could have (should have) just cancelled and told the passengers that we would have to stay until morning but, I didn’t. We headed across at 1500’ and, within minutes, the lights of Fort Myers were behind us. All I could see out front was the dim reflection of the panel lights. I didn’t have an instrument rating but I thought, with, my hundred and fifty hours of experience, I could handle it. The air was hot, wet and bumpy. One of the passengers sitting in the back seat got sick and yipped her spaghetti down the back of my neck – the smell was horrible. I had to hang on and get these people home. I got a little vertigo and was sweating- trying to believe the instruments. Finally, I could see the glow of Immokalee and got my balance back- after another twenty minutes, I picked up the lights of the east coast and we were OK, The passengers never knew how scared I felt and how close a thing this was.
I had to get the instrument rating. I remember meeting my cash hungry instructor many times at nine or ten at night, after we both worked a full day, and off we would go, flying over the dark everglades in the 182. I practiced holding patterns, turns and stalls on instruments and all manner of approaches. I had passed the written exam and, on the big day, just five months after earning my commercial, I arranged a check ride with Bill Conrad, who by that time must have been pushing seventy. Bill was well over six and a half with huge Brezhnev eyebrows. He was permanently bent over and for me and most of his students, very intimidating. Bill almost had a rating in every aircraft that ever flew. His license read like pages of an accordion. On October 10, 1964, while Fort Lauderdale airport was the center of a national fly-in, I earned my instrument rating and had the multi-engine rating to go.
I took the multi-engine lessons in a Piper Apache, this little jewel has two 150 HP four cylinder engines and almost will fly on one of them. I rented the aircraft from a FBO at North Perry airport and the tower operator, Mr. Delgado, who also a experienced instructor, had me fly approaches and landings with simulated engine failures over and over, until he thought I was ready. Caplin also gave me this rating and, in 1964, I was finally ready to fly into commercial aviation.
CHAPTER 4
Commercial flying
“The desire to reach for the sky runs deep in our human psyche.”
— Cesar Pelli, architect of the tallest building in the world, the twin Petronas Towers in Kuala Lumpur, after the terrorist attack on the World Trade Center, quoted in The New York Times, 20 September 2001.
I flew with a few Ex- Cubano Airline pilots from Gulf American’s base at Opa Loca’s ex-navy airport, just north of Miami International. We would load the passengers every morning and fly them to the West coast of Florida where the Rosen’s had built the swamp peddler’s paradise. Cape Coral is just across the Caloosahatchee river from Fort Myers and today it’s a thriving lovely city. I flew with Tony Sanson who, along with Chico Arjona and Armando Sanchez, were all former employees of Fidel Castro. These particular pilots voted with their feet and escaped the Island workers paradise. They could fly the hell out of the DC-3. Sanchez had thirteen years in the ‘Diesel 3’ and they all taught me how to fly this wonderful aircraft. They asked me if I had studied Spanish in school, I had- so, from then on, I not only learned the DC-3 but my Spanish improved, “Conyo!”
The aircraft we flew were a mixed bag- one from the long defunct and scarcely remembered Mohawk Airlines, N400D had rotten wooden floor boards. The flight attendant one day put her high heel through the deck. We had a couple of ex-Delta planes with some weird plumbing to keep ice off the windshields. One plane had a manual “wobble pump” that you had to use to get the fuel to the big Stromberg” carbs. This same plane had only a single hydraulic pump for the brakes on the right engine so this was the one that had to be cranked first-otherwise it would taxi around in circles. One day, on pre-flight, I found a fuel drain leaking. I showed this to a mechanic and he stuck a wad of bubble gum in it – that worked, no leaking, Avgas won’t eat up bubble gum- amazing!
The Gals were fun as much as the flying. One, a wet-dream named Linda, used to come into the cockpit and take off her uniform. We shared motel rooms on lay-overs and all the gals ran around in stages of un-dress while some of them met the pilots in the bathrooms or locked bedrooms for afternoon delights. In those days, I was dating a long legged blonde that my Grandfather had introduced me to. Monique used to take him to church and he would call me and say, “Robert, you better meet this gal.” One Sunday morning I did and was sorry that I hadn’t done so sooner. Monique was truly unique. She would ride my BMW motorcycle and spend nights on my boat.
One of our Captains, a retied American Airlines pilot named Elkin Floyd, was a member of the “Silver Eagles” and the OX-5 club. He was so old- how old was he?” well, he was older than the DC-3’s we flew, which is saying something. He was older than all of our pilots added together. No, that’s not true, but he was old. His hands shook when he advanced the throttles. One day we were flying in some really stinking weather and I got to see why he was still flying and how good he really was.
The rain was coming down in buckets- the hatch in the cockpit roof was leaking and we were circling around some ugly clouds that were like a dark shimmering green in the early evening skies. Elkin flew the plane on instruments around the weather picking his route like he had been doing it all his life, which of course he had. We broke out about ten miles from the Cape Coral airport and make a perfect text book landing on the still wet and very narrow runway. The Old pilot set the brakes and, looking over at me, took his hands of the yoke and said, “well Robert, even an old hog will find an acorn some times.” The reason he kept flying, despite having retired from WW I and II and American Airlines, was because he just had to get out of the house. His wife was hell on wheels, a devout born-again and a real pain in the ass. They had been married for centuries and his generation just didn’t believe in divorce.
As nuts as this sounds today none of the DC-3’s we flew had radar. We flew every summer though what pilots call “thunderstorm alley” dodging and guessing which cells were the least dangerous. This area is over the everglades between Miami and the Gulf coast. The storms, often towering over fifty thousand feet, have powerful vertical currents moving huge shafts of air and rain. Cloud to cloud and cloud to ground lightening flashing and crashing all around us, we would scoot down to 1000’ scud-running under the roll clouds, trying to stay visual while dodging the bigger cells.
On February 12, 1963, a North West Boeing 720, flight 705, an incredibly strong plane, flew into one of these cells and was torn apart, coming to earth in pieces, killing all forty three passengers and crew. The aircraft crashed thirty seven miles west-southwest of Miami after penetrating a thunderstorm and encountering severe turbulence. The aircraft initially entered an area of updrafts followed by downdrafts which put the aircraft into a high speed dive. While trying to pull out of the descent, the aircraft broke apart from excessive G forces. The crew probably tried to maintain airspeed in extreme turbulence instead of flying attitude and just keeping the “dirty side down”. In doing so, excessive stress was applied to the wings which separated from the fuselage. The weather was considerably worse than forecast. Isn’t it always?
One guy I knew told me that he was on the crash scene an hour after the accident. He saw a flight attendant sitting up, leaning on a short palm. He thought she was alive, there wasn’t a mark on her, her hat was still on an she looked perfectly ok until he got up to her and saw that she had been cut completely in half - only her torso, arms and head were there. It took