rapidly becoming a lost art in the modern day flying world. GPS has virtually eliminated the need to navigate, until it quits working! Then it's back to ba-sics. I would never allow my students to use their neat little GPS until they had mastered the basics of navigation.

When I went overseas to the CBI Theater, Hoodecheck reported to a P-38 group in Italy. He was shot down early in his deployment while flying a strafing mission in support of ground troops. He was at a very low altitude but was able to pull up enough to allow him to bail out. His chute opened just in time to save his life. He hid in a haystack and eventually was picked up by the underground loyalists of Mikhailovich. He was with them for six months before he was repatriated. The story of those six months was a hair-raising tale worthy of a Robert Ludlum novel; it is too bad he didn't document it. He had returned to Long Beach after being separated from the Air Corps and we resumed our friendship. He bounced around in different jobs, lifeguard, bartender, salesman and finally went back on active duty where he finished twenty years and retired. He and Sissy bought a home in St. Petersburg, FL. I was able to visit them from time to time throughout his career and after his retirement.

While he was in Long Beach, we devised a method of fishing for Halibut in the tide flats near Seal Beach. I had bought a throw net in Tokyo and learned, from the Japanese, how to throw it. We would go to the slews on the change of the low tide where the water would flow through the channels like a stream. I would catch a bucket full of chub (minnows) with the throw net and we would fly line them in the flowing water like we were fishing for trout in a river. The halibut would hit and fight just like a trout on our fly outfit. In the time it took the tide to change we invariably caught a nice mess of halibut. We also caught scallops off the bridge in Alamitos Bay with a unique method. I welded a series of hooked wires on a coat hanger and we would cast it with a surf casting rig dragging it back across the bottom. The scallops would clamp onto the hooks and we could soon fill up a bucket. We also caught


many fish surf casting.

I continued to fly the Pacific through August 1947 when the Flying Tigers lost the military contract. I spent the next two months freelance flying for a couple of non scheduled airlines. In October I noticed an ad in the paper that TWA was hiring pilots. I went into Los Angeles to be interviewed. There were about a dozen of us in the waiting room. I struck up a conversation with the guy next to me. His name was Dick Carlson. He had flown B-17's over Germany. When the interviews were over Dick and I were the only ones hired.

Home at last

Dick Carlson [TWA 1948—1981] and I spent our entire TWA careers together. TWA awarded our seniority according to age. I was a month older than Dick so I was senior to him. We were sent to Kan-sas City for training, given an evaluation check ride in a DC-3 and assigned to a month of ground train-ing in the New England Building. There were 35 of us in the class. Dick and I found a room in a home a few miles south of town. It was an easy bus ride down town. Much of the training was redundant but a good refresher. We were issued company equipment and FAA manuals with a huge stack of revi-sions, I could hardly see over. We needed to bring them up to currency. We were scheduled, a few at a time, to be fitted for uniforms. The ground school instructors we got to know intimately through the years. Some of them were still there when I retired 34 years later. The restaurants in Kansas City were numerous, reasonable and good. We came to have our favorites among them. I would spend training gigs in this town for various purposes.

A few years down the line, TWA bought a building at the corner of 13th & Baltimore and re-fitted it as its training center. Some training was accomplished at the domiciles but this was mostly flight transi-tion training and check rides. We did have link trainers at the domiciles and would be required to fly them a couple of hours a month to keep up our instrument skills. Later the MKC training center would be equipped with full-blown simulators for each type of airplane in the fleet. The simulators were con-figured identical to the aircraft in the cockpit complete with sound. The visual graphic display was somewhat crude early on but went on to become incredibly realistic.

Ultimately, the simulators got so good that students were taken through the entire training program in-cluding being rated by the FAA to fly the airplane. The last group of student captain candidates I got for on line training had never been in the airplane. I would fly with them on line checks until I felt they were qualified to function as Captain in command. I am getting ahead of myself. To get back to our novice training, as far as TWA was concerned, we were still wet behind the ears regardless of our background.

When we completed our training, which included a few hours in the DC-3, it was usually on the dark side of midnight when the airplanes were not needed on the line, we were available to fly schedules. At the time we graduated, we were sorely needed on line. As a result, I was assigned to a red eye flight from MKC to ABQ with stops at Wichita and Amarillo. I was in civilian clothes as my uniform had not been delivered yet. The captain was Arky Ainsworth [1912—2004, TWA 1940—1972]. He was from the Ozarks and called me white folks. I pre-sented the flight plan to him in operations and he pulled out a quarter, flipped it and told me to call it, heads, heads it is your first leg. Wichita was reporting 500' in blow-ing snow with one mile visibility. I looked at him and he just grinned. I climbed into the left seat and off we went. [F/Os were allowed to fly from the left seat at the Cap-tains discretion up until the jets arrived—Ed.]

The approach was not a particular challenge, I had made lots worse and I had an idea he knew that. He flew the next leg to Amarillo and I flew the one into Albuquerque. I had not had much sleep in the frantic effort to get us qualified for the line. Arky went

Woodrow “Arky” Ainsworth

c.1980 Making of an Airline


straight from the airport to room 209 at the Hilton where a perpetual poker game was in progress. I went to bed and slept 16 hours straight. The flight back to Kansas City was uneventful. Thus was my first flight on my new airline. Arky always had a top spot in my esteem roster. He recently turned up in the "Flown West" section of our TWA Active Retired Pilot's Association magazine. I will miss him.

My seniority number was 1087. Thirty four years later it was still more than 100. It really didn't make much difference by that time as I was number three in San Francisco and a check pilot setting up my own schedule. Then they put me out to pasture. Bidding flights was a time-consuming job. I had writ-ten a computer program that took all the flight parameters into consideration and spit out a sequenced bid for the coming month. By the time I got it debugged I was senior enough that I didn't need it, but some of my fellow pilots enjoyed using it.

In 1946/47 Jim Douglass lived in the San Francisco Bay area. He had gone to work for Southwest Air-ways when he got out of the service. He had a Cessna 140A which he kept at Bay Meadows Airport. He came across a prewar Taylorcraft that needed re-covering. I bought it for $300.00 and Jim and I set out to re-cover it. I commuted back and forth to southern California in his 140, working on it between trips. The Dacron covering process now widely used in covering was still in its infancy. We covered it with grade A cotton fabric which relies on the application of Cellulose acetate nitrate or cellulose ace-tate butyrate dope to tauten it. The butyrate available at that time continued to tauten when exposed to the sun until it would damage the structure. Its advantage was that it was flame resistant. Nitrate on the other hand has the better tautening qualities but is highly flammable. We used the nitrate as did most airplanes at that time. It took three trips to get the fabric on and doped.

I elected to fly it home with just the clear dope and finish it at home. I painted the registration numbers on with a brush in silver, which was the next step in the process. The silver application provided UV protection. I took off with it. Jim said he could see all the structure through the fabric as I flew over. I finished the restoration in my back yard in Hawthorn. I kept it at the Hawthorn Municipal Airport, only a short distance from home.

I had become friends with Paul Seal while flying for Western. He had a Globe Swift, a two-place low wing metal airplane. We decided to join up and start a flying service at Hawthorn Airport, which had recently been deeded to the city by the Northrop Corporation. There was no such service there at the time. We became Piper Dealers and acquired a fleet of six airplanes providing training, rental, air taxi and charter. We built a large hangar on the northwest corner of the airport which is still in use today. During this time, I had flown for Western, Flying Tigers, several small non schedule airlines and fi-nally TWA.

After flying out of Kansas City for a month I agreed to trade domiciles with a co-pilot in LA that wanted to move to KC. I flew out of LAX for most of 1948. As winter approached, it looked like an-other furlough was imminent. I took another leave, this time vowing to come back when the time came. I was not going to give up my seniority spot. I flew for another non sched in addition to running the FBO.

A couple of months later TWA called me back. There was only one catch. I was to report to the De-troit domicile, moving at my own expense. I left the family behind thinking I would be able to get back to LA soon. I reported to the Chief Pilot at Willow Run Airport where they had built thousands of B-24s during the war. I checked into the Huron Hotel in Ypsilanti and took my baggage up to my room. I sat on the bed and looked out the window at the bleakest scene I had ever witnessed. The skies were grey, the trees were bare, and a light snow was falling. I guess if I had been able, I would have cried.

As I settled in, things looked better. The flying was interesting. The domicile being small was close knit almost like family. Dick Carlson had brought his family with him and had me over often. I moved to a rooming house where some of the guys who had come solo were and soon I was enjoying life in


spite of myself. The short time turned into a year and Bettye and I decided it was time for her and the kids to join me. She rented the house and we found a nice frame house in Ypsilanti to rent. We made one more move, to Ann Arbor. Flying up and down the Ohio Valley was a great experience and I learned many nuances about winter, ice, low ceilings, and thunderstorm flying to enhance what I knew about mountain flying. Finally, in late 1951, I was transferred to the San Francisco Domicile to fly withmy old friend the DC-4.

During the time I lived in Hawthorne and ran the FBO, I fulfilled my Army Reserve duties flying out of Long Beach. I had access to either an AT-6 or a Douglas A-26, later re-designated B-26. One week-end, I was flying the A-26 off the coast southeast of Long Beach when I noticed a marine Corsair from El Toro Marine Base joining me on my wing. He waved and signaled me to pour on the coal. The A-26 at the time was one of the hottest airplanes in the Air Corps' stable. I started adding power as he fol-lowed suit to stay on my wing. Soon I realized I had no more power to add and he still sat there solidly as could be. At that point he grinned and waved again then left me like I was standing still. I then real-ized that it was one of the new Corsairs fitted with the Pratt & Whitney R-4360 "Corncob" engines. The 4360 was the end of the line in round engine technology with four rows of 9 cylinders. It devel-oped more than 3500 horsepower. Further development in power took the form of turbo prop and pure jet engines. Lycoming had developed an engine with over 7000 cubic inches displacement and devel-oping around 7000 horsepower, but it never got past the prototype stage and still exists in their ar-chives. For my annual two week active duty tours, I went to Travis AFB in Fairfield-Suisun, CA. While there, I had the opportunity to fly the KC-97 Boeing Stratocruiser. It was powered with the Wright 3350 engines. These are the same engines that powered the B-29. They also powered our Con-nies. In its early configuration it was fraught with problems and prone to overheat. It required a lot of pampering to keep it operating within limits. The KC-97 had to be overloaded with fuel in order to make the west coast Honolulu leg.

Travis had a long runway that would accommodate the long takeoff run. Hickam Field in Honolulu on the other hand was a little short on one end. Luckily John Rogers Airport adjacent to Hickam had a runway that with a bit of paving, could be used as an extension to the Hickam runway. So the takeoff procedure was, roll the length of the Hickam runway onto the John Rogers runway until finally air-borne, and then fly four hours at 3000' until enough fuel was exhausted to allow a climb to 9000' for the balance of the trip. The 3350s were gradually upgraded to better reliability and power until the ad-dition of the Power Recovery Turbines, but that is another story I will address later. The nose section of the KC-97 could easily accommodate a row of ten seats across its width.

Bettye flew out to LA to check on the house. The Kids stayed temporarily with a group of Hostesses in a house they rented together. I traded in our 1947 Chevy on a new Ford station wagon, loaded all our belongings and my beagle dog and headed for LA. I stopped off in Kansas City to re-qualify on the DC-4 then drove on to Long Beach, stopping only to nap and eat. When I arrived Bettye had found that our tenants had trashed our house and it was going to require extensive renovation before we could sell it.

We drove on up to the bay area and I reported in. Bettye found us a house to rent in Belmont. We sent for the kids and moved into the house. We had sold the business in Hawthorne and the only thing now was to dispose of the house. We did most of the work on the house commuting between trips. We even had to refinish the hardwood floors, repair holes in the wall and paint the entire interior. The house sold easily after the renovation and we settled into our new home in the Bay area where I was to spend my remaining 30 years until retirement. We moved to three more rented homes, then again with the help of my Dad, built a house in Redwood City, moving into it in 1955.

The airline business remained relatively static for the next three years. It did go down at one point to where I was the junior co-pilot in the San Francisco domicile. It was at this point, I met a man who


would become one of my closest friends. His Name is Walt Morehead [1913—2006, TWA 1942—1973]. He was at that time the junior Captain in the domicile. We flew a lot together, mostly up and down the San Joaquin Valley between SFO and LAX in DC-3's. During the winter months Tule fog

frequently moves into the valley and stays there for weeks and sometimes even months on end. During that period our scheduled stop at Fresno, was bypassed. We would make an instrument approach to minimums, see nothing, miss the approach and go on to LAX. We would repeat the drill on the way back to SFO.

One trip when the weather was nice and we did get into Fresno we were walking into the terminal. Waiting by the fence was a stunning young lady. Her top consisted of a pair of suspender like straps of sheer material and to all intents and purposes nothing else. Walt's gaze immediately locked onto the vision and he started groping for the door handle while thirty feet away from it. I took his arm and led him to the door, explaining to the passengers that, "Our captain is blind”.

Business slowly got better and we both moved up to flying the Lockheed Constellations to points east, usually laying over in Chicago and eventually when we got the Super Connies, non-stop to New York. On one trip, flying a red eye in an L-1049G, we started our descent over Davenport, IA for Midway Airport (O-Hare was still being built) and the time was just about first light. We had been experiencing some icing en route and the nacelles were coated on the leading edges with a thin coat of ice. As we passed through 18,000 ft the ice started to melt. At that point the ice in the air scoops to the fuel injec-tor system sloughed off on all four engines and fell onto the screen that was installed to keep foreign

MDW in the ‘50s—note people on the observation deck, TWA Connie and Martin

Walt Morehead Making of an Airline


objects from being ingested into the engines. For the second time in my career, I found myself in a four engine glider. I unconsciously put my hands on the wheel. The Captain, who shall remain nameless for obvious reasons, dropped his hands onto his lap and seemed to teleport to another planet. I turned to the flight engineer who was near panic. I said take it easy Gordie you have 18000 feet to get them going again. He seemed to relax and started pumping alcohol into the intakes. I called air traffic control and apprised them of our dilemma. They set about clearing all traffic below us. At 3500' the engines started to surge and finally came back to life. At that point the Captain returned to earth and took over flying us on to Midway. Needless to say, they removed the screens from the intakes. I had already picked a point in the Illinois River to ditch as we broke clear of the clouds in the dawns early light.

Chicago Midway Airport served well in the early days of air transport up through the first post war years after WWII. It became painfully inadequate for the later generations of the piston powered air-craft. The runways were marginal in length, the terminal facilities were crowded and there was no room for it to expand. Landings and departures required skills beyond those of some of the senior "stick and rudder" pilots from the air mail days, many of whom were holding the senior flights from the domicile. Unfortunately, top skills didn't necessarily go along with top seniority.

An incident occurred which will illustrate my point. The ... Connie was an extremely tight fit on the runways at Midway. One of the senior captains … [flying a] flight into Midway ... landed one morning after flying all night from SFO. He misjudged the approach and landed too long and too fast. In spite of all his best efforts to keep the plane in the confines of the runway, it proceeded off the end, across the grass over run, through the fence and stopped in the middle of the intersection of 55th and Cicero Ave. [See July 2007 TOPICS for pix.]

The story took on a humorous bent as it evolved. According to the legend, the chief pilot had seen the situation develop from his office. He had rushed outside, commandeered a vehicle and arrived at the scene soon after it came to a stop. The Captain was still in his seat with the side window open. The Chief Pilot allegedly yelled up at him, "What did you stop here for?” the Captain allegedly answered, "The light was red”. Luckily no one was hurt on the ground or in the airplane and the damage to the airplane was relatively minor. The passengers were off loaded and the airplane towed back onto the airport for repairs. The Captain was given a line check, slapped on the wrist and returned to service.

I could relate many such tales some resulting in hull damage or loss but it would serve no useful pur-pose and probably take on a taste of sour grapes. It is not my intent here to cast Airline Pilots in a bad light, the vast majority are very good at what they do and of those about ten percent are superb. Even the ones I have referred to as "stick and rudder” were nothing if not heroic in what they accomplished against impossible odds. They pioneered an industry that simply outgrew many of them. I say from the bottom of my heart, bless their brave souls. Many of the old timers from the "seat of the pants" days were "retired" with the arrival of the Jet Transport. Training on the jets was something akin to learning a new language and it scared the hell out of them. Flying the jets was a young man’s job.

I remember a similar situation from my Boeing School and United days. When I arrived at Boeing School the airlines were just getting into serious instrument flying. It proved too much for some of the older open cockpit, seat of the pants, flying the mail over the Rockies, pilots to absorb. The situation was referred to as "the purge" by the United pilots at the time. As a result United took instrument flying so seriously that they gave us ten hours of link trainer time before they even put us in an airplane. In-strument flying was very crude by today's standards. Perhaps I should describe the basics of instrument flying to illustrate my point.

In order to maintain controlled flight without reference to outside clues, requires information on five parameters, altitude, airspeed, attitude, time and direction. Altitudes were provided by the altimeter, the airspeed indicator is familiar to anyone who flies and the magnetic compass provides directional infor-


mation, albeit reluctantly. In stable flight the compass provides faithful directional information but in a turn the dynamics of the compass introduces errors called acceleration errors or lead and lag. These can

be anticipated and allowed for, but for the most part heading information is only reliable in stable straight and level flight.The above instruments are familiar to all pilots. That leaves one bit of information still to be provided. The first instrument designed to provide this information was again still crude by today's standards, but still utilized in one form or another in all instrument certified aircraft for redundancy. The instrument is called a "Turn and Bank," consisting of a vertical needle controlled by a gyro which indicates yaw left or right. The degree of deflection indicates the rate at which the airplane is turning. The other portion is a smile shaped sealed tube with a ball and a dampening liquid in it. In stabilized straight and level flight it indicates wings level. In a turn, it indicates whether the airplane is slipping or skidding to be corrected by application of a rudder. The T&B is calibrated in a manner that a deflection of one needle width indicates a turn rate of three degrees per second, two widths six degrees per second, etc.

The normal method of turning to a desired heading is to note the amount you want to turn divide it by 3, make a standard rate turn (3o/sec) for the number of seconds determined above, then check the com-pass when stabilized. Now with practice we can maintain controlled flight without outside reference. It takes a while to gain enough confidence in the instruments to bet your life on them. Disorientation and/or vertigo are now a constant threat and must be overcome by will and concentration.

This problem becomes less threatening as ones confidence in the "gauges" builds. There is no “seat of the pants" instincts allowed in flying instruments. Now there remains only one problem, where the hell are we? If we know our direction and speed we can compute an approximate position by dead reckon-ing, provided we know where we started and the speed is accurate. Not really, as we leave sea level and climb, the air becomes thinner and what we read on the airspeed is no longer a true representation of our speed through the supporting air. The true airspeed increased 2% for each 1000' we climb so at 10,000' 100 mph indicated airspeed would translate to 120 mph. Ok now we have it, not really, we know how fast we are going through the supporting air but what is the supporting air doing relative to

Connie pilot stations had mainly flight instruments and flight controls. Most engine and systems indicators and controls were on the overhead and Flight Engineer’s panels. The artificial horizon and fluxgate compass were major improvements; before that, it was “needle, ball and alcohol”.


the ground? So you have it, if we know the temperature, altitude, wind and we know where we started, we can get a pretty good idea of where we are, still with no outside references. Dead reckoning can be surprisingly accurate when properly done. That is pretty much all we had flying the hump until we got near our destinations. Many of my colleagues ended up in a pile of wreckage on the side of some Himalayan peak because of a simple miscalculation. So, I guess we really need to have some kind of outside reference. This was provided by radio stations on the ground. The first reli-able radio navigation aids took form as the Radio Range, or "beam" as they came to be known to the public. I guess, having gone this far, a brief explanation of how they worked is in order.

The radio range called the "Adcock Range" transmits four directional signals into four separate quad-rants. Two on opposite quadrants broadcast an "A" in Morse code, dot dash. The other two

broadcast an "N" dash dot, where the A and the N come together they merge creating a steady tone in the headset.

By making small heading corrections when an A or an N starts to predominate the signal toward the opposite quadrant it is possible to fly the beam to the station. Determining whether you are flying to-ward or away from the station is accomplished by listening for a build or fade in the signal strength. A "cone of silence" exists over the station to indicate passing the fix. The ranges were broadcast on a low frequency, 200-400 kilocycles, now called "Kilohertz". This frequency range is very susceptible to static and other anomalies caused by weather conditions. This made it quite a challenge in bad weather. The legs would swing back and forth at times. Sometimes we had to count the A's and N's making our corrections based on keeping the number's of each the same.

Above all, in this environment you must be able to hear, I could never qualify now. Today Nav-Aids use visual cues broadcast on very high frequencies that are relatively static free. These existed experi-mentally during WWII but they were never brought to our attention. I often wondered what that instru-ment on the panel with a needle and a blue quadrant opposite a yellow one was. These would later be-come as familiar as the back of my hand. My friend and idol, Jimmy Doolittle was the first to prove the concept of "flying blind" by flying coast to coast solely by instruments.

In 1954, [our family grew] with the arrival of Jerry Wayne Ament. My Father came up to visit when Jerry was a baby. That was just before we moved into our new house. It was the last time we ever saw him alive. Michelle Robin followed a little over a year later. Geraldine lived with us most of the time, later to be joined by Grandpa Eugene. They were with us until Eugene died of a ruptured aorta. Grandma became a permanent member of the family for the rest of her life and I enjoyed her until she passed away at the age of 94 leaving us with a treasure trove of wonderful memories.

I flew one other make of airplane as First Officer before checking out as Captain in 1955. This was the Martin 404. It carried 44 passengers and was powered by two R-2800 Pratt and Whitney engines with water injection. It was not really water but a mixture of alcohol and water with some other additives. It boosted the power for takeoff by a couple of hundred horsepower but was limited to four minutes. The flight flew to Kansas City with stops in LA and Albuquerque. It was picked up in ABQ by a Kansas City crew and we had a layover in Albuquerque for about 24 Hours. It was a very popular flight for the flight atten-dants.

On one occasion, one of the very senior ladies whom I had known since my days in LAX, Rosemary Granna, later married one of our more colorful pilots, Bob Kadoch [1911—1996, TWA 1941—1971]. She asked me if I would warm up the cabin. She Bob Kadoch

Making of an Airline


was used to the Connies where the Flight Engineer had the environmental controls. I explained to her that the cabin controls were on her panel near the rear steps. She said, "Well the engineers always set the heat for me". I said I have no control up here besides the pressurization, you wouldn't want me to depressurize would you?” She replied, "Don’t get smart with me young man.”

ABQ was a great place to layover. It had a great Mexican restaurant. We stayed at the Casa Grande motel located west of town near the Rio Grande. We fished in the irrigation canal alongside the river for trout during the season. They would prepare them for us in the restaurant. I became friends with the owner, his name, Ike Valley. He took me fishing on his ranch in the White Mountains once. The fish-ing was great and we saw [a lot of] interesting wild life.

The upgrading program for TWA was the most stringent of any airline. It consisted of one month of ground school, 35 hours of line checking, a semi final line check, at which point you were either rec-ommended for a final check ride or another 35 hours of line checking. I was assigned to do my upgrad-ing in the Detroit domicile in the Martin. Dick Carlson was assigned the same program. We reported to Detroit together and shared a motel room.

The 35 hours went smoothly as did the semi final check. I was recommended for a final line check. For this ride I was sent to New York with a check pilot I had never met in the M-202 which I had never flown. The weather was terrible requiring me to make decisions far from the ordinary like taking off payload to add extra fuel. On the approach into Dayton the crosswind was blowing so hard during the approach that I had to fly five extra minutes outbound on the procedure, turn in order to avoid blowing through the final approach course when I turned back inbound. After about four minutes into the proce-dure turn which is normally one minute outbound, the check pilot asked me, "would you mind explain-ing to me just what the hell you are doing?” I explained my thinking and he said OK.

Fortunately the turn worked out perfectly as did the balance of the approach. The cross wind was so severe that I elected to land with 3/4 flaps. After landing he said, "do you know the book doesn't ap-prove landing with less than full flaps?” I said, "yes sir, I felt it was safer this way”. He grinned and again said OK. On the return trip I had all the top brass on the airplane going to a meeting in New York. Upon landing in St. Louis he said, "Congratulations Captain, I will fly the rest of the way”.

When I got back to Detroit that night, I woke Dick up and we finished off a bottle of Jack Daniels while I recanted my check ride. He had his final ride. We each flew a trip out of Detroit as Captain and a couple of days later we headed back to SFO.

When I moved to SFO in late 1951, Jim Douglass and I were able to rekindle our friendship. We had fishing and hunting trips together and he introduced me to the Klamath River. Jim had designed a lure he called a Metlfly. It proved to be an extremely productive lure in rivers and streams. He hand formed them in a small cheap Sears Roebuck vise in which he had filed a female die, hammering it into the die with a bullet-shaped mandrel. He made the originals from stock cut from beer cans and brass shim stock. He asked me to help him produce and market them. He was awarded a patent on the design and we set out to design dies and machines to mass produce them.

I had bought a small lathe while working with Garland Pack on our engine. I moved it into his garage located below his house and bought some other basic tools. The first machine was somewhat crude and still required a lot of hand work. We added weight by increasing the gauge of the metal used so they could be used for spin fishing as well as fly casting. The first open faced spinning reels were beginning to be brought in from Europe, and showed a lot of promise. The reels made in the U.S. were closed face and adapted for use on fly rods. We used these mostly for a couple of years but they were cheaply made and lacked an adequate brake system. It was obvious that the market was begging for a durable, quality product to compete with the European imports. There were reels from England, France and It-aly all of which were excellent reels, each with its own good and bad points.


I used all three as much as I could, noting their good features and failings. They all had one common failing, the wire bail to pick up the line after casting. This required the use of the other hand to prepare for casting by opening the bail. We decided that the answer would be a reel that did not require remov-ing ones hand from the crank to prepare for the next cast.

The other short coming was the design of the brake. All the existing reels could not withstand repeated runs from really big fish without burning up. I set out to design a reel to overcome these faults. The re-sult was a reel that was prepared for cast, by simply turning the crank backward, and a multiple disk brake utilizing Teflon and neoprene which we ran in the lathe for days with no sign of failure. Jim is left-handed and I built the first prototype for him.

I made wooden patterns for the frame, cup and spool, and had them cast from aluminum. I had helical gears cut to turn the cup five 1/8th turns for each turn of the crank. The cup gear ran in stainless steel ball bearings. All the other parts I made by hand with the exception of a few off the shelf parts such as screws. The pickup eliminated the bail altogether and consisted of a finger running on a ramp with a raised front lip at the forward portion of the spool. The finger was raised by a system of cams when the crank was reversed.

The prototype worked perfectly and I set out to build one for myself. All it required was a new wooden pattern for the frame and cutting the gears to turn the other direction. I applied for a patent and was awarded two patents; one on the brake system and the other on the pickup system. In the meantime, we made a number of trips to the Klamath River to field test the prototypes. I caught 64 steelhead that fall up to 12 ½ pounds. Jim did well also on his left handed model. We made a number of the prototypes with various modifications and finally settled on what we felt to be the best configuration. Those relics are still in perfect shape today, though they have been retired to become heirlooms. More on the reels later in the story.

On one occasion, Jim hooked into a grand daddy while in the river only a few inches below the lip of his waders. The river started to rise as it did when they would start the turbines at the dam at COPCO. Jim was swept off his feet and swept down the river with his waders rapidly filling with water. He dog-gedly held the rod high above his head as he bounced downstream. I raced downstream ahead of him and crawled out onto a tree overhanging the river. I managed to grab him by the scruff of the neck as he passed under me. It was all I could do to hold him against the current as I worked my way back to-ward the bank. He still held onto the rod, reel and fish and I yelled to him, "Don't you drop that reel you son of a bitch or I will drop you.” We both had a good laugh as I dragged him out onto the bank. We even landed the fish.

To get back to the lures, we had convinced a Jobber to stock the lures and they were being offered in a number of stores throughout the area. The need arose to offer another size. I set out to re-design the dies. What we settled on was a smaller version of the lure. From what I had learned in building the first dies led to an improved version on the second [attempt].

At about this time I had to go into the hospital for a hernia repair. I was very uncomfortable during my convalescence and could only sit up for short periods of time. I had my drawing board in the bedroom next to my bed. I would sit at the drawing board for as long as I could stand it then lie down and rest until I could have another go at it. Thus, I designed the new machine.

When I was fully recovered, I set about building it. Again, it required wooden patterns, iron castings, and machining. We had a couple of brothers that did wire forming that took a liking to us and gra-ciously let us machine our castings in their shop. I built the machines while Jim painstakingly hand filed the intricate dies. The beast went together according to my drawings and when completed, wonder of wonder, worked perfectly the first time. It turned out lures by the thousands complete with the ex-


ception of holes that were punched in a second die. Two of the holes in the lures we were able to punch. The third had a space between the two sides and we drilled it. We built a fixture to hold the lure for drilling that drilled one side and guided the drill to the proper spot on the opposite side. This worked fairly well but the drill was very small and broke often.

One day while I was drilling the lures, the drill broke and in a burst of blasphemous frustration, I jammed the broken stub into the fixture. It punched the shank through the other side and left the hole neat and clean. I put in another lure and tried it again and it worked slick as a whistle. This violates all the principles of punch dies, using the billet of soft material as a punch for the opposite side. Not wish-ing to violate the gift horse axiom, we built a die to punch all three holes and we punched many thou-sands of lures in this manner. They say necessity is the mother of invention, but I think serendipity must be the father.

Ament Douglass Manufacturing Co. Inc. went on to make another larger version of the Metlfly, an-other variation of it in several sizes and a lure I designed called a "Metlbug" which I also patented. I put up a building in Redwood City with the help of Bettye's dad and uncle who oversaw the construc-tion. Jim being a car buff, resulted in our branching out into modifying Volkswagen and Porche en-gines to enhance their performance.

After Dick Carlson and I returned to SFO they discontinued service with the Martins west of Kansas City. We were Captains without a ship. Back to MKC, this time to get our Type ratings in the Connie. This time the course was abbreviated somewhat since we were both intimately familiar with the Con-nie. A few days of ground school, a warm-up flight, a rating ride, and then back to SFO. Being junior captains our flights consisted mostly of what no one else wanted, which meant midnight to dawn red eyes. Air conditioning was not common in the hotels where we stayed so you would get into the room in the morning, open all the windows and lie in a pool of your own sweat all day trying to rest up for the red eye flight home. Still, after eight years, it was wonderful to be back in the left seat again and I wasn't about to complain.

Things went on like this for the next couple of years. At one point I had to go back to co-pilot for a couple of months in the winter. In 1957 we took delivery of the Lockheed 1649. This was a wonderful airplane, but came along a little too late as it would be shadowed by the sleek Boeing 707 a year later. I would fly this wonderful 1649 called the "Jetstream" a lot when it was reduced to a freighter later.

TWA was scheduled to take delivery on the first Boeing 707 Jetliner in the spring of 1958. Its arrival would result in reducing the Connie service and thus putting me back in the right seat. I was in the first jet class. A couple of the senior captains in each of the classes, after a week or so of classes, managed to forgo further training and return to fly Connies. This was strictly against traditional TWA policy. Heretofore if you were not able to successfully complete training it meant termination. This pushed more of the junior captains on the Connie into the first officer status. The training was demanding but at the same time a welcome challenge. I enjoyed it very much and found the airplane easy to fly and it opened up a new world of flying. Things like ice were no longer a serious problem as you were up and through it before it had a chance to bite you. Eight hour flights became four hours and it was easier to circumnavigate nasty weather. I loved it. I was on the first transcontinental flight from SFO to the new TWA facility at Idlewild [later JFK] Airport on Long Island.

During the ground school training on the 707, I noticed what I perceived to be an anomaly in the design of the control system that controlled the elevators. They employed a bootstrap method of moving them. A small tab was activated that in turn moved the elevator a small amount. A pair of sensors placed in the gap between the horizontal stabilizer and the elevator sensed a differential pressure which allowed ram air to enter the stabilizer moving a balance panel inside to further move the elevators. It looked to me like it would be possible for proper sensing to be corrupted by ice, dirt or some other medium dis-


rupting the air flow over the sensors resulting in faulty or erratic movement of the elevators. I sensed that even a reversal of input would be possible. I brought it up in class with the instructor. He felt that all possibilities were probably well researched by the engineers at Boeing, and no further discussion was encouraged. Little did I realize at the time, that fourteen years down the line I would be the one to prove my theory correct.

For the next few years I flew captain on the pistons in the summer and co-pilot on the jets in the winter. During this period I had wonderful working conditions in both cases. I was senior as a First Officer on the jets and held a flight I loved, flying the 1649 as Captain. I left SFO on Friday evening with a load of freight for St. Louis. I would layover in STL until Sunday morning, fly an L-749 Connie thru Indi-anapolis, and Cleveland to New York and back to STL, then Monday mornings fly the 1649 back to SFO, then nothing until the next Friday.

As jets came on board, phasing out of the Connies was inevitable. I had the dubious honor of flying the last Connie flight out of San Francisco and found myself back on my old friend the DC-4. It had gone from the gleaming Cadillac I had met many years ago at Homestead, FL to the Model T of the four en-gine airliners. My working conditions suddenly went from the sublime to the ridiculous. My job now was flying freight from SFO to LAX six nights a week. I would report to the freight terminal each night after dark and dressed casually in street clothes. They would send the release over to me and I would fly to LAX, nap while they unloaded and reloaded, all done by fork lifts in those days, fly back to SFO arriving about daylight, go home to rest up for another go. Some of the loads we hauled were as inter-esting as some of the exotic concoctions we flew over the Hump. Monkeys probably accrued the most bonus miles. I can't begin to describe the odor that accompanied them but I finally became so accli-mated to the smell that I could eat my box lunch without batting an eye. Another particularly aromatic favorite were strawberries. It was awhile before I could really warm up to Strawberry Short Cake again.

We also frequently carried cadavers. They were some of the best passengers I ever had. I never heard a single complaint. One night I took my young son with me to see what dad did for a living. He soon started to get sleepy. I told him he could go back and lay down on top of that long box in the cabin and take a nap. He asked me what was in it. When I told him, he suddenly wasn't sleepy anymore. Even this flight was replaced with a jet freighter and I still remained on the DC-4. The old bird was relegated to an engine carrier. By this time, I was the last captain on TWA qualified on the DC-4. I had three co-pilots that I managed to keep busy. They had to schedule me for one day a week off. On one of my days off, the scheduler called me and said, "We have an airplane down in Las Vegas with an engine out, can you take it over?” I said, "Gee Bob, I'd love to but I had a beer with my dinner”. He replied, "If you are too drunk to drive take a cab, but please get your ass out here, we've got to get that engine over there”.

In March of 1965, Dick Carlson and I were sent to Kansas City to check out in the Convair 880. It was a four-engine jet that carried 97 passengers. It was a love child of Howard Hughes and one of the most fun airplanes I ever flew. It was the fastest jetliner in the world and broke many speed records, three of which I held. My favorite was Oakland to San Francisco in two minutes. I continued to fly it until it was retired. To this day I hold my hat over my heart when I fly by them parked in rows on the Mojave Desert. Later, we were restricted to mach .82 to keep from running over all the lead sleds ahead of us, also restricted to a maximum airspeed of 250 knots below 10.000'. Few records were broken after this restriction. I was also rated in the 707 and dual qualified to fly either one.

I will step back a few years to fill in some important portions of my life. In 1957, when I was first starting to fly as captain, I had a flight to Denver in a Connie. The flight engineer was a fellow by the name of Jim Penney [TWA 1953—1981]. He and another captain had found a couple of dust-covered Beechcraft Bonanzas at Will Rogers Airport in Oklahoma City. They had cleaned them up and ferried


them back to SFO. These were the very first model of Bonanza, the straight B-35. All of the "V" tailed bonanzas had a trait that was offensive to some pilots. In rough air they would oscillate rapidly in yaw. It was easy to stop, I did it without even thinking about it but some never got used to it. Jim Penny was one of these. While we were eating dinner on a trip together he lamented having bought it and would like to get rid of it and get a Cessna 195. I finally said to him, "Jim if you are that unhappy with it I will buy it from you for whatever you have in it”. He jumped at the offer and thus I became the owner of Bonanza B-35 N3273V, the 521st built. I paid him $4,600.00 cash and I owned it until 1972. I would put a thousand hours on it.

During our fishing trips to the Klamath River we became friends with a fellow by the name of Jack McMaster. He owned 462 acres along the south bank of the river with a ramshackle house he had started to tear down. He had moved into town in Hornbook and wanted to retire there. We bought the property from him and I recruited ten people to share the cost. Through the ensuing years three of the members dropped out with the others buying their shares.

We set out to restore the house to livable status, mostly just nailing back what he had torn off. While this was going on, we fitted the living room as a sort of a dorm with cots to sleep on. One occasion brought forth a classic remark from Walt, whether inspired or purloined it fit the situation intimately. We were sleeping in adjacent cots one night when I heard something scurrying around on the floor. I reached for the flashlight and we both stared at what it revealed. In between our bunks was a skunk looking distressed. Walt asked, "Did you put a door on this side Ament?” “No”, I replied. He said, “Where would you like one?"

In the kitchen was an old electric range. We cleaned the dust off the top and cooked on a Colman Stove placed on top of it. Someone had opened the oven one day revealing a pack rat with a tail that looked like a broom stick. He closed the oven and it remained closed for some time to come. One day I happened to turn on one of the burners. Voila! It worked. We cleaned the stove of rats' nests and spider webs and from then on used it to prepare our meals. I used to bake wild blackberry pies in the oven. The thermostat did not work so I had to cycle the power on and off in order to maintain the

proper temperature range. It worked great and my kids grew up remembering meals consisting of fried ground squirrel, fried potatoes with onions and ortega peppers and wild blackberry pies.

When we got it completely “all weather livable” and cozy, I named it the "Klamath Hilton”. We later graded a runway on the top of a ridge near the house which was marginal but safe if you knew what you were doing. We changed what was a four and a half hour drive to a one and a half hour flight. We enjoyed it for many years until encroachment from developers and commercial river boat guides dimmed the luster.

Mexico Canada etc.

In 1957 I took a trip to Baja in the Bonanza. My crew consisted of Bettye who wouldn't even hold the wheel while I ate my lunch, and two of her girlfriends. The trip started a love affair that lasted for most

Jim Penney c.1980 Making of an

Airline


of the next fifty years. The trip was an adventure to be remembered vividly for the girls. The first leg into Baja from Mexicali presented a mild challenge with low ceilings and reduced visibility in rain. The girls were quite nervous but putting on some brave faces. I assigned each with some trivial duty to keep their minds occupied and foster a feeling of helping.

The first stop was a small pueblo at Bahia De Los Angeles, (Bay of the Angels); upon landing safely I was rewarded with cheers and heroic accolades. We spent the night in the fishing village with our fa-mous hosts Mama and Ontero Dias. Mama, famous for her turtle steaks, put on a feast for our benefit. Ontero made his living selling turtles caught by him and his associates. He trucked them to Ensenada and returned with supplies for the village which they sold in a little store. They also enjoyed a modest tourist trade. At this time, there was no improved highway any further south than San Quentin, less than one hundred miles below Ensenada. Everything south was four wheel drive and took a week or more to negotiate. The only practical access to points south was by air.

The next morning the weather had moved on and we pressed onto our next stop which was Mulege, pronounced Moo-lay´-hay, a lit-tle town situated along the only river in the Baja. Hotel Serenedad was adja-cent to the airport. The rooms were separate cabins disbursed over the grounds. Our next stop was the Capital of Baja Sur, La Paz. La Paz, at the time was a town of about 50,000 and served by air and a ferry from Guymas on the mainland. The ladies enjoyed this place immensely. The hotel fronted on a waterfront esplanade overlooking a

sandy beach, the yacht anchorage and the beautiful Bay of La Paz, meaning peaceful.

Bahia de Palmas was our next stop. The hotel again was on the air-port and all arrivals were greeted with a complementary margarita. We would soon become stockholders in the hotel and spend many memorable vacations on this lovely piece of paradise. We went fish-ing the next day and spent the rest of our stay visiting the resorts at the tip of the peninsula. At that time, Cabo San Lucas was a sleepy little town whose main industry was a fish cannery on the pier. The airport was located in a tide flat where the present day marina now sits.

There were a couple of posh resorts along the water front to the east, each with their own airport. Hotel Cabo San Lucas and Hotel Palmilla have since been joined by dozens of other hotels and re-sorts along the waterfront and the town of Cabo is a tourist trap with wall to wall people. The last place we visited before heading home was a little fishing village called San Jose Del Cabo. We parked the


bird at the dirt strip that served the village and found on our return that some enterprising kid had scratched his name on the propeller. That cost me a couple of hundred dollars to rectify upon my re-turn. San Jose Del Cabo today is a bustling town of perhaps 20,000. It too has many resort hotels but has somehow managed to retain its Charm.

Walt Morehead and I had become very close friends from the 1950's on and planned and enjoyed countless hunting and fishing trips through the years. We took an annual hunting trip to Alberta, Can-ada for a number of years. We would fly to Lethbridge on a pass, rent a car and spend a week hunting pheasants, Hungarian partridge and sharp-tailed grouse. We also included ducks when we could. We would take what we bagged throughout each day and, under a street light with the frigid wind blowing across the bare prairie (from the North Pole I think) pick them enough so that they could be drawn, dust the cavities with black pepper, find a motel and spread them on the roof of the car to chill. We would pack them in a parachute bag and cover them throughout the day while we hunted, repeating the rou-tine each night. When we got home we froze them with the feathers on and enjoyed them throughout the year.

The last trip we took to Canada was in 73V. I had upgraded the engine from 205 HP to 225 HP and added tip tanks that gave it a range of over eight hours. We took off from Lodi, CA and flew nonstop to Lethbridge. The tower asked us for our point of departure. I told him Lodi, California. He said, “No, I mean the last place you took off from.” I again repeated Lodi, California. He couldn't believe it. On the trip home we cleared customs at Cut Bank, MT and headed for the ranch. Climbing over the Bitter-root mountains we encountered a severe headwind. After a while Walt said, "I hate to be a wet blanket, but I have been looking at that same clump of aspens for the last fifteen minutes.” I turned south and headed for Dillon, MT. That proved to be one of the roughest rides I ever had in an airplane and be-lieve me I have had some very rough rides. We both had bruises from jerking against the seat belts. The next morning we were able to proceed to the ranch.

With the coming of the jets, their productivity and efficiency made all the propeller airplanes obsolete. As the pistons were replaced by the jets the down sizing of flight deck personnel became inevitable. The Airline Pilots Association negotiated and got a featherbedding concession that was downright shameful. It required that all jet crews had to include a second officer. [The third pilot, if the flight en-gineer was not ‘pilot qualified’ meaning he had gotten his commercial license and instrument rating, second officers received the F/O ground school and simulator programs and got three landings in the airplane—Ed.] Though saving jobs it served no other useful purpose. The second officer sitting in the jump seat behind the captain was nothing more than a distraction. He had no job description other than looking out the window for other traffic, which didn't happen. Asked what he had learned from a year in the jump seat one second officer replied, "80% of the captains need haircuts.”

The situation gradually went away [when all F/Es became ‘pilot qualified’] ….. The latest generations of jetliners only have two crew members in the cockpit. With the introduction of the Boeing [307] Stra-toliner circa 1940 the position of "Flight Engineer" became a career position. These professionals mostly came from the ranks of line mechanics, now called aviation technicians. Most of the four engine airliners to follow had a station in the cockpit behind the pilot stations. The exception was the Douglas [DC-4] where the F/E sat on a jump seat between the pilots. They were charged with fuel management, power plant management, aircraft logbook entries, preflight inspection and fueling supervision. On oc-casion, in-flight repairs were accomplished by these professionals. Some of the discrepancy write-ups were noteworthy. I recall finding one in a log book, as I checked it before flight, concerning the for-ward lavatory. To quote it, "The flush motor in the forward Lav is insufficient to whisk away the really big ones.”

Again, the ALPA stepped in when the jets came along and decreed that all flight engineers to follow, would be required to be pilot qualified. A mechanic's certificate was no longer required. The flight en-


gineers' union then negotiated their contract requiring that the company provide pilot training to those wishing to pursue it. The alternative was a severance package and early retirement. Most of them opted for the pilot training package and many of them went on to become fine captains. They were farmed out to local flight training schools for their primary training and certification. Most of them, upon be-ing pilot certified moved into the First Officer ranks due to their seniority. The engineer position was filled with the junior pilots that had been displaced. For a number of years this fostered a subdued ani-mosity in the ranks but at least the second officer's debacle went away.*

I was to be involved closely in their training and upgrading as they came on line and my sympathies were torn between the two groups. …. I had been approached on sev-eral occasions to become a check pilot. I declined, because I liked what I was doing very much. One of my immediate superiors was a close friend who had been under my command when I was Chief Pilot at Barrackpore flying the Hump; his name, Jack Clark [1923—2002, TWA 1947—1983]. He is now deceased, though he was a year younger than me. He, like Jim Penny, from whom I had bought the Bonanza, was a Cessna 195 buff and had one parked at San Carlos Airport where I kept 73V.

Bettye and I had been spending our month long vacations at Bahia de Palmas since we had become stockholders in the hotel. We were a couple of weeks into our vaca-

tion and gone completely native when Jack showed up in his 195. The chief pilot had sent him to talk me into becoming a check pilot. He was of course met with the traditional margarita. We got him checked in and retired to the Cantina to talk old times. Jack had spent a couple of years living in Saudi Arabia training the Saudi pilots on their new airline. During his tour his spare time was spent either scuba diving in the Red Sea or playing ping pong. He was quite accomplished at both.

After another margarita he suggested we have a game of a ping pong. I declined as I wasn't even in his league. One of the waiters in the dining room was a full-blooded Yaqui Indian. His name, Mario. Like Jack, he spent most of his free time playing ping pong and he was good! After another margarita Jack was feeling no pain at all. I suggested we go to dinner. He still tried to entice me into a game. I said, “No, I am hungry.” When we sat down, Mario came over to take our order. I told him in Spanish to watch us and walk through the kitchen door when we got up to leave. As we ate I said, "Jack you really want to play ping pong, I'll bet you $20.00 that the first Mexican to come through the kitchen door when we leave can beat you playing ping pong. He took the bait. Mario and the margarita beat him 21 zip. He had a few uncomplimentary things to say about my mother, but I placated him by agreeing to be a check pilot. I continued checking off and on until my retirement in 1981. Jack became a regular at Bahia and we enjoyed many diving adventures together.

I was contacted after we had moved the business into the new building in Redwood City by a represen-tative of Harrison Industries Inc. They were distributors for a line of fishing tackle with wide distribu-tion in stores nation wide as well as mail order. The man's name was Cecil Hoge. He was interested in taking on our line and particularly interested in the reel. They were willing to finance the tooling costs for producing the reel. I went to see the President and CEO on one of my trips to Newark, New Jersey and we struck a deal.

I got busy and started designing the reel for production. When I settled on a final configuration, I pre-sented it to several die makers for evaluation and bids. I made a few further changes at their suggestion and we commissioned the dies for the die-cast parts. There was a total of sixty parts in the reel. Some of them were off the shelf hardware but mostly the parts had to be fabricated. All in all, there were five vendors retained to produce the parts. I double checked all my dimensions and figures finally farming out the work. I thought my god, I sure hope these things all fit together when I get them back. A num-

*The crew complement issue was highly emotional and very divisive at the time; after all, careers were at stake. It was the primary cause of the American Airlines pilots leaving ALPA—Ed.

Jack E. Clark Making of an Airline


ber of special tools and fixtures needed to be designed and built to process the raw parts. This was all done in house. Three months or so later I had all the parts and pieces, tools and fixtures in hand. Eve-rything went together as planned and I had in my hand a viable spinning reel. I put together a dozen or so of them and we farmed them out for field testing. The field testing turned up no major problems and with a few minor modifications Harrison started shipping reels to the marketplace. The feed back was quite rewarding.

On one of my trips to Harrison I walked through the operation with Dick Davimos the CEO. The ineffi-ciency I witnessed was frightening and I said "My god Dick, you are going broke here.” He asked me if I would come and run it for him. I told him I already had a job. Anyway, it caught up with them shortly after and they were forced into reorganization. The end result was that the reel wound up in limbo and I had parts to make three thousand reels. Since we owned them, we sold what we could through our out-lets and about fifteen hundred or so found their way into the marketplace. They are now, 40 years later, collector's items. Jim and I are still fishing with ours.

The first time I saw Dr. Bob Cesnik he was lopped over a bar stool in the cantina at Bahia like a water balloon. I pegged him for a sedentary couch potato. I couldn't have been more wrong. Despite his obe-sity he was one of the most dedicated and enthusiastic sportsman I ever met. He had a stable of toys that would rival a Cabelas showroom. One of these was a 300 HP Cessna 185 which he could retrofit with floats, skis or wheels at his pleasure. He and his wife Lorraine had flown in from St. Cloud, MN. In the airplane along with all their other supplies were a Zodiac boat and an outboard motor. This actor would serve a prominent roll in many of my post WWII adventures for the next forty years until he passed away a few years ago. They had ten children, most of whom were still living at home. Their oldest son John and I also developed a close relationship which is still ongoing.

Meanwhile, back at the airline, I had a brief training session in KC to prepare me for check pilot status. In 1967/68 the company hired new pilots. [The big hiring wave began in the last months of 1963 – Ed.] These mostly came from the ranks of the military. These were the first pilots hired in many years and most of them looked quite young. These lads were referred to as "New Hires”, this label stuck with them for the balance of their careers and are still jokingly brought up at our retirement group get to-gethers. During this period I spent a lot of time with on-line training of the new first officers. I simply bid a line of time and the first officers would be assigned to my flight for training or check rides. I would also give captain checks as they were needed. In most cases, with the captains I would simply bump the co-pilot and assign the pay to him, so he got paid for staying home. I was very popular in this duty, at least with the co-pilots. I am not so sure about the captains, no one likes taking check rides.

Along with additional personnel, an upgrading program was in progress, many of the new student cap-tains came from the ranks of the old "A1" flight engineers. Many had accrued enough flying time to qualify for their Airline Transport Rating [1500 hours]. They went through the traditional ground school and simulator/airplane training at the training center. After that I would get them for on-line training. This led to some interesting and demanding actions on my part. It is procedure for the First Officer, or in this case me, to call off V1, the speed at which the takeoff is continued in the event of en-gine failure. If it fails prior to V1 the takeoff is rejected. The next call is Vr which is the speed when a smooth rotation in pitch is initiated for lift off….

On one occasion I had a new student captain just out of training in the left seat. We initiated a takeoff out of Tulsa, OK on a hot day. I looked at the airspeed indicator and called out V1 when I looked up he had rotated into an abnormally nose high attitude and the airplane staggered into the air. This is a situa-tion we refer to as behind the power curve. The drag is increased to the point where power is marginal. Another term, "ground effect”, comes into play here. Within about one wingspan of the ground, a por-tion of the drag is cut off by the ground. In this situation you can't accelerate and you can't climb. The corn stalks off the end of the runway were coming at us at 120 knots and we were going to be in them.


I yelled "I have it”, grabbed his hand on the throttles and pushed them against the stops as I raised the landing gear. The maximum allowable temperature allowed on the 880 is 1066 Deg. (Battle of Hast-ings). I noted that all four engines were above this limit as I gently coaxed the airplane into a climb and reduced to normal climb power. I asked the engineer to note the overshoot temperatures and the time they were over boosted. We all relaxed with the crisis over and I felt like I could now finally put my full weight down. Upon landing at St. Louis, I went with the Engineer to the maintenance foreman and told him we had exceeded automatic engine change limits. He said no problem and made a note in the log "engine over boost" and sent us on our way. Apparently, their limits were more liberal than ours. Makes sense. I said to the student, "I'll bet you won't do that again."

An amusing event occurred on a flight with two of the new hires. I landed at Phoenix and went into op-erations to pick up the clearance. The First Officer and Engineer were both young and looked even younger. They were on the airplane tending to the preflight duties. When I walked out and boarded, a

passenger seated in the front of the cabin looked up and said, "Whew, I am sure glad to see you, I thought those two kids were going to be flying this thing. Thinking back to my responsibilities as a twenty-year-old I said, "You would have been in good hands."

The thirteen years we spent in our home in Redwood City were pretty much typical Sub-urbia. The circle of friends we enjoyed was an interesting and stimulating group. They were quite diverse including bank executives, Bechtel engineers, college professors, indus-trialists and retired military. Our frequent gatherings were anything but boring. The kids pretty much grew up there.

Mark Twain Country

In the late sixties Bettye and I started looking to move out of the Bay area. After a year or so of looking in the surrounding Counties, we found a place that looked right from the gitgo. In July of 1968, we sold the house in one month and bought a lovely house on thirty acres in Mokelumne Hill in Calaveras County. Peggy and Wes were both on their own and the younger ones were teenagers. I moved my airplane to the little airstrip serv-ing San Andreas and began thirteen years of commuting to SFO by air.

I soon became a regular member of the airport community and eventually joined with the great lady that had been responsible for there being an airport in Calaveras County. Carol Kennedy was a veteran pilot in her own right, having been an active pilot as long as I had. We set up a fixed base operation offering fuel, maintenance, training and charter service. Carol was Airport Manager and lived with her husband, Jay, in a mobile home on the airport.

In 1968, I was honored by being selected San Francisco Captain of the year. TWA flew us to Stratford Upon Avon for presentation of the honors. We spent a week on guided tours which included landmarks


like Stonehenge and The Roman baths at Bath. Bettye is an avid tourist and enjoyed it very much. We were still able to walk among the great stones at Stonehenge. I en-joyed it also but I am really a lousy tourist. The honor was greatly appreciated.

A few years later Bettye and I went on a trip to Russia. It was during the time of the fall of the Soviet Union and was a wonderful time. The people were full of hope and greeted us warmly wherever we went. On one bus tour in St. Petersburg, they had a band playing the Star Spangled Banner as we got off the bus.

I had started building a small single place biplane in the bay area. It was a "Pitts Special”, designed specifically for Aerobatics. I worked on it in our garage for a year or so then finished it at the airport. I flew it in 1971. I practiced my aerobatics for a couple of years and accepted contracts to fly at some air shows. It was during this period that I met Maury Rasmussen. Maury owned the ski resort at Mount Reba in Sierra, Nevada. I had been helping Maury build a small single place, low wing monoplane. The airplane was a Midget Mustang made entirely of metal. Maury and I decided to fly the two airplanes back to Oshkosh, WI. Bob Cesnik had contacted me asking if I would consider flying back to do an air show to dedicate their new airport in St. Cloud. I told him I would try to work it in with our trip to Oshkosh.

We flew together spending the first night in Scotts Bluff, NE and made St. Cloud the next day. … I made the necessary arrangements to do the air show on my way back through. Maury and I went on to the EAA fly in. On the return trip we split up as Maury wanted to visit some relatives in Kansas. I headed back to St. Cloud. En route I encountered some low ceilings and rain. I had to get lower than some radio towers I knew were in the area. I flew on staying directly over the railroad tracks where I knew there would be no towers and landed at Eau Clair, WI. I was pretty cold and miserable when I landed so I went into the restroom and donned a pair of long johns I had in my pack. I noticed that they felt particularly tight taking my voice up about an octave, but I pressed on anyway. The weather im-proved as I proceeded west. I landed at St. Cloud without further incident.

Bettye had flown to St. Cloud on a pass and was waiting for me at the house. As I undressed to change clothes, I noticed her covering her mouth and giggling. It was then that I noticed that in my haste to get warm. I had inadvertently gotten my head between the top two buttons of the long johns.

Bob's oldest son was now a doctor serving his residency in St. Cloud. We had a great visit and John and I planned a trip together to the high arctic. [More about this in Part III in the November issue—Ed.] John had put himself through medical school bush flying in the arctic for the famous Bush Pilot, Weldy Phipps and had a hankering to return for a visit. As we were having cocktails before dinner, Bob, started extolling the virtues of his beloved Cessna 185, finally allowing that it could out climb the Pitts. I, of course, knew better and agreed to a bet of twenty dollars. The bet was that we would take off to-gether and the first one to reach 1000' won the bet. He took off on the runway and me on the taxiway. I easily stayed a comfortable distance above him until I reached 500' at which point I rolled inverted and beat him the rest of the way up upside down. This was poetic justice for a bet we had made several years earlier in Baja. I had bet him the same amount that I could land my Bonanza shorter than he could his 185. He had beaten me by ten feet, a bitter pill. The air show went off without a hitch and I let John fly the Pitts which he did like he had been flying it all his life. I headed out for California alone this time. I spent the night at Wendover UT, and made it on home the next morning. [For more on pre-sent day Wendover, see Flying the Concrete Compass in the November 2003 TOPICS]


I flew regularly at the Calaveras County Fair where there was a small airstrip. It was in this activity that I met Herb Ross. He was doing pretty much the same thing I was in a Pitts he had built. We put to-gether a short routine to open the air shows. Usually the shows opened with a skydiving exhibition. Herb and I would circle the jumpers with smoke on, and then after they landed we would join up to do a few maneuvers in formation. The crowds loved it so we put together a complete show with the two of us. It caught on and soon we were per-forming regularly at all the shows in the area. One year, we did 67 per-formances in one season. It was quite demanding. I practiced every day and we tried to practice together at least three times a week, then we would warm up on the way to the shows. Herb had retired from the Air Force as a full Colonel and was a fighter ace in WWII flying P-38s. After retiring he went back to school to get his teaching credentials and taught aeronautics at Delta College in Stockton, CA until retiring again. We continued to do air shows until 1984 when he felt his eyes were not good enough to fulfill the de-mands of precision formation aerobatics. The last show we did together was at Petaluma, CA. Every-one raved it was the best show we ever did, but Herb was wringing wet when we finished, his failing eyesight required concentration he felt he could no longer sustain. He later had laser surgery on his

eyes but we never put the team together again.

We would be joined on some occasions by a third mem-ber, Bob Herendeen, an ex-military [pilot] and national aerobatic champion several years running. Bob was also a TWA pilot based in LAX, so it was not easy to get to-gether to practice. I continued to do shows solo for a cou-ple of years but did not enjoy working alone and ulti-mately retired from the air show business. I tried once to train another partner, Briggite De St. Phalle, a champion in her own right, but it didn't work out.

One of the shows we regularly did was a Rock Concert held annually at Frog Town, (Calaveras County Fair-

grounds). The event went all day long and we would take turns with all the performers during band changes. Jim Franklin was a famous performer, his was one of the featured acts at the show. They had a canopy rigged up so we were out of the sun between shows. We were all lying under it relaxing wait-ing our turns. The music show finished and the next band was getting set up. Nothing was going on in the air. I said, "It's pretty quiet, who is up?" Franklin was lying back with his hat over his eyes. He said laconically, "You are." So much for punctuality.

On one particularly warm humid day we were performing at the fair. Everyone was complaining about how dead the air was. Anyone who has flown airplanes to the edge of their performance envelopes will know what I am talking about. It is a phenomenon that occurs during certain meteorological conditions. The sequence that Herb and I used was about twenty minutes long. It started with a series of maneuvers performed in close formation then I would leave the box and he would perform a series of solo maneu-vers, then leave the box and I would enter, perform solo, and then we would join up and perform a fi-nale which consisted of a bomb burst to separate us and finishing with a head on snap roll performed with a lateral separation not apparent to the audience.

In the early days of our air show careers, we had no radio communication. All of our maneuvers were accomplished with hand, head signals and timing. One of the maneuvers in my solo routine was a ver-

Bob Herendeen, 1928—1994; TWA 1955—1985

Herb Ross


tical eight. This maneuver consists of an inside loop on the top and an outside loop on the bottom. On this particular dead air day, I should have left this one out. On the outside loop as I pushed it over, I kept getting a nibble, a warning of the onset of a high speed stall. Once this maneuver is past vertical it is not possible to abort. I normally went under the bottom with about 500' to spare. It kept nibbling and I kept backing off to break the stall. Counter intuitive as it is, it is necessary to have full throttle no mat-ter how loud the engine is screaming as a dragging propeller will stall out the wing. I kept coaxing it around the bottom with a mind set similar that I had with the mountain wave action flying the hump. I was doing everything my experience and skill would allow. There is a hill between the aerobatic box where we performed and the audience. When I went under the bottom of my outside loop, the hill was between my airplane and the crowd. Everyone said the audience cheered wildly as they thought I had done it on purpose.

I monitored the ambient conditions a little more carefully after that. On another occasion before we had radio communication, we were performing at Salinas, CA. About half way through the formation por-tion of the show my Aresti diagram blew out. This is a card we tape up in the cockpit with crypto-graphic symbols representing the maneuvers to be performed. I went on from memory with some de-gree of uncertainty. When we finished Herb said "I knew something was wrong but I couldn't figure out what it was”.

The way we got fuel to feed during inverted flight was by inserting a weighted flexible tube in the fuel tank. The weight would carry the fuel pickup into the gasoline regardless of the attitude of the aircraft. This system was later updated to placing a header tank under the main tank that would feed the engine while the aircraft was inverted. The flop tube caused me to have the only accident I experienced during my air show career. The flop tube in my tank had stiffened over the years.

Herb and I were practicing for an upcoming show at frog town. We practiced using an extra 1000' of altitude which in this case saved my life. I had left Calaveras with about a half a tank of fuel which nor-mally was plenty. One of the maneuvers we performed in formation was a hammerhead stall. In this maneuver, the airplane is pointed straight up, just before it stalls, full left rudder is applied and the air-plane pivots on its vertical axis and proceeds straight down on the same line it went up on. When I achieved a vertical attitude the flop tube gulped a slug of air and I was looking at a stationary propeller with no way of restarting the engine. Herb saw nothing where I was supposed to be. When I recovered control of the bird I was at about 800' and had to make a 2700 turn to get onto the runway. I couldn't hold a tight enough turn to make it onto the runway without inducing a high speed stall so I picked a small clearing in the woods adjacent to the runway. It was obvious I wouldn't be able to stop in the clearing and would plow into the trees at the far end. I put the airplane down at the near edge of the clearing and immediately pushed the stick all the way forward to put it on its back. This worked like a charm, I went less than 50'. I let myself down by slipping the adjustment on the belt until I could get my elbow on the ground, released the belt and slid out from under the plane. I had a scratch on my el-bow from the ground, otherwise, was unhurt. I signaled to Herb who was circling that I was OK and started surveying the damage.

I was surprised that the damage was not extensive; in fact, I had the airplane back in the air in a little over a month. Tom Grammar, who was the Under Sheriff, showed up about this time and helped me right the airplane and we moved it onto the airport and into a small hangar used by PG&E for their helicopter. A strange thing happened that shows the strange way in which peoples minds work in time of stress. Tom Grammar swears on a stack of bibles to this day that he pulled me out from under the

Herb and Wes at Watsonville c. 1978


airplane. In discussing the accident later with Herb, I said I could have made it onto the airport if I had just been able to turn a little tighter. He said "are you kidding me, I never saw such an incredibly tight turn in my life, I couldn't begin to stay with you”, he had tried to fly my wing on the way down.

We were slated to fly at Watsonville the next weekend so I flew lead in his Christen Eagle and he flew wing in his Pitts. Jimmy Doolittle was the Grand Marshall and he came over to congratulate us after our performance. He remembered both of us from the war, me from India and Herb whom he had pre-sented with the Silver Star in North Africa. He insisted that we ride with him in his rounds of the crowd.

One other incident comes to mind. We were doing a show for a Rodeo in Stonyford west of Willows, CA. The promoter said that after we finished the show we could land on a small strip a few miles south and take a car he had there and come to the fair grounds to meet the crowd and pick up our paychecks. I flew Herb's wing to the site. I saw him do a double take and point down, I looked down and saw the promoter’s car and an airplane parked at the end of a pair of car tracks. I shrugged and shook my head. We went down to take a look and I saw Herb set up for an approach. He rolled out near the end and sat there with his engine running. I came on in. Half way down the rollout I passed under a tree limb. I pulled up next to him. I had a parking brake so I set it and climbed out and went over to his bird. I said, “are you sure this is where we are supposed to be?” He said, “Yeah but I sure don't want to do that again.” We drove up to receive our accolades and money, drove back and concentrated on not becom-ing airborne until we had passed the tree. We flew down to Frank Christensen's (Of Christen Eagle fame) strip in Hollister. He was scheduled to do a show in San Juan Bautista that afternoon which he couldn't make and asked us if we would fill in for him. We did two shows that day and flew about eight hours total.

In 1973, I sold the Bonanza to Taylor Howard, a friend I had met while in Redwood City. He had re-cently moved to Calaveras County and bought a ranch I had found for him. He was a scientist at Stan-ford. He was very active in the space program and in Radio Astronomy and founded the large dish sat-ellite system. He ultimately put 1000 hrs on the bird as I had. In its place I bought a small twin engine Beechcraft Travelair which I ultimately put more than 4000 hours on. The Travelair served me faith-fully for the next thirty years. There were three separate incidents during the first five years I owned it, that could have had very serious consequences, the last twenty five years there were only routine main-tenance items.

In July of 1972, I was flying a non stop to Boston and returning with a stop at Hartford, CT. On most of the flights I was checking first officers. On the 18th, I departed from Boston for Hartford with the first officer flying. It was standard procedure in the jets to make our descents at maximum allowable airspeed down to 10,000'. During the descent the airplane started to oscillate violently in pitch. I knew immediately that it was the incident [discussed in ground school] fourteen years ago. I could see that the student's input was just aggravating the problem. I yelled at him, "Don’t fight it Mike,” as I closed the throttles and locked the yoke against my knees. The airplane went through five violent oscillations before it stabilized. One of the flight attendants was in the galley at the time and was severely injured. She spent six months in the hospital and rehabilitation. Luckily everyone else was strapped in and no other injuries resulted. I landed at Hartford having requested an ambulance to meet the flight. They gave me some flack about the ambulance so I changed the request to an order. We canceled the flight, booked all the passengers on other flights and ferried the airplane to JFK. I explained my theory to the powers that be. Neither TWA nor Boeing wanted to hear what I had to say as modifying the elevator control system would be prohibitive. They inspected the tail thoroughly and returned the airplane to service.

Ironically some years later, the same airplane was descending into LAX from Honolulu and the same thing occurred. This time the pilot continued to fight the controls resulting in 35 oscillations before sta-


bility was restored, the first five could be superimposed on the flight recorder tape with the one off my flight from that point they increased before they finally steadied to normal as the airplane slowed. This incident resulted in three passenger fatalities. After that the tail was removed and installed on a freighter. The first officer on my flight suffered a near nervous breakdown and later failed to make it through upgrading to Captain. The 707s that are still flying, still have the same control system for the

elevators. I have heard stories about other upsets but they never got much publicity. In 1975, I took my wife, daughter and granddaughter on our annual trip to Bahia. On our return trip we stopped in La Paz to top off the fuel. As we were climbing out northbound over La Paz Bay at an alti-tude of about 3500' the right propeller parted from the airplane with a loud bang. The propeller sailed over the top of the cabin and down. As I turned to return to La Paz I saw the propeller splash into the bay. The propeller tended to all my shutdown procedures automatically, so all I had to do was fly the airplane. I advised the tower we were returning with the right engine inoperative and he cleared me to land straight in. I landed and by keeping the speed up I was able to taxi all the way to parking. The commandant and many curious eyes met us and I started looking at the damage. It was obvious that the engine was ruined as the propeller had severely bent the flange on the crankshaft. As I was examining the damage, the Commandant commented, "You no nervous?” I don't remember what my reply was but he said, "Muy fuerte” [very strong] and from that day on I could do nothing wrong at La Paz Inter-national Airport.

The Governor of Baja Sur had a hangar on the field where his airplane was kept. His pilot was a fine pilot and gentleman that had attended Boeing School at the same time that I had. His name was Jose Casteñeda. He arranged to have my airplane stored in his hangar until I could make arrangements for


repairs. It is the law in Mexico that a Mexican mechanic be retained for all work done on aircraft within the Mexican border. I made arrangements to hire one. Thinking, I would just pay him and make the repairs myself.

I arranged transportation home for us all on Mexicana. A week or so later I had rounded up a re-manufactured engine and a propeller. My friend Harry Greene, who made all the screw machine parts for the reels and a partner in our ranch, and I loaded the engine and prop into his Cessna 210 and headed for La Paz. We arrived in La Paz at ten in the morning and I started preparing to change en-gines. The mechanic I had hired was the mechanic for the Governors airplane. His name is Jose de la Cruz. He stepped in with his helper to help me. I soon saw that I was just going to get in his way and spent the rest of the day handing him tools. We unloaded the engine from Harry's airplane at about ten thirty Saturday morning and by three Sunday afternoon the airplane was ready to test fly. Their laws also require that the Commandant be on the test flight so we went and I let him fly, which he thought was great. Jose de la Cruz later became Commandant and we grew to be great friends.

A few years later, I was meeting Harry and some friends at Bahia. He was already there and I was to come down a few days later. I was flying a freighter which arrived back at SFO in the morning. The freight terminal was adjacent to Butler Aviation where I parked my airplane while on flights. I just jumped out of the 707 and walked over to my plane not even bothering to change clothes. I arrived at La Paz a short time before dark that evening. Mexican Law does not allow night flight by U. S. visitors. I did not want to spend the night in LAP so I walked into Operations and laid a ten-dollar bill on the desk, saying I want to go to Las Cruces, a field about ten minutes away. He picked up the ten spot and said as he slipped it into his shirt pocket, "Captain Ament, you got plenty time to go to Las Cruces”. It was pitch dark when I arrived at Bahia.

The next incident occurred a few years later while flying home after a flight. The oil cooler is mounted in the front of the cowling with long oil lines connecting it to the accessory case of the engine. The lines are secured by several Adel clamps to the side of the cowling. One of these clamps had broken in flight and allowed the oil line to contact the hot exhaust stack. It had burned a hole in the line allowing all the oil to be blown out. I noticed the oil pressure drop and saw oil on the cowling I feathered the propeller immediately but not before it had ruined the engine. I landed at Calaveras and noticed as I pulled the prop through, that the engine had started to seize. Luckily the engine was only a few hours away from overhaul so I just changed engines a few hours early. These problems could all be traced to faulty maintenance or deferred maintenance prior to my acquisition of the aircraft. No serious problems occurred after these were corrected. The aircraft received regular scheduled maintenance after that, as was required by strict Air Taxi regulations.

TO BE CONTINUED…

IN THE NEXT ISSUE:

JOURNEY TO THE HIGH ARCTIC


FLYING ACROSS AMERICA:The Airline Passenger Experience By DANIEL L. RUST

Nowadays, when you're standing on long, snaky lines, clutch-ing your discount e-ticket and waiting to shuffle shoeless through airport security, it's hard to remember that air travel was once a glamorous, exotic adventure enjoyed only by the well-dressed rich. While today we think of flying as some-thing to be endured, when commercial air travel began less than a century ago, it was something to be enjoyed. In 1929, when Charles Lindbergh's Transcontinental Air Transport of-fered the first air-rail passenger service across the country, you might have boarded a Ford Tri-Motor aircraft wearing

your finest fur coat, been served an elaborate lunch on real china with gold-plated utensils, and watched sheep scatter across farmland through curtain-clad windows you could open for air. Then again, back in those days, the noise in the plane's cabin was deafening and the trip from New York to Los Angeles took about 48 hours. In his large, amply illustrated, and carefully researched new book, Flying Across America: The Airline Passenger Experience, Daniel L. Rust, assistant director of the Center for Transportation Studies at the University of Missouri-St. Louis, traces how people have ex-perienced transcontinental air travel; his narrative moves from the beginning in 1911, when Calbraith Perry Rodgers became the first person to fly across the country, through the swingin' jet-set years, to the present day. Rust peppers his history with firsthand accounts, including passenger Jessie Gray's de-piction, in 1933, of the view from above: "As if in the hollow of a great hand, I am upheld serenely to see the entire picture instead of tantalizing detail and unsatisfying incompleteness." With these sharp observations -- as true today as ever -- the book takes flight. -Amy Reiter [Amy Reiter, a former editor and senior writer for Salon, has written for The New York Times Book Review, The Washington Post Book World, Glamour, Marie Claire, Wine Spectator, and American Journalism Review, among other publications.]

From Jim Schmitt: “...Its definitely a living-room coffee-table book, and every old TWA pilot should own one - hang the cost!!!” [As of this writing, amazon.com has dropped the price from $45 to $32.40—Ed.]

“Its 'Flying Across America' by Daniel Rust, brand new, 2009 date, yet lots of old pictures heavily laced with TWA. My little tear-jerk moment (I'm sure there will be more...as my wonderful wife Carole presented me with this book on today Aug. 25, my 81st birthday) was page 72 - a 1956 photo of multiple sets of identical twin 'stewardesses', all TWA.”

“I immediately recognized the Manby twins, Jean and June, based at EWR when I arrived in April of ‘56. I was struggling financially as a new F/O. ...I went to summer camp on Cape Cod with the NJANG in August. I was still being processed so received no military pay for that two weeks. TWA thought I had been terminated so on my return from camp, I was off the payroll for weeks.”

“On my next Martin 404 trip to PIT I mentioned my plight to the captain and hostess, saying I was go-ing to have to hit up the folks back in St. Paul for a little cash. I was shocked when June Manby said, "Jim, how much do you need?" She reached in her purse and lent me $200 - half a month pay for me in those days - right on the spot. Those were the good old days….”


FLOWN WESTFLOWN WEST


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Saturday, January 30, 2010, former TWA L-1011 N31019, Fleet no. 1019, MSN 193B-1066, fuse-lage no. 66 lands at Wheeler Downtown Airport; better known to TWAers as “Munie” or MKC and taxis to the AHM ramp (the old Slick hangar) on the SW corner of the field.

AHM Photo

Former TWAers suit up to welcome old 1019 to MKC

AHM Photo

N31019, now N710TS is readied for her last flight at Roswell, NM (ROW). For minute by minute flight data go to www.flightaware.com, enter n700ts in the “tail #” box, enter, then click on “track log” on the Status line.

AHM Photo

The Lockheed L-1011 prototype returns from it’s first flight November 6, 1970 at Palmdale, CA (PMD)Jon Proctor was there and snapped this picture

Ship #1019 in her second livery at STL, December 7, 1984

From the Jon Proctor collection

From the Jon Proctor collection

2010 07 tarpa topics

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