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As
soon as I read Hans' Flight of The Month for April, I knew it was
something special. First of all, sharing that part of his life and
heritage and then offering us an opportunity to recreate a small part of
that heroic undertaking made this a unique treat. And then there was the
amount of thought and work that went into putting it together... quite
impressive.
No
way was I going to mouse click a plane to instantly appear Hidesheim,
ready to go. Nope, this will be an adventure! Holding to that concept, I
boarded the Club DC-3 (pleasantly surprised to see it after Peter
mistook it for a Pitts and tried to climb Hoover dam with it) in
Redmond, Oregon for a trans-continental flight to Newark, with a refuelling
stop in Minneapolis. After 13 hours of flight time, we landed at KEWR,
got a little sleep and checked out the 707-320 for the trip across the
pond. About 800nm west of Shannon we caught the FSMeteo jet stream and a
287kt breeze from behind. Apologies to the fellows on that Russian
trawler that was under us when we dropped the extra fuel.
The
journey continued with a quick hop in the 727-200 to Hannover (EDDV),
where Hans had agreed to pick me up and drive me to Hildesheim. Sure
enough, as I shut down at the gate, I saw Hans roaring across the apron
in his big ol' Caddy convertible, cowboy hat flopping in the wind. (pic
a) Now personally, I think they are showing way too many
"Dallas" re-runs there, but oh well. Hans looked a little
jittery and told me to get in fast. Now I know that Hans' English is
pretty good, but something had really shaken him up and he kept
muttering words like "hundehutte" and "passé sein"
Even though my knowledge of the German language is embarrassingly
limited, I was pretty sure that those were not things that were going to
add to the quality of his life.
I
finally got him calmed down and speaking English again. He said that
Astrid had told him if he didn't quit spending so much time with that
bunch of international delinquents that he hangs around with, he would
find himself sleeping on an old sofa in the back yard... if he's lucky.
"Sorry
to do this to you kumpel, but you're going to have to get to Hildesheim
on your own"
"Uh,
how am I going to get there?"
"Not
to worry, you can use the Nimbus besenstiel"
"Huh?"
Silly
me, I thought a Besenstiel was some
kind of new, high performance German sports car. Imagine my surprise
when he opens the utility closet and hands me the "besenstiel".
"What
the hell am I supposed to do with this?"
"Sei
so lieb" he nervously whispered. "Take this and go". He
was slipping back into German again, so I took the besenstiel,
the map and the POH he handed me and set off for Hildesheim (Pic
b). Unfortunately, I made it about a mile and a half before
executing a near perfect face plant while diving to read a road sign. (Pic
c) A group of nuns driving to Hannover from the Marienrode
Convent gave me and the remains of the Nimbus a ride back to Hans'
house.
"Dummkopf!
Schwachkopf!" "Who taught you to fly, Bill?" "Here,
Take my car. Just get out of here before my wife sees you and kills both
of us!"
Hans
felt bad for accusing me of taking flying lessons from Bill and loaned
me his hat for the ride. I followed his directions and kicked the Caddy
into overdrive (Pic d). I spotted the runway (pic e)
and located the Beech Baron (Pic 1) that Ron had
arranged to be there for me. I guess Peter was originally supposed to
have it but supposedly there were some concerns about it not coming back
with the same number of wheels it left with or something.
Finally,
I was going to get this flight started. he Baron was fuelled and ready.
After a quick pre-flight, I departed 07 and climbed out over the
beautiful countryside of Saxony. I made a left turn to 315 and levelled
off at 1,500 feet. Since the scenery looked different from up here than
it did on road, I followed Hans' instructions to find his house and came
down to about 100 ft to give him a little wave (Pics 3&4)
before heading over to Wunstorf AB. I centered the ADF needle on WUN and
spotted the runway (Pic 5), turned for a quick final and
settled the Baron nicely on the runway (Pic 6). Following
Bill's directions, I taxied over to what he told me was the Officer's
Club for a Bock or two since my flight to Tempelhof wasn't until
tomorrow. Bill's "Officer's Club" turned out to be the fire
station. (Pic 7) Thanks old pal.
The
next morning we loaded up the C-54 with boxes of food (Pic 8),
got our clearances and taxied out to 09 for departure. With a full cargo
load and 60% fuel load, this thing was heavy. It took most of the runway
and nearly 130 kts to get off the ground but finally the old bird began
to climb. We continued our climb over EDDV (Pic 9) and
turned to the Braunschweig NDB and on up to 7,000 ft. As we neared
Berlin, I couldn't help wonder what the people on the ground thought
fifty-odd years ago when the C-54's & C-47's were flying over head (Pic
10), bound for Berlin.
About
10 minutes from Berlin we got an emergency radio message telling us that
there was a problem at Tempelhof. Apparently not wanting to be upstaged
by a mere U.S. Secretary of Defense, His Royal Hyena, the Supreme High
Royal Emperor of Chicagoland, Richard M. Daley dictated that he too
would visit Germany. In order to truly impress the Germans and Secretary
Rumsfeld with his pure omnipotence, He ordered the six City of Chicago
Parks Department C-5 Galaxies that accompanied him to be relieved of
their cargo. Within minutes 12 large backhoes began carving giant X's in
runway 09R, the ILS runway (Pics 11&12). Fortunately,
before he could finish the job with the other runway, he received word
form his palace guards back home that the voter peasants of Chicagoland
were plotting some sort of insurrection so he loaded up his backhoes of
freedom and security and headed home to squash the rebellion.
We
had pretty clear conditions, so we flew a visual into 09L (Pics
13,14&15) and landed uneventfully. After we got the food
boxes unloaded (Pic 16), I hustled over to the helipad
where a less than impressed Secretary Rumsfeld was waiting.
Once
in the Bell Cobra, I heard the Secretary's voice in the headphones
"You know, once we clean up this Iraq thing, Dubya might be willing
to entertain suggestions about a little regime change in Illinois"
I figured that I had better leave the politics to the politicians and
concentrate on flying this thing. Why they asked a plane jockey who has
a long record of wrecking helicopters to transport the Secretary of
Defense, I'll never know. Somehow I got the Cobra off the ground without
altering the architecture of Tempelhof's terminal (Pic 17)
and we headed for the Brandenburg Gate
While
tempted to enjoy the scenery, (Pic 18) I knew that if I
crashed this chopper and bent up a Cabinet Member, Ron probably would
stick me with something in my next assignment that would make Peter's
hast rides look good. So we approached the gate from the east and safely
(if not either gracefully or gently) set down on the north side. I
looked for the Too Much FS Pub that Bill showed, but apparently they had
gone out of business by the time I got there. Bummer.
After
Secretary Rumsfeld ran from the Cobra, screaming something about
"Nincompoop", I Lifted off again (Pic 19) and
made the short flight over to Berlin-Tegal where I slid ever so
gracefully to a stop in front of the tower.(Pic 20). Hans,
thank you for all your effort with this one... it will be a memorable
flight. Tony
Radmilovich Note:
In reality, Mrs. Linde is a very gracious and hospitable lady who would
actually welcome the likes of us into her home and Bill very likely
COULD teach a thing or two about flying. |
