Dragon tales

Flight Journal, Jun 1999 by Frey, Ed

During the Vietnam era, the United States Air Force's Undergraduate Pilot Training (UPT) was "the year of 53 weeks," and after completing the course, the graduate was lean, flat-bellied, full of "High Flight" and qualified to go forth to new and exciting weapons systems. Equipped with a pair of "go-fast pants" from days in the supersonic T-38 Talon and an ego blown way out of proportion by a solo out and back, the graduate was aerobatics-, instrument- and formation-qualified and ready to transition to anything-anything! Anything, except perhaps a C47! Or, to make it even more exciting and difficult, an AC47.

Somehow, into the mix of first flight assignments, this new advanced-theory aircraft appeared. In "AC47," "An means attack; it was once even called an FC47, but that was before a possible revolt by the Fighter Pilots' Union caused the "F" to be dropped. For all that it was and all that it had been, it was difficult to think of the Douglas DC-3/C-47/Skytrain/Gooney Bird/Dakota/Douglas Racer as a fighter or ground-attack aircraft.

To transition from the T-38 to the C-47 meant taking a step back in time to another era of flight. Everything about the Goon was old. Certainly, it was older than most of the crew members-instructors excepted-who flew in it, but it also had idiosyncrasies that hadn't been faced by the crews who were about to fly it. The hydraulic pressure gauge-at the copilot's right knee-had an indicator hand that must have been stolen from an antique clock shop. It was rumored that the flaps ran on a piece of railroad track. To make sure that the sometimes sluggish hydraulic system responded properly, flight mechanics often carried sawn-off broom handles to beat the accumulator into submission. Since the accumulator was on the back of the copilot's seat, this had a second purpose of keeping the copilot alert, if not a little gun-shy. No matter how you look at flight, these are not indicators of state-of-the-art, ultra-sophisticated aircraft

The Goon was propelled by two 12-foot "things" (propellers) that rarely, if ever, did what they were expected to do when they were expected to do it These propellers were powered by engines that weren't jets, and that alone made them immediately suspect to recent UPT graduates. They had pistons and magnetos and things that hadn't even been discussed during UP. The aircraft had a 16 foot-tall rudder-a barn door behind you. This was a rude awakening to T-38 pilots, most of whom had been taught never to step on the rudder pedals unless in a dire emergency (a rudder roll in a final turn could ruin your whole day). Watching the first final turns of new prospective Goon pilots who tried very hard not to use the rudder could have made the finals on "America's Funniest Home Videos" every week. Staying lined up on final approach, again without somehow using that barn door as a crutch, was virtually impossible. Not only did it take forever to get anywhere because you were going so slowly, but while you were working on getting there, the slightest crosswind or turbulence also caused random ground tracks that became religious experiences for the copilot and other crew members. Many times, they prayed aloud for instant salvation-to say nothing of making a solemn promise that they would never, ever, fly with this particular pilot again.

Put purely and simply, the Goon was (and still is) an absolutely classic aircraft in every sense of the word. But classics are not neo essarily the easiest things to fly, especially when the prospective flier's database is limited to supersonic flight and afterburners. The instructors who were brought in to guide these fledglings along the pathway of transition and up the veritable learning curve seemed ageless. They-pilots, flight mechanics, load masters and gunners-were paragons of knowledge, skill and time in the aircraft who loved to mystify the young with both fiction and fact. They formed a team with two apparent purposes in life: qualifying the unqualified and absolutely destroying the huge egos UPT had worked so hard to produce. What a collection!: instructor pilots who were masters of sarcasm, ridicule and fear and flight mechanics who knew every nut and bolt by name, number, location and failure rate. They were load masters who could figure weight and balance in their heads and gunners who knew more about the SUU 11 pods than Mr. SUU himself. The only small reprieve-and it was temporary-for the front-end neophyte's ego was that the navigator instructor's contribution to this wrath was missed because the navigators didn't train with the rest of the crew.

To the ignorant, the most venomous of this surly band of profes sors were, without a doubt, the flight mechanics. Perhaps this is because they could see everything bad that was about to happen but had absolutely no control over any of it. The instructor pilots could see it, but they could also correct it before it got totally out of hand. The rest of the back-end crew had to get the excitement secondhand over the intercom, and that made them basically passengers on an airline that, at any particular moment, they may not have wanted to be on. The flight mechanics could severely damage egos and instantly stop hearts with such caustic comments as, "Butt can? Sir, you don't need a butt can. Just open the window!" And then, without negotiation or further discussion, and just to prove their point, they would! Now, somewhere in the T-38 phase of instruction, God told all student pilots in a dream, "Thou shalt not open thy windows in flight." And yet, when the windows were opened-yes, the windows-the cigarette ashes went right out, courtesy of Venturi or whoever else was responsible for that phase of aerodynamics so overlooked by most student pilots. Those same flight mechanics taught aircraft cleanliness by removing the flex ble and quite lengthy defroster hose from its intended position, putting one end out through the navigator's drift-meter opening and using the resulting vacuum on the other end (again courtesy of Venturi, or whoever) to vacuum out the pointy end of the aircraft.