In the early summer of 1972 I was working as a CFI in a Piper Flite Center at Long Beach, California. Into the office one day walked Ron Whitelaw, who was then Chief Instructor at Flight Safety across the field. He came to talk to a friend of his, one of my fellow instructors, Bob Wagner. From a few feet away I overheard their conversation. Ron said he was to ferry a DC-3 from Long Beach to Medford, Oregon, for its new owner. But Ron had a problem. He needed a co-pilot to be legal. And he was leaving in an hour. "You won't get paid, but you get DC-3 time and all it'll cost you is airline fare back to Long Beach. Can you get away?"
Bob looked at his daily schedule sheet -- it was full, and he couldn't cancel all those students. "Sorry, can't do it," he told Ron.
Ron looked around, surveying the single-wide trailer that served as our flight school office, as he formulated Plan 'B'. "Is there anyone else who could go?"
It was one of those classic Maynard G. Krebs moments: "You rang?"
Soon I found myself walking around N1213M with Ron. It was on the books as a DC-3C (P&W engines), having been built for the USAAF as a C-47 in 1943. I don't know its airline history, but in later years it had been a Goodyear Tire & Rubber corporate transport. It had just been sold to a company that would use it for smokejumping in southern Oregon, and its clean but dated 13-seat corporate interior would likely be ripped out.
N1213M had the appearance of a business tool that was well-used, but also well-cared-for. Its white-and-grey exterior, which could have passed for a US Navy paint scheme, showed no major flaws.
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In the cockpit, Ron introduced me to my first officer duties -- the fuel slectors, the multiple levers that operated the landing gear, and the magic sequence in which they are operated; the knurled round knobs that operate the cowl flaps; power settings (I still have them scribbled on the back of Ron's business card), radios, and so on.
We took off from runway 25L at Long Beach, flew through the old VFR corridor above LAX, then climbed to 8,500' for the northbound route to MFR. We cruised over the hot, dry Central Valley of California, country music blaring from the ADF. Ron graciously let me hand-fly the whole trip until the approach. Near Merced CA, Ron got up out of the left seat to go to the lav in the tail of the aircraft. As he wriggled through the narrow passage past my seat, he tapped my shoulder and said, "If you lose an engine it takes a lot of rudder," and he was gone.
To be alone in the cockpit of a DC-3 in flight ... wow. Ernie Gann's books suddenly changed from words on paper to full sensory overload.
When it was my turn in the lav a while later, Ron thought it would be a good time to check that the rudder still had full travel. It did.
Ron greased the landing on runway 30 at Medford, four hours after we left Long Beach. I learned the procedures for securing the airplane. Gust locks had to be installed in the control surfaces. The elevators are very heavy, and care must be taken not to let go of them until the gust lock is secure. The force of the elevators falling of their own weight would send the yokes in the cockpit right through the instrument panel.
The flight back to Long Beach on a Western Airlines 737-200 was an anti-climax. Later Ron endorsed my logbook with 4.0 hours "Douglas DC-3 - First Officer".
I'm told that N1213M was scrapped at McAllen, Texas, in the early 2000s.
Weird coincidence follow-up to this story ...
About three years ago I was flying my 172 home to Washington State from San Diego. Flying more or less the same route toward Medford, I reflected on that DC-3 trip so long ago.
Passing Medford, my reverie was broken by chatter on the Cascade Approach frequency. A Lancair Columbia was IFR from the Medford area toward Burns, and there were a number of transmissions between that aircraft and the controller. I was slightly annoyed that all that chatter was distracting me from reliving the DC-3 flight.
All of a sudden I got a chill when I realized what callsign I was hearing from that Columbia: N1213M !!
. It has to be the time we lost power over the Rockies in the clouds enroute between Denver and Vernal, UT. At some point, I'll write the story. It's been suggested by our FAASTeam leader I do a presentation on it.
, you would say that... But I agree...
