Old Time Stuff #7

1949 was my last year working at the airport but what a year! Hollywod showed up in the summer to make a movie there called ' ON An Island With You." Peter Lawford, Esther Williams , and Jimmy Durante wre in it. You can look it up on the web. Paul Mantz , of course, did the flying and he showed up with a worn out Grumman Avenger that he purchased surplus from Norfolk Naval Air Station. They hired a Grumman Widgeon from Lake Wales , Fla. and we supplied the maintenance and navy paint jobs for them. We got to talk with Paul Mantz at length and he told us about racing in the Bendix and how Jackie Cochran could have won if she had stuck to the plan that her engineer had laid out for her. She was supposed to drop her aux. tanks at a certain point but she relied on feminine intuition and hung onto them too long and Mantz beat her. he told us also about the filming of " Blaze Of Noon." where one of the young pilots tried to out- spin the rest of them and he did---right into the ground. I guess ther was an opening scene of some barnstormers at a carnival spinning to get the interest of the crowd.
Every Sunday on my day off I swam at the fresh water pool at Lido Casino on Longboat Key. Who should show up but Esther Williams. The pool emptied for all except me. I had been a lifeguard there during the war and I knew swimming but I didn't mix it up with Esther. She is a big powerful beautiful woman and I did my thing and she did her thing all the time vocalizing loudly with anybody that would listen.
A buddy and I decided to follow her around several nights as she made her way from bar to bar but we simply ran out of gas. I had to be on the line at 6:30 AM ---0630, okay------she was already on the set bright and early and ready to go. Enough of that.
The day after Labor Day weekend an Ercoupe appeared south of the field that looked like it was out of control. It made several attempts to land but was clearly out of control. After the third attempt the entire staff was on the flightline wondering what to do. Finally he made to the runway and thumped it pretty good and we all breathed a sigh of relief BUT he took off again in a wobbling climbout and circled the field again. Our airport manager was a type A personality and he was in arage so he ordered the fire engine out on the field with instructions to stop the airplane. The plane pulled up and around the stand of power poles and wires and made another arrival on the field after which we blocked it with the fire engine.
The pilot and his passenger were so drunk that we couldn't get them out of the airplane. The cockpit had an empty 5th of gin and an almost empty pint. Urine soaked the floor carpet, the nose bowl looked like it had been worked over with a 5 pound ball peen hammer, the leading edges of the wing looked the same and hot burned oil leaked out of the engine .
It was obvious that they had flown through a hail storm on their way back from a West Palm Beach drunken weekend that stretched into their flight home. I have never liked the Ercoupe but this time the airplane that liked to fly itself, got two drunks home safely. The airplane was trash.
The airport manager asked the pilot why the hell he took off again after his first landing and his answer was, " I just wanted to show my buddy, Cuzy, that I could do it again."
I forgot to mention that Paul Mantz told us that the P-51B is the fastest of the breed and that is why he chose it to race.
Shortly after that incident, we had a real show put to us. The first Bonanza on the field was in the hangar getting a new fangled piece of equipment installed called OMNI. It was sitting at the front, nose to the centerline of the hangar, a huge wooden lftover from the war. The radio man had just finished the installation and turned on the master switch and promptly fired all three airways flares back into the hangar. The airways flares were a hangover from pre-war and sure enough, the Bonanza had three of them on the right side.
These thermite flares were in between a lot of fabric covered airplanes and in the back was a DC-3, and a Lockheed Lodestar. We had perhaps 25 airplanes with flares burning in the middle of them. We drove the fire engine into the hangar and began spraying water on everything but the flares while one of the guys started to dump sand on them. It seemed like we were at it for a couple of hours but it was probably only 15 minutes or so but we saved everything but the concrete floor that had three deep holes in it.It was equal to anything I had experienced in the service---almost.
The radio man discovered that drill shavings had dropped onto the flare switch contacts and when he turned on the master, they fired. Pretty exciting.
Switches