Stu's Seaplane Flight
in St.Thomas
Tony P apapandrea@cfl.rr.com
Start 'em up and off you go. I'm not sure I
would have had the intestinal fortitude to do it, but then times were different
way back then.
Tony P
Life is Good
In God We Trust
------ Forwarded Message --------
From: bilarn@comcast.net bilarn@comcast.net
Date: 4/13/2021 9:36:26 AM
Subject: FW: Stu's Seaplane Flight in St.Thomas
To: bilarn@comcast.net
True story about a friend who was a Pan-Am
pilot on a layover. I thought it should be shared.
Just Another St. Thomas Layover
It was just another layover in the early 1970s when
we flew the 727 into St. Thomas. On this particular flight we had the next day
off, so Buck and I decided to go to breakfast.
Buck said, lets head down Antilles Airboats to see
Charlie Blair and his wife, Maureen O’Hara then go for breakfast. Or at least,
that was the plan.
We left the hotel about 8:30 AM. Approaching their
hanger, we ran into the operations officer who was standing there looking up
and down the street. Buck asked, what was going on and the operations officer
explained, “my pilots never showed up and we have a full load of passengers on
that plane. We are just waiting for the pilots. I have not been able to get
hold of them. I'm stuck!”
Without hesitation or glance over at me, Buck said,
“Stu is a seaplane pilot! We can take the flight.”
“Are you crazy?” I
said.
He convinced me to at least go and take a look at
it, and so we did. We made our way down to the dock where a British 4-Engine
Sunderland was tied up to the dock, full of passengers. We climbed aboard and
found the cockpit. I sat in the left seat, Buck in the right.
For a minute or so, I looked around, turned to the
operations officer that had entrusted us, and asked “How the hell do I start
this thing?”
He said it was no problem and proceeded to start the
four-engines. Next thing I knew, the officer was gone, and we were moving away
from the dock. “Looks like we are going to St. Croix, Buck.”
Having spent time in pilot training, flying B-25’s,
I knew how to do a mag check along with the engine run up. It was no different
from the HU-16 I was also flying in the Air Force Reserves. We put the flaps to
the first notch and glanced around the bay for the take off area. Once the
boats had cleared, we began our take off.
Climbing out, Buck asked “how high do you want to
go?”
“500 feet is good.” And with that, we were headed
towards St. Croix. Except there was one problem. Any time I had flown to St.
Croix before, we always landed at St. Croix Main Runway. This was a SEAPLANE.
We had no idea where Charlie’s seaplanes landed in St. Croix.
Luckily, I was able to have a flight attendant join
us in the cockpit and asked if she knew where the seaplane terminals were. She
knew they were at least on the north side of the island so I asked her that
when she was done attending the passengers if she could come back into the
cockpit and guide us to where we needed to land. It was only a short flight
from St. Thomas to St. Croix, so a few minutes later she returned and directed
us.
I had been flying the Albatross (HU-16) for six or
seven years by this time with many ocean takeoffs and landings. However, the
Sunderland had no reverse on its engines which made docking at the seaplane
terminals a bit more of a challenge. I had to cut the engines and drift to the
dock. It almost worked, but we came up short and the dockhands had to pull us
in about 40 feet.
As the passengers were deplaning, the guys on the
dock asked us to get out of the cockpit and go stand on the left wing. Buck
asked “why?”
To which they replied, “the right-wing float leaks
so we have to keep it out of the water!”
Makes sense.
They were about done loading all the new passengers
on with their baggage to go back to St. Thomas, so we climbed down and took our
seats in the cockpit when I turned to my copilot with no seaplane experience,
“Buck, just like in Pan Am, I brought it over, you have to take it back.”
It all worked out and it was much easier on the
return flight now that we were both experienced seaplane pilots and we knew
where to land in St Thomas. Buck made a nice landing and I taxied it to the
dock without any problems, with the light wind pushing us right to the dock.
“Now can we go get breakfast?” I asked Buck. “There
were no crew meals on that short flight, let get something to eat.”
We never did get to visit with Charlie and his wife,
but we had a good crew party that evening with a new story to tell.
Stu Archer
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