Turk:
I forget the dates but we were approaching for a landing, it was raining and we overshot the runway. All of a sudden baggage and instruments were flying all over the place. The pilot locked the left wheels and opened the right engine and we spun. like crazy. When we came to a stop the pilot came out the cockpit screaming all kinds of obscenities to us. We finally were told to leave the aircraft via a rope ladder. As we looked around when we got down we would have gone over a valley if the pilot didn’t do what he did. Needless to say they sent another aircraft for our return to Bolling. However there were a few cats that refused to fly back and took a train. That was also my last gig with the Corps as I was being discharged.
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Glenns Story…
According to the crew chief, that was the first time anyone had “ground-looped” a C-54. Yeah, we came in hot and heavy in rainy weather with poor visibility on a 5000 foot runway, at the end of which was a steep drop-off with some kind of power station (I think) at the bottom. The pilot realized when he touched down that there was not enough remaining runway to get the fully-loaded bird back off the ground and not enough runway to brake to a stop (C-54 didn’t have reversible props like a C-118 did). So, he decided to try to do a 180 and apply power to the engines, First, we were skidding sideways for awhile, then he got the bird the rest of the way around and gunned the props. We ended up off the end of the paved runway, facing the direction we had come, with the tail of the aircraft at the beginning of the drop-off. The landing gear struts were severely damaged and the crew chief had us move very carefully (like one at a time) to get off the plane.
Needless to say, we didn’t go back to D.C. in that bird. In fact, that C-54, which had been based at Bolling, was later taken south somewhere for repair. [We thought and hoped that it was going to be taken out of service, but I remember that it showed up at Bolling several months later with a different tail number.] This was the 4th or 5th incident we had with this bird over a period of about six months, including engine failure hanging us up at a base in New York; returning from Maxwell AFB and landing in soup at Bolling with one gear almost off the runway; returning from Hanscom and being hit by lightning (according to the crew chief) on Good Friday afternoon. So, this Wilkes-Barre thing was the final straw, and it was not surprising that a couple guys refused to get on the replacement plane that was sent to pick us up at Wilkes-Barre.
Oh yeah, the good times!! I believe this happened sometime in 1961 – I know that we covered a lot of miles on many trips that year – west coast, northeast, mid-west. In fact, I seem to recall that the Corps logged more in-aircraft (in country) hours that year than ever before.
Another C-54 Story………..
On a trip home with winds coming across the designated runway, our plane was crabbing down, bucking the crosswind, coming over the hill above Bolling AFB , just straightening out prior to wheels down on the runway. Some of the corps families who lived in the Apts. up on the hill would know when hubby was arriving just bt knowing which crabbing plane had the Drum Corps on board.
On the C-54, there was a navigators compartment and seat which was usually unoccupied since that was a”wartime”position. If the radio operator wanted a better signal, he lowered a cable with a large weight on it, shaped like a window sash weight. The thin cable was approx. 75 ft. long. On one trip, the plane crabbed along over the hill and down to the Bolling runway, when phone lines lit up on the hill and sirens were soon heard. It was thought that a part of the plane had fallen off and crumbled the chimney of one of te Apt. buildings.
What was finally determined was that the radio cable was never winched up on that trip and the weight squarely hit a chimney on the ridge!
It’s not known if heads rolled, but one guy named “cookie” was in the Navigators seat listing to the rsadio on that flight!