Cross country in a USN A-1

MikeD

Administrator
Staff member
Oldie by goodie here.

This is the kind of flying that's just not emphasized anymore with today's studs, be they from an FBO or a glossy ad pilot mill. With today's crutches of GPS, G1000, TCAS, etc, and many pilots simply incredulous that planes actually flew long distances (AZ to VA, in this case) at one time without these gizmos, it's a wonder we have any "back to basics" at all anymore. Heck, I'd venture to say that the vast majority of guys flying at regionals, and probably some at majors, don't realize what an FE was for. There are a good few pilots I could just see having a coronary just reading the following story. :)

Good stuff here. Pilotage and DR at its finest.

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Three Thousand Horse Power J-3 Cub

by Mac Grisham

The Piper J-3 Cub had been one of the most famous civilian trainers. It was the little plane that I first flew and soloed at age 16. It began with a power plant of only 40 horse power, and shortly moved up to a 65 horse power engine. After soloing, most of my flying was conducted in the only 40 horse-powered Piper Cub in the fleet of ten planes of the Laurie Yonge Flying Service of Jacksonville, Florida. As no one else liked to fly this under powered bird, and I knew it would always be available, I claimed it as a personal aircraft. It was fun to take in out early in the morning, just after sunrise, with a parachute strapped on and perform tail spins for a couple of hours at a time. I was in "hog heaven" until after earning my Wings of Gold as a US Naval Aviator and began flying the AD Skyraider.

While in (sqaudron) VR-32, I had to task of delivering a Douglas AD-4N Skyraider to NAS Norfolk. This marvelous dive bomber initially started off with a 2,750-horse power engine, but ultimately the engine had been modified to the point of developing 3,000 horses.

In the ferry squadrons, there was a policy that if you happen to be away from the squadron for five days, you got two days off. Even if you had been on the road for thirty days, you were allowed two days off. For a lot of the times in this unique outfit, I would leave on a trip on Monday, return on Friday and then get my two days off. On this particular incident, I had arrived back home on Sunday and was taking my two days off when a phone call from the Schedules Officer instructed me that I had to pick up this old bird, an AD-4N at NAF Litchfield Park, AZ, the Navy's "grave yard" where it had been in storage for seven years. The Aircraft had to be in Norfolk by noon Friday so as to be loaded aboard a ship. The plane was being given or sold to France, who would ultimately use it in Southeast Asia, which is now Vietnam.

Pleading my case that I had been gone for almost two weeks and that I deserved two days off fell on deaf ears. I was told that I was the only pilot remaining in the squadron qualified to fly the AD. After a leisurely shower and a bag of clothes refitted, I arrived at the squadron and boarded an R4D Gooney Bird (C-47) that had been waiting to take me to Litchfield Park.

The next morning, on entering the cockpit, I was horrified to say the least. I found several holes in the instrument panel where the primary flight instruments had been removed the aircraft had been cannibalized. In addition, the radio would have crystals for only four communication frequencies. And there were no navigational radios, not even the low frequency radio range receiver. In fact, the only navigational piece of equipment was the magnetic compass. Except for the more sophisticated engine instruments the plane suddenly took on the characteristics of an over grown Piper J-3 Cub.

Although I had accumulated over 950 hours in the bird, it had been a long time since I had taken one off the ground. As I aligned the aircraft on the runway, I noticed that the magnetic compass, commonly referred to as the wet compass, was about five degrees off the runway heading. I knew that I might not be perfectly aligned with the runway heading, and I considered the magnetic compass was within the allowable tolerance it generated no concern.

However, as I applied throttle, the sound of the engine quickly gave concern that it would keep running. I had forgotten how noisy the short exhaust stacks were. Keeping an eye on all the engine instruments revealed nothing wrong. The engine ran smoothly, but noisy. With concern of an engine that might quit any time, my test hop remained in a circle, all within gliding distance of the field, climbing up to 9,000 feet. In the circle around the field, looking at the magnetic compass never entered my mind. My wings went to level flight on the last final seconds before landing. With nothing to actually complain about to prevent flight, I signed for custody of the bird, and filed a VFR flight plan to El Paso International Airport.

Without the normal primary flight instruments, the flight to Norfolk would have to conducted under Visual Flight Rules (VFR). My first stop for fuel was to be El Paso International Airport, followed by NAS Dallas, Nashville and then terminating at NAS Norfolk.

The heading from Litchfield to El Paso was 092 degrees magnetic. On this heading after takeoff, the city of Phoenix and Sky Harbor Airport would lie to the left of the fuselage, while Mt. Graham would be just to the left of the nose. After take-off, and I leveled off and pointed the nose on a heading 092 degrees, Phoenix and Sky Harbor was on the right of the fuselage, and Mt. Graham was misplaced about 45 degrees to the right of the nose. Immediately, I knew the compass was useless. Then I deducted that a good compass would not be available at Litchfield, along with using nearly a whole day of critical time, I elected to continue on, as time was short to complete the task on time. As I had flown over this terrain many times, I felt very comfortable, just as if I were in my own back yard.

At El Paso, a message was sent to NAS Dallas requesting a wet compass. I knew I could make it all the way to Memphis with out a map and compass, and even all the way to Nashville with out a compass, but from there on, I would need a compass and a map.

After passing Big Spring, Texas, a line squall of thunderstorms necessitated, dropping down to 1,000 feet above the ground, and flying through some heavy rain. For about ten minutes, ground contact was lost as I reverted to "partial panel" instrument flying. "Partial panel" flying meant flying with out the aid of any stable gyro operated instruments. This is often referred to as "needle-ball-air speed" flying. Emerging on the east edge of the summer storm, I figured that my heading was off about ten degrees. This deduction came from the noticeable fence lines and agriculture field layouts. I felt pretty good about the "partial panel" flying during the heavy turbulence encountered under the thunder storm. Once I was out of the rain, I climbed up to 8,000 feet, looked around, and orienting myself without the aid of maps and proceeded on to Dallas.

Arriving at Dallas before night fall, the compass was installed during the night, and the next morning, I put the airplane on the compass rose for calibration. All my previous experience performing this task, assigned to me because I was always the junior man on the totem pole and it was such a menial task, no one else wanted to take on the job, was paying off big time, (sometimes "dirty" jobs provide some good experience) and fine adjustments brought the compass within 2 degrees of the cardinal headings a fine and satisfying piece of work.

After a leisurely flight to Nashville, arriving about noontime, I spent Thursday afternoon and night visiting my cousin, Henry Ford Grisham and his wife Frances. Norfolk could have been easily reached Thursday night before dark, but I was upset that I had been deprived of my two days off, and was not going to deliver the aircraft no sooner than absolutely necessary.

The next morning the weather between Nashville and Norfolk contained a line of clouds over the Allegany Mountains, stretching from the Great Lakes to deep Alabama which required climbing to 12,000 feet to traverse this area. The maps were useless because of the cloud cover, so it was a strictly "Dead Reckoning Navigation."

An hour after takeoff, it was time to give a position report to a Flight Service Station. As I was over clouds, without positive position indications, my radio report was little more than just the fact that I was still airborne, someplace between Nashville and Norfolk. I had to estimate my location near some kind of fix for the benefit of the Flight Service Station record.

Another aircraft, over Atlanta, over heard my radio report. It happened to be flown by another ferry pilot crew in a P5M Marlin patrol aircraft. During a short exchange of information, the other pilot revealed that there had actually been nine other pilots, including himself, around the hanger that wanted to fly the mission, but the Skipper wanted the most experienced AD pilot, and the most experienced ferry pilot to take the flight thus Gisham was "volunteered." This removed my resentment for having lost my two days off.

Realizing the problems I had encountered, the other pilot confessed that he was glad that he had not been given the task, and that the Skipper was right in his personal selection.

After passing the high clouds over the mountains, the sky ahead contained lower broken fair weather cumulous clouds. Picking out land marks became easy, and the AD-4N was delivered just 30 minutes before the dead line time.

So say the least, I was glad to be relieved of this 3,000 horse-powered J-3 Cub.

Pics below:

(Yes, the second A-1H does in fact have a toilet attached to one of the bomb hardpoints, to be dropped on the North Vietnamese, along with the rest of the ordnance).
 

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Wow. That would absolutely suck. All the way x-country in a beast like that...having to listen to that loud radial. Doesn't even have an airframe parachute if you got into trouble. Why anyone would like that is beyond me. Seriously, how can you go somewhere or not collide with airplanes unless you have GPS or TCAS? These people are dangerous!
 
Wow, that's pretty awesome. Too bad that kind of Naval Air is a thing of the past for most of us.
 
That reminds me of the T-6 at the local FBO that is getting a 530 and a Aspen installed in the panel....
 
Thanks. That was a great read.

And I wonder who spotted the falling toilet with the big terds in tow. Since the next thing to see would be a big boom...
 
C'mon Mike, the drug runner ultra-light pilots do this kind of stuff every night! Just imagine how much more interesting your job would be if they had A-1 Skyraiders!
 
C'mon Mike, the drug runner ultra-light pilots do this kind of stuff every night! Just imagine how much more interesting your job would be if they had A-1 Skyraiders!

If they had those, there'd definitely be more seizures going on.......and I'd be finding a way to put those seized planes into service.
 
I worked a few strikes with the VNAF A-1s and yep.. they had crystal sets so instead of them coming over to my usual freq, I had to go to theirs. Bien Hoa had a large number of VNAF A-1s based there. And at the VNAF Officers' Mess, there was a Bearcat sitting on a concrete pad. Doubt it is still there.
 
(thread hijack) Mike, are you ever conflicted about taking down the drug couriers? I remember a youtube video of a Tucano (I think? Some kind of turboprop with gunz) taking down a Cessna twin (421, 414, something like that) a few years back down in Sud America. The Cessna was jinking and weaving feet above the treetops, pushing it to the limit, but had no advantages and eventually wound up feeding the weeds. I remember on a board (another board) everyone was just howling with delight that this Evul Drug-Runner was dead. All I could think was "That guy was kind of badass and it sucks that a badass died like a fish in a barrel" (/thread hijack)
 
(thread hijack) Mike, are you ever conflicted about taking down the drug couriers? I remember a youtube video of a Tucano (I think? Some kind of turboprop with gunz) taking down a Cessna twin (421, 414, something like that) a few years back down in Sud America. The Cessna was jinking and weaving feet above the treetops, pushing it to the limit, but had no advantages and eventually wound up feeding the weeds. I remember on a board (another board) everyone was just howling with delight that this Evul Drug-Runner was dead. All I could think was "That guy was kind of badass and it sucks that a badass died like a fish in a barrel" (/thread hijack)

Most of our aerial traffic anymore is in ultralight aircraft, at least where I am. Not much in the way of drug planes as it was in the '70s and '80s, where there were hordes of Piper Aztec's, Beech 18s, and DC-3s as common drug runners. Anymore, that's moreso in the Carribbean area. So I haven't run into anyone who was "full up" with flying who has impressed me yet from that side. And unlike our Central and South American counterparts, we don't shoot down the planes, we follow them and take either pounce on them at a landing site, or retrieve their jettisoned loads. However down south, lots of PC-9s and A-37s available to go to guns, as necessary.
 
Thanks Mike for the good read and some interesting insight in our current dealings with south of the border drug aviators...just drop a bowling ball on the ultralights...what a way to ruin a perfect drug run.
 
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