Don't MAKE Me Haf'tuh KILL Ya'...

[CloudDancer]

Prologue


I’m a child of the 1950s. My first ride in an airliner was on an American Airlines DC-6 as a six month old baby. With Papa CloudDancer working for American and Momma CD working for Delta Airlines, I literally was raised in the American maintenance hangar at Amon Carter Field in Fort Worth and the Delta Airlines hangar at Love Field in Dallas, Texas.
As a youngster growing up, my heroes were the post-WW I fighter pilots who flew the mail in open cockpit biplanes. With no radios, they searched the ground ahead of them looking for their “navaids”. Their eyeballs would strain to see through the haze…the snow…the rain and fog, seeking to spot (hopefully) a 50 to 70 foot long concrete arrow on the ground painted bright yellow. At night it was the 5,000 candlepower white beacon light that they sought to find. It flashed once every 10 seconds.
By the late 1930s, as World War storm clouds again built up around the globe, Donald Douglas Sr.’s revolutionary new monoplane, the now ubiquitous DC-3, was setting all kinds of new records in the nation’s still fledgling airline industry. Mileage, freight-tons and passengers hauled. And reliability. Unlike its predecessors, the DC-3 seldom “fell out of the sky”. And it had radios! And even a new-fangled navaid called an Automatic Direction Finder. AutoMAtic no less!
For my 10^th birthday Mom and Dad gave me my first copy of what I would come to believe truly was the Bible of aviation. It was Ernie Gann’s “Fate is the Hunter”. I devoured it in the next three days, and then started to read it again immediately. I have since owned about five or six copies of that book and read it no less than 20 times in my life.
Thus, my new heroes became airline Captains such as Gann and fellow airline Captain-writer Len Morgan who at the time wrote a monthly column (Vectors) for FLYING magazine, for which of course I had a subscription.
From the time of the inception of the two-man (NO GIRLS) cockpit, the CO-pilot (2^nd pilot, ASSISTANT pilot, whatever they might be called) was regarded pretty much by everyone as….an apprentice. One learning a trade so to speak whilst sitting in the right seat. His most important jobs were (in no particular order) keep the HEATER running in the winter, loading and unloading passenger baggage and mail bags, serve the MEALS (prior to the hiring of stewardesses) and keep the damn logbook and especially any paperwork regarding pay in absolutely perfect order. If he did these things consistently well he would occasionally be rewarded permission to execute a takeoff and quite often some cruise flying, especially on the longer legs.
And in the left seat sat….GOD.

[SJ]

Cloudy! Great to hear from you!

sj

[OLDCROWE]

"Who was that masked man"

[Farmboy]

It’s opening posts like that one that make me read the next page, wait impatiently for the next post, or seek out the book to which this deliciously enticing story emits from.
These are the stories, saga’s, life collections and campfire legends that need to be (must be) recorded for history.
Todays history, tomorrows history, for all of future aviator generations. If we don’t add to the likes of the accounts such as Gann, the generations to come will be sorely underwhelmed.

Write, verbally record, do something to record one story a day… or a week… as you are reminded of them.

Because we, along with the world, wants to hear.


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[BC12D-4-85]

CloudDancer's books are great read. He even stopped by my float pond spot one day and offered to trade all three for my PA-11. It was a tough choice...years of Superior flying experience for my puny Yellow Cub. My loss.

Gary

[CloudDancer]

(Prologue cont'd)

Well…I mean…not the one and only, original, born in a manger, can change water into wine Jesus Christ. But rather a group of men who, at that time and for a few decades to come, perceived themselves to be a “god”. You know. Sort of on a par with Thor, or Odin or Loki for you Norwegians. And really, I suppose that given the state of the infant industry prior to World War II, it is not too hard to see why.
Out of a total U.S. population of 132.1 million people, in early 1942 when the U.S. Air Transport Command took over the majority of the “airline industry” for the duration of the war, there existed in the United States a total of about 2,640 civilian airline pilots. And of course, about half of that number, or 1,320 approximately were the revered “airline CAPTAINS”. One THOUSAND three HUNDRED and TWENTY men out of a total of 132.1 MILLION people. That’s like…what? ONE guy out’a every 132,000 people? Damn RIGHT these must have been a special breed of men indeed!
Brave…daring…capable men who defied the odds. Fearless men. Calm and collected in the face of Mother Nature’s fiercest storms. Cautious and wise always whilst holding your very lives in their two hands.
ALL employees, dispatchers, stewardesses, ramp attendants and yes, sometimes even the CEOs of the industry deferred to the pilots “wishes”. Which were of course really deemed to be more along the line of demands or orders in those days. And rightly so or not, the majority of airline Captains at least graciously accepted the adulation and subservience. And a very large number expected this behavior from their subordinates. And the real assholes demanded it as if it were their birthright.
By 1946, rapid post-war airline industry growth was staffed by thousands of new employees. Both in the cockpit and outside the cockpit, a huge percentage of these new employees came from a recent military background. The pilots from fighters, bombers, and cargo transports. New ground personnel might or might not have had military aviation experience but; everyone understands rank (Captain, SIR!), discipline and status. The pre-war tradition(s) continued and, for a few years at least, even gained strength.

[gbflyer]

Whoa…he’s back!!!!!


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[skywagon8a]

ALL employees, dispatchers, stewardesses, ramp attendants and yes, sometimes even the CEOs of the industry deferred to the pilots “wishes”. Which were of course really deemed to be more along the line of demands or orders in those days. And rightly so or not, the majority of airline Captains at least graciously accepted the adulation and subservience. And a very large number expected this behavior from their subordinates. And the real assholes demanded it as if it were their birthright.
By 1946, rapid post-war airline industry growth was staffed by thousands of new employees. Both in the cockpit and outside the cockpit, a huge percentage of these new employees came from a recent military background. The pilots from fighters, bombers, and cargo transports. New ground personnel might or might not have had military aviation experience but; everyone understands rank (Captain, SIR!), discipline and status. The pre-war tradition(s) continued and, for a few years at least, even gained strength.

This "tradition" continued well into the 70s when the last of those WW2s were retiring. There were still some "new" Captains who attempted to resurrect the old traditions, but they gradually became the minority.

[KJC]

Those traditions continued well into the 80s but you are correct times were a changin. As a mechanic who worked his way to brand new flight engineer, I recall the old timers quite well. Those guys were very demanding but they sure could fly well. Hand flown NDB approaches weren’t all that unusual and you did them correctly or they would let you know. I’m pretty sure if I talked to my F/Os that way today there would be tears. We shut up and accepted their “advise”. In retrospect, I know they made me a better pilot and I’m still grateful.

Things are different now. I had 15000 hours before I got my chance at the left seat. Now it’s often just months for the regional jet guys and gals. Remember everyone here can pass on their previous experience in a kind way to the next generation. That goes for both Supercubs and airliners.