Much to my surprise, I enjoyed flying the C-46 and found it handled quite well, especially with no cargo aboard. It handled so well, in fact, that once when testing it after some maintenance, with no cargo and about half full of fuel, I made a creditable fighter peel up and circular landing pattern, to the consternation of the tower and raised eyebrows from Colonel Muldoon. I just couldn't resist the temptation to look jetty.
Since we weren't doing much flying, several of us decided to try skiing for some excitement. Naturally, the group consisted of three Floridians — Barney from Miami, Brad Brown from Lake Worth, and me from Tampa — who had never skied or even been on a mountain before but were undaunted by our lack of experience. One Saturday morning, bright and early, we drew skis, boots, and poles from special services, borrowed a Weasel, and drove to Birch Hill, the Army ski slope just a short distance from Ladd. Walking along jauntily with our skis on our shoulders, we tried to look like old hands but blew it almost immediately. There was a sign in front of the ski slope office that said in large letters, "Fill in your sitzmarks!" Being old soldiers, used to filling out forms for everything, we thought a sitzmark was a form. Brad went in to get them and came out almost immediately. With a sheepish grin he informed us that sitzmarks are the divots skiers make in the snow when they fall, and they fill them in with snow to keep the slope as smooth as possible.
Feeling somewhat deflated, we carefully put on our skis and taxied slowly to the beginning of the rope tow that pulled skiers to the top of the hill. It looked tricky, but after watching a few experienced skiers, we thought we could handle it. Brad went first, then Barney, and I brought up the rear, with intervals of about fifty feet between us. All went well until the slope steepened dramatically about halfway up. I noticed that Barney and I were gaining on Brad. His grip had loosened and the rope was slipping through his gloves. Seeing that Barney was about to collide with him, Brad made a spectacular bailout into the snow, but his ski clipped Barney's, causing Barney to tumble into the snow alongside the tow path. Fortunately, or unfortunately as it turned out, I was able to get by safely and make it to the top of the hill. I was feeling rather superior until I worked my way to the beginning of the downhill run and realized I would have been much happier if I, too, had fallen. It looked twice as high and three times as steep looking down as it had looking up. Also, there was a 30-degree dogleg about halfway down, and I had no idea how to turn. I could see Brad and Barney struggling through the waist-deep snow from the tow path to the slope and wished I were with them.
I stood at the top looking down, trying to muster the courage to launch myself into what looked like oblivion. I might still be there but for some ten-year-olds who made three runs while I stood by. They were beginning to look at me with disdain. The kid in me wanted to yell, "You might be able to ski, but I can fly jets," but I resisted the impulse.
I finally bit the bullet and, hoping not to bite the dust as well, started down. Instead of S-turning across the slope as the real skiers did, I went straight down like a kamikaze pilot, leaving a trail of melted snow. When I reached the dreaded turn I went straight off the slope, up the hill into the deep snow where Barney and Brad were waiting, and did a nice hammerhead stall, ending up almost on top of them.
When we had recovered our respective composures, we went gingerly onto the slope. We precisely aimed ourselves down the less-steep second half of the run and, when there was not a soul ahead of us, pushed off. We all managed to remain upright until we got to the level stretch at the bottom, where we ran into our aiming point, some waist-deep snow that brought us to a stop. Greatly relieved, we gathered our dignity and our ski equipment, turned in the latter, and gave up the sport, swearing to stick to something safer in the future, like test flying.
Later in my career as a member of the faculty at the Air Force Academy, I was one of the officers-in-charge of the cadet ski club. I did quite a bit of skiing in the Colorado mountains on some of the best slopes in the world and learned why skiing can become addictive.
"There are strange things done neath the midnight sun by the men who moil for gold, and the Northern Lights have seen queer sights," reads a line from one of Robert W. Service's Yukon poems, The Cremation of Sam McGee. Barney and I were not moiling for gold, but we saw a strange sight late one afternoon in front of the base operations building. We were on the second floor checking some weather maps when we heard a C-54, the military version of the Douglas DC-4 transport, taxi onto the ramp and shut down its engines to discharge passengers. We went to the window that overlooked the ramp to see who was arriving. Seeing no one we knew, we stayed at the window and watched the flight engineer enter the cockpit to start its four engines before they got too cold (it being 50 below zero), preparatory to taxiing the aircraft to the parking area.
The number-one engine, outboard on the left wing, started with no trouble, but the number-two engine kept firing and cutting out. He continued his efforts until finally it flooded and caught fire inside the cowling, and smoke began pouring out. The assistant engineer quickly opened a hatch in the fuselage and climbed out onto the wing carrying a fire extinguisher. He opened an inspection plate on the top of the cowling, through which flames could be seen, and began discharging the fire extinguisher at the flames. They seemed to be diminishing when a fire truck roared up and stopped just short of the wing. One of the firemen was manning a water cannon on top of the truck. He aimed the cannon at the visible fire and turned it on full force. The powerful stream hit the unsuspecting assistant engineer full in the chest and swept him off the wing into some fairly deep snow, where he was instantly transformed into a human icicle.
Water is not the recommended agent for extinguishing gasoline fires, and we soon saw why. Instead of going out, the fire grew steadily larger. The engineer wisely shut off the number-one engine and abandoned ship. The fire continued to grow until it was blazing fiercely, totally out of control. The firemen now directed their efforts to ensuring that the operations building didn't catch fire. They were successful in that endeavor, and one out of two ain't bad.
The C-54's wing eventually burned through, the landing gear collapsed, and the plane was totally destroyed. It was quite a fire, and many of the spectators had the same feeling voiced by Sam McGee's corpse as it sat in the blazing furnace: "Since I left Plumtree, down in Tennessee, it's the first time I've been warm."
When the fire had been extinguished and the wreckage had cooled, the plane was towed away to the base boneyard. It snowed heavily that night, and in the morning there was no visible sign that there had ever been a fire. A few inches of freshly fallen snow can cover a multitude of sins.
In January, near the end of my stay in Alaska, Colonel Shanahan and several staff members were scheduled to attend a meeting back in the States (Alaska was not yet a state). They were to leave one evening in a C-54, which had sufficient range to make the trip nonstop. An ice fog had dropped the visibility to near zero, but Colonel Shanahan, who was in the process of being checked out in the C-54, decided to fly as first pilot with the instructor pilot in the right seat.
No one knows exactly what happened during the takeoff roll, but the C-54 veered to the right and ran off the runway, continuing in a slight curve across the field until it ran into the side of a large hangar. It never lifted off the ground, but the power must have been reduced during the run across the field, because had it hit with full power it is likely that all aboard would have been killed. Only the nose of the plane penetrated the hangar wall, and Colonel Shanahan's leg was crushed against one of the girders.