Engine failure
Here’s another little story I thought you would get a kick out of. In 1978, I went up to Fort Smith to hang out with my father.
That particular year was average for the amount of fires that were fought (fire bombed)
This year, as I may have mentioned, was the first for CF-DKU. G+M Aircraft had Terry take DKU up to Smith on spec. (Meaning if any fires broke out that required more than 2 planes then DKU got some air time) The contract with the gov’t was only for two planes. Therefore, if MWC or OND didn’t fly at all, they still got money for sitting on the tarmac.
This first year for DKU as an Air Tanker was more of a trial period and if she got any flying time in, that was considered a bonus.
At the end of this particular season (end of August) things were winding down and Terry figured he would fly DKU back south to Edmonton and leave MWC & OND in Smith for a few more days to see if he could get anymore flying time in on them. Well, no sooner did Terry leave the Airport with DKU and my father said “let’s get the **** out of here”
There were only the 3 of us left (Myself, my father & Terry’s son Brian) all the rest of the crew either went back with Terry or with the bird dog plane.
So, we raced back to the living quarters and packed up our gear and loaded MWC with our stuff. It was getting to be early evening by the time we got airborne. Brian was riding shotgun so I figured I would just settle in with a book up in the nose. The nose on MWC was solid therefore you couldn’t see outside. I had seen enough aerial views by this time and it didn’t matter to me anymore if I could see outside or not. (Novelty had worn off)
We had been airborne for about 40 minutes and I could feel the plane bank. Wondering what was going on, I climbed back up to the cockpit. I didn’t have an internal communication headset on, so I tapped my father’s shoulder with a look on my face “what’s going on?” He pointed out to the port engine and when I looked I saw the propeller stationary and the blades featured back. Using body language he motioned for me to sit down and strap in. Because we were 40 minutes out, he elected to return to Fort Smith. Because I was only 14 years old, I didn’t grasp the situation at hand and we were flying level enough that I went back to reading my book. It must of felt like 20 hours for my father on the trip back, but to me it didn’t seem to take no time at all. When we started our final approach on the airstrip our descent was very steep and it almost felt like we were coming in at a 45 degree angle.(keeping our airspeed up to prevent stalling) I couldn’t help myself, but I had to look out and I could see a Boeing 737 waiting on the side of the tarmac as we touched down. As we maneuvered MWC back to our end of the airport my father told me that the Captain of the 737 had radioed him and congratulated him on the smooth landing. After shutting down the starboard engine I was told that we had blown a cylinder and piston and to prevent metal contamination to the engine my father elected to shut it down. After all this excitement, my father still insisted that he wanted to get home. So we threw our gear into OND and took off without delay and we had an uneventful flight home. A few days later my father and Brian had to drive back to Smith to replace the damaged cylinder and piston and fly it back to St.Albert.
Sign In
