Flying On Instinct Page 3
Bush planes were, and still are, equipped with floats, skids, skis or tires (and the ability to switch as conditions change) depending on the intended route. They must have short takeoff and landing capability (STOL), which is defined as the ability to take off and clear a 50-foot (15-metre) obstruction in a distance of 1,500 feet (457 metres) from beginning the takeoff run, plus the ability to stop within 1,500 feet after crossing a 50-foot obstacle on landing. There is no margin for error in clearing trees on takeoff or avoiding the shoreline on landing.
Typically, bush-plane wings are on top of the fuselage to prevent them from hitting the lumps, bumps and bushes in the landing area. The undercarriage, or landing gear, supports the aircraft on the ground and is of two main types. Conventional or taildragger undercarriages are configured with two wheels toward the front and a single, smaller wheel or skid at the rear. Tricycle or nose-wheel undercarriages have two main wheels under the wings and a third smaller wheel under the nose.
In early aviation, the taildragger arrangement was preferred since it allowed greater propeller ground clearance to avoid hitting rocks and deadheads (submerged tree stumps or trunks); however, it required greater pilot skill to land and take off because any deviation from a straight trajectory amplified drag and could make the aircraft unstable since the main wheels were forward of the plane’s centre of gravity. The tricycle arrangement had tail-strike problems (the plane’s rear end would hit the runway) if the pilot pulled up too quickly or raised the nose too sharply during landing. In the case of a taildragger undercarriage, the tail was already on the ground with a wheel or skid underneath. In the tradeoff that is bush flying, the taildragger aircraft has better aeronautic ability, but the tricycle type can land almost anywhere if equipped with oversized tires. The skill of the pilot was, and is, the most important factor in flying either type of aircraft.
Bush flying was hard physical labour, too. After putting down in a remote location, the pilot had to unload the plane, usually by himself. The ground was rough and rock-strewn, or spongy muskeg and muck. If a pilot was lucky, when he landed on water he could pull up to a dock, but often he had to wade into the water, pull the cargo out piece by piece, carry it to shore and then scramble up an embankment through thick underbrush to high ground.
The early planes used for bush flying were adapted from military uses and not specifically designed for ferrying freight in the Far North. However, the post–First World War slump in military aircraft sales motivated manufacturers to look at new designs and new markets. Bush planes were a profitable niche. British, American, European and Canadian designs took to life in northern skies. Names like Bellanca, de Havilland, Fairchild, Junkers, Norseman, Stinson and Vickers became recognizable names in bush flying. Ironically, veterans of the First World War who turned to bush flying in civilian life were confronted with a descendant of their nemesis—the Red Baron’s Fokker Dr.1 triplane—when the Fokker Universal and later the Super Universal became popular bush planes.
The Junkers Flugzeug- und Motorenwerke AG (JFM), commonly known as Junkers, was a major German aircraft manufacturer that pioneered all-metal aircraft also used in bush flying. Its model Junkers W33 was a single-engine transport aircraft, aerodynamically advanced for the 1920s, a low-wing, all-metal cantilever monoplane. It holds a place in aviation history for making the first east-west, non-stop, heavier-than-air crossing of the Atlantic. The Junkers W34 was developed from the W33 and carried a pilot and five passengers or their equivalent weight in cargo. The Junkers were nicknamed “flying boxcars” because they were capable of delivering large loads inside their square fuselage. And the low-wing design was a welcome safety feature for pilots landing on thin ice. If the skis broke through, the broad wings kept the passenger and cargo compartment up out of the water, at least for a while.
The small used planes that flew in the North went through many crashes, hard landings and makeshift mends; one pilot referred to his craft as little more than “a collection of spare parts.” Those parts had to hang together over huge uninhabited areas. Despite these significant equipment problems, the greatest challenge to the early airborne surveyor, fire spotter or photographer was the immense size of the country. Even by the start of the Second World War in 1939, large tracts north of the 57th parallel (roughly on a horizontal line above current day Fort McMurray, Alberta) were still unmapped. In 1920, the new Canadian Air Force (the Royal label was added in 1924, removed in 1968 and reapplied in 2011) was tasked with surveying Canada by air. It was to be a straightforward operation: fly a continuous line, without deviation, back and forth over unmapped areas while a photographer busily took multiple overlapping photos that would be pieced together in a topographical map by cartographers. But the project did not go smoothly. Minor turbulence caused the early light planes to bump around, and variations in altitude distorted the map scale, making ponds and ridges smaller or bigger as the plane moved up or down. The mere dip of a wing shifted the scale sideways. Clouds blocked visibility and eliminated great swaths of territory below. It was said of the eventual result that “the only good thing about those charts was the price—25 cents.”
No obstacle was more irritating to early Canadian bush pilots than freezing temperatures. Winter flying required patience and perseverance. Parked outside in sub-zero weather, everything froze solid. At -40°F/C this happened in less than an hour. It was the job of the flight engineer, or the pilot if he was flying alone, to prep the radial internal combustion engine for shutdown and start-up. Every night the oil was drained into buckets and brought into the cabin or tent, and if possible, the engine was covered by a canvas tarp draped over the nose and propeller as slight protection from the biting wind and snow. The next morning, they set to work in the pre-dawn darkness, because pilots wanted to lift off at sunrise to maximize daylight flying hours. The oil was warmed in a double boiler to prevent scorching (which ruined its lubrication ability) on a wood stove or fire right along with breakfast. While this was underway, the engine was prepped by warming with a kerosene heater called a blow pot for at least an hour. (Blow pots were originally designed for melting lead used by plumbers working with metal pipes before plastic pipes were readily available.) The thinned oil was carefully poured back into the warmed engine, which the pilot prepared to start. If it did not turn over, the problem had to be found and corrected before everything froze solid again. If a pilot failed to follow the warming routine, he went nowhere. A frozen engine was dead, and encouraging it back to life was slow, dangerous labour. The air reeked of gas fumes as the blow pot roared into action, and without careful attention, it could set the entire wood and fabric plane on fire. More than one blow-pot blow-up grounded pilot and passengers—and incinerated the cargo. If that happened, the best hope was that someone would see the smoke from the manmade torch and fly in for a rescue. Otherwise it was a long walk to civilization or a long wait until spring thaw. After use, the blow pot was stowed in the tail section of the plane, ready for the next night.
By the late 1930s, the US Air Force began to thin circulating oil with gasoline in order to get northern fighter aircraft airborne faster without preheating engines and oil. Canadian Airways of Winnipeg had a winter fleet of 40 aircraft, and its president, James Richardson, authorized a trial installation. If the new technique worked, the cost savings and safety benefits would be huge. It did work, but single-plane operators continued to use the blow pot at northern locations.
A large part of the time spent bush flying went to preparing the plane for flight, rounding up the passengers and loading and securing the cargo. Even then, things could go wrong. Sometimes a plane’s skis were frozen to the ground. One approach to freeing them was to rev the engine at full tilt while your helpful engineer, a passenger or a local resident grabbed the plane’s tail, bounced it up and down and shook it from side to side. While doing this, the helper was being blasted by pieces of ice thrown back at high velocity in the propeller slipstream. That was if a pilot was lucky enough to have a helping hand;
if he didn’t have a human agitator, he could try jumping on the skis to loosen the icy grip or pour warm water over them. Leftover breakfast coffee might do the trick or maybe peeing on them would help.
Winter was not the only season fraught with challenges. In summer, fog or rain could sweep in quickly, and pilots had to decide whether to drop down so they could still see ground markers, risking a crash, or climb higher but lose visibility and risk becoming lost. Even the finest flying weather could be dangerous. Mirror-smooth lake water perfectly reflects the sky and causes pilots to become disoriented, unable to determine how high they are above the lake’s surface. The calm conditions known as glassy water are the most deceptive phenomenon known to the float pilot and make it difficult to judge the final few feet. Landings take a considerable distance, so the worst-case scenario is a heavily loaded aircraft landing on a short lake in glassy conditions. A glassy water takeoff can be equally unnerving, as the surface of the water is very hard to discern. A fixed reference point like a rocky outcrop, point or dock helps in calculating distance.
Spring and fall, the “changeover” seasons when ice was melting or water was freezing, were also dangerous. Bush pilots had to guess whether they needed wheels, floats or skis, and what was needed for takeoff was often not appropriate when and where they landed. Granular old snow called firn tended to suddenly break under pressure and grab sinking skis. New snow drifted and hid obstacles like rocks, fallen trees and stumps. Either situation could cause a nasty crash. Pilots who survived a crash were faced with the challenge of repairing their plane thousands of miles from help. Fortitude and ingenuity were all that mattered.
In the mid-1920s, two pilots with Canadian Airways broke a propeller blade during a hard landing on crusted snow at Fort Smith, Northwest Territories. The closest replacement was in Buffalo, New York. No problem. They bought a wooden sled and a moose hide from Natives and set to work using basic items from the small onboard tool kit. With a knife, they shaved strips of hardwood off the sled then boiled up bits of hide in water until all that remained was a gelatinous glue that would stick the wood strips together. Using small files and eyeballing the dimensions, they crafted a handmade prop that got them back to base in Fort McMurray, Alberta. Flying home was the easy part.
When not flying, pilots were known to party hearty, especially during long winter nights when fewer flights were scheduled. In one 1925 incident at the Boiler Room Bar in Sault Ste. Marie in northwestern Ontario, a mock trial was staged when a young pilot was accused of wearing his flight suit, leather helmet and goggles into the bar with the sole intent of impressing the ladies and “attracting advances by the fair sex.” The accused explained to the moot judge and jury, composed of fellow pilots who were sitting in judgment on his crime, that he had done so simply to keep warm and that alcohol had not been involved in his sartorial choice that night. In fact, he said, he had consumed alcohol only once in his entire life and had never been drunk. The entire barroom-cum-courtroom was filled with jeers and shouts of “That’s what’s wrong with him!” Following the obvious verdict of guilty, the judge delivered his horrible sentence: barred from the bar for two weeks. Then everyone lifted a glass or more of distilled beverage to toast the swift application of frontier justice.
CHAPTER
4
Airborne Exploration
THE GREAT AGE OF BUSH FLYING and aerial exploration in Canada coincided with the launch of the Fairchild FC-1 all-purpose aircraft. Before starting production, the manufacturer in Long Island, New York, had asked bush pilots what characteristics they wanted in the planes they flew, then incorporated those recommendations into the first models. Pilots wanted a high-wing monoplane so they could easily see the ground. They also wanted an air-cooled radial engine to eliminate the irritating cold-weather problems caused by the liquid-cooled engines in the many war-surplus planes that were still in use. But most of all they wanted an enclosed, heated cockpit and cabin. And so in 1927 the purpose-built FC was born: F for Fairchild and C for closed. It featured fabric-covered metal-tube construction for ease of repair and innovative hinges at the base of the wings so they could be folded for storage. The Fairchild could be outfitted with wheels, floats or skis for year-round flying. It was smaller, faster and easier to fly than the open cockpit Fokker but carried an equal payload. In short, the Fairchild was ideal for bush flying and its design features were much copied by other manufacturers.
Exploration and development were the catalysts for flights into the West and North. Small bush planes took mere hours to travel to and from remote communities that previously had been accessible only by foot, horse, boat or sled. Pilots developed their own flying techniques to land on sandbars, Arctic ice floes and rocky Barrens. They became a vital part of everyday life and transformed the expectations of northerners in the 20th century. It was possible to charter an aircraft and fly almost anywhere. Air transport became affordable to trappers and missionaries, geologists and surveyors. The ill and the injured could be evacuated quickly for medical attention. Bush flying in support of mining operations even continued through the Great Depression of the 1930s, when more freight was being moved by air in Canada than in all the rest of the world combined. Tales of bush pilots’ fascinating adventures began growing as fast as stories about their wartime air-combat sorties.
In August 1929, Lieutenant Colonel C.D.H. MacAlpine, the president of Toronto mining company Dominion Explorers, set out for the high Arctic with eight engineers and prospectors in two single-engine planes. The expedition members intended to stake claims in a rich copper field that was to be opened to public development by the Canadian government. They used MacAlpine’s own Fairchild FC-2 and leased a Fokker Universal from WCA. Dominion’s pilots had started venturing into the North on exploratory mineral-seeking flights.
This time, MacAlpine planned a three-week sweep of the Northwest Territories to the Arctic Ocean, but the group ran into bad luck and challenging weather. At the start, one plane was lost at Port Churchill when a high tide in Hudson Bay swept it away. The replacement arrived a week later, but the delay proved costly. When they finally got underway, their compasses were affected by the north magnetic pole; seriously off course, they hit bad weather, ran out of fuel and made an emergency landing at Dease Point, in what is now Nunavut. Stranded over 100 miles (160 kilometres) inside the Arctic Circle, they hunkered down beside their float planes and figured out where they were.
At this time, planes were not radio-equipped, and there were only six radio stations in operation across the territories, so no one knew of their predicament. The group decided to sit tight until freeze-up, then walk out over the ice. They figured correctly that the nearest white settlement was at Cambridge Bay, where the Hudson’s Bay Company (HBC) had a post on Victoria Island off the northern mainland. To reach Cambridge Bay, they would have to walk 60 miles (97 kilometres) west along the coast, then traverse 25 miles (40 kilometres) of still-open ocean to Cambridge Bay. But first they had to wait for the water to freeze. They settled in beside an Inuit hunting camp where they constructed a 4-foot-high by 12-foot-long (1.2 by 3.7-metre) shelter of stone, mud and moss roofed with canvas from a tent that kept blowing off in the strong winds. Food and ammunition were strictly rationed. Each person got two meals a day. Hunting parties amassed a stockpile of ptarmigan and ground squirrels, while gathering teams collected moss and willow twigs for fuel. The Inuit supplied them with 55 dried whitefish (which the stranded explorers ungraciously deemed “awful greasy”) and 2 dried salmon. On October 15, the temperature dropped well below zero, and the Inuit at the camp indicated that they could walk out soon.
On October 21, they struck out northwest along the coast. With Inuit guides and three sled-dog teams they climbed over rough pack ice, weaving in and out of coastal ice floes in -25°C (-13°F) temperatures. The Inuit built snow igloos each night, and they dined inside on boiled trout and salmon supplemented with bacon and sugar from their dwindling emergency rations. Seven days later, they started
across the frozen Victoria Strait. A quarter of the way across they were stopped by open water. There was nothing to do but go back. Six days passed, and only dog food remained. The men began to fight among themselves. One of the expedition’s pilots, Stan McMillan, wrote, “It has often been said that even among the most enlightened peoples of this earth, the veneer of civilized behaviour is thin. We didn’t suffer any conspicuous peeling of this veneer, but incidents did occur where one might say fractures developed.”
The Inuit had left to resupply the group and returned on November 1 with caribou, fish, flour, sugar and tobacco. The next day, the MacAlpine group set out again, threading a course across ice floes. Sled travel was difficult as they had to shove the sleds over huge hummocks of ice without losing their footing. When they hit areas of thin ice the Inuit tested it with their spears. If it withstood a sharp throw, the chances were that it would hold a man, at least for a short time. November 3 was the final and most fearsome day of their trek. In a -27°C (-17°F) wind chill, they fanned out across undulating sheets of ice, running fast and avoiding darker patches that indicated very thin ice or open water. As they ran, they could hear the crack and groan of moving ice sheets, but they all made it across and staggered into the HBC post on November 4. All they wanted were clean clothes, dry footwear and food. The post manager used old wireless equipment on board the ship Bay Maud to send the message “all well” down south. The men were amazed that they were now in better physical condition than when they flew out on their expedition. There was only one permanent injury among them; one man had three toes amputated because of frostbite. They all agreed that without the help of the Inuit they would have died on the tundra.