My grand son Max called this week all excited about flying a B-17, I
think he said it was the “Memphis Belle”, Max has picked up the habit of
bicycling to the Peach Tree City airport each afternoon after school just
to see what is new and interesting, I am afraid he may be inflicted with
the same disease I contacted hanging around airports. Anyhow their
flight lasted two and a half hours and he was thrilled, I am happy for
him, not many youngsters will ever get the chance for such an experience.
While we were on the phone I had to tell him of my one ride in a B-17. We had taken General Clisby to La Paz, Bolivia to meet with his
counterpart and where just killing time in the hotel. The rest of the
crew had been there before and had gone to one of the gold mines and
bought some gold but it was all new to me. I assumed that we would take
a cab to one of the mines but I soon found out that the only easy way to
get to the mines was by an old B-17. The Bolivian AF had at least two of
them and I was surprised to find them very well maintained, they had been feather weighted, I mean every thing that was not essential had been removed. La Paz is about 13,000 ft above sea level and all the mines we visited to pick up the days take of gold were below 15,000 ft but we did have to climb up to about 18,000 to get through some of the passes. Us passengers each had at least one walk around bottle of oxygen, us sea level dwellers needed it.
The pilots bragged about flying day after day with almost no maintenance so I assume there were no turbochargers because they would have been a maintenance head ache. There was a rack in the cockpit that held several rope mesh protected liter size glass jars where they would put the collected gold, and we dropped off a clean jar for each one we picked up. None of the jars were full but all together I would estimate that we
collected about 35 to 40 pounds of gold that day. The pilots had
instructed us as to which of the mines that was easiest to deal with. I
bought 100 grams at a dollar a gram, about three and one half ounces,
they put it in my handkerchief and tied it up with string. Now, I wish I
could have bought a lot more. At that time Americans were not allowed to own gold, but Nelly was still a French citizen and the children had dual citizenship so we where pretty well covered legally, but just in case I took the gold to a jeweler in Panama city and he added a monogram plate to a gold bracelet we had previously purchased and made me a really heavy belt buckle. Robin has them to this day, I am pretty sure he knows their worth. Nelly had a heavy gold charm bracelet that she added a gold coin to for each new country she visited, Natalie got that, it too would weigh several ounces.
The Bolivian pilots did not offer me a chance to fly the B-17 but flying
between the peaks and landing every few minutes there was no time for
frivolity, they had their routine and stuck to it. The airfields were
all notched out of an out cropping on the side of a mountain and were
about 5,000 ft in length all gravel, the boss at each landing strip/mine
had a shack but I don’t remember seeing any other buildings like bunk
houses or mess halls they were probably nearer the mines. I suspect that each landing strip serviced several small mining operations. It would
have ben interesting to learn more about the mining operations, but the
language barrier and noise pretty well limited the learning to what one
could see, asking questions just was not the way to learn things on that
trip. It was an exciting day and I’m glad that I had the experience but
I am not anxious to go flying like that again, watching how close the
wing tips were to the canyon walls was a bit un nerving.
We went on to Cochabomba, Bolivia where General Clisby had some more business, we visited a brewery where we learned from the brewmeister that beer does not travel well, he said that is why Germany has so many local breweries, “local beer is besser”. We never took the Convair back to La Paz, I calculated that we would have only about 100 fpm rate of climb on a single engine and that was just not enough for comfort. General Clisby agreed and he took a C-118 after that. But we did make plenty of other trips to the other lower altitude places.
Paraguay was a dictatorship at the time so we kind of avoided it, I only remember refueling there once but I don’t think we ever stayed there overnight. The embassy flight went to all the capitol cities at least once a week and some of the embassy’s had twice a week service, those were the countries with the most active Military assistance programs.
Lyndon Johnson was president at the time and he had arranged for the
conversion of a few C-131’s to turbo props so he could land at his Texas
ranch. They would fly Air Force One to Barksdale AFB then transfer to
the Convairs and continue to the ranch. The conversion was engineered by Pacific Aeromotive, the engines came from Lockheed Electras or the
military equivalent and they de rated them from over 4,000 HP to less
than 3,000 HP because full rudder deflection could not handle the
asymmetrical thrust during single engine operation at slower speeds. Avensa Airlines were also converting their Convairs to turbo props with
slightly different engineering. So the seed was planted, and me having
seen the hodge podge of embassy airplanes all over Central and South
America and knowing the huge maintenance facility that we maintained at Howard AFB to support them, C-47’s, C-54’s, C-131/T-29’s, and even a
C-118 or two. My theory was we could get all the retiring air evac
C-131’s out of the bone yard, 20 or so, send them through an upgrade
program reequip them with surplus turboprop engines and props, upgrade the avionics and then position one at each embassy with a high altitude airport, safety would be improved and the support/logistics
infrastructure would be greatly reduced from the mix of airplanes, the de
rated engines operating at less than 75% of rated power would have a
great increase in mean time between failure, my fear was complacency,
“these things will run for ever”. I turned in my suggestion to Col Hunsaker the big boss of my office, he liked it and added some of his ideas about the savings and sea level power being available at the higher altitude airports, and he being a fellow experimental aircraft type he sent it on to General Clisby, the general liked the idea and when he had another need to go to the Pentagon asked if I would brief the air staff on my proposal, of course I went with him with the high hopes of selling an idea.
Four Star Glen L. Martin responded with a tirade essentially saying he was busy fighting the Vietnam war and we were pestering him and the staff with minutia of trying to save a few bucks, he did not have time for such crap. Of course I was broken hearted and General Clisby went to the basement of the pentagon to arrange his retirement, he was truly shaken by the rebuke. General Clisby was just trying to improve things in his area of responsibility, he and I licked our wounds on the way home and Col Hunsaker met us when we arrived back in Panama, he consoled that we had given it a good shot but our timing was off, I just did what I thought was right, boy was I wrong. The lesson, don’t try to sell an idea of thrift or good management in the middle of a war…
So the other idea I had that I had confided to Col Hunsaker was: since
we had an aviation mechanics school at Albrook AFB, we could provide kits of parts for a training aircraft, students would build the aircraft and
learn how to maintain them in the process, the host country would provide off the shelf items like the power plant and avionics. That idea never took hold in Panama but we turned it over to US Aid for International Development (USAID) because of our bad experience with the pentagon but eventually both Taiwan and the Philippines were using Pasmany PL-2’s as primary trainers for their primary flight trainers for their pilot inductees. I felt good about that one because we snuck it in, in spite of the pentagon being too busy with the war in Vietnam. Ben Hunsaker retired to San Diego and was the news letter editor for the local EAA chapter for years. I recently found out that he has passed, General
Clisby retired to the Pacific North West, they both were a pleasure to
work for. Have a happy Thanksgiving. Bob
