I'll Take the 18: The Story of Beech 18 Freight Flying

Copyright © 2017 by Scott H. Gloodt

All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review. Printed in the United States of America

ISBN: (Print) 978-1-54393-066-5 (Ebook) 978-1-54393-067-2

Contents

For the Pilot

Dedication

Preflight

Converging Courses

A Beech 18 Freight Pilot

The Quest

A Mixed Bag

Classroom in the Night Sky

Into the Fray

The Sandman and Hitting the Can

High Jinks and Hilarity

Now a Warrior

Delivery by Air

The Mail Must Get Through

Entrepreneurial Airmen

Maintenance

The FAA

I’d Like to See Your Papers

We’ll Fly What You Need

The Load; Carry That Weight

Push it Up

Destinations

Ten Boxes of Screws

A Most Complex Mechanical Choreography

Hazmat

Glowing in the Night

Nitro

Big Bang Theory

Old Reliable

My God, what a magnificent machine

Fit for a Purpose

The Mighty 985

Twin Buzz Saws

GEAR DOWN!

Load It Up

Flippers, Flappers, Rudders and Wings

Elixir of the Gods

Flying Blind

Alpha Omega

Nice Day for Flying

Where We Live

Spring, A Time of Wind and Rain

Summer, When Titans Roam the Land

Autumn, The Golden Days

Winter, A Hard and Dangerous Old Man

David Moses

In Solitude

Time Moves On

Affection Unabashed

The Old West Fades into History

Rise of the Phoenix

The Interview

Lovelorn

Time Traveler

A Spiritual Meeting

An Airplane Named Sugar Charlie

Old Freight Dogs

In the Distance, Where the Sun Sets

I’ll Take the 18

Definitions

For the Pilot

At a flight’s conclusion, nothing exists except a change of location. The carpenter has his structure, the physician the patient’s recovery, the artist an expression of his creativity.

But the pilot stands with nothing. His manifest is where they wished it to be. And why would it be any other way? The challenges, prudent judgment and skillful execution go unnoticed, unrecorded. The pilot leaves no talisman behind, the journey chronicled only by a memory, and that, usually just by the pilot. May that pilot hold this book in his hands, and through its physical being say Yes, it happened. Here it is! And I was a part of it.

A few housekeeping details:

The year 2017 marks 40 years of flying for me, more than two-thirds of my life. I seem to think about the numbers and years most often in dark cockpits, like on a recent Boeing 737 overnight flight from Los Angeles to Chicago, the all-nighter flight. Beside me sat the First Officer, the copilot, as they are called in other parts of the business. I remember glancing across the cockpit at the outline of his youthful face. It seems like only yesterday it was me in that seat, but somehow, I now have over 23,000 hours aloft, all told. I’ve held the rank of Captain for a major U.S. airline for almost two decades now. Before that, I sat in the cockpit of a twin-engine propeller airplane for a Midwestern airline, which flew much smaller loads of passengers in America’s heartland. And before that? Before that is where I learned the iron core of my craft, flying in a rugged old airplane of 1940s design beside pilots with years of toughened experience.

This story is about those years long ago, forging that dependable iron core when I was just a new pilot. Mine is not a single voice, for along with my experiences are the voices of many other pilots who flew that aged bird, the Beech 18, flying small cargo loads around the United States in all conditions imaginable.

Additionally, this story is written in the masculine pronoun. It is done so for the ease of its composition and the fact that this period of time was a very male-dominated era. That’s not to say there weren’t female Beech 18 freight pilots; there were. Their numbers may have been few, but their experiences were the same.

For unfamiliar terms, at the end of this story is a list of definitions. The definitions are general in nature to provide a broad understanding of the terms pilots use in general conversation. They are not intended to be taken as a final or formal definition of the term. I’ll leave that to the academia, lawyers, and FAA, who can wrangle amongst themselves over the proper wording of the terms that we employ in everyday use.

Before we crank up the engines, let’s talk about where we will be flying to. This story is about a group of pilots who flew the night freight in an airplane known as the Beech 18. It is about a group of honest, plain-speaking pilots who wrote a small chapter in aviation history flying one of the finest airplanes ever built. The setting occurs mostly at night across the skies of America, at small, out-of-the-way airports, and at the rough-and-tumble freight areas of larger ones. Expect the story to be neither glamorous nor romantic, and most situations begin deceptively benign, but the danger is real and ever present, sometimes arriving with a flash of cold sweat. The antagonists are varied and they mostly remain in the shadows waiting for an opportunity to strike. They are capable of great cruelty, are inexhaustible, and keep no tally - unsympathetically striking at one or many. Accepting the challenge is a group of gritty, self-reliant pilots who had a job to do. They loaded their freight into their airplane, started the engines, and flew off into the night sky determined to get the job done. This story is not about the lantern-jawed pilot who struts through the airport terminal, decked out in a tailored uniform, winking at the girls with an air of self-importance. Hang him. No, it is about the rest of us who, when the cockpit door closes and the night is frightening, know how to handle this business.

Where did this flying experience come from? For many of us, it came from sitting in the cockpit of a rugged old airplane next to a pilot who knew what the hell he was doing. Then, after a time, we were out flying on our own, stacking our own experiences upon the foundation those pilots gave us. These lessons were taught on stormy nights and on beautiful summer days, when things ran smoothly, and when they did not. Experience deepened with every skillfully flown instrument approach and was hard-won with each situation that made the heart pound furiously. The maturation of experience is a journey, one that takes time, applied in layers, filled in line-by-line in the logbook of each pilot as he records his own history. Despite the reliability of modern aircraft engines and systems, and the astounding capabilities of computers and automation in today’s cockpits, the wind and the sky are still our home. Those technical advancements will never serve as a substitution for pilot skill and experience.

Through the accumulation of stories in this book, by the end I wish the reader to have a feel for the seasoning of a freight pilot. This is not just my story, or any one pilot’s story, but a collection - from pilots I flew with, from others I interviewed, and from my own experiences and research. These are the brief stories we pilots enjoy telling each other when we get together. We listen, laugh, or solemnly nod, depending on the lesson, then take another swig of beer and move on.

There are innumerable Beech 18 stories and experiences, as many as the pilots who flew her. Every pilot has his own way of flying and handling an airplane, so while in one particular situation a pilot might nod his head in agreement, another might shake his head in scorn. The stories that follow are not intended to be used as a How to Fly the Beech 18 manual. The accounts within are as accurate and accountable as possible, and only represent a scattering of the vast experiences of these pilots. Some pilots felt their experiences should not leave the privacy of the cockpit, and I respected their wishes. Others had their logbooks closed forever by time or tragedy before their trials could ever be told.

Occasionally while reading these experiences, some readers might second-guess a pilot’s actions, formulating how they would have more wisely handled the situation. Any pilot with experience knows that withholding damning judgment is the prudent course. A comfortable armchair, desktop computer or even a full motion simulator will never replicate the exact same conditions. Unless you are actually sitting in the cockpit, unforewarned, when the airplane suddenly starts shaking so damn hard you are convinced it will fail instantly in some way, or suddenly a fire erupts in the left engine and the blaze quickly streams back, engulfing the left cowl, roaring just three feet from the cockpit side window, you have no idea what the pilot went through. Your outcome is yet unwritten.

Two silent characters run throughout this narrative and need introduction. One inspires us, and the other we dread. The first is Ernest Gann. His name is not as commonly known to pilots today as it once was, and that is a shame. His book Fate is the Hunter chronicles his civilian flying career starting in the 1930s flying DC 2s and DC 3s. For a generation of aviators, he set the high mark of what it meant to be an airman, and placed before us the obligation we must repay to the art. His writing is among the best in American aviation literature and this romp is of no comparison. In fact, a preemptive apology is in order. This adventure is written in the natural language of the freight pilot, it is a workingman’s language and contains occasional profanities. But these profanities are as necessary and significant as the actions to shut down an engine that is on fire - quick, blunt and effective. In his works, Mr. Gann also graciously spared the reader technical depth. I will not promise the same. For myself, and most of my colleagues, the best part of Fate is the Hunter is the first third. It is where we sit in the cockpit of a DC 3 and work and fly and sweat and freeze, and scare ourselves - ultimately learning to become better pilots. It is not uncommon that scattered amongst the technical details is that one piece of information that’s needed when a pilot’s life hangs in the balance. Dear reader, if you wish to relax in your chair and gloss over them, that is your prerogative. But if you are a pilot, and intend to fly along, heed this warning: the system you neglected to learn, the procedure you did not bother to memorize, or the technique you thought you would never need, will be the exact one required, and it will come back to bite you hard on the ass. This brings us to our second silent character.

Mr. Gann forced us to acknowledge the presence of powers beyond our control. And that is what we dread. His eloquence described the happenstance of fate and the coldness of probability, sobering concepts that grate on the good-natured, devil-may-care, personalities of most pilots. In Gann’s words:

There is a point, ever varying and always frivolous in appearance, when diligently acquired scientific understanding is suddenly blinded and the medieval mind returns to dominate. This mixture of the mystical and factual produces quick confusion followed by a needling sense of peril. This moment of realization and discovery is verbally identified as luck, or fate to the more elegant. Whatever the label, it presupposes a firm belief in powers supernatural. Therefore, partly in shame and partly in hopeless lack of understanding, the factor of luck is officially ignored among those engaged in any endeavor dependent upon science and machinery. Those charged with the success of the enterprise must ignore luck----or they will soon go crazy.

Unfortunately, pilots of any experience whatever are forced to bear this painful division in their thinking and develop a tolerance for it----or they would go crazy. It is a considerable tribute to their general stability that so few of them have.

From Fate is the Hunter by Ernest K. Gann

Uncomfortably, we try to ignore fate’s dark presence and possibilities. Yet when forced to acknowledge its existence by the blunt display of fact or accident report, we defensively resort to a form of voodoo science, citing Murphy’s Law as the attributing cause.

Murphy’s Law states in unequivocal terms:

What can go wrong - Will

With an addendum added for pilots:

Usually at the worst possible moment.

So while Fate and Probability lounge on Mount Olympus, gazing down upon mortals, deciding the lives of men, a lower court administers this law. Its application enforced by Old Man Murphy himself. Sometimes out of devilment, sometimes out of humor, sometimes out of cruelty. Although we feign familiarity, and offer up our experience and preparation in hope of a mutual respect, we are forever a servant before a Deity. The Old Man might just as playfully drip engine oil on our new white shirt as start a fire in the cockpit. Old Man Murphy will make his appearance occasionally throughout our journey, and rarely is his presence welcomed.

Finally, this is not a love story. Unless it can be accepted that a man can love an airplane - then it is fully that. It is about flying, and learning, and becoming a better pilot. It is about experiencing nature’s wonders, facing her forces, knowing how to slip through, and knowing when to bow to superior strength. All of this in a rugged old airplane that is forever your faithful partner in every adventure.

So now we are ready. For all you old Beech 18 freight pilots, let’s make one last freight run. If you are new to the 18, come on up and take the right seat – it’s open. A pair of jeans and a comfortable work shirt are just the right things to wear. Do you have some earplugs? That’s all right; I have an extra headset anyway. I know the Beech looks well worn, but the engines are perfectly maintained and dependable, and the airframe is rock solid. Buckle in and we will get things going. It is a beautiful clear summer day. We will fly over to Detroit, pick up some auto parts, and then bring them back here to Rockford, Illinois. At 5,000 feet and 160 MPH, you can see the beautiful countryside and experience just how large Lake Michigan really is. You are going to love this. This is Beech 18 freight flying.

Converging Courses

I awoke in that mild state of peaceful confusion that follows a deep sleep, where immediate memory is temporarily suspended and the present is slowly blinked at with the wide-eyed wonder of a child. Quickly the presence of my current condition began to restore itself, and the first aspect of this was the harsh cold. The skin of my face was thick and stiff, and the tip of my nose was completely numb, as if the bitter cold had first touched there and then slowly flowed downward. The progress of the cold halted at the perimeter of the wool knit cap pulled tightly over my head, and beyond that, the rest of my body was warm. Inside the old sleeping bag, which was zipped tightly up to my chin, I was fully clothed, still wearing my heavy jacket and leather boots. Lying on my back, I began to feel the vibration of the surface I was on, and then the sound overtook me. It was so loud, so dominant, that it seemed impossible I could not have heard it immediately, much less slept through it. It was the roar of aircraft engines with the background noise of air rushing past the fuselage. I realized now I was in the back of the old Beech 18 freighter, sleeping on top of wooden crates, crates we had shoved together to make a workable bed. In those crates was our freight that night: 600lbs of Class A explosives.

It was two o’clock in the morning and darkness filled the cabin of the freighter. With a half turn of my head, I looked for the night sky through the weathered cabin windows. The sky was clear, a relief. Although we had expected good weather for the night flight, we had seen enough weather forecasts turn sour to hold a healthy suspicion of their promises. Now it was my turn to fly. Most Beech 18 cargo flights required only one pilot. A second pilot might ride along to gain experience, or could be required due to insurance or federal air regulations. In this case, it was the regulations; hazardous material flights required two pilots. On shorter flights, we would have both stayed in the cockpit the entire flight, but on longer ones, we took turns napping in the back. That way, when the time came for the really important parts of the flight, like takeoff, approach and landing, we were both wide awake.

Carefully, I unzipped the sleeping bag and wriggled out of it. My heavy boots dragged and caught on the material as I worked them out. With only a few feet of space between the stacked wooden crates and the ceiling of the cabin, I knelt on the crates, hunched over, and folded the sleeping bag into thirds over my arm and then laid it on top of the shipping crates. The frigid air in the cabin was already attacking the outer shell of my jacket and the material was quickly chilling and stiffening. Crawling forward on my hands and knees, I slid open both halves of the faded canvas accordion door that separated the cabin from the cockpit; it was hardly warmer up there. The airplane’s cabin heater was not working, and while it was near zero degrees Fahrenheit in the back, at least the cockpit was about five degrees warmer.

Jim Stockton was flying in the left seat. He tilted his head over his shoulder, Good morning Sunshine, he shouted as I climbed into the copilot’s seat, his voice straining over the drone of the engines. His smile and good-natured greeting could not hide the fatigue in his tired, watery eyes. While I slept in the back, he kept himself awake with cigarettes and half cups of coffee.

James David Stockton, nicknamed The Buffalo. He answers to Jim, or to Stockton, or simply to Buffalo. I asked him once, not long after we had first met, where the nickname Buffalo came from. He paused, looked me square in the eye, rigid in form, and then answered very directly A buffalo comes straight at you, with its head down, and does not stop. He then stared at me and said nothing more. I offered nothing in return, but over the course of our acquaintance, I discovered the nickname was accurate. Jim was a civilian pilot, in the middle years of his life, and had reached an age by which he had accumulated a great deal of flying experience and the bravado of youth had long since been melted away by experiences, both heroic and humbling. Confident in his abilities and thoughtful in his actions, he retained a healthy suspicion of the simple and routine, knowing that, on occasion, it could prove to be deceptively not so. His training, experience, and all of his previous flying jobs were in civilian aviation. He was a tradesman, equipped with the skill to fly airplanes, and followed the work where he could find it. His background varied from short hops in small single engine aircraft to flying corporate jets all over the globe, and now, fate had placed him in the Beech 18, flying the night freight.

Stockton sat comfortably in the left seat of the cockpit, the captain’s seat, his heavy shoulders and sturdy frame completely relaxed. Jim was a strong man, but only out of necessity. His strength came from loading and unloading the freight, sometimes as much as 2,000lbs each flight, and it made him strong and lean. As Jim flew, he rested only one hand on the wheel of the control yoke. His hands were a perfect reflection of the occupation, strong and calloused, and yet they handled the control wheel with a gentle touch. Stockton’s dark hair was losing over to streaks of gray, but the stubble on his face, at this early hour of the morning, was nearly white. Although the cockpit was very cold, the Buffalo had jammed his coat behind his seat. He wore a thick, red plaid flannel work shirt, with the sleeves rolled up two turns, revealing the white long-underwear shirt he wore underneath. He sat there, seemingly impervious to the frigid air in the cockpit, determined that this was how he was the most comfortable and to hell with the cold.

I carefully slipped in and plopped down into the right seat. I pushed up the sides of my wool cap and then grabbed my headset, which was straddled over the copilot’s control wheel, and clamped it on my head. The roar of the engines subdued, but the ear pads of the headset were ice cold and sent a bolt of chill down my neck. I swung down the boom microphone of the headset, pulled it in close, and adjusted it to my lips.

Jim picked up the thin, accordion-folded paper navigation chart to discuss our progress and the route that lay ahead of us. The map was not like an ordinary automobile map, marked with places of interest and tourist information, places that would be useful in finding a nice place to stop and have lunch. Nor was it like the map used by pilots who navigate by looking at references on the ground, maps that show every detail, every town, waterway, railroad track, and the high towers that airplanes must avoid. Those maps are wonderfully colored; sandy brown for dry areas, like the arid southwest and west Texas, green for deep forests and lush farmlands, and a hard brown for the carefully defined mountains whose peaks and ridges yield to no one. Those other maps had refreshing deep blues that marked streams, tributaries and rivers that trace their ways to lakes and oceans, and used bright yellows to carefully draw the shapes of towns and cities along with the roads that connected them all together. Overlaid on this beautiful tapestry were the radio navigation aids pilots use for electronic guidance. Large, thin blue circles designate these stations, with the degrees of the compass ticked off around the perimeter with the radio station itself dotted in the center. Finally added to the masterpiece were airports of all sizes, from Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport to privately owned grass landing strips. We sometimes carried a few of these charts with us for the pure enjoyment of being able to put a name to a town or a river we passed over. These were the maps that would delight any explorer.

No, for our flying, we were instead using an aeronautical instrument navigation chart. A map devoid of all personality. A map drawn on a white background, criss-crossed with blue lines, and then covered generously with navigation fixes, radio frequencies, numbers, magnetic bearings and altitude limitations, details critical for our use. We were not planning on stopping for lunch, and for all the beauty of the other map, it was useless to us if the ground below us was covered by cloud or blanked by the dark of night. The instrument map would keep us safe and on course, above the hills, and around the mountains that rise up unseen. It may lack personality, but it is as trustworthy and dependable as simple mathematics.

Stockton snapped on the toggle switch of the small overhead light, which only feebly lit the cockpit. He unfolded the map on his lap, and then slowly slid his outstretched hand from one side to the other, smoothing out the folds. He started at where we were at that moment, and then traced over the route ahead of us with his finger, naming each navigation fix, one by one, and the course we would fly. It was a long stretch we both knew well, and both of us could visualize the actual terrain that existed below.

Next was the weather. It was just as I had seen looking out the cabin windows in back, clear and cold. A large high pressure area had centered along our route and the night would be clear with light winds. The weather required little discussion.

Finally, we talked about the airplane and the fuel. I knew from the sound and feel in the back of the cabin, even before I crawled into the cockpit, that the 18 and its engines were running fine, and Jim confirmed that. The Beech 18 is an honest airplane and does not hide mechanical complaints. We were right on schedule with how much fuel we expected to have used, so then it was just a matter of which of the multiple fuel tanks we would use to feed the engines. Jim explained to me when he had switched to the particular tanks in use and at what time he expected them to go dry. The airplane has fuel gauges, but we rarely trusted them. Instead, we knew how much fuel the engines burn each hour, and using our watches, we could accurately predict when the tank would be empty.

As I settled into flying, Stockton maneuvered out of his seat, grabbed his coat as he passed through the cockpit opening, and crawled on top of the crates full of explosives. Although he had a large physical build, he moved with remarkable flexibility and grace. As the weight of his body shifted toward the back of the airplane, the airplane’s balance changed, and as a result, the nose of the Beech nudged a little skyward. I reached over to the trim wheel next to the pilot’s seat and slowly rolled it forward a quarter turn and the airplane returned to level flight. The Beech 18 was back in equilibrium. Within a few moments, the Buffalo was zippered inside the sleeping bag and dozing. I felt a quiet sense of pride in the complete confidence he was placing on me.

I examined the map, now laid on my lap, comparing the navigation radios and course settings tuned in the radios with those depicted in blue lettering on the map. Everything was in order and understood. I reached up with a single finger and confidently flicked off the switch on the overhead light. The small light had done more than I thought, and the cockpit became darker than I expected. The only illumination left was from the soft, circular glows given off by each individual instrument light. Studying the engine gauges, they confirmed what my ears and senses felt, that they were operating at a healthy, steady pace, like that of a long distance runner set in his stride for the long haul. This Beech 18 had no autopilot, and most of them typically did not, and so the pilot was required to continuously fly the airplane. But pilots like to fly, and so this was a joy rather than a task. My feet rested on the rudder pedals, my elbow was propped on the side window pad, and my hand gently held the yoke. The 18 responded gracefully to even the slightest touch, and it flew beautifully.

The night sky was black. On the ground below were four dots of bluish white light, each widely separated from the others, perhaps marking a road intersection or a remote ranch site in the darkness. Above, the sky was brushed with a thousand stars and, as the Beech 18’s strobe light spiked white light on and off, it felt as though we were more part of the sky than of the earth. Despite the factual reading of the outside air temperature, and the cockpit being only slightly warmer, it no longer felt cold. I slipped out of my jacket and let it fall behind me, cushioning the back of my seat. Although I didn’t know it at that time, that wonderful airplane would teach me more than I could have ever imagined, and the pilot zippered in the sleeping bag, along with his colleagues, would mentor me by example and instruction. The next few years of flying freight would set the foundation for the rest of my days. All of this taught in the Beech 18, and from some of the best and hardest-working pilots in aviation.

The era of Beech 18 freight flying began in the early 1960s when a unique set of independent factors merged on a common course. These complementary factors strengthened and grew during the 1970s and 1980s resulting in its greatest period of activity and zenith. During the 1990s, the conditions that had produced this success began to evolve, age, and diverge, and by the turn of the century, like the fading sound of an aircraft engine crossing over the horizon, the era closed largely unnoticed. Four components made the era of Beech 18 freight flying possible: industrialization in the United States, the Beech 18 itself, the level of oversight from the Federal Aviation Administration, and the expansion of America’s air network resulting in a demand for pilots.

In the twentieth century, the United States developed into an industrial powerhouse. Factories and production centers flourished near the great cities in the Northeast and Midwest, while some industries actually made the city great, such as automobile production in Detroit, Michigan. These industrial facilities were huge, complex enterprises. They were fed by a thousand tributaries, each brought in raw materials and partially completed subassemblies, where they were amalgamated by a mass of employees into a finished product, which then flowed like a great river to the consumer. At the apex of these most complex organizations was the production of automobiles. This production required continuity and consistent momentum of the assembly line. The process consumed a steady diet of inventory, parts and raw materials, and each item was required to be available at the exact moment it was needed. Some items were delivered in massive quantities by ship and railroad, while over-the-road trucking provided other items. Items delivered at specific times, in specific quantities – not too