“Is there an important person waiting for you to return to Cleveland?” Nick asked as if reading her thoughts.
“I hope so. His name is Tom. We went to high school together and dated pretty steady until he enlisted. Considering all that could happen, we chose to hold off on the big commitment until after the war.”
“Was that the right decision?”
“That’s a good question. I just don’t know. But I think about him every day and pray he’s safe. He’s in the 36th Division, stationed in North Africa.”
When Nick arrived at Bethel the next day, the communications officer tracked him down in the briefing room with an important telegram. “I think you’re going to want to read this one right away, sir.”
SEPTEMBER 2, 1943
NICK. WE FINALLY DID IT. THE DOCTOR IS SURE THAT I’M ABOUT FOUR WEEKS PREGNANT. I LOVE YOU.
MARTHA
Nick was excited, but not totally shocked. After the weekend at the cabin the tension between them escalated. Martha couldn’t shake the thought of him with other women. She was jealous and wouldn’t drop it. The nagging wore on Nick, and in classic Nick fashion, he came right out during one of their disagreements and said, “Let’s get serious then and have a baby.” The idea of starting a family broke the emotional logjam for them. The timing was right, and they put their hearts into it during the rest of his stay.
Enroute to McGrath from Bethel
September 3, 1943
My Dear Martha,
I hope the baby is a boy. What do you think? We’re going to have a swell family.
Been shuttling for two days straight working like dogs. We didn’t get into our sleeping bags until four this morning and got up again at nine and back on our horses. There was a wonderful show of the Aurora Borealis-Northern Lights last night directly above us. It is amazing that they’re 50 miles above our altitude. They’re similar to the ones we see in Minn., but much grander above the Arctic Circle. Wished you could seen them. The upper atmosphere literally shimmered with colored ribbons of phosphorescence. The crew couldn’t control their oohs and aahs. Had a few of my own, though I am getting used to them on most night flights. Too bad that most people never experience these celestial oddities.
Thought of you tucked away in that nice soft bed, cozy and warm all night while we were up here above the cold moonlit peaks and tundra.
Yours,
Nick
CHAPTER 7
“Captain Nick Morgan—that’s the flyboy I’m lookin’ for, dad,” Robert “Red” Johnson announced while showing a smile that could charm a snake. Red had a habit of calling everyone “dad” when he wanted their attention, the same way people from Minnesota called a man fella. It was his thick Oklahoma accent, however, that turned every head in the flight operations room that morning in Anchorage.
“Captain Nick Morgan you say,” said Warrant Officer Martin Mason in a harsh, nasally voice with a thick New Jersey accent. He sat behind a long, paper-laden operations counter. It was his job to schedule the ATC flights of all the pilots and co-pilots based in Alaska, which might seem routine if it were not for the unusual complications. There was no counterpart in the operations of an airline. It required a deep appreciation for human nature, monumental patience, powerful insight, and the discretion and tact of a seasoned divorce lawyer. All pilots and co-pilots benefited from shared flying time, which gave each captain an opportunity to pass on his version of the truth regarding the C-47 and, simultaneously, gain exposure to co-pilots seemingly barely out of high school. Martin had to know the disposition and mood swings of every pilot, while instantly matching their names, faces, and reputations in order to balance the experience and skill of every crew. Hence, he shared the most hidden details and frailties of many and a cleverness to make it all work. Attesting to the complication of the task was the interrupting chatter of four dedicated Teletype machines receiving and sending requests for flights, manpower switches, new schedules, and changes to schedules.
“This is flight operations, cowboy, not a corral,” Martin said loud enough to grab the attention already generated by this big sodbuster. “You sure you’re in the right place?”
“That’s a good one, dad. Nope, I got the right place, alright. You boys got me saddled up with him on the next bus to Fairbanks.” Red Johnson was about as out of place as a person could be. His big hands and leathered skin told the story of growing up on a ranch in hard country. Experience with oceans, snow, mountains, and glaciers was as foreign to him in Perry, Oklahoma, as roping cows and Saturday night rodeos were to the Inuits.
“God save the Union,” Martin whispered sarcastically to one of the captains who was in the process of filing a flight log nearby. “I think I’ve seen it all.”
“Excuse me, pard? If you think I’m goin’ to stand here and put up with some lip from a paper pusher, ya got another thing comin’. Now, I got a plane to fly, and if you don’t know where Captain Morgan is, maybe you can point me in the direction of someone who does.” Red tended toward settling things with his fists when someone else’s mouth infringed on his rights. It always started off with spittle flying in every direction when he got excited.
Martin’s ego was damaged by the abrupt verbal retaliation. Most pilots deferred to his position of expertise and authority, since it was Martin who made up the flight teams and adjusted the schedules to meet individual demands that involved fishing, hunting, gambling, and women for many of these men. As a staff officer, Martin could pile on additional misery to a pilot’s life with undesirable schedules, flying partners, paperwork, and bureaucracy.
“I’ll be with you in a minute after I take care of this captain’s flight schedule,” he replied coldly, emphasizing the rank of the man in front of him. “Sit down over there and cool your heels, Tex.”
Red’s ears turned red with anger, but he realized he was off to a bad start for his first day. He was a big man who was accustomed to a rough life. If push came to shove, he’d generally get the best of it. Not now, he thought. “You might as well go ahead and put a brand on me, too, while I’m sittin’ over here,” Red said with a lightheartedness that diffused the situation. The men in the room rested easy knowing that the tension had passed.
At that moment, Nick walked through the door. A blast of damp, cold October arctic air rushed in before he could shut the door. “Anyone seen an Okie with wings from Camp Gruber?” he asked with his back towards Red.
Martin’s head-nod provided the answer.
“One and the same.” Red lifted his body enthusiastically off the bench and covered the distance between the men in two strides in order to shake hands. “My friends call me Red. I hope you do, too. But, this little cricket over here, however, can call me Mr. Johnson.” Red’s smile packaged the comment meant for Martin, and the men in the room laughed out loud. Even Martin lightened up.
“What’d I miss?” Nick questioned, looking to others with his palms up.
“Sometimes you don’t need to know how the well was dug to know there’s water at the bottom,” Red answered, reaching across the operations table and shaking Martin’s hand. “I’m right sorry for stepin’ on your toes, Little Cricket. It won’t happen again.” From that day on, everyone in flight ops called Martin “Cricket.”
Nick and Red’s flight to Fairbanks had been delayed until late evening. Although their ship had been upgraded to the C-47D “Skytrain,” it was still a tight squeeze for the big men. The cockpit was filled with instruments and dials, and the dashboard rose to just about eye level for most pilots. Red’s and Nick’s heights were an advantage in this respect, but quickly gave ground when leg space was considered. All in all, with the center console, peddles, and steering column factored in, they were real cozy.
Since becoming a captain thirty days earlier, Nick had adopted Captain Marshall Smith’s habit of checking out his co-pilots. He didn’t have much of a track record to run on yet, but he remembered the first impression Smith had on him. “I missed you in the officer’s c
lub last night. Thought it might give us a chance to get to know each other beyond what’s in your file,” Nick said after leveling off at a comfortable nine thousand feet. The brilliance of the winter moon was like a backlight to the curvature of the earth to the west. In the distance, however, the sky appeared to be shaped like a wedge, dividing their view into layers—a growing blackness below with a plateau of vapor, almost exactly at their altitude, and the clear night sky above.
“Woulda liked some time in the club, Captain, but I had a bunch of postcards to get out. Alaska’s about the strangest country I’ve ever seen, dad. My friends would call me a liar without the pictures. Just had to get ’em done before I got sidetracked.” Nick liked the way Red called him dad; it reminded him of Martha and the baby.
Just at that moment, they hit some turbulence. Nick called for a weather update from Elmendorf. No major changes, just an unusual extension of the mild front that would be with them the remainder of the 350-mile flight to Fairbanks.
“It’s holding at zero degrees,” Red said in his first official communication outside of normal procedure. He continued to focus on the outside air temperature (OAT) gauge, knowing they would lose seven degrees for every one thousand feet of elevation.
“What are the options?” This was a good time for Nick to find out more about his new co-pilot’s training background.
“Out on the panhandle this might be the beginning of what my Uncle Jeb would call a Norther, but hell, we can’t get too much further north than this.”
“What then?”
“Maybe it’s just a fall storm or at worst just a bunch of clouds with no tit to drain the water.” He paused while thoughtfully scratching the two-day old shadow on his cheek. “We don’t want that.”
“Why not?”
“Well, any cloud at this temperature has the potential for ice. It’s a crapshoot, though.”
Bingo, Nick thought. Maybe Pecos Bill here does know something about flying. “See if you can tune in Ladd for their version of the weather.” Luckily, the cargo was only ten pallets of dry-good supplies and no passengers, eliminating the need for seatbelt announcement formalities. Red did a passable job of operating the direction finder on the radio, which was controlled by a tuning dial and small crank for turning the receiving loop. After a few fingernail-on-slate screeches, the base responded with a vagueness that indicated they were equally in the dark.
“What now, Red?” Nick had registered that in thirty minutes they would be at the halfway point in the flight—not a concern for fuel, simply a symmetry in logic all pilots seemed to possess when considering whether to return to base or to continue on to their destination.
“Your guess is as good as mine, pard.” They waited and watched the OAT gauge for changes. None came.
“There are two things I’ve learned about you in the last forty-five minutes that weren’t in your file.”
“Am I busted?”
“On the contrary. First, your priorities of choosing people over beer after a long flight are solid. I like that. Second, you don’t bullshit your captain with superfluous information. I can work with both. Welcome aboard.”
Suddenly, the windshield became opaque. Almost instantly, the world of the cockpit ended with a gray panel-covered window—there was no visibility. It was already too late for the pilot heat, prop, and windshield anti-ice systems to have an impact. “Start the de-icers!” Nick commanded as his attention shifted immediately to the certainty of icing on the wings. Red flipped the switch to activate the expansion and contraction of the rubber “boots” on the edge of the wing that could be inflated and deflated with air. “Get the landing lights on, so we can see.” From the side window Nick could see that a sheet of ice had formed on the starboard wing; it looked like a big piecrust. The rubber boots, swelling and collapsing like elongated hearts, shattered the crust of ice into large flakes. About a half inch of ice had also formed on the rim of the engine cowling and propeller hub.
Suddenly there was an erratic banging from behind the cockpit. It sounded like someone hitting the outside of the plane with a sledgehammer. “Get some alcohol on the props, now!” Nick commanded. “The propeller blades are icing up.” In this condition the centrifugal force of the propellers’ rotation whirled the ice chunks against the aluminum. Since the accumulation on each blade was inconsistent, the balance of the three-hundred-and-eighty-pound propellers was greatly disturbed. This caused a severe vibration, which seized the entire ship. Red labored at the hand pump to send alcohol to the propeller blades to free them from ice.
“God dammit!” Nick yelled over the ominous racket. “Try Ladd Field again!” At that point he noticed the air speed had dropped to 122 miles per hour.
Both men knew that with a load of ice the ship was a completely different aircraft with unknown flight parameters. At some point the ship’s airspeed would no longer support flight, but they couldn’t know exactly what that speed was. It would likely come sooner than later considering the cargo load.
“Altimeter’s dropping fast,” Red said rhetorically as both men looked at the dial on the dashboard. They had lost three thousand feet in just minutes. At their current altitude of six thousand feet, they would have to negotiate a gap in the terrain by hugging some relatively low mountains to the east while staying clear of several unnamed treacherous peaks in the McKinley range to the west.
“Can you see what’s wrong with the de-icers?”
Red looked out the window, but he already knew. “The ice is accumulating too fast for the de-icer boots to work. Had this problem on a flight to Kansas City. It wasn’t pretty, but I can walk you through it, if you want.”
“I’ll tell Ladd to give us clearance for an emergency landing.” Nick knew they’d never make it to a runway the way things were going. They were at forty-eight hundred feet and Fairbanks was still two hundred miles away. Dropping at two hundred feet per minute would put them right into the Wood River in about twenty-five minutes.
“This is where you earn your stripes, cowboy. Tell me what to do.”
“Well, the problem, dad, is that the boots are pulsating beneath the ice shield that’s formed on the leading edge of the wing—kinda the way a chicken heart still pumps after its head been lopped off. Goin’ nowhere fast. We got to shake that bar of ice loose.”
“Okay. But the manifold pressure gauge shows a steady loss of power. Can you feel it?” Nick asked, indicating the feeble response from both engines and mentally recording another drop of two hundred feet. “That doesn’t have anything to do with the ice.”
“I think the air scoops to the carburetor are icing over,” Red said, remembering the ice storm over Kansas. The carburetor air scoop is an oval-shaped metal mouth on top of the engine. Air is as important as fuel and must pass through the scoop or the plane will die like a drowning person.
Nick knew exactly what to do. He concluded the training exercise and yanked open the side window to get a better look at the port engine. He could see the ice forming around the lip of the scoop’s mouth. “Hang on!” he said as he cut off the fuel mixture to the engine. His intuitive actions no longer required the advice of his co-pilot. Starved for fuel, the engine backfired viciously, spitting a flame from the air scoop and sending more vibrations throughout the ship, which knocked the ice off the scoop. Immediately, he pulled the fuel level to reengage the proper fuel mixture; the response was glorious. The engine produced full power. After repeating the process with the starboard engine the plane was able to climb. “The engines are suffocating. Cut the mixture until they backfire. Then slam them on again.”
“That’s what I was going to explain. I’ll watch my side for build up,” Red assured. The backfire spits a tongue of flame from the air scoop, but, it’s the force of air that breaks the ice free. The procedure was brutal on the engines, but it beat an attempted landing in a river in the middle of nowhere.
They were able to hold a course at forty-five hundred feet while exercising the procedure every three
or four minutes. Every time the plane shook they held their breath until the ship regained stability. Nick reflected on Red’s skill and composure during the ordeal and mentally placed two plus signs next to his name as a future flying partner. “So, where did you get your flying experience?”
“Crop dustin’ on the panhandle, until the drought kilt just about everything in sight. It’s the only gal darn job I ever liked, but the dust bowl plumb wore me out. Uncle Jeb used to say we had two-year-old catfish that didn’t know how to swim.”
At that moment, they emerged from the clouds into a clear night under a full moon. “I’ll be damned,” Nick said, almost anticipating a refrain from the Halleluiah Chorus. The vibration of the plane quickly disappeared as the last of the ice was thrown from the wings. It’s customary for captains to restrain themselves from showing uneasiness in a situation with co-pilots when confronted with “escapes,” particularly new co-pilots like Red. So, in this case, a simple bump with the heal of his hand on the leather-padded cockpit dash acknowledged their achievement while simultaneously preserving Nick’s dignity.
“Tell me more about Uncle Jeb and those catfish.”
CHAPTER 8
“I’m pretty new at this,” Red said, “but it looks to me like we’re plumb locked in for awhile.” Red and Nick were eating a late breakfast in the officer’s club at Ladd Field. It was situated near the northeast runway with a clear view of takeoff and landing activity. Nick always preferred this club for its closeness to the airfield. The Elmendorf officer’s club in Anchorage was near the barracks. It might as well have been in a warehouse district.
“I’m not sure of the exact translation of plumb,” Nick said, enjoying a little fun with Red’s drawled expressions.
“You’re not, huh. Well, let me tell ya. It’s pretty much like when I put a hammerlock on my younger brother. It’s a sure thing. You might say being ‘locked in’ leaves a margin for escape. Being ‘plumb locked in’ is like solitary confinement. Ya know what I mean, dad?”
Fatal Incident Page 5