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luvflyin

luvflyin

Touchdown! Greaser!
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Luvflyin
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I’m doing a briefing for a flight I’m taking tomorrow and found this. Never seen one like it before.

1788716063220.png
 
Google says it's for loading explosives onto ships. It reminds me of being based at Travis in the early 1970's and having my Cessna 140 based at a little strip south of Vacaville next to the interstate. A guy there had a Twin Beech he used for hauling dynamite. Not my kind of gig.
 
dtuuri said:
Google says it's for loading explosives onto ships. It reminds me of being based at Travis in the early 1970's and having my Cessna 140 based at a little strip south of Vacaville next to the interstate. A guy there had a Twin Beech he used for hauling dynamite. Not my kind of gig.
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I have it on good authority that nitroglycerin will survive the fire that destroys the airplane (CE-401, IIRC) that it’s being transported in.
 
luvflyin said:
Is there a story here
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A friend that I used to fly with, who passed away not too long ago, unfortunately, worked for a freight outfit that would periodically transport nitroglycerin for the government. They were over the desert southwest, and he saw a puff of smoke at the intersection of the tip tank and the wing. Called “fire”, and the copilot had just seen an airport that they flew over. Power idle, gear down, land, and take the gear out on a snow windrow exiting the side of the runway. His version went something like, “By the time I got the master switch off, my copilot and the courier were both out of the airplane. When I got to the door, I noticed there were no footprints in the snow between the air stair door and the wingtip, and I don’t think I left any, either. The three of us are standing there watching the airplane burn, and I notice my copilot has his headset in his hand. As I’m wondering how he remembered to grab his headset, I realized I was still wearing mine.”

Airplane burned to the ground inside of 15 minutes, and “the only thing left was the nitro.”

The copilot is a POAer, but he hasn’t posted for several months, so I don’t want to name him without giving him the chance to rebut. ;)

I haven’t had any luck finding the accident report, but I’ll do some more looking later on.
 
Many years ago in Alaska, I had a friend who flew for his father's air taxi/air freight operation based in Soldotna. One of their aircraft was a Volpar (modified Beech 18 with tricycle gear and turboprop power). There was a lot of oil exploration happening in the area and there was a great demand for downhole perforating explosives(specialized shaped charges). These were mostly supplied by a French company at the time: Schlumberger. Due to regulations on air transport of explosive materials, it was astronomically expensive to ship this stuff using normal channels. My friend Dean made two round trips in the Volpar to Paris from Alaska, hauling perforating explosives. I volunteered to be a copilot on the second trip but was turned down.
 
Surface to 1499 agl. Shouldn't be a factor.
 
MauleSkinner said:
A friend that I used to fly with, who passed away not too long ago, unfortunately, worked for a freight outfit that would periodically transport nitroglycerin for the government. They were over the desert southwest, and he saw a puff of smoke at the intersection of the tip tank and the wing. Called “fire”, and the copilot had just seen an airport that they flew over. Power idle, gear down, land, and take the gear out on a snow windrow exiting the side of the runway. His version went something like, “By the time I got the master switch off, my copilot and the courier were both out of the airplane. When I got to the door, I noticed there were no footprints in the snow between the air stair door and the wingtip, and I don’t think I left any, either. The three of us are standing there watching the airplane burn, and I notice my copilot has his headset in his hand. As I’m wondering how he remembered to grab his headset, I realized I was still wearing mine.”

Airplane burned to the ground inside of 15 minutes, and “the only thing left was the nitro.”

The copilot is a POAer, but he hasn’t posted for several months, so I don’t want to name him without giving him the chance to rebut. ;)

I haven’t had any luck finding the accident report, but I’ll do some more looking later on.
Click to expand...
You mean this one?
Oh, and it wasn't nitro, there were three 8" experimental artillery rounds in crates about 3' long by 12" square.
They were made by a well-known Minneapolis company that starts with a H.
There was no puff of smoke, just a dark brown stain that flowed out along the tip tank fairing which was the wing fuel bladder being melted at 14,000'. As we turned north, looking into the sun I could see fuel flowing out along the entire length of the spar cap.
The right nacelle got real brown colored on short final and flames did come out on touchdown and smoke entered the cabin through the floorboards.
The young lady we had on as a security guard was her first time in a small plane.
No one got a scratch.
The date was December 17,1984 over Raton NM. You can see one round in the foreground in photo 3, and that's Craig talking to the fire dept.
I was in the right seat, and it was shortly after getting my MEL. The plane was a Cessna 401 and I still have that David Clark headset.

I do know someone who did carry nitro slung in the baggage area of a Mooney. That was Sam Kapplinger.
 

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