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The
104th Aircraft Recovery Squadron
January 26,
2012
I was driving the other day and I spotted a small airplane,
mounted on a trailer and being towed down the interstate. I was
wondering what sad occasion had brought it to such a low state
and I fell to thinking about my old friend Willie Mason and the
104th Aircraft Recovery Squadron.
Willie came into my
life in the late 60's as a flying student, when I was teaching
flying and running a small country airport. Something between us
clicked and in the process of my teaching him about flying we
became great friends. Then over the next few years he taught me
about the art of the small adventure.
He was upbeat
and funny and I loved the way he could wring joy out of the
simplest things. Soon it was a given, that on the rare occasions
that I could get away from the airport, Bill would appear and we
would be off on yet another silly quest. One mission we repeated
many time and which my wife came to refer to as our 'old cars
and old bars routine' consisted of visiting abandoned farms and
looking for old cars left in the ruins. What the plan was if we
found one, I can't recall, but I do remember the thrill of the
chase, and yes, there always seemed to be an old bar involved
during the trip home.
Our bottle dig was another grand
adventure. Willie had learned the location of the old town dump
in his town, from a time when the garbage was picked up by horse
and wagon, and we decided there was a fortune in old bottles
awaiting us there. With shovels and sacks we made our way
through the wooded terrain until we reached the gully that was
said to be the site. An hour of digging proved the treasure map
to be true and we started hitting pay dirt. Each time we heard
the shovel hit glass we would carefully brush the dirt of
decades away, extract our treasure and put it with the others. I
can't remember what happened to the burlap bag of old bottles we
came out of the woods with, but I do remember how triumphant I
felt coming home with our booty.
On another occasion,
I was anxious to try out the little trail motorcycle I'd
purchased, so I called Willie and asked if he could meet me for
a motorcycle ride. He said he didn't own a motorcycle, but his
nephew did and he would borrow it and meet me. Early the next
morning he drove up to our rendezvous in his truck, but with no
motorcycle in sight. He dismounted, walked to the rear of the
truck and took the smallest motorcycle I'd ever seen down from
the truck bed. It was no taller than my knees and the wheels
looked as if they'd been borrowed from a lawn mower. The nephew,
as it turned out, had yet to see his ninth birthday.
Undaunted,
Willie mounted up, or actually mounted down as the case was, and
we whizzed away, down the dirt road that was our route for the
day. I was laughing so hard at the bizarre sight of him that I
could hardly control my bike. I followed dutifully as he roared
along at his top speed of 25 miles per hour, his knees
positioned just about even with his ears. As we passed a large
farm house about a mile into our trip a very fast and very mean
farm dog burst from the yard and went for Bill. I dropped back
so as not to run over the dog while he had Bill in his mouth and
they disappeared around a turn in a shower of dust and gravel,
the dog actually looking taller than Bill on the bike. Around
the next turn I met the dog trotting back with a satisfied look
on his face and had the thought that this did not bode well. I
soon came upon Bill, a jumble of wrecked bike, ripped coveralls
and skinned flesh, in a heap by the side of the road. He
reported that he'd actually outrun the dog, but lost control of
the bike doing it, and thought next time he'd just let the dog
bite him.
It wasn't surprising then, when it was time
to retrieve a downed airplane that Bill was the one I called on.
I owned a trailer that had been modified to haul a
disassembled aircraft and for whatever reason, it seemed to get
plenty of use. Today an airplane roosting in some spot other
than an airport would be far reaching news, but looking back to
those heady days, it seemed to be rather a matter of course. I
would get a call to pick up a downed airplane in Farmer such and
so's corn field and I'd call Bill, hook up the trailer and we'd
set out on another adventure. It happened so often that Bill
started referring to us as 'The 104th Aircraft Recovery
Squadron'.
Sometimes we didn't have far to go. I
recall one week in 1969 when we had downed airplanes off both
ends of our own 1600 foot sod strip. One, a Cherokee 160 was
setting on a race track a half mile off the east end of the
strip and the other, a PA-12 was squatting in a corn field 300
feet off the west end, both victims of too much load for the
available runway. The fence at each end of the strip made sure
there was no fudging on the length of the runway, and both
airplanes had hit it, one on Friday and the other the next day.
I didn't witness the PA-12 accident, but the pilot had
flown in to meet friends and wanted to give them a ride before
he left. He loaded the back seat with two big people and found
too late that the day was too hot and his engine too weary to
lift them all over the fence. The airplane caught the top strand
of barbed wire and made a sort of crumpled landing in the
adjoining corn field, There were no injuries, only minimal
damage to the airplane, but of course major damage to the
pilot's pride.
The second accident ended very
differently and could have been a major tragedy. Again, the
pilot had flown in to visit family and again, airplane rides
were to be given to the whole family before departure. I
happened to be outside working on an airplane when the pilot and
his considerable entourage arrived and I watched with disbelief
as he loaded three passengers into the airplane. A Cherokee 160
is far from a STOL aircraft and that was exactly what was needed
to lift that load out of this short strip on such a hot summer
day The little wind there was across the strip and shifty, first
favoring one runway, then the other. The engine started and as I
watched, the pilot's window opened and the pilot motioned for me
to come over and speak to him. 'Which runway would you use
today?' he asked. I replied that the runway I would use was
located at another airport and much longer that this one. He
thanked me, closed the window and taxied out.
He chose
to use the west strip and his take off run was slow, way slow
and as he approached the fence he was still on the ground. At
the last minute he gave a mighty heave on the controls and the
airplane staggered into the air, missing the fence by less than
a foot. I decided to be gracious when the shaken pilot came back
and confessed that that had been the dumbest thing he'd done for
a while, and went on working on the Cub. Soon the Cherokee
landed and taxied up to the hangar. The three passengers were
discharged but the pilot remained at the controls and three more
people marched up to the airplane and got in. I was dumfounded.
The airplane started and taxied out, this time using the east
facing strip. I called to Glen our mechanic working in the
hangar, and asked if he'd like to witness an airplane crash. The
outcome was so predictable that I thought if I had time, I could
sell tickets to this disaster. I wondered how anyone could do
this, given the narrow escape that he'd just had.
The
takeoff run seemed even slower than the first, and approaching
the fence it seemed impossible that the airplane could rise over
it. Again, at the last moment came the desperate pull on the
controls and the airplane, amazingly, left the ground and
cleared the fence by inches. But this time the stabilator met a
fence post with a whack that we could hear from where we stood
and the airplane staggered. It remained flying though, and the
nose continued to rise. Later we learned that the collision with
the post had locked the stabilator in a fixed position and the
only controls left to the pilot were the ailerons and rudder and
of course, throttle. The pilot, for all his bad decisions, kept
his head and reduced the power and kept the airplane from
stalling. As it continued to the east Glen and I ran to a car
and started to follow its path. A half mile later we came upon
the airplane in the middle of an old horse racing track, damaged
but in one piece with the pilot and passengers standing about
congratulating each other on being alive.
One of our
trips to rescue a downed airplane involved one of my aircraft, a
Champ that I had sent to Tennessee for a prospective buyer to
look at. My young instructor Skip, filled with the enthusiasm of
youth and the desire to log hours, volunteered for the trip. My
assessment of Skip was that he was long on pilot skills but that
his judgment hadn't reached its full growth yet. Against my
better instincts I let him take the trip.
All went
smoothly on the trip down, but returning found him flying long
after the non night equipped airplane should have been on the
ground. Faced with continuing on until it got really dark or
doing an off airport landing in the remaining dusk, Skip chose
to set down in a field on a mountain top in Southern West
Virginia. The landing was perfect, but the corn stalks were
thicker than they looked from the air and finally physics caught
up with the Champ when it came to a halt before it was done
landing. The call I got from Skip said the airplane was on its
back in the middle of a corn field and it looked as if the only
damage was one bent strut.
The next morning found Bill
and I south bound with a spare strut lashed to the top of the
car. We reached the airplane about noon and set about righting
it and installing the strut. By this time the local grapevine
had spread the word that an airplane had landed on Phifer
Mountain and the fools were going to try to fly it out. A crowd
had assembled before we arrived and as we worked on the airplane
people kept coming until the field was a swarm with
mountaineers. 
Since
the corn had been harvested from the stalks the farmer was kind
enough to lend me his tractor and a drag, and I proceeded to
drag the corn stocks flat in the direction that I intended to
take off. When I was done and dismounted the tractor I found
Bill laughing until tears were streaming down his face. When he
could speak again he pointed to a small wizened lady who looked
to be almost ninety years old. She had come up to Bill, looked
into his face, looked at the airplane, then at the trees
bordering the field, then at young Skip. Looking back at Bill,
who was ready for the pronouncement of a miracle in the sparing
of young Skip's life, she said "the little son of a bitch
lucked out, didn't he?"
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