I suddenly realized that the essence of the Cub was running through my veins. Every lesson it had to teach was there for me. I knew I would never master the Cub – that was a ludicrous concept – because you can only learn the airplane’s secrets by being one with it, respecting it, loving it.
Mastering an airplane has an adversarial, ham-fisted overtone. Melting into it, sliding into the seat as a well-oiled and long-paired gun slides into its holster, feeling every vibration and note – that’s being one.
Once in, you smell the scent of a working Cub, and every working Cub has the same scent, a mixture of 80 octane, exhaust that has slipped in through the doors and windows for years, burnt and leaking engine oil that has taken the same route or slid under the floorboards, a hint of hydraulic oil from servicing the brakes and vague remnants of the sweat of a thousand or so pilots who learned from the Cub before you.
The pock-pock-pock of the engine at idle turns to a smooth, solid sound with the movement of the throttle for taxi, then a roar at full power. You feel the controls come alive and the flying, the Cub flying, flows back into your sensory system.
Flying over Jones Beach in the 1970s meant lots of people below.
In the air, I tossed the hook out of the open door, swung around, snagged the banner and headed for the beach. This summer day in 1972 was beautiful, crystal-clear blue sky with a few puffs of cu, and, at 500 feet, crossing Sandy Hook, a view of New York City, its bridges and beaches alive in the sun, the skyline sharp and crystal clear as a picture in a Viewmaster.
On this perfect day, on the way to the New York beaches, was when it hit me, the first time I was aware of the sensory communication with this airplane. It was as if it had come alive for me and was singing its same beautiful song that I was hearing for the first time. This communication had been going on for a while, for several seasons, but it was the first time I was aware of it, could sense the palpable connection between me and this beautiful machine. I became aware that the Cub had all of the secrets of flight and could teach them to me if I was open to learn them.
I headed out to Jones Beach inlet at 500 feet, dropped down to 200 feet and worked the beaches back to Coney Island, then over to Sandy Hook again for the long haul to Cape May. On a good day, at 55 mph, I could make the flight in a shade over four-and-a-half hours. I’d drop the banner at Cape May, land, roll it up, toss it in the back of the Cub and fly home.
If it wasn’t bumpy and I didn’t have a headwind on the long haul, I didn’t need to refuel. Starting with 43 gallons of gas, I had just enough for the 1:15 flight back to Colts Neck, do a loop, land and put the airplane away for the next day’s flying.
The flight was good, although I did notice a little burble in my seat when I put in up elevator, something loose I guessed, a fairing or something. I made good time to Cape May and a pilot from Tomolino’s banner crew met me climbing out of the Cub to say hello. Lew and I had chatted before. It was fun to meet someone from another banner company to compare notes. We talked while I rolled up the banner, Lew pulled my prop and off I went. On the way home, I again noticed the buffeting when I pulled the stick back. I wished I had looked the airplane over in Cape May, but I was 20 years old and everything was full-throttle all of the time. Hell, it was flying. I forgot about it.
In the pattern at Colts Neck, I was going to pull my loop and then land. There was an unusual amount of movement and cars at the airport. During the week, Colts Neck was a fairly sleepy little grass strip. I got a cold chill as if something were wrong, so I just landed. When I got out of the Cub, Paul, the guy who ran everything at the airport except the banner towing, was standing by my wingtip.
We had a fellow who’d been spraying gypsy moths from a Bell 47G for a couple of months. He was a nice young guy named Mike. I liked him and talked to him often during down times. Mike had crashed and gotten killed at the airport that day. What we didn’t know then was that he had left a fueling hose draped over a landing skid after he fueled and when he tried to blast away from the pumps, it flipped him and the crash killed him. Simple as that, an easy mistake and he was gone.
Paul’s parting shot was, “You fly just like him. You’re next.”
Four tail braces are standard on a Cub – and most certainly required equipment.
Mike’s death shook me, but hadn’t sunk in, Paul’s stupid-ass comment hadn’t sunk in either, but as I grabbed the elevator to wheel the Cub around to put it in the hangar, I saw a broken upper tail-brace. There are four of them, one in each quadrant of the tail, which give the horizontal stabilizer great strength to stay straight in the slipstream and to absorb the loads the elevators put on that portion of the tail when they’re deflected.
Usually, when an upper tail-brace fails, the attendant horizontal stabilizer and elevator fail to a straight-down position and the airplane goes into an unstoppable spiral. The owner of the banner towing company, Cecil Coffrin, who had flown since the Lindbergh boom of ‘27 and was my aviation hero, had told me he’d put a two-foot chromoly bar through the jack screw and into the horizontal stabilizer leading edges to beef them up and offset the weight of the oversized engine and metal prop. It had held. No one had ever tested it before, but it held through almost six hours of flying.
The brace had broken on my pick-up at Colts Neck. I vowed to never get in an airplane, even one I had just landed 20 minutes earlier, without walking around it. I looked at the charred wreckage of the helicopter. It was still warm. My beater car, an old Plymouth station wagon, had been sitting right behind the gas pumps, opposite side from where Mike had crashed, and I realized there were shards of molten helicopter canopy stuck to one side of it. I drove out, shards and all.
Later, I reflected on the day, the loss of an acquaintance and fellow aviator, and what Paul had said. I knew, had I done a loop, at some point the tail would have failed. The Cub exceeded her capabilities for me and Cecil had divine intervention when he had the foresight to put the chromoly bar in the tail, but it would have all been for nothing, Cecil’s and the Cub’s valiant effort, if a young aviator hadn’t died that day. The loop would have ended it. The tail would have failed.
I’ve never been able to decide why the series of events conspired to save me. The day held a mysticism of my new awareness of the airplane, but I hadn’t listened to it. It was day one, lesson one. After four years of flying, I was a newborn pilot. That night I started a tradition of getting a beer for the aviators who can’t be here. It sat on the bar as I raised my glass to Mike and I promised to be better, to listen, and I decided that it just wasn’t my turn.
- Witness to an airplane crash - August 23, 2021
- One last visit to a dying airport - November 5, 2020
- Nodding off at 10 feet above the waves - February 5, 2020
Good story and lesson to learn from it. The loss of another aviator and friend is never easy. The memory sticks with you forever. On the lighter side, the reference to the Viewmaster will undoubtably go over the heads of many a younger reader.
Thanks for the positive. Over the years I’ve left a few too many beers on the bar for the aviator that couldn’t be there. Also, I thought of that with the Viewmaster. It’s what I saw at the time. It was a different time when that beautifully clear picture in the Viewmaster left me and many others in awe.
Never EVER treat anything you’re going to fly like the vehicle you drove to the airport in. You have. My learning experience was surviving a crash in the Navy that as a crew member “in the back” was out of my control. Terrifying, disorientating, screaming, pissing my pants, horrible convolutions of the aircraft…and the Lt. putting it on its belly and sliding to a stop and all of us running and 115- 145 av gas exploding on the S-2…the concussion knocked me down……just like in the movies. Hot….it was damn hot. I got back up and ran as fast as a white guy could, which was still slower than Ensign Jameson, who was being trained on the S-2 and had skin impregnated with massive amounts of African – American melanin. He was faster than Usain Bolt.
That experience – – – although caused by a system failure on the aircraft – – – taught me to pre-flight like my life depended on it (lol !)…and any oddities of the aircraft I sense/feel/hear/see are to be immediately investigated by landing the aircraft NOW (ASAP)…which I have done which in both cases in twenty years.
Hey, G Affect. Thanks. I’m not quite sure how I made it through the ensuing 47 years and 28,000 hours of flying since that day without your overly-didactic, racist admonition, but I did.
Dan, fortunately my flying episodes of some lack of oversight consist of improper flap settings or unlocked doors. “Fly the plane” mantra was exercised in all those flights. Once had a brake lock up enough to want the plane to pull to the right upon taxing for takeoff. Shut down and a few wrench taps got it to release, but upon returning to my home base I made plans not to use that brake and landed accordingly. Not the best plan should I really have needed it, but my CFI told me to do it under the circumstances. At least I wasn’t surprised by it on landing since I was at least alert to it and responded accordingly. I have become more keenly aware of the preflight even after having just flown the plane minutes before. Feeling and listening are much more important in an aircraft than in a car, and the more familiar we are with either the better chance of us sensing differences. The downside is that sometimes changes are so gradual we may not notice until it becomes blatantly obvious. Makes a diligent preflight check all the more important. Seeing the number of drivers with autos without operating tail or brake lights is a simple reminder to us pilots of how important preflight checks are since a failure in our world above is much more perilous. Thanks for sharing.
What happened next? Was the brace replaced? Did you fly the plane the next day?
Hey, David. Yeah, it was a pretty simple fix, of course and I flew the same job the next day. This was in 1972. I flew that airplane for a total of six seasons. Best I can tell, it’s still flying.
Hey, G Affect. Thanks. I’m not quite sure how I made it through the ensuing 47 years and 28,000 hours of flying since that day without your overly-didactic, racist admonition, but I did.
Nicely written Dan. Good lesson too. That was close. I hate to admit it, but this year I have been a licensed pilot for 45 years. I love flying airplanes and heli’s, but I don’t want to die in one. For many years now, during preflight I ask myself “What have I missed that is going to kill me today?” So far… Thanks for sharing.
Thanks, Don. I’ve flown 47 years and 28,000 hours since that day. Another thing in that story is that whenever I think I’m hot stuff, whenever I get that feeling that I’m on top of it, that’s when I do something stupid, as if the aviation Gods are wagging their finger at me. Have fun flying. Sounds as if you have the right frame of mind.
I remember, Jethro Tull, Leslie West, the coke machine in the office, Cecil, his wife, the BT-13 I helped drain many Coke bottles of contamination from the fuel tanks, the road department guys, Norm the mechanic, Jack Ekdahl. I still do my own maintenance today and remember Jack each time I do. I tell people about how he taught me to swear. Dirk, Elliott, Rich Reese, Barry, Ron, Don the avionics guy, Dirk, Rex. Who was the husband and wife team that taught ground school at night in Red Bank High School? I remember the T-6 crash at Cape May. I remember going to Asbury for gas when we ran out, ( my grandsons name is Billy Gibson) I remember the Beech 18 crash at EWR from Red Bank Airlines I can go on. Your Valiant Station wagon, I always thought that was such a beautiful car, (can you imagine having it today)? I remember hearing them call my number for the lottery at your house on TV. Charlie got 5, he was going, I think I got 141, and if I remember you got something close to 360? We went to the Reading Airshow in 84S and you told me who Bob Hoover was, “ Jesus Christ our Lord and Savior Billy!” The Blues were flying F-4s. Dick Schram crashed there the year before you told me, the stick came out in his hand. Colts Neck General Store, Bill would make me a ham and swiss on rye, mustard instead of mayo, with the works, to go.
At Monmouth I remember Hughey, and Maynard, and the guy Audie that had a shop, you worked for him. Timmy Fabric’s Queen Air? The Heron. George fired me off line service and Huey hired me the next day to work in the shop taking the seats out of the 99s. The Apollo dinner. Like I said I can go on.
One thing I forgot about though was what Paul said to you. I had my own emotional events that day. I was under Mike when he crashed. I ran into the office and got Ron, he was a part time fire fighter and had his fireman’s coat in his old white VW. We tried to get Mike out but it was way too hot and and the other tank was still intact in the fire waiting to explode. We stepped back and it did. It was horrible. I had dreams about it for decades, always a little different but, the same theme. When I read this it slowly came back to me what Paul said to you. It was buried under years of neglect.
Mike wasn’t the first guy I knew to, “buy the farm.” Do you think the new generations of pilots know this saying? Remember Monmouth’s crash in ABE? The young man that was the copilot was a new father and starting on his career. I would talk to him all the time and then one day he was gone. Today, all these many years later, I tell people that I can fill a small room full of people I know that went in. Flying is dangerous. I am glad to see that you made it out the other side in one piece.
What’s happening, Billy? A lot of wind has blown across the runway since those days. We sure had some fun. I’ve had a great airline career, flown acro in Pitts, loved it all, but the very best of it was those days. The sun was always brighter, the sky always bluer, the airplanes more exciting. The Heron was gone but I flew captain in the 99’s and the DC-3 for Brownie. He didn’t believe in upgrading copilots so it was right into the left seat. I got my ATP in the type ride on the 3. It’s all been great. I never much thought about the dying. I saw enough, I guess. I watched 255 go in at DTW. Couple friends on that. I just always figured if I made a smoking hole I was either stupid or it came unglued and that was my fate. Either way was fine. ‘Sup with you? What are you flying?
Dan, thanks for getting back to me, the short of my time since I saw you last is, I left Colts Neck and went back home to Ohio. I went to work for a guy I remained very good friends with until his death just a couple of years ago. He had a Piper dealership and over the course of about 11 years I got to fly a whole bunch of cool airplanes from Cubs to Mallards, Staggerwings, to Standards, over 150 or so I think, all of them very cool. I have about 2000 hours in a Twin Beech but, I only flew them for about six months, LoL. I built a One Design and flew in a few airshows. I still instruct, but I’m retired from Piedmont, USAir, USAirways, America West, ending with American, 32 years of mergers. I have hair down to my shoulders now and still listen to Leslie West and Ian Anderson, two guys you turned me on to. Of all my flying buddies I would like to catch up with, you are number one on the list, I have so many fond memories of my time at Colts Neck. I wish I would have seen your reply sooner. I would like to hop in my airplane and head to BLM ( I was there about 2 years ago and did a lot of reminiscing) but I am down for medical reasons. Can we FaceTime or something?