Let’s Try Again

Brother Dave was trying to fly from Gadsden [AL] Municipal Airport to Charlotte when one of the two engines on his Cessna Skykight failed on take off.

There were four of us on board, Dave; Jack Lambert, who is married to our sister, Alene; H.C. Mundy, an old friend of Dave’s; and me.  Dave had taken us to the Senior Bowl in Mobile and then to Super Bowl IX, played Tulane Stadium in New Orleans.   The Pittsburgh Steelers had dominated the Minnesota Vikings, 16-6, and won the first of their six Super Bowl championships.

We flew out of New Orleans on Sunday night after the game and stopped off in Gadsden to visit relatives and spend the night.

[When we took off from New Orleans there was a lot of traffic, a lot of private planes, all around.  I was trying to keep track of them, pointing out the ones that seemed, to me at least, to be close and getting closer. Some of traffic was in front of us but Dave told me not to use the phrase “dead ahead.”]

This is a photo of a Skyknight, but it isn't Dave's plane.
This is a Skyknight, like Dave’s plane.

It was cold the next morning — Jan. 13, 1975 — as Dave taxied the Skyknight to the end of the runway. When he released the brakes and gave it the gas the plane took off down the runway, rapidly gaining speed.

We were rolling when the right engine failed and the plane veer sharply to the right, off the runway and onto a grassy apron that was frozen as hard as concrete.

What did Dave do?

He cranked the engine –it was just cold, he said– taxied back to the end of the runway, warmed it up some more, and tried again. Pretty soon we were back in Charlotte.

NOTE:  I don’t want you to get the wrong idea — Dave was an excellent pilot.   He flew for years and none of his passengers, or anyone else, was ever killed or injured.

But some of his flights were exciting.

On New Year’s Eve, 1971, Donna and I moved from an apartment on Brigadoon Drive in Raleigh, where we had lived for seven months after we moved here from Charlotte, into our new house. Dave flew up from Charlotte that morning to help.

It was his first out of town flight but he didn’t have any trouble getting here, he just followed the highway.

Dave flew into little used Raleigh Municipal Airport, just a few months before it closed. Landing at Raleigh Municipal was a lot less complicated than trying to land at Raleigh-Durham International Airport.

My wife, Donna and I were there waiting for him.

As his plane approached the runway a little crowd began to gather, pilots and airport idlers, almost like he was a celebrity or something. They were watching his landing with intense interest.

I heard one of them say, “I think he’s going to make it!”

The rookie was landing with the wind at his back.

Coming Monday: Thump ‘Em, Bo!

A Language He Understood

When the taxi passed through the main gate at Tan Son Nhut Air Base near Siagon the driver should have turned left and taken the shortest route into the city. But the driver turned right instead and took a longer, less traveled road toward Siagon, by way of a rubber plantation.

During the Viet Nam War my brother-in-law, Jack Lambert, then a captain, later a colonel, was stationed for a year at Tan Son Nhut. Normally he would have taken a Navy bus to his quarters in Siagon but he had worked late, it was after 10, and now he had to take a cab.

Capt. Jack E. Lambert
Capt. Jack E. Lambert

The wrong turn made Jack nervous, because three American officers had simply disappeared from the air base. Had they been kidnapped? By a taxi driver? No one ever knew what happened to them.

Jack tapped the driver on the shoulder, pointed back in the other direction, away from the rubber plantation.

“I told him to turn around and go back.”

But the driver kept going.

He told Jack, “No good.” But did he really understand what Jack wanted him to do?

When the driver missed a second turn, and headed toward the coast, Jack was more persuasive –he pulled a .45 caliber pistol and put it against the man’s head, behind his ear.

Now the driver understood perfectly. He turned around and took the shorter route.

Postscript:

“He did a 180,” Jack said. “I would have shot him if he had kept going.”

Coming Monday: A New Boy