Our Missing Plane

Memories of the

Rhein Main Air Force Base

Twin Fan Spam Can
One of our planes is missing.

CHARLES L. LUNSFORD
Radio Operator; 12th T.C.Squadron

The 10th and 11th squadrons each had 18 aircraft. The 12th squadron, however, had only 17. The reason for the 12th being one C-119 short was that the 18th airplane had a two year stopover at Prestwick, Scotland. 53-8140 was it's name. It was the bird nobody wanted to fly.

Long before I got there, the 60th Troop Carrier Wing was equipped with new aircraft, replacing the old C-119 CF models with the newer G models.

These shiny new airplanes were ferried from Maryland via Gander, Newfoundland, Sondestrom Fiord in Greenland, then on to Iceland, Prestwick and finally to Dreux, in France. 8140 made it as far as Prestwick where it was damaged in a taxi accident, colliding with a B-26. It was in Prestwick for nearly 2 years, so it must have had heavy damage.

It had also been painted somewhere. It was never shiny polished aluminum like the others, and none of the modifications had been done to it. It still had the older markings when it arrived at Dreux; that is, the "U.S. AIR FORCE" and "TROOP CARRIER" weren't painted on it in the same places as the others. All this made poor 8140 look like a square peg in a round hold. Even the 12th's"Blue" squadron trim on the nose and the vertical stabelizers was a different shade of blue. 8140 was a horse of a different color!

The engineer assigned to 8140 was the one with the unpronounceable name – polish or Hungarian or something, Karl Hricko. His work was cut out for him, but he was happy to be promoted to flight mechanic. There were others ahead of him in line to be crew chief, but he got the job, and one hell of a job he did.

So why didn't anybody want anything to do with 8140? Because an airplane is like a thoroughbred racehorse. It has to be worked and exercised. It can't sit idle for long periods of time or thing start going wrong with it. It's illogical, but seems to be true. The general opinion was that 8140 was an airplane looking for a place to crash.

True to form, 8140 always had something wrong with it. It was a flying example of Murphy's Law. If 8140 had been an automobile, we would have called it a lemon.

We all thought the engineer with the unpronounceable name was not long for this world. Karl Hricko had to go everywhere that airplane went. It was his airplane and he was, as John Traficanti used to say about his own 8145, signed out with it. The rest of us went to great lengths to avoid flying 8140, volunteering for oddball missions, developing mysterious illnesses, going on leave -- anything to keep out of 8140. But unpronounceable couldn't do that. He was stuck with it.

The first time I flew 8140, we made an emergency landing at Chateauroux with very dangerous hydraulic problems. The other aircraft had all undergone a major modification to the hydraulic system to correct the problem, but 8140 missed it. It was in Prestwick. We left Kral Hricko in Chad and got other transportation back to Dreux. He spent a lot of time alone with 8140, waiting for repair crews or parts, usually in some unspeakable place in Turkey or Saudi Arabia or North Africa.

I lost a couple of engines in 8140. Nothing serious. One sort of expected to have an engine quit in 8140 – one just didn't know WHEN!
Everyone who flew 8140 had some hair-raising story to tell. One crew had complete electrical failure. They were in perfect weather conditions, so it wasn't life threatening and they got down OK. Another had to crank the landing gear down. It was the hydraulics again. Circuit breakers would pop at odd times and for no apparent reason. Tires would go flat. Fuel injection plugs would blow out of the cylinderheads -- nothing real serious, but annoying, and if it happened at night, looked like an engine fire inside the nacelle cowling. I was flying 8140 one night when an injection plug blew and we made a hurry-up landing, also at Chateauroux. Not an emergency landing, but we didn't waste any time getting down.

The 3350 engines we had were the same engines that the old B-29s carried. The B-29s were cylinderhead fuel injected; the C-119 was not. We had a carbureter. There was a screw-in plug where the fuel injectors would have been on the top of each cylinderhead. Very occasionally, one of them would blow out like a champagne cork. When that happened the fuel would be forced out the hole on the compression stroke, and would ignite on the un-insulated sparkplug wires. You couldn't see it in the daytime, but at night it looked like the Forth of July inside that nacelle.

And the Radios! The radios were… well, I never knew what was going to happen next. One or more of the were inoperative all of the time, usually the one I really needed at that moment. Of course, the next time I tried it, it would work just fine. And only certain headsets would work at certain jackboxes. If they got switched, I had to walk around the airplane, plugging them in trial and error, until I found which one went where.

Safety wired electrical plugs would fall out of them and the next time, couldn't be blasted out. Once the VHF receiver wouldn't cycle, and then after the tech-order recommended "Sharp Rap," wouldn't stop cycling. It got to be rather comical. What the hell was going to happen next?

Another time, the gasoline heaters shot craps and the crew nearly froze before they got down, then, of course, the next crew couldn't shut the heaters off.

All this in an airplane that was almost new, and had a thousand less hours than the others. The two years of idleness had to be the reason. Karl Hricko never gave up, though. He just kept banking away until slowly, painfully, 8140's problems went away (mostly) and all the modifications were made. He was still 8140's crew chief when I rotated back to the states, and as far as I know, 8140 never did find that place to crash.

I have since learned that many of our aircraft were sold to the Third World. Well, the Italians got it, I'll just bet 8140 has them talking to themselves!

Many of the C-119s based in Europe were sold to the Third World, and the Italians got 8140. I’ll just bet that airplane has them scratching their collective heads and talking to themselves.

Author’s Note.
I thought 8140 never did find that place to crash—but I was WRONG. In a recent letter from Bob Wilder, GCA operator at Chateauroux in France in 1962, he tells of 8140 and it’s Italian crew from Pisa, Italy trying to takeoff from Chateauroux one morning in foggy, misty conditions. 8140 lost power on takeoff, and unable to stop in time, ran through the barrier at the end of the runway, near the GCA shack. All three landing gear collapsed and 8140 was on its belly, tangled in the barrier. The crew was unhurt, so the aircraft was jacked up, the gear lowered and it was towed to a maintenance area. The Italian crew braced the landing gear with 2x4 lumber, and after some minor sheet metal work on the damaged belly the next day, flew it back to Pisa with the gear down, landing there safely according to Wilder. As the damage was minor, probably the Italians repaired 8140 and continued to fly her.

As stated previously, this writer once made a wild, white-knuckle emergency night landing at Chateauroux in 8140 back in 1958, and it is my opinion that 8140 had already picked Chad as its place to crash, but had to wait a long time to do it.

Great story Chuck. Thanks, Bill

Editors Note:

Chuck has been blessed with a special talent, writing stories and novels. He has a book publshed about his experences in the 12th TC squadron. I have one and have read it, it's great. You will enjoy it, get one. Click on the book below.

Chuck also wrote this after we were talking about the sound of airplane engines. I know you will enjoy it.

CONTRAILS

By Charles L. Lunsford

It has been more than forty years since I flew in airplanes for a living. Airplanes and flying in general have progressed to a point where the aircraft I few and the flying I did are not only obsolete, but have passed into the realm of ancient history. Almost the only thing that remains constant is that airplanes are still held aloft by the lift created by their wings. Nearly everything else has changed.

In those 40 years, I have pursued other things. I married, had children and raised them, and watched them leave the nest and do well in careers that have very little to do with flying.

Why, then, do I feel compelled to look up every time I hear an airplane fly over?

I used to think that this compulsion would pass over time, but not so. If anything, it’s getting worse. I even find myself wasting my time watching the Boing 737s climb out from the local terminal. Why would I watch a 737? I know they are fine little airliners, but not very interesting. They all look alike, and they always climb out making exactly the same turn and exactly the same altitude and at exactly the same speed at exactly the same time of day. What’s interesting about that? Why must I look up at them?

My work takes me out of doors, and I know my co-workers think there is something wrong with me because I’m looking up all the time and stumbling occasionally because I’m not watching where I’m walking. Poor old guy in his dotage.

The civil terminal here shares the runways with a large Air Force base, so I’m treated to a rich variety of aircraft flying over. I play golf at a course that is directly off the north end of one of the runways. The other golfers complain about the noise and the wind, but I love it. The airplanes are so low on final over the course one can almost reach up and touch them. The base is home to a few C-130s that drone overhead from time to time, and I have to look up at them. I flew in their predecessor, the Fairchild C-119, and I never see a C-130 without being reminded that they are the reason I quit flying when I did. They were so sophisticated that they didn’t need my particular skill as a Radio Operator.

There are F-16s on the base, too, but I only hear them roaring off the ground in afterburner, and doing maximum power climbouts. Now and then, I’m treated to a formation peeloff over the end of the runway, about 3 miles away. But the F-16s are only fighters, flown by very young men who do tactical practice and gunnery practice on the range near the base. They are homebound. They never get to GO anywhere.

Very rarely, I’m treated to the unmistakable old sound of large radial piston engines driving multiple propellers. For them, I have to run outside if I’m inside, or to run to a clear area in a frantic effort to locate the source of that wonderful thunder. Usually, the source of the sound is a “slurry bomber,” an old DC-6 or a Neptune going to fight a forest fire someplace, but once or twice it has been an old Connie or a B-29. The old 2800s, 3350s and 4360s running on 115/145 octane aviation gasoline – the highest ever refined. Engines that permeated one’s very being with their power. Those are my kind of engines. The ones that took my high-pitch hearing. Nothing else sounds like those big engines. I MUST go and look up at them when they come over. They are the engines of my youth.

My town is also directly under a major east-west airway, and when conditions are right, the contrails are nothing short of spectacular.

When I was flying, there were few contrails. Not many aircraft flew high enough to generate them—certainly not the aircraft I flew in. Most airliners didn’t fly that high either, so if one saw a contrail, it was more than a little exotic. It almost had to be a military jet; flying at altitudes we could only dream about, on some fabulous and exciting mission. We were guilty of envy when very occasionally, we were treated to a feathery white streak going south over the Mediterranean. We were seeing the first jet airliners. Their callsign was “Springbuck” and they were the ill-fated De Havilland Comets of BOAC, on their way to South Africa. They flew so fast and so high that they usually didn’t bother with radio calls to the air traffic controllers. There was no other traffic up there for them to worry about.

Now, of course, those envied white streaks are commonplace. Every airliner makes one. So why am I still fascinated when I look up at them?

On those good contrail days, there I’ll be, gawking up at the head of the contrail, trying to see that little silvery speck that is causing that long white streak against the blue, watching it for a long time until it passes below the vault of the mountains, and wondering what the final destination of the little speck could be.

Sometimes I can see one that is not on the airway, but streaking across the sky at some odd angle, usually very high, and very fast. A military jet, probably, doing his own thing uncontrolled by anyone on the ground. And once in a while, a flight of fighters in loose formation, making multiple, parallel streaks across the sky.

And now and then, I’ll see a very large aircraft spewing out a big contrail of four little wisps behind its engines that quickly merge into two larger ones. Something big and majestic. Maybe a 747 or a B-52. Or one of UPS’ stretch DC-8s. There is one of those old, refurbished DC-8s that climbs out among the 737 traffic every evening, no longer loaded with passengers now, but loaded with the myriad stuff of overnight parcels and mail, but it doesn’t matter—this airplane has some class. Whatever I’m doing, I always have to stop and watch this beautiful aircraft as it climbs out to the east and then makes a slow and majestic turn back toward the west in the gathering dusk. Sometimes, just after sunset, the airplane gleams with the golden light of the dying sun, while the rest of us are in shadow. I must watch until he is gone from sight.

A few days ago, I watched the contrail of something large moving toward the horizon to the east. It was very high and probably 20 miles beyond the mountain, but I could still see the end of the contrail moving perceptibly away from me. The crew of that airplane had no idea I was watching them, nor did their passengers. I thought back to my own flying days and wondered if ever there had been an old flying man somewhere down there watching me fly over, and wishing he had those days of his youth back. Maybe his hearing was damaged from freezing in an open cockpit and listening to the pounding roar of his engine only a few feet away amid the wood and fabric and wires of his fragile aircraft. Watching me, he would have had no idea where I was going, but he’d have envied me my destination. Wishing he were going with me. He would have been a type who, regardless of his age, still had to look up when an airplane went over.

In the future, I have no doubt that many of those young men currently roaring around in F-16s and other modern aircraft, will be looking up, too. Looking for the speck at the head of the contrail, feeling a little envious, wondering where it’s going, and remembering what it was like to be up there – high and clean and free of the Earth.

They will have to look up because, just like me, a part of them will always be up there. Flying.