Daddyoleo: Flying with Mort 2

I had flown with Mort a few times on Washington DC trips, but a few months into my assignment I was tasked with a three week European trip which made me real happy.

We left San Antonio in our C-118 (DC-6) heading for Washington DC for the night. The next day we went from DC to Goose Bay, Labrador and New Foundland, Canada. It was March and the snow was deep and piled everywhere, the runway and taxiways were surrounded by about 6 feet of snow. When we broke out of the clouds it was surreal to me and I couldn't believe we were landing with all that snow there. We were a long way from civilization other than Goose Bay and it was good to get some gas. After fueling up it was off to Keflavic, Iceland and on to England.

The flight to Keflacic took us over Greenland... Solid ice and snow... I never realized that Iceland was so green and Greenland was almost all ice...

Arriving in Keflavik Mort was flying and I was the co-pilot. There was a lone thunderstorm right on final approach for an instrument approach... Never thought I would see a thunderstorm in Iceland! It would have been real simple to just fly a visual approach to the runway and turn inside if the thunderstorm and in the clear air, but Mort would have nothing of that. He wanted a full instrument approach, so we flew 15 miles past the airport and lined up with the final approach course and heading straight for that thunderstorm! I whined and complained the whole time and tried to talk him out of it ... To no avail. We entered the thunderstorm and picked up lots of turbulence and icing, which kept me busy flipping switches and running checklists. Mort was having trouble keeping the aircraft on course and I had to keep correcting him. Finally we popped out of the storm and back into the clear air. We were coming into land when Mort started dropping too low, so I was telling him to pull up or we are going to land in the approach lights. I had to get real loud to make him correct. It wasn't pretty but we made it. Later, I grumbled and complained to Major Wheeler who was back in the back resting.

The next stop in England was uneventful and we spent the night there. The next day it was on to:
Brindisi, Italy... for fuel
Ankara, Turkey... to clear Turkish customs
Samsun, Turkey ... To drop the General off
Ankara, Turkey... To remain until the General called

I was flying into Brindisi on a nice clear day and when I was a few hundred feet above the ground I saw a big Alitalia DC-8 diving for the runway and trying to beat me there. Unusual to say the least... to add to it he was coming in the opposite direction and we were going to touch down to a head on collision. The controller had been talking to me in English and Italian to the DC-8 so this was a big surprise. We were asking the controller who had the right of way and we heard a lot of Italian in response. The DC-8 continued and I was about to go missed approach when the DC-8 did a real aggressive maneuver and turned away and climbed with a lot of Italian being screamed. I feel pretty certain the airliner had been training pilots and had no passengers on board... his maneuver to get to the runway would have created a huge crisis with the passengers.

We got gas and went on to Ankara, Turkey... the capital. The airport was all gray concrete buildings and the Turkish flag look like a communist flag to me. I was wishing I knew a little more geography and history. There were police everywhere carrying machine guns. Clearing customs wasn't too bad and we got gas and proceeded to Samsun, Turkey. Samsun is located very close to Russia and is on the Black Sea.

Approaching Samsun our navigation radios stopped working and we were pretty sure we were receiving a fake signal from the Russians. Luckily we had a navigator on board and he kept us on course. Landing in Samsun was another story... Mort was flying again. He elected to approach the runway from the Black Sea end of the runway. It looked like fun to me. The approach end of the runway ended at a cliff that dropped hundreds of feet to the beach. Mort got low again and I though we would break off our landing gear on the cliff so I took control of the aircraft briefly to get the approach angle right and gave the airplane back to Mort... which was a mistake because he immediately chopped the power and we dropped like a rock to a firm landing. Once on the runway it looked like the end of the runway was coming up and he used max reverse power on the engines and locked up the brakes... then we peaked the little hill in the runway and saw there was thousands of feet left... Mort was good at teaching me what not to do.

Samsun was a tiny little civilian airport and we couldn't stay there, so after dropping the General off we went back to Ankara.

No one enjoyed Ankara and it's machine gun toting police so we asked the General if we could wait for him back in Brindisi, Italy and it was approved.

We spent 10 wonderful days in the small seaport town of Brindisi. I had a room in a small hotel overlooking the harbor and we ate like Italians and enjoyed every minute of it. Several people in the crew took an overnight train to Rome to see the Pope give Easter Mass. I elected to stay behind in case the General called... he didn't.

Room with a view