My Best C-133A Trip

Countdown to R-Day: 7 Days!!!

George Stoner has provided a great write up (with photos) of his "Best Trip" in February, 1971, the last year of 133 operations. It's in the form of a 13 page Word document which I am forwarding as an attachment to an e-mail distributed to our list of Crew Colleagues. It's not practical to post the entire story on this blog, so I'm just copying the first few paragraphs here.

Enjoy, relate, and remember!

Thank you George!! We'll miss you next week in Dover!!

My Best C-133A Trip

1971 would see the end of a great career for the C-133A. I had joined the 1^st MAS at Dover AFB, Delaware in 1965 when the fleet was grounded. I took my first flight as Navigator in May. The mission went to Southeast Asia and lasted six weeks. We would return home for three days crew rest and begin the cycle over again. This was how it went during the Vietnam War. Out of those 6 years, I was out of the CONUS, 5 years, 7 months and 9 days, all TDY. I had also earned the 5000 hour flying pin.

Flying in a C-133 is an experience few people can appreciate. As crew members in C133 aircraft, we flew all around the world to many exotic places. One of the things that made the C-133 interesting was the fact that we, typically, only flew one leg a day. This meant that many times, after eight hours of flying, we were done. Of course this wasn’t always true, when we flew in the Pacific there were many 24-hour crew duty days. We found ourselves with an augmented crew and very long days with multiple stops. What the crews look forward to most was going somewhere they hadn’t seen before. During my flying in the C-133, we went most of the major places in the world taking outsized cargo of one kind or another. We would fly both east and west out of Dover Air Force Base in Delaware. The C-133 was unique in that the greater part of its life span covered the Vietnam War. From the time in the early 1960’s when Vietnam was building, until the aircraft’s decommissioning in late 1971, we were taking many supply flights into Thailand and Vietnam. Our normal schedule from Dover AFB was to fly to Travis AFB, CA. through the Pacific into Vietnam or Thailand and return to Travis AFB. There we would be turned back to the Pacific and repeat the roundtrip over again. It was the rare occasion that we would fly east over the Atlantic Ocean and have a trip to Europe. These were always exciting and interesting because, typically, they did not go to places that we normally flew.

Such was the case in February of 1971. What started out to be an interesting but routine mission turned into one of the memorable flights of my entire career. The mission seemed simple enough, we were to fly two communications vans into Asmara, Ethiopia. The flight was to take us across the Atlantic into the Azores, where we would refuel and crew rest. The next leg took this into Torrejon AFB, Madrid, Spain. We always looked forward to going to Madrid because of the wonderful restaurants and great shopping. When we went to Madrid we only stayed for crew rest and left immediately after 12 hours on the ground. On this occasion, we would stay in Madrid while diplomatic clearance was being arranged for us to fly on through Saudi Arabia. This meant a 24-hour layover instead of our normal 12 and 3. Now there was time to go to the Plaza d’Mayor and sample suckling pig at Earnest Hemingway’s favorite restaurant.

At home, the living rooms of most MAC fliers were festooned with a combination of articles brought back from all around the world. There were ceramic elephants from India and Thailand. There were Hibachi Pots from Japan and all manner of furniture from the Philippines. Anything that would fit on a C-133 on our return trips, when we were empty of cargo, was permitted to be brought back. Usually the results were only limited by the willingness of your fellow crew members to on-load and off-load the shopping articles at each interim crew rest point. So on this particular flight, in February of 1971, landing at Madrid at Torrejon Air Force Base presented a myriad of shopping opportunities. For those who enjoyed the Spanish wines, many inexpensive high quality wines were available at the Class VI store. There was Spanish art work and many of us brought that back. Much of the art was oil on canvas, but the regular assortment of nudes painted on black velvet abounded. On this trip the officers club was having a huge art show. On display were artists from all over the area. As we came in the door, one particular piece attracted my attention - it was a 36” x 24”piece of junk art. The artist Vincent Hayden, was doing a whole series of artwork based on vintage American and European cars. Most of them were in a 12” x 8” format. The particular one that I looked at was a vintage 1860’s steam locomotive. It was made up of a thousand pieces of everything from thimbles, to garter clips, to flashlight lantern housings, to wheel weights, to lamp bases. They were put all put together to form one of the most interesting and eye-catching pieces of art that I’ve ever seen. I ask him the price for the piece and was reluctantly told it was the model for a piece that he had done for the American Museum of Modern Art in New York City and was not for sale. The museum piece had all the pieces gold plated and was on display in New York that very day. We went into the club to eat and after came back out and talked with him again.

George Stoner, LTC, U.S.A.F Retired

C-133A Navigator (1965 - 1971)

(Continued with photos as a Word attachment to our e-mail list)

Call for "Crew Tales"

As Cal Taylor requested in the previous post, we're encouraging you to do a little digging: Basement, Garage, Attic? As we approach our Reunions (both Dover and Travis) in May, we'd like to get your stories and/or memorabilia on your years in the C-133!

Flight logs are great reminders. Where did you go? For what purpose? When? In what airplane? Who were your crew-mates? What stories do you recall? Especially trips in 61999!

The guys in Travis would like to build a record of their museum airplane. And Cal Taylor's asking them to do the same for us about 90536. But don't stop there! Tell us any of those stories we can all share (you'll need to copy-and-paste the addresses into an e-mail).

Send them to me, Dick Hanson @ rehanson342@me.com

Copy our AMC Archivist, Harry Heist @ archivistamcm@comcast.net

And Terry Juran, Museum Director @ Travis @ Terry.Juran@travis.af.mil

And thanks to Dick Strouse, look what he found in his attic (sorry about the fine print; I know you can't read it; I'm sending it to our e-mail list so you can read the story):

"Hello, I was up in the attic looking for picture's for my 50th high school reunion this year and I came across this old MAC Flyer. I made copies of the C-133 story. Hope everyone enjoys. See you in May".......Dick Strouse

U-2 Deadstick Landing

Thanks to Ted Feindt for the following link to an AMAZING story:

Click on: Cortez Aviation Heritage Celebration

Remember our story about how flying the C-133 consisted of hours and hours of sheer boredom, interrupted by moments of stark terror? This guy's stark terror lasts quite a few moments! The video starts out pretty slow, but you need to hear the story. It's worth it!

"True Survivor" Colleague

The following three e-mails were just received by our Book of the Month Reviewer, Rick Spencer (39th ATS Navigator, '62-'65) from Bill Neely (40th ATS C-124s & 1607th Flightline Maintenance Squadron, consolidated maintenance, '55-'58, when the 39th was converting from C-54s to the brand new 133s). So Bill was in Dover when C-133 #54-0146 "augered in, inverted" in Georgetown, DE, with 4 fatalities. Here's his story:

17 Aug 2008

Hi Rick:
You probably don't remember me but I'm one of your high school classmates.
I spent nearly all my adult life in aviation as a mechanic and pilot. Also did about 20 years of skydiving and parachute rigging as a hobby.
I retired from the FAA in 1997.
I was talking to an old friend the other day who was in the Air Force when I was and we were discussing the various types of aircraft when we were on active duty.
I was at Dover AFB from 1955 through 1958. I was in a C-124 outfit as a mechanic and later a crew chief (started in the old 40th Air Transport Squadron-MATS).
There was also a C-54 squadron there.
About 2 years before I was discharged (maybe less) the new C-133's were assigned to Dover to replace the C-54's. While I was there they had the first (I think) fatal accident with the C-133.
A civilian C-46 (Logair) pilot supposedly saw the aircraft on it's back falling out of control.
I never did hear an official answer as to what happened. I think there was a rumor that the props may have reversed in flight.
One of our hangars was used to reconstruct the airplane wreckage.
As I recall the aircraft were grounded and I don't remember if they got back flying or not before I left Dover.
I was wondering if you could point me towards a web site that may have accident information on the C-133.
During my nearly 30 years with FAA I participated in numerous civilian aircraft accidents, but never got involved with any military investigations.
Since I survived many hours in "Old Shaky" and you did likewise in the C-133, we can be termed "True Survivors".
Thank you in advance for any information you may provide.
Stay safe.

Bill Neely



Rick;
I found a brief description of the accident I inquired about.
It occurred 13 April 1958 about 8 months prior to my leaving Dover.
Crashed inverted about 17 mins after takeoff @ Georgetown, Delaware.
4 fatalities. Not much info.
That may be all that's available.



Thanks Rick:
That's the web-site that I had book marked from your message to Mitch quite awhile back.The accident I'd mentioned was the first fatal accident with the C-133. A probable cause was never determined. Most of the accidents with that aircraft went in the "undetermined" category. From what I found on various web-sites only one accident had survivors.
You are probably familiar with the various sites. They all have good info and many photos.
When I was at Dover the 39th was the C-54 squadron. As I mentioned, I was in the 40th. Later we became the 1607th Flightline Maintenance Squadron (consolidated maintenance).
Shortly before I was discharged we got a new assistant crew chief named Robinson. He had been a flight engineer on C-124's and got tired of box lunches and living out of a B-4 bag. He was one of my bosses those last few months of active duty.
Many years later he showed up at my FAA office in Columbia, South Carolina to get authorization to take the examinations for his civilian mechanic's license. He retired from Charleston AFB (troop carrier outfit). He was a civilian Fixed Base Operator in the Charleston area until he finally retired for good. I hear from him every now and then. Small world - huh? When I left the Air Force I never thought I'd see any of those guys again.
I met a lot of old C-124 guys in the FAA. Also at Charleston AFB civilian aero-club.
When I came to South Carolina in 1975 there was an aircraft museum in Florence, SC. It was out in the open along the highway beside the Florence airport. In it was 52-1074. A C-124 from Dover. The owner of the place either died or went broke and the airplanes disappeared. It turns out that my friend Robinson and some other retired C-124 guys got the airplane patched up enough for a ferry flight to Charleston AFB. The airplane is on display inside the main gate of the base.
Robinson told me the ferry flight was quite an adventure. The fabric covered control surfaces were patched up with duct tape. There were fuel leaks everywhere and not many of the instruments worked. About 10 minutes out of CAFB the duct tape on one elevator came loose and set up a lot of vibration. Anyway they made it safely and the airplane is on display. Looked pretty good to me the last time I saw it. The crew chief on it when at Dover was a good friend of mine from Florida.
Once again, thank you for the information. It's good to hear from you. I look forward to the updates from Mitch. That's a nice thing he's doing for all us old farts. Later.

Bill

Ed Elias, 1972 POW

Some of you may remember Ed when he was a Navigator in the 39th ATS in the early 60s. This is the bizarre story of his POW experience in 1972:

ELIAS, EDWARD KNIGHT

Name: Edward Knight Elias
Rank/Branch: 04/US Air Force
Unit:
Date of Birth:
Home City of Record:
Date of Loss: 20 April 1972
Country of Loss: North Vietnam
Loss Coordinates: 172400N 1063400E
Status (in 1973): Released POW
Category:
Aircraft: RF4C

Other Personnel in Incident: None missing

Source: Compiled by P.O.W. NETWORK 06 September 1996 from one or more of the following: Raw data from U.S. Government agency sources, correspondence with POW/MIA families, published sources, interviews.

REMARKS: Released Hanoi 720925

VIETNAM [magazine]: June 1996

PERSONALITY:

In a bizarre incident, Air Force POW Ed Elias was freed through the
propaganda efforts of American collaborators.

By Carole Hack

Major Ed Elias was captured three days after he and his backseater ejected from their burning McDonnell F-4C fighter over North Vietnam. Although Elias evaded one surface-to-air missile (SAM), a second hit them.

Elias saw no one the first day. The second day, searchers came very close to him. On the third day, he decidded to leave his secure hiding place and move across the river, to get away from the populated area and establish communications. He was captured near the river later that afternoon by North Vietnamese Army (NVA) troops. "If you're going to be captured," Elias said, "you're better off with regular army that understands the importance of an American prisoner."

After the NVA soldiers stripped and searched him, they gave him back his flight suit, but not his boots. They marched Elias out with tied wrists. After they were out of the jungle, they blindfolded him. He lay down in a truck and rode about 30 minutes to a holding area, where they interrogated him.

At one place, the captors stopped and displayed their prisoner to the local people. Some of the locals poked at him with sticks. One guard tried to push them away, but they persisted. To Elias' relief the soldiers reappeared and left with him in tow.

At one point on the journey, Elias' captors stopped on the road and told him to dig a hole. A car pulled up bearing an officer and a civilian with a camera, who took a picture of Elias. The photo was later published in a newspaper with a caption saying this was an American digging a foxhole to protect himself from American bombing attacks. Elias was told he was digging his own grave.

His guards were singing Ho Chi Minh songs and Hanoi was ablaze with lights as Elias entered the city in the evening, 3 1/2 days after his capture. That was a low point for him. He could not believe the city was lit up, rather than hiding in fearful darkness.

Elias was taken to Hao Lao, the old French prison known to its inhabitants as the "Hanoi Hilton." First stop was "New Guy City."

The people most likely to have current military information were "the new guys," the new prisoners, said Elias. The American military knew U.S. fliers could be shot down, so they changed military information all the time. While new prisoners were subjected to intense interrogation, the captors eventually moved on to things that could be used for propaganda purposes.

For the first week, Elias was interrogated day and night. They tied him up, threatened him, said they would release evidence to show he had been killed, kept him awake, and generally wore down his endurance. Since his capture, he had been interrogated by Russians, Eastern Europeans, a Cuban, and a Vietnamese with a French accent.

New Guy City was all solitary confinement. Elias was first confined to a big room, about 20 by 20 feet. On the high ceiling was a loudspeaker and a light that was always on. The walls were plaster over lath. The floors were stone. In the center was a concrete pedestal two feet off the floor that served as a bed. There was a door with bars on the window. After a week, Elias' captors left him alone for awhile. He was then moved to a smaller room in New Guy City. After four months, he was taken to another camp, name CuLoc, "The Zoo." It was a former French movie studio converted to a prison. There, rooms were about 10 by 5 feet with a concrete pedestal in the middle and a bamboo mat. A mosquito net was a welcome addition because it protected him from rats as well as from mosquitos.

Prisoners at the Zoo were fed twice a day. In the morning they got a cup of powdered milk and a piece of bread. The bread was dotted with pink spots, with a weevil in the center of each pink spot. Some prisoners picked out the weeils, but Elias ate the bread, weevels and all, because it supplied more protein. The second meal was served around 4 p.m. It was soup made from local vegetables in season. This could be turnip greens, pumpkins, potatoes, or squash. Sometimes there was pig fat in it, with the hair still on the skin side of the pig.

The prisoners wore clothing that was either maroon or gray striped. Shoes were thong sandals made from old tires. Toilet facilities were a bucket. The sandals could be set on the rim to serve as a seat.

Although the prisoners could not see one another, their routines were such that when one prisoner was led off to a weekly four-minute bath at a well, another prisoner would empty the absent prisoner's bucketl. Sometimes this routine offered an opportunity to leave a message scratched on a piece of soap or paper. The prisoners called them "drops."

Another form of communication was tap code. Prisoners memorized the alphabet in the form of a grid, with each letter having a number equivalent that was determined by its position on the grid. Then they tapped out a message. The Vietnamese knew the code too, but they couldn't have someone listening in every cell all the time.

The best time to communicate was in the midst of confusion. The guards were frightened by bombing raids and would hide until the all-clear. During such times, the prisoners would yell to one another.

Elias kept his eye on the piece of sky in his window at The Zoo. One dahy he saw an airplane shot down. He established the date. (Guards who spoke English were willing to tell prisoners the date.) Years later, he learned the downed pilot had escaped. Unless another pilot was shot down on the same date, the pilot was Bud Breckner, who later would be Elias' wing commander at Williams Air Force Base.

One day Elias was blindfolded and put in a vehicle with another blindfolded American, Jim Padgett. They were taken into a room and seated at a table; their blindfolds removed. They saw five or six other prisoners sitting there, Minutes later, in walked Jane Fonda.

She talked 30 to 45 minutes about why she came to North Vietnam. She stood in front of the men and lectured them about committing genocide, destroying civilian targets and committing other atrocities. Fonda said she would be broadcasting a message asking their fellow American fliers to refuse to fly sorties against North Vietnam. She dwelt on how much the people of the United States were against the war.

Later, Elias listened to what he thinks was a tape of the same speech broadcast over the loudspeaker in his cell.

Elias was not taken to hear former Attorney General Ramsey Clark speak, but once again tapes were played over the loudspeaker in his cell. Clark said how wrong the United States' actions were in the eyes of international law.

Those experiences were a low point in Elias' entire POW experience. He threw his sandals at the loudspeaker again and again in his cage.

"We were really pumped up for the cause," he recalled. "We wanted South Vietnam to have the right to be free. Here these Americans were coming over and telling us we were criminals."

One night someone came to Elias' cell and told him to put on his clothes and come along. Elias was taken to the interrogation room, where another man was sitting. "Some Americans are coming to see us," the man said. After the two men had sat there for a long time, an interrogator, who had been nicknamed "the Weasel" while at the Hanoi Hilton, appeared. He told them, "In honor of [some Vietnam holiday] and the benevolence and memory of our beloved president and the goodwill of the American people, we are going to release some prisoners." After that, Elias was returned to his cell. He was called back again the next day, and the release progressed from there.

The actual circumstances of Elias' release were a mystery to him at the time. The people who came to release him referred to themselves as "the Coalition." They included Cora Weis of the Faberge' family; David Dellinger of the Chicago Seven; William Sloan Coffin, a Yale University chaplain; and Professosr Richard Falk. They were accompanied by NBC correspondent John Hart and Associated Press correspondent Peter Arnett. Elias says the whole thing was a propaganda effort to show that the Coalition could deal with the North Vietnamese government and the American government could not.

"I didn't know who these people were," he said. "I only knew I wanted to get back to the military." When he learned the Coalition was intent on preventing the military from "capturing" him, he got up from their table and left the room. A North Vietnamese political officer stopped him and said, "That is not intelligent."

Elias and the Coalition flew from Hanoi to Beijing. Arnett had given Elias the telephone number of the satellite communication system that President Richard Nixon had used on his recent trip to China. When Elias walked into his hotel room, he picked up the telephone and dialed that number. A switch operator picked up the call in New York and passed it through to Elias' wife in Valdosta, Ga. "We talked no more than two minutes," Elias said. "no one eger knew except Peter Arnett, who was in the room when I called."

From Beijing the group flew to Moscow where Adolph "Spike" Dubbs was the American charge'd'affaires. Elias said, "He was wonderful." After a conversation with Dubbs, Elias decided to be quiet. The group flew fromm Moscow to Copenhagen and then on to New York, where Elias was finally reunited with his wife and family.

[Disributed through P.O.W. NETWORK]

Classic 133 "War Story"

Ted Feindt, who provided a photo from Nord in an earlier Post (click on "A New/Old Connection" in the Archive at the right), when challenged, has provided proof that it was May, 1964 with the following copy of the official Flight Order (yes, you were "anal" Ted). Ted's story of the "unauthorized air drop" is one of those cherished memories!! Let's have some more!

Dick, in response to Marion Johnson's comment to you that the Thule - Nord shuttles were flown later in the summer, be advised that the photo of Maj. Alex Witmer and myself was, in fact, taken at Nord sometime between 20 May and 28 May 1964. I've forwarded to you via email a copy of the 1st ATS flight order for that mission. Please post the order on the blog (I have copies of flight orders for EVERY mission that I flew while assigned to the 1st ATS each annotated with the actual itinerary - Okay, I was a little anal!). I recall that we also made an "unauthorized" airdrop on that mission. We purloined a condemed parachute from the Thule crew survival shop and attached a package with cans of fruit juice and frozen fish for the men and dogs, respectively, of a Danish expedition out on the north coast of Greenland west of Nord. On our next flight to Nord from Thule, we skillfully located the expedition in a fjord and using my best CARP computation, we dropped the chute and package. At this point we became aware of the fact that it was the practice at that time to CUT the shroud lines on condemed chutes. The package reached the ground significantly before the chute while still accelerating. Boy, were we embarassed! None of the cans of juice survived the drop, but, we were told that the dogs enjoyed the fish.
June 27, 2007 9:30 PM

A New/Old Connection

Thanks for the Comment, Ted Feindt, Navigator, 1st ATS, early 60s! . And thanks for the great photo of you and our boss, Major Alex Witmer, up at Station Nord in May, 1964. AWESOME!

I sure remember those shuttles from Thule in the summer, landing on the ice, hauling supplies to the Danish weather station. Those Danes were thrilled to get rides back to "civilization" at Thule for R&R!! I also Googled your name, and got the photo you posted on the Aviation Enthusiast Corner website....ol' 71612 up at Station Nord. Then I found by clicking on that photo, it brought up the airplane specs and more photos.

I'll add your e-mail address to the list we're building and keep you in touch. Sorry we weren't connected in time to see you at the reunion......definitely plan on the next one!! Put this blog address on your Favorites list and check back periodically for new posts.