While I was doing my ground job at Cold Lake, Alberta, I had a wonderful boss for a while who unfortunately for me was about to retire after many years of service. Somehow, he had been able to arrange one last swing through the Canadian bases in Europe just a few days before he was finally released from the service. It was back in the days when the RCAF operated a couple of DeHaviland Comet jet transports on their longer runs. Ed had managed to wangle a flight on one of these from Ottawa to Europe and back a few days later. All he had to do was to get from Cold Lake to Ottawa and back. I stepped into the breach and offered to fly him in a T-33 two seat jet trainer. The flight to Ottawa was uneventful and I saw him safely aboard the Comet.
The T-33 wasn’t made for VIP transport, but it’ll do in a pinch.
I promised to be in Ottawa a few days later to meet him when he returned. It was critical that he got back to Cold Lake on schedule because there was a large retirement party planned for him in the officers’ mess that evening. This was a tightly scheduled operation so I flew down to Ottawa the day before just in case he arrived a bit earlier than expected. When I arrived I found that they were unable to hangar my bird for the night and it was the depth of winter, with temperatures dipping way below zero. The T-33 did not like sitting out in the freezing cold for hours on end—they get “cold soaked.” What’s more, the weather situation for our flight back was terrible. It was going to be almost impossible to be able to file a “legal” instrument flight plan to Winnipeg, our fuel stop.
Ed’s Comet arrived on time and within a few minutes, he was strapping into the back seat of the T-33; I noticed he was carrying a briefcase, which he stowed behind the headrest. I closed the canopy and found it hard to lock, which was not unusual in a cold soaked aeroplane. Finally, the locking lever went “clonk” and the canopy was locked. Then I smelled a very slight whiff of alcohol, which was not entirely unusual. The plane had a little valve in the cockpit that enabled the pilot to inject a shot alcohol if a warning light indicated an ice build-up in the fuel filter, so it didn’t worry me unduly. I started the engine, got taxi clearance. and headed for the runway and took off
Our flight plan was via airways to Winnipeg, which itself had only marginal weather conditions. For an alternate destination I had filed Duluth, which had much better weather. However, it would not have been possible to fly the Winnipeg, make an instrument approach, if unable to land due to the weather climb up again and fly to Duluth (as the regulations required). I planned to make a decision over Lakehead. If the weather at Winnipeg had improved as was forecast, I would continue as planned; if it was still dicey I would air file a change in flight plan direct to Duluth.
The T-33 with a full load of fuel was not the quickest plane out of the box—we lumbered down the runway and into the air and started to climb to our assigned altitude, in this case, 1000 ft. above all clouds. It was not long before I noticed that our cabin pressurization was not working properly. The cabin pressure was getting above where it was supposed to be. We climbed and climbed and it was not until about 38,000 ft. that we came out of the top of the clouds. The T-33 does not like flying at that height. The band of indicated airspeed between the onset of compressibility and the stall is very narrow. If you let the nose drop a couple of degrees you begin to feel compressibility buffeting; if the nose comes up a couple of degrees the speed drops just a few knots and you begin to feel the onset of a stall. Therefore, one is faced with doing some accurate, highly concentrated flying (we had no autopilot in those days).
The cabin pressure was way above where it was supposed to be and I was starting to feel a bit dizzy so I turned my oxygen regulator to 100%. As I flew on the dizziness increased, my fingers were white, and my nails starting to turn blue—signs of anoxia—so I turned the oxygen regulator to emergency in which mode it actually forced oxygen into my lungs. By now, we were about halfway across Lake Superior and the weather at Lakehead was still well below limits for us to land there. I was feeling groggy and in a cold sweat. I kept saying to myself, “Hang on young man. Hang on. Hang on.” Eventually, after fighting these symptoms for what seemed an eternity, we passed over Lakehead. Now we were able to contact the Winnipeg Air Traffic Control Center on the radio and they gave me the news I was hoping for: the weather there was improving rapidly. I asked for and received clearance to start an enroute descent.
Not a hospitable place even when everything is working.
As we began to descend, the anoxia symptoms gradually dissipate, to the point they had completely disappeared as we came in for a landing. As we taxied in, I said to Ed in the back seat, “Christ! I thought I was going to die up there.”
He replied, “Yes, I thought I was going to as well.”
I was mystified until we got out of the plane. I got out first and as I looked up at Ed, I saw he was holding a briefcase with something dripping out of it.
The difficulty I had latching the canopy at Uplands was because Ed’s briefcase was caught in it. The whiff of alcohol I smelled came from a shattered crock of Scotch Ed had in his briefcase—not from the aircraft’s fuel filter de-icing system. The reason that we did not get the right cabin pressurization was because the briefcase prevented the canopy from sealing properly.
With all of the alcohol fumes we inhaled on that trip, if we had crashed and been killed would the autopsy have found so much alcohol in our blood they would have thought we were pissed?
- Hang on young man: fighting an invisible enemy in a T-33 - August 4, 2021
Eric,
That’s a great story and thank you for sharing it. You’ve really brought back some very good memories. I really love the photo because I flew T-33s and Grumman Trackers with VU-33 Sqn Comox ’86-’88 and, as you can tell from the paint job, 263 was one of our airplanes. I’ve just checked my logbook and counted 55 flights in 263. Those were great airplanes and great days.
Best wishes, Martin.
Just proves the point. Alcohol and flying don’t mix! Cheers!
Except in 1st Class
Enjoyed the story. Reminded me of how my father, back in the day, used the T-33 like his own private Learjet. After flying F-86s in England for three years in the early 1950s, he was posted to C.O. of the base maintenance squadron at Laughlin in Del Rio, Texas. One time he lost his engine, severe vibration shutdown, at 32,000 feet over Luke — where he got his wings in early 1943 at 19 — in a thunderstorm in the black of night and deadsticked it to the numbers. Asked why he didn’t bailout. He had done that over the North Sea in May 1944 when his brand new bubble canopy P-47D prop “ran away” chasing a couple of Germans. Not doing that again.
But of the many stories that went with his flying the T-33, my favorite was when he flew “a maintenance hop” to Oklahoma to pick up a liver and white male Springer pup, pick of the litter. If there was anything my father loved, it was hunting and fishing. After picking out Prince, he headed back to the flight line. When he got to his T-33, he handed the cardboard box with puppy and blanket to the line chief and asked him to do his best to secure him in the backseat. Took off and flew back as gentle as a mother rocking a cradle. Shallow climbs, descents, and turns. After landing he popped the canopy and the maintenance crew found the little fellow fast asleep. He used to say the “T-Bird” was the most forgiving airplane he ever flew. Think Prince if he were still alive would agree with that.