April 2003 - Berlin Airlift

In January I had us flying in Oregon, in February Peter took us to Canada, in March Tony had us traipsing around Alaska…I’m glad that this FOTM Club has finally expanded out of North America! And I’m glad that we are all able to share in some of the personal (real-world and virtual) experiences of our fellow members. This bit of history has a place in my heart as well, first because I have the privilege of working closing with war veterans every day. I have heard the stories, I’ve looked into the eyes, and now, thanks to Hans’ suggestion for this month, I will be able to, sort of, share in the experiences of some of these men who flew decades ago. Secondly, I have walked these same roads, driven from “The West” into Berlin, “Crossed over”, into East Berlin…been through Checkpoint Charlie etc. Foremost in my mind is thankfulness that the great German Nation has been reunited, I’m so glad that the walls are gone!

But, let us not forget our history, for when we forget the past, we are more likely to commit the same errors again and again – and as far as I’m concerned, many of the politics of 1937-1991 are NOT worth repeating. So it is with memories and respect for the past that I, personally set out to complete this flight.

It is Tuesday, April 1st, 2003, and it is now 16:49 local time. The weather here in Germany is clear for the moment but rain is coming. I wander around my Douglas Dauntless Divebomber, again, waiting for this guy Hans who supposedly works just “over there” in those buildings. He was “supposed” to get out of his STUPID meeting at 16:30, said he’d “be right over” and had something he wanted to show me. “Something historical” he had said. I wondered if in the translation he had meant “Hysterical” and the joke was ME, standing around for an hour! Just the thing to happen on April 1st too, figures.

“Maybe he should just get his own plane.” I hear myself thinking, “Then he could fly whenever he wanted to, rather than making me wait here like this.” Well, I’ll be getting him back. I promised him a “two-seater” he just didn’t know that he’d be riding backwards in a World War 2-era Divebomber! (I went for Historical) I turn up the volume so I can hear a favorite tune from www.plr.org on the web. It is….about 2AM at home but frankly, I’m glad to be stretching my wings a little, venturing out, seeing the world, discovering new things. And I wondered again what this new thing Hans had was.

Finally Hans comes rushing up to the plane, sweating, smelling, and panting. “The crazy boss!” he exclaims breathlessly, “I thought the loon would never stop talking. ‘Blab, blab-blab, blabbidy, blab’. Oiy!” Hans not only had to sit in meetings all day, but he had then run over to the airport to meet up with me for this flight – of course, the guy never stretches [weblackey's note: Mr Blehm is a physical therapist in real life and clearly has an axe to grind here :-)] before he takes off running and…as much as he’ll never admit it, he is kind of a sedentary fellow, sitting at computers all day and then going home to create sceneries after work. (Sometimes he creates sceneries while AT work but don’t tell his wife!) This guy is a cardiac-event waiting to happen! So, I offer him a pasty and we set off.
“Where’s the 172?” he asks.
“You said, ‘Historical’”, I reply. “So I found this in my FS2000 hanger – she’s NIIIIICE.” ~See Screenshot One~

Since the real-world weather today had light winds out of the West we taxi and bump out to runway 25, set the ADF to 419 at Wunstorf and take-off. I climb up to 3,500 feet and set off toward a heading of 315°. Shortly Hans starts telling me to “Turn Left, Turn Left!” At first I wasn’t sure if he meant his left or the plane’s left. Then, “RIGHT, I meant right you idiot!” I thought that he had seen some traffic out there and he had…it was Astrid’s car heading home! We dropped down to barn-storming level and buzzed low over the sight of the Hannover Fair. “Torpedos AWAY!” I shout.
“WHAT?!?!”
“Sorry, wrong sim!”

A little dip of the left wing and we are cruising right over his house. “Ahhhhh,” Hans sighs, “I can almost smell the Sausage down there.”

“No my friend,” I answer, “When you bank this baby too sharp she throws up a little oil!”
“WHAT?!?!” Damned headphones. I roll onto the right wing ~See Screenshot Two~ and we continue on into Wunstorf, there at the shore of the Sea/Lake, and land at 17:20. ~See Screenshot Three~ After a bit of effort Hans is able to extricate himself from the back seat and leads me over to the venerable DC-4, which Tony has just finish painting, exquisitely, in FS Flight Club International Colors. “Ahhhhh, so this is your surprise Hans, Very Nice Indeed!”

We climb up to the cockpit and run through the checklists. While I’m trying to get this old bird to fire up, Hans is taking about family history and the Berlin Airlift of the late 1940’s – I wish I had the time to actually listen but I get the impression that this guy wants to GO SOMEWHERE. “So,” he continues on, “I thought you might like to fly that run with me tonight.”

“Woah, wait a minute buddy. You want ME to fly the Berlin Airlift run? AWESOME DUDE, LET’S GO!!” Kinda like all those enthusiastic pilots who volunteered for duty back then – fine upstanding young men. (Hans has given us a website with a ton of good history information and a couple of maps too.) Go to: http://www.billvons.com/bal/part1.htm

So, with daylight on the fade (it is now 6:00 PM) we taxi the old DC-4 out to runway 26 and take to the skies again, some high clouds are gathering from the West but they are no concern. I bank the plane out over the water and then to the East and head out toward the first NDB, which Hans reports is just over 40 miles away. Since we are heading eastwards I plan on climbing up to about 9,000 ft but as we pass 5,500 ft Mister “Right Seater” reminds me that we are cruising tonight at only 6,000 feet. (Backseat Driver!) Oh well. We cross BRU at 18:18 and turn slightly northward towards the next waypoint. “Push the nose, Pull the tail,” I remember that from Peter’s little tour up in the Canadian arctic – see, we can learn some things from this little FOTM Club. Sure enough we loose the NDBs but there is little wind up here so it’s smooth sailing. Another hint I learned from a real-world pilot is that if you watch your horizon more than your heading, it’s easier. Any little wind shifts will show up on your horizon and be corrected before you notice you’ve drifted 5° off your course! Eventually we pick up the next NDB, pointing to 095° and soon enough we start our descent. I’m asking, begging Hans to give me some information about this 27L approach and procedure turn but he is not being too helpful. Oh, how I miss those GPS-filled glass cockpits, NOT! Really, this is too much fun! I dial up 327 kHz and notice that the needle doesn’t move. I go back and forth a couple of times, finally convinced that the NDBs are aligned. I hold 2,500 ft, over the airport, until I cross DIP, turn left 45° and drop to 1,500 ft. After 1 minute 15 seconds I turn right onto downwind, go out three minutes and make the big right turn back into 27L. ~See Screenshot Four~ Probably should’ve flown a Left pattern not Right huh? This small lapse in judgment is only a small foreshadowing of things to come.

I drop in the flaps while Hans is calling out altitudes and airspeeds. Gear down and locked. No ILS tonight, we’re VFR and they didn’t have ILS in 1948 so…..”Daddy, can I do airplane game with you?”

“Hans?” I ask.
“Daddy?”
“HANS!?!”
“Dada…”

With my wife out running errands, I figured that I could get this April flight knocked out in one swoop – forgetting of course that I was at home with two little one’s. What could they be up to? Water spilling out of the tub; every toy in the house in the middle of the living room floor; dog shaved bald; walls painted a new color; could be anything, except that my wife has raised two excellent, very responsible and understanding kids. “Daddy, brother is coloring, can I help you do airplane game?”

“Yeah” I say, eagerly, allowing her to climb up onto my lap, “I’m about 3 minutes away from those white and red dots right there. We need to land right next to those”

So I take throttles and pitch while daughter takes bank/roll – she really can do an excellent job when she wants to be detailed about these things. I’m swelling with pride….”Daddy, how come those red and white dots are all white now?”

“Oh, cause sometimes they change colors for no reason.” Then I chop the throttles only to discover that this old DC-4 glides very nicely at 120 knots. Funny, I hadn’t noticed that before.

“Daddy, what do those lines mean?” “Those lines, which are going directly under our plane, mean that you can fly just like Bill Smith in Australia!” (Will he EVER live down that January comment? Not likely!)

“Daddy, why are those numbers on that road upside-down?”
“Well, that means that we have just flown over the airport about as high as our house, and still haven’t landed.” IAS 90 now but there’s nothing to land on but grass. I advance the throttles, pull up the gear and flaps and dial up 347 on the ADF. It is 18:54 local time. I land back at Wunstorf at 19:32 and the light rain had started – screenshot was too dark.

The next day I get up before dawn. Hans went home to sleep in his own bed, leaving me atop the boxes in the DC-4’s cargo hold. “German hospitality!” I climb back into the cockpit and fire up the four radial engines. A quick lap around the plane in a very cold rain assures that everything is still in working order. I taxi out about 6:20 AM, set the NDBs, again and depart runway 26, turning eastward and flying back to Berlin.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2-fpbBC0MBE

This time I fly a Left pattern over the DIP NDB and set up for landing on runway 27L ~See Screenshot Five~ I have to crab very slightly for the winds out of 282° this AM, a more ugly day than the 1st but landing this time is no problem ~See Screenshot Six~ I taxi over to the terminal and shut down at 7:45 AM.

After breakfast I figure I’ll try the little helicopter leg over the Brandenburg gate. Now, I have no idea how some in this club have learned to fly Helo’s with just the keypad ‘cause I have NEVER managed to get any helicopter into the air. Jetranger, Huey, Dauphin and this newest, “easy to fly” addition from Vladimir Zhyhulskiy all have ended in the same smoking fate….sorry guys, just can’t do it. ~ See Screenshot Seven for one of the more mellow crashes~ I guess I was never destined to be a Rotor-Head.

With set-up time, a couple tries getting this thing going and then muffing the first landing I feel like this FOTM is taking far too much time out of the real world (certainly I over-react, 10 days to fly this is not unreasonable!) so I figure I’ll find a new way to get to the Brandenburg Gate! Now this beaut’ is something I can fly! ~See Screenshot Eight~

Hans, I’m glad that you have shared this part of your life with us all. The flight was nice, the NDB-only part, added a real challenge and the lack of a Go Around? Well, that sucked but it’s not your fault I couldn’t land.