Robert Roth on the Fun of Flying: Thanksgiving Travel

Sunday, November 10, 2013

Thanksgiving Travel

Airlines are predicting a 1.5% increase over last year to a total of 25 million passengers over a twelve day period.

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Excerpt from "The Fun of Flying: The Pan Am Years"

DOVER SOULS
The drive went smoothly enough and when I got near the base there were plenty of signs leading the way. I still had a couple of hours to go before the first arrival. Security was tight. I had to show the Air Force telex and my Pan Am credentials to the MPs. They searched the van inside and out. I thought they would question me about the box of loose floor locks, but they must have seen many of those before; Dover was an air force base after all. What they did do was take Ret’s camera. They said they would give it back when I left the base.

They gave me a clip-on visitor’s pass and directed me to the flight operations office where I met a five stripe NCO who took me to see the outbound pallets. I measured them and moved them to the scale to reweigh; I wanted to be sure no one made a mistake. All except for two were under 2,000 kgs and were configured to fit in every position. The other two weighed 3,500 kgs each, had explosive labels and would be loaded directly over the wings. There was also 3,000 kgs of milregs (military mail) for the bellies.

I used the couple of hours I still had to plan the load, number the pallets with my trusty magic marker and calculate the weight and balance for the outgoing flight. It was going to the Nam and had a full load of fuel. It would make two stops on the way for a refill, the first one in California.

I went with the technical sergeant and six airmen who let me follow them in my van to wait for the plane. Just before it arrived a personnel carrier pulled up next to my van with a squad of airmen in dress uniforms. Oh boy! This was going to be bad news. It was an honor guard.

Another Air Force staff car drove up with the relief Pan Am flight crew. I introduced myself and went over my load plan and weight and balance with the engineer. Then a Pan Am maintenance team from Washington, DC arrived, prepared to change up to four tires if necessary. There were no fuel trucks, since the Air Force pumped JP-4 kerosene from underground tanks located at each parking spot.

We could see the honor guard get out of their van and form a column of twos. As the Clipper came up to the blocks they came to attention. When the plane was finally chocked and the big cargo door was raised, they solemnly marched on both sides of the cargo elevator, stopped and were again called to attention and made turns to face the elevator. I wondered if they did this for every soldier killed in battle.

When I went on board I was horrified! I thought the honor guard was there for a single hero. The plane should have been called the Clipper Grim Reaper. The tail needed a skull and crossbones painted instead of the big blue ball. The whole freighter was filled with American flags draped over the coffins of dead American soldiers and Marines, 35 of them upstairs and another 8 in the bellies. I’m glad they showed proper respect for the dead and didn’t pile more coffins in a second tier, even though they would have easily fit.

The guards slowly raised their white gloved hands into a final salute, and held them up as each pallet of battle heroes was lowered to the ground by the airmen. I saluted too, with tears streaming down my face. Any one of them could have been me! I was a real wuss. So was the Pan Am relief Captain. The guard detail held it together though; they’d done this heart wrenching work before.

No news photographers were allowed to see the offload, no public record was made about the personal toll exacted on individual soldiers and their families. No wonder they took the camera from me. If the public saw this carnage, there’d be even more antiwar rioting in the streets. Planeloads of dead bodies! Every day? I saw them, and it is still hard for me to believe.

We finished up and the plane took off on its way back to the Nam at 4AM. I was either working or driving for the last 24 hours and was ready to collapse. The emotional strain from the arrival only made me feel worse. The muscles in my neck and back went into angry spasms. Before I left to find a motel room near the base, the technical sergeant handed me another telex. It looked exactly like the first one except for the date. I would be unloading another planeload of warrior corpses the next day.

I grabbed a room in a motel near the main gate, took four aspirins and a Valium that my doctor prescribed for this sort of severe stress and conked out for the next twelve hours, only to go back on the base and do it all over.

Robert Roth on the Fun of Flying

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Sunday, November 10, 2013

Thanksgiving Travel

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