TRUE STORIES

True story from the 1976 Olympics.. On the night shift at the Transportation Control Centre, one of my duties was to monitor all radio dispatched vehicles that were used to ferry atheletes, officials, and VIPs around Montreal. If a vehicle became involved in any type of accident, the driver was required to contact the Control Centre immediately with the details. The code word we used for accident/collision was "bingo". One night a young driver contacted me and said, "Sir, I have had a bingo", so I replied "Was that a small bingo or a large bingo", he said, "Sir, it was a jackpot". Turns out he wrapped a brand new chevy caprice around a light standard while driving downtown. It was a write-off. Speaking of accidents, on a night off a couple of us were attempting to drink all the beer in Montreal. When we decided we had had enough, we hailed a cab to take us back to barracks. Particularly tipsey, I immediately fell into the back seat and went to sleep. While travelling through a rather seedy part of town, a car coming down a cross street ran a red light and broadsided us. When I woke up on the floor in the back I was covered with broken glass and thick warm liquid. I thought at the time that I had bought the farm. Three very large persons with many tattoos holding cue sticks came racing out of the corner pool hall to assist us. When I egressed the vehicle staggering and moaning, they began laughing uncontrollably. Why, I thought was the site of a mortally injured person so humorous. I sobbered up rather quickly then and realized that although there was considerable damage to the vehicles, no one was hurt. I was sitting on the curb dazed with a quart of motor oil that was in the back of the cab dripping off me. No blood, no cuts, no broken bones, just a very large hangover in the morning.

That brings to mind a story. In 1982, when I was aircrew on the CC137 boeing, we had a hairy type of landing at Trenton. I apologize if I've told you this one before but as they say, the memory is the second thing to go... can't remember what the first is.

Anyway, we were on final approach to the airfield with 170 passengers onboard. Weather was nice and CAVOK. Suddenly the aircraft lost all hydraulic pressure. The pilot could still maintain control in-flight with "armstrong" steering. But landing the beast was going to be another kettle of fish.

Fortunately, there is manual crank down backup to get the landing gear down. After about 10 minutes of hard cranking we managed to get a 3 green indication that the gear was down and locked. That was the easy part.

With no hydraulic pressure there is no way to manually steer the plane on the ground below V1. In addition the manual breaks are hyraulically assisted. It was therefore necessary for the pilot to be perfectly lined up with the runway centre line and bring the aircraft to a stop ASAP after touchdown. Needless to say the pilot performed this manouver flawlessly. On touchdown, he immediately got the plane as strait as possible using flaps & aelerons then put the engines into full reverse and stood on the brakes. After the shortest landing roll in history, passengers and crew disembarked with only a severe case of caa-caa pants. As they say, " Any landing you can walk away from is a good one."

... Eagles may fly but weasels aren't sucked into jets