Congo pilot: Flying cargo during a civil war

Flight Journal, Apr 2003 by Dedman, Robert

Earning a buck the hard way

This is not one of those "There I was at 30,000 feet with Fokkers around me" stories. Rather, it starts simply but has a nervewracking ending.

Back in 1960, I was furloughed from Panagra airlines in South America, and then went to work for Capital airlines in Washington, D.C., and was furloughed again. I searched the trade papers for a job and answered an ad from Seven Seas Airlines in Luxembourg. I was hired as a copilot, and because I had completed my ATR written test, I was waiting for a chance to get the rating on a DC-4. I was offered 4.75 cents per statute mile-straight-line distance, so if you were put in a holding pattern-tough; points A to B only. After a couple of months, a friend was going for a rating so I tagged along, and there was enough time remaining on that flight for me to get my DC-4 rating. (I had never been in the left seat of a DC-4, but all went well.)

Now we skip to the Belgian Congo, circa 1961. Seven Seas had a contract with President Moise Tschombe of Katanga and a mining company called Union Miniere to supply its needs. The mine was in western Katanga in an area called Bakwanga. It supplied a large portion of the world's heavy-duty industrial diamonds. The rest of the Congo was strife-tom and poor, and a new ruthless rebel leader was instilling fear in and killing the natives; his name was Patrice Lumumba.

When the United Nations decided to step in to reunite the Congo, Seven Seas went for the UN business, and indeed, it was very good. It was poor wages for pilots, but a bonanza for Seven Seas' owners. I needed the "heavy command time," as I wanted to return to the scheduled carriers. I was unhappy as a relief captain, so I quit and went to work for Inter Ocean Airways (also Luxembourg based) as a captain and was sent back to the Congo because business was booming. The company ended up with DC-4s and two new Douglas Carvairs for the UN airlifts.

I was sent to Britain to fly back the first Carvair. I stayed with the operation for some weeks and learned a great deal about the new aircraft. It was built around the wing of a DC-4 but had a higher tail and a higher nose. The nose had a door that opened at 180 degrees, and the cockpit was above the fuselage, so a ladder entry was required. It had a new electrical system, a nosewheel pod and, best of all, it was a zero-time aircraft. It had the same basic performance as the DC-4 because, to reduce weight, it had nothing that wasn't essential. Certification was fairly easy, but the FAA required a separate rating because of the new cockpit height. I had an FAA flight inspector named Dave Switzer and a maintenance FAA inspector, and we certified the aircraft on a trip from Luxembourg to Tunis, Kano and Leopoldville. They liked the aircraft and it flew well. As I had the only Carvair rating (number three) in the Congo, I had to check out the new captains for their ratings nice change of pace.

UN pilots wore khakis and blue berets and were supposed to carry a submachine gun to protect the aircraft and cargo, but I preferred not to. If you come out waving a gun, you are hostile. On a routine trip to Stanleyville, we were met by a UN officer and taken to the Officers Club for lunch. All aircrews did the same and there were many airlines plus military aircraft from a variety of nations. After lunch, we passed an incoming Italian military C-119 crew. We flew back to Leopoldville and were told that 10 minutes after we left the club in Stanleyville, rebels stormed it and massacred the Italian crew. They even hacked them up, and rumor was that their parts had been hung in a local market (a close call, for sure). A lot of good a machine gun is when you think you are in a safe place; the Italians had been armed.

As we were paid by the statute mile, we devised ways to maximize our daily mileage. One of our duties was to shuttle fuel drums from Albertville (on Lake Tanganyika) to a fighter base at Kamina in Central Congo. We carried 55-gallon fuel drums in the DC-4, about 30 at a time, with all the emergency windows open to rid the aircraft of fumes. The drums were loaded by forklift and secured to the fuselage floor with a rope cargo net. The pilot, always in the left seat, would land and, as we taxied to the ramp, the other crew member would go back and remove the cargo net. As the aircraft came to a stop, he would open the cargo doors and throw out a tethered aircraft tire. The pilot would cut the numbers one and two engines and set the brakes and would then go back and start rolling drums aft; the other person directed them out through the door, onto the tire, from where they rolled out onto a ramp. When the plane was empty, the crew swapped seats, started the two engines and began to taxi. By the time the door had been secured, we would be ready to take off. Our fastest time ever was nine minutes from touchdown to takeoff. This kind of teamwork got us extra trips many times. Tough work, but we enjoyed it. My first officer was John Koontz, who later went on to fly with Continental Airlines