Harry A. Willenberg Overseas

We finally left Louisville for Fort Wayne Indiana, to be issued our overseas gear and aircraft. Our group drew one hundred C-47-A’s in numerical serial number order from 4315801 to 4315900. Our crew’s aircraft was 4315875, the highest number in our Squadron. Don managed to acquire a copy of the Pratt and Whitney power charts for the PW 1830 engine. We used these to set our long-range cruise control settings on the trip to India. We had better fuel consumption and flew faster than most of the aircraft in the squadron. Someone overheard one of our Group Headquarters pilots wonder how many of our planes would be lost on the trip over water because of the low flight time and experience of the crews. As it turned out, the Group Operations plane experienced the only incident on the trip. Their Crew Chief got curious about the flare pistol and removed it from the flare port for examination. He accidentally shot off the colors-of-the-day flare, inside the cockpit. I was told that it ricocheted around the cockpit area and bounced off the copilot’s head before coming to rest in the center aisle between the pilot’s seats. The radio operator ran back to the cargo door for the fire extinguisher. The Group airmen in the rear of the aircraft, seeing the glow from the flare, got excited and decided to jettison the cargo door. The C-47 Cargo door was divided into two halves. The two halves were hinged so the front half swung forward as a passenger door and the rear half swung to the rear to widen the door space for large cargo. To jettison the front half of the cargo door; the rear door half must first be unlocked at the top and bottom. With both doors free to swing after the Jettison lever removes the front door hinge pins. The rear door will catapult the front door free and clear of the horizontal stabilizer when the front edge of the front door is pushed out into the slipstream. The rear half of the door simply swings back against the door stop on the outside of the fuselage and comes to rest, being held there by the slipstream. The Group Airmen weren’t briefed on how to perform this action and did not unlock the rear door half. The front door hung for a moment before it broke free of the lock mechanism between the two halves and then tore most of the left horizontal stabilizer and elevator off the airplane when it broke free of the aircraft. The airplane was about one hour over the north Atlantic at the time. The flight was forced to return to Gander Air Base and spend the best part of a month waiting for parts and repair. Mr. Douglas certainly built a sturdy and airworthy aircraft.

Our route overseas took us to Bangor, Maine; Gander, Newfoundland; the Azores; Marrakech; Tripoli and Cairo; North Africa. Abadan, Iran; Karachi; Agra; and Sylhet; India. On our arrival at Sylhet on September 2, 1944, we found all aircraft except the one we ferried and one other were grounded for inoperative generators. (Our Crew Chief took the time to lubricate our generator brushes and brush blocks, to counteract corrosion by salt air, before we left Bangor, Maine, our POE. One other Crew chief took his lead from Harold W. Clark, our Crew Chief, and performed the same maintenance). Our two aircraft spent the next few days on flights to the Bengal Air Depot for generators.

From a Manscript 'Tales of Combat Cargo' written by Harry A. Willenberg which was written from memory December 20, 1999. Copyright Š 2001.

I am looking for former members of the 3rd Combat Cargo Group, 1st, Combat Cargo Group, 2nd Combat Cargo Group and the 4th Combat Cargo Group. In fact I would like to hear from anyone who flew over the Hump during WW II, or flew any Combat Cargo Missions at any time (Berlin Air-Lift, Korea, etc.)

Please e-mail comment, suggestions, corrections,etc to: bill.b@erols.com

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