Lee, We called them flying coffins. Our outfit had 14 major accidents reported in 8 months. I lost two close friends in one of them. I was fortunate to walk away from the one I was in. We were all putting in for transfers and our CO was getting upset over our requests. When my transfer come through I got lucky and went to Frankfort, Germany, where the squadron had all C-47's. We actually ran a scheduled airlines all over Europe and North Africa. We flew into Templehoff ( where Hartmut has his coupe) twice a day on schedule.I had the Templehoff flight about 4 times a month. I felt uneasy at first in the C-47 because we did not carry parachutes. However, when I learned that my new outfit had the best safety record in all the Airforce and had never had an accident I quickly got used to not having a chute on.
Al ----- Original Message ----- From: [email protected] To: [email protected] Sent: Thursday, April 09, 2009 8:24 AM Subject: Re: [ercoupe-tech] Re: Small tube under fuselage Al, I flew tooooo many times on a c119. We always had our hand ready for the rip cord and ready to jump. Unfortunately, most of the time we were over the sea of Japan and would have not survived for too long in the water. We called them the flying death trap. Hope your experiences were better. Lee ____________________________________________________________ Don't work harder, work smarter. Get info on an Online Bachelors here.
