Airplanes I Have Known – C-47 42-93585

    
What you might call financial
constraints have always limited my exposure to new airplanes except, that
is, when Uncle Sam was footing the bill. Then, on occasion, I was lucky
enough to be assigned to fly a brand new expensive machine. I recall a
PT-19, a BT-13 and a couple of "Useless" 78s in that category; and
then there was C-47 42-93585.
     In June 1944 "Ëœ585 arrived at Hamilton AAFB on
the shore of San Francisco Bay about the same time that we did, having
made one test flight and the trip up from the factory before it was
assigned to us – total time less than 10 hours. We were a crew of absolute
strangers. 1st Lt. Tom Gavey, pilot; 2nd Lt. R. Story, copilot; 1st Lt.
Paul "Smitty" Smith, navigator and Cpl. Bill Meyers, radio operator.
Of the four of us, only Smitty had ever flown anything much bigger than a
puddle jumper. Now our orders stated that we would deliver "˜585 to
Brisbane, Australia, which as near as I could figure was some 8,000 miles
over water with perhaps 200 miles of that within sight of land.  We
were going island hopping and the first hop was a doozy – 2,600 miles,
more or less, to Hickam Field, Hawaii. 
     We were able to squeeze in just one test flight
before the big event. In three hours we went through everything in the
book (and some that wasn’t) and she came up clean as a whistle. (NOTE:
The Japanese did not invent quality control.)
     The next time that we saw her she had been outfitted
with eight 100-gallon fiber auxiliary tanks mounted on wood frames, four
on each side of the cabin. This brought our total fuel up to 1,600
gallons, good for maybe 18 hours at cruise. It also made the fuel and oil
weight at takeoff very close to five tons and gross weight over 32,000
lbs. – or about three tons more than the CAA maximum gross for the same
airplane. This really simplified things. Takeoff was go/no go; we reverted
to single-engine status with twice the probability of failure.
     The runway at Hamilton was quite long for that
era, about 8,000 ft. as I recall. About halfway down it, tail up, tires
still firmly planted and the two P & W’s doing the very best they
could, Gavey says "Feel this thing. I’m not sure it’ll fly." He
was right. It was about like pulling on a fence post. I suggested trim and
he rolled in a little that helped some but it was mostly a matter of
letting her go until we got enough speed. This happened shortly before the
end of the runway and I cycled the gear as quickly as I could when he
called for it.
     We had taken off to the northeast, headed inland
and had to turn back over the bay. This we did quite gingerly, still at
max power. As we got squared away over the bay and aimed at the Golden
Gate Bridge, Smitty, who was standing behind us, suggested that maybe we
ought to consider going under it instead of over. But we cleared it by at
least 100 ft. and eased off on the power about the same time.
     It was early evening as we left the coast and
chased the sunset. Thirty miles out we passed the Farallons, still
scratching for altitude. Rough seas were pounding those solitary
rocks.  They were certainly an impossible haven; still they were to
be our last landfall until Diamond Head so they marked the transition from
that sense of the familiar to the unknown.
     At briefing that morning we had been introduced
to the latest development in long distance flying – they called it cruise
control. We were given an extensive set of charts and tabulations; a
program of power settings for use throughout the flight, guaranteed to
extend our range and endurance. Having worked our way up to 8,000 ft. we
tilted her forward and I read . . .