PACKETS AT GREYBULL

"It's one of the best goddamn airplanes I have ever flown," states the ever-colorful Gene Powers. And he should know. For years, Powers operated various Fairchild C-82 Packets in a wide variety of roles everything from cargo hauling to insect spraying. Today, Gene is the owner of the last flying example of this important transport aircraft.

With America's entry into WWIl, it did not take long to figure that a specialized transport aircraft was needed to fight the global war. Something more than C-47s and C-46s was needed and Fairchild replied with the Model 78 which was essentially a twin-engine flying box in which cargo could he easily loaded and unloaded. Designed to carry 44 paratroopers or 78 passengers in emergency configuration, the design had a cargo capacity of 2870-cu-ft, the same as a railroad boxcar.

The military liked what they saw and ordered the type into production as the XC-82, the prototype of which made its first flight on 10 September 1944. The Army immediately ordered 100 while production lines were set up with North American Aviation at Fort Worth and Kansas City to built 792 C-82Ns but only three were completed when the contract was canceled with V-J Day.

Only 220 C-82s would he built before contracts were changed to the much-upgraded C-119. However, the Packets, as the type had been named, performed valuable USAF service before being retired in 1954. Numerous examples were snapped up for the civil market and Stcward-Davis at Long Beach, California, did a considerable amount of work in trying to get the C-82 an FAA standard category license but this did not happen because of a certain weakness in the tail booms caused by perhaps excessive FAA requirements. Steward-Davis also did a number of modifications on the basic type including the installation of a jet engine atop the fuselage which offered an excellent punch in top performance when needed.

One such aircraft was C-82 N9701F which was purchased by TWA and utilized in Europe to haul replacement engines between various TWA bases. As jets turned into fans, there was very little room between the fuselage side walls but the C-82A performed its task with workman-like regularity. Given the name Orttos (Greek for The Thing), the Packet was eventually retired by TWA and went through several civilian owners until being acquired by Gene Powers and moved to Greybull where he uses the aircraft basically as a "fun" machine.

More recently, Duane Powers rescued two surviving Packets from Alaska. He had these machines disassembled, put on a barge and shipped to Seattle where they continued their journey to Greybull by truck. Today, they are carefully stored and await a future call back to flying condition or as static museum exhibits.