Jack Warneke C-124

[Applause] first person I like to recognize tonight put all this together for me this Paul Trainor loosely like mission her to make sure all electronics work and everything he's had a project for several years where he goes out and videos the planes that are out here for the museum and gets a crew member that flew on that plane does a walk around and talk about that plane and and I we did the c-141 which is been in the gift shop for sale money maker for the museum and he's put all this together it works very well for me I just got a bunch of slides together and emailed him to him but he put them on there so we'll see him tonight the history then all I got into one twenty fours like retama the hundredth anniversary of the base next year the reserve history started in 1960 when the unit was out at Long Beach they moved here to March before that was a full sac base but then the reserves got here with 50 planes c-119 flying boxcar and it was here know about 67 and then they retired that and brought the c-124 in and the reserves who those four until 1971 through that and they took all those to davis-monthan and scrapped them so the only ones that are left are the few at museums they didn't leave one here for the museum our churches that was a big plane so he reserves have been here and then in 1995 or so is when they had the base closures so since then that's been an all reserve base here so the mystery will probably go out into the future that way so when we got the c-124 I had to go to the ground training which was at a Air Guard base in Tennessee when I came up two by two weeks and then we had the flight some flight instructors here so we got the instruction right here at March fly out so we went from having flying boxcars around they flew around the United States and up to Alaska we had the 124 had the capability of flying across the Pacific and of course getting it in 67 that's when the big build up starting Vietnam admissions to fly in the reserves through the plane you reserves out there there are own planes and the crew would get together they would sign up when you could go somewhere from your job I was at UCR so I would come out for ten days or two weeks and fly a mission somewhere out of the Pacific get to that so that this is a model of the 124 let's see it had low wave four engines and a big fuselage they can see there well but there's a bunch of windows two levels so it actually was a double decker inside the top deck could be moved floor could be put up the side and they could have a high cargo come in or they could lower the sides and put normally 200 troops but if they lowered the second deck that could carry 400 people in the plane we had it here at the reserves we were just flying strictly cargo it gets like 50,000 pounds of cargo in this plane and the depending on how far you had to go you would have to subtract cargo for fuel so most missions went out with about 30,000 pounds but no no no pressurized flew out over the Pacific about eight or ten thousand feet so no pressure so you flew along and they called it all shaky because you are flying in where the most turbulence is in clouds or if there's build ups and you just sat there for 10 hours 12 hours just bouncing around that was his name all shaking when I found with all I'd say we got the slides and then we found a couple of videos where they show they 124 actually fly the plane had big doors in the front clamshell that went open right out and then ramps and they could drive a Greyhound bus inside strictly they kept it flying until the c5 which is the four inch of jet became operational when it took compressed several years they had a lot of problems with hydraulics on that so the 124 kept falling until the c5 and then the 141 recently was replaced by the c-17 switcher out runway and they have a capability of mid-sized car that's just before those days c-141 that I that I flew it didn't have refueling but in the mid-seventies they came out with air refueling they could refuel them so I heard my have this I just selected some pictures of showing me plane sitting on the ramp on the thing sleep 134 feet long and 170 wingspan and the tail was 50 feet in the air in the top that's 48 or something but the big thing to get used to was the cockpit was over 25 feet in the air and then when you come in to land you get a nose-high attitude so you're up there even higher so you had to learn to not look down if you're looking way out the end of the runway to get your respect coming into laughing with all that weight and everything you see it was just early for wheels you look at the c5 from the 141 they had a whole bunch of wheels under them yeah yes okay there's this what the dimensions I was getting you know what playing you see there's a door here the plane and if they had hmm using the plane for trip drop this is where the paratroopers would exit the plane then it's right through there's a door on the other side and this one and then we'll see some slides later but this is the front entrance and then there was also a hydraulic system in the plane with a hoist that ran from one end to the other and there was a like bomb bay doors right in the midsection that would open up and you could use the hoist to bring the cargo in and out of the plane so there's three different exits here shows the front section pilot and co-pilot the front engineer sat behind but there was a wall here with the door but went in but the flight engineer sat find the co-pilot the navigators have behind the pilot to get up into the cockpit and see there's a ladder you have to climb to get up in there and then it's showing here where Tom mounted just a little bit ago there was an entrance into the wing so the flight engineer if there was a problem in flight they could we'll go all the way out here shows one here to the engine and like if you had a generator go out or burn up you could go out remove the generator and the engine was still good or they could flight engineer he even had a panel where they can analyze engine nd might bring out the the engines were what they call it a 4360 it was a 28 cylinder engine there was four rolls of cylinders and seven cylinders in the row and each one had two spark plugs so they got 56 spark plugs but if you happened to have some bad luck that a whole bunch of them went bad they could actually they're illegal I don't know I never was on a plane where they did it but where he could go out and access it in flight now this wasn't pressurized so we weren't flying at an altitude that that it would have been a factor the only factor would have been maybe it's cold and it just the cargo compartment it shows somebody walking in this right here is that whole thing where the hoist above could bring cargo up and down this is this view of the cockpit showing the pilot and co-pilot and we'll get into that the throttles the yoke the the throttles the flight engineer rant me the engines really so that the pilot only touched the throttles for takeoff as soon as you got above the ground it hand them over to the flight engineer and coming into land the flight engineer would have the throttles right - always on final approach I left the take over it was a lot of space up there compared to a lot of planes or like you see airliners of never fly look up in the cockpit you could stand up in here and here's the flight engineers panel and then you know it looks like a lot of instruments but so you got four engines every instrument is four times this is their analyzer here engine analyzer and this is the curtains draw but he's got a side when doing look out he could at least see the right side of the plane it just shows the fuel tanks on one side it had six tanks on each side and when they refueled they had a center point refueling so that the flight engineer was sit at the panel and they would have another engineer outside and then they would talk to each other and the one of the panel that would do the pushing the wrong button filming tanks one at a time but he could handle everything from the panel about where the fuel was going on Centrepointe and this is the navigator stationed here in he had a radar screen he could look at and the radar was only used mainly in weather that red here they you get out there in the Pacific and run into some big storms and you try to guide your way through between different cells pretty soon as like driving well as you come to a dead end and then you got to go through one because again we could go much over 10,000 feet so he gets now they can fly above him in the rear of the plane they had a comfort station and a couple of bunks and stuff especially the reserves go out with double crew members because it was also a training thing besides home cargo so there was a stove back here bunks where he could lay down for a while yes here shows this this person's up at the second level and they he's got the floor folded up so if they wanted high cargo or else he dropped the floor they would have a second here shows the front of the plane that there were the ramps come down and they just drive onto the plane things another picture that shows the size you could put on with cargo here shows the heating duct system when you're flying a big plane like that huge it's like a barn door out here put down you get into icing or something it builds up in a hurry so there was a heating system in here and then in the wing they haven't pointed that out but when they see the plane flying or like this one this is on the tips of the way these are not jet engines which a lot of people think it is but they're huge heaters so that the air comes in and the air that goes through the wing keeps the frost ice off from the wing it shows right here coming in from the heater on the wings out into the way there's a shot the only shot that somebody took a v-sit than the see so I the only proof I have that I was in LA here's another shot that show the difference the c-119 is what's sitting out here on the ramp and here's the and 1:24 with a car blowing up in it I might add at that point right here this is the same engine as on the 12440 361 one of the places then once it opened up to fly west you win 24 flew about 200 miles an hour speed so bike to go to Hawaii 2400 miles it took 10 12 hours to get there if people flew airliners back in the 50 when they were propeller driven that's what it took to go across the United States it was 10 or 12 hours rather than the five or six now so it's quite a lot of time and Wake Island sits west of Hawaii 2,000 miles so it's another 10 hours to get to Wake Island and week island is unique it's the only island within about a thousand miles out there closest one and it's the top of a mountain 10,000 foot mount in other words the waters 10,000 feet deep there and at the top of the mountain it's just right below water level so the coral has be build up on that over the years so all this is is a coral reef and the runway runs down one side and the planes are parked in here and they had some quarters over here for the cruise so you spent the night there and then the next day you get up and fly to the Philippines or Guam or Japan which was another 8 or 10 hours so any c-124 you go out into the Pacific deliver cargo fly back you generally had 80 or 90 fine at the end of the slides that you could show that first video and out of it well Ike said he made these videos out here we did and these are one up of a similar and that they show your way around the plane the way it's Globemaster to little master one was a c74 during the 40's and this came out in 49 and the old master three is the one on the other side of the runway c17 is called Historical Society c-124 globemaster known as old shakey be 20 times that are still there's there's Woody's first airplane [Music] here's the thing 124 sitting out from the backside the airfield earlier they were over on the whole aircraft area that we saw before there could be an idea of what the aircraft sort of looked like when we picked it up a year ago I'm had it towed over in this area we'll take a tour of the airplane in just a bit here there it sits in all its splendor old shaky this aircraft is not flowing across only ten years it was flown in here and the maintenance crew is put the aircraft back together every system has been thoroughly inspected rebuilt the aircraft was and be cranked up in taxi prior to flight the flight crew will fill a flight check on it and make sure all systems are go prior to flying as you can see it looks in pretty good shape here this would be the only flying c-124 in the world there are only about eight other aircraft such as this type around the world left today up about 20 380 that were built in the 50s here's some of the engines you can see this pretty bad shape that they're in bent pop blades all the stacks are missing antennas were broken parts missing late ladders broken I wanna emphasize that maintenance crew have worked on these aircraft mainly roofing Dobbins Georgia their National Guard there and the rest of people were from Travis Air Force Base which compromised active duty people some Air National Guard people from California and Air Force Reserve people from California a few people from Dover and a couple other bases around mostly all c-124 people who worked on one point for is we're in active service many years ago from the top to the aircraft back on the fuselage out on the wings [Music] engines that come off our aircraft when we got here and started chucking the engines we found out that all the engines been frozen due to weather and rain running down the shoulders from all the engines these engines come off the aircraft we're a pretty bad shape we ended up going to Tucson Arizona through engine dealer that is what many engines off the 124th pack he has about 300 I'm down there granite Kansas and we ended up buying five engines from him for the aircraft which the meanest group went hadn't changed all the engines out on the aircraft we had all good engines now we've run them up in the all checked out good these engines here literally junk they'll be sent back to the salvage dealer and he'll hopefully buy him back for Salvage only here we have a project engineer day Floyd one day Pilar what a motley looking crew guys look like you had a bad evening there's a summer belly seat that looks pretty good today what I let now move you Ben you're told [Music] you'll notice check right thank you bye folks you've hurt [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] you can be proud David [Music] [Music] really helped us out immensely though we had to counter all the things we fake barter still full from those guys we'd really be in debt hey thanks a lot guys [Music] [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Applause] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] you you walk around sent over heresy 133 which did have the turboprop the Air Force's long-range air lifter that performed yeoman service through two world wars and nearly 25 years the c-124 nicknamed old shakey was a major redesign of the c74 Globemaster that was developed at the end of world war ii the c-124 used the same wings and tail and engines as the c74 it was capable of handling such bulky cargo as tanks field guns bulldozers and trucks up to seventy four thousand pounds of cargo it could also be converted into a transport capable of carrying 200 fully equipped troops and it's doubled deck cabin or 123 litter patients and their attendants well up here the pilot and the copilot each had throttles the only time they really use them was on the ground for taxing and they would start them up for takeoff and they would control them on land they far as the they had a prop control they had a mixture control but all of that went through the flight engineer station and it's rare forever that they would use it over here on this side are the pilots flight instruments on the other side the copilot has an identical set over there they're completely independent so that you have redundancy in case any one should fail the other system would still be operational here is your control for bringing up the landing gear to co-pilot and bring it up on the pilots command once we had this rate of climb established after takeoff over here on the left is a radar screen this was used for weather the very early models a models like this one when it came out of the factory they didn't have it at that time but it was later put into the aircraft and the steering wheel over here this is for your ground steering and it controlled us the the nose gear for steering on the ground and over here on the far left there's a couple of levers which was for emergency there were air brakes in case of hydraulic system failure that you still had a backup system for brakes let's get you stopped and landing after you landed the pilot with polar is back and then he could take them and pull them way back and go into reverse and then you could use the engine and props for braking action help slow you down these are all radio and navigation instruments trim tab for the rudder trim tab for the elevators engineer station here most of the systems except for the flight instruments and the navigation instruments went through the flight engineers panel we had all these one for each engine so there's 48 engine instruments here on the flight engineers panel monitor everything that goes on on them from the flight engineers station you start engines do the engine run up and once they started down the runway the pilot would heat start the throttles up and any call for takeoff or for max power and you'd follow him up and maintain max power till you got airborne as soon as he called got the gear coming up he called for me tow and you'd bring back the pot the props this was your main prop control here and the throttle mixers the and the mixtures once you got in crews long-range flight so you manually leaned out the engines to get maximum fuel economy out of them over here you had your carburetor heat to fuse in icing conditions or you could get carburetor icing if you use carburetor heat make sure that you didn't get carburetor icing fuel these were for controlling the fuel tanks this was a six tanker if you happen to have a C model that was a 12 tanker and they had electric control of the fuel there for booster pumps and the various valves to rough the fuel to the engines this is the neve navigated position on the C 124 this is our Lauren long-range navigation and we have a radar it's basically a weather radar primarily and there's a repeater up in the pilots position in the front this is our radar altimeter and up here is the sextant mountain for celestial navigation there were three main ways of getting this is primarily a cargo aircraft and there were three main ways of getting cargo into the aircraft through trip doors and stairs on each side through this elevator platform and we would have a winch up above with cables through all four corners of this elevator platform we would open underneath just like Bombay door and lower that to the ground and you would have to manually load the boxes and you bring that back into the aircraft and you could slide it forward along the rail so you wouldn't have to carry the the cargo is far the third way of getting car going through the aircraft is through the nose the nose doors were open they're called clamshell doors and the two ramps that you see there were extended down and you could drive vehicles into the aircraft the numbers you see along the side are the number of inches from the nose of the aircraft and the purpose of those is so you could balance the aircraft and you couldn't put too much weight in the front or into the rear you had a ballast it and just like a passenger with a seat assignment all the cargo that came in also had in the same place there are some photos over here of the aircraft restoration process one of them shows the ramps down with the vehicle being driven off and here is one of the helicopter being a winch off through the nose doors this aircraft came from Offutt Air Force Base in Omaha Nebraska in order to get it into Dover we got to take off the the engines the wings tail the gear and then we have to actually slice the fuselage in half and it just barely fit in inside a c5 and then we float it fluid in here and then we had to reassemble it and put all the rivets back in to hold it back what you see here is the upper decade and this is an example of Holland look when you when you put it down we didn't put cargo up there we had it wasn't stressed with it to take the weight of the cargo but we would have four rows of seats in the cargo main cabin and then we have four rows of seagull in the upper decade and with that arrangement we carry approximately 400 people in here now you could trade off the seating for litters so if you wanted to have litter patients you would just replace it the seating with litters this is the ladder here that is used to get up up to the upper decade this aircraft is somewhat unique in virtue of the fact that you had tunnels that went out to thee through the wings so that you can access the inboard and outboard engines while in flight you'd go down through this compartment and then there's the tunnel that extends through through the wing the primary purpose or not maybe the primary but at least one of the main purposes of doing that is that each engine had a generator and just like an automobile to generate it would sometimes fail over heat so if that happened you've got to shut the engine down but the engine was still good then you have somebody go through the tunnels and you have them physically take the generator off the engine this disconnected and then you can restart the engine you can have the power of the engine again and then the other three generators could supply your electrical power without any kind of a problem [Music] well that's so we've seen the inside how it flew like I say you've seen the last flight of the 124 on that video something in those slides that I had I showed the inside of the plane this is what every pilot where every crew member actually had one of these it's like you're operating manual you have for your car tells the plane and I the slides that I had up there were right out of the book or explains everything and operating procedures and so on and flight engineers were flying they had a book that has all kinds of charts in it depending on your altitude if you lose an engine or something of what power settings to use what's the most efficient altitude to be at depending on your weight and everything so it's just a book of charts that they go to to determine what power settings they use in the various altitudes so it's the use of fuel they change the settings on how is that one of my first talks I gave here was about the Russian flight that came over the North Pole back in 1937 and they landed here actually over in San Jacinto the chose not to land here at March field they wanted more room to land so huge wing and like a glider aw boss taking the breaks off everything they could reduce weight so no they landed in San Jacinto but I have the pilot's diary Aires logs and stuff and they talked about that they spent two years before the flight figuring out what the best altitudes and everything this books I'm Shoni are made now that they have them but they didn't have those charts then so they had to figure it all out for themselves of what they were going to do this particularly flight was in the air for sixty two hours on unstuff they didn't get refueled or anything and I don't think anything has done that since they was only flying about a hundred miles an hour so they flew sixty three hundred miles now Moscow they picked 120 degree meridian and flew the murray and right down straight to Los Angeles set a world record distance mark was flying over the North Pole just sayin ice books show all these charts these guys had to do their own figure it out what they were gonna do just like the Wright brothers all they disassembled the plane and shipped it back that's a good question I have for myself why didn't they fly back they didn't have to go nonstop going back I say they didn't have to they had it planned even before they landed they had an engineer in Los Angeles that came right out wherever the plane landed a disassembled it shipped it back got it back to Russia and put in a museum and then the museum got bombed in World War two it burned it out well you know even even with bird had to do the same kind of planning yeah sure but these guys threw in the extra thing or we're flying over the pole nobody never done it so I didn't even know what the temperatures or the icing conditions and everything would be well again there were not prayers so generally around eight 10,000 although they had to go up to a maximum they went 13 to avoid I see it's giving my age away but five years old and I lived on the ranch right next to where that landed and my dad gathered yeah we went right over there there was a crowd and I had understood that mana because they've got lost but they all lost they were just lucky then they had the fiftieth anniversary and they donated it to the museum see you miss now because we've celebration of the 70th and then this summer we had the 80th and I have a model of the plane you know the one here but I've got one that's 1/7 scale so it's got a wingspan of 17 feet it's big and we had it out there at the site where the end it's still an empty field if you've been over there and everybody that saw the plane just like you say over five they sign them wait that they saw the plane on the ground and ten years ago I had 30 people but you weren't and then this summer this summer I dare to generes yeah yeah you got a couple of minutes I yeah we got a good picture of it sitting there how is this what is an injury how was it to handle when he moved amazing that's just what I was gonna I got a story to tell him once I gotta spend five minutes here yeah handled real good and see by the time the reserve got these planes they had quite a few hours out of me when they finally got rid of it they were around 20,000 hours they had but the engines were a big problem they were when they had him in the b-36 is in 1968 maybe I was a reservists here saw I'm a cold war veterans do it one of the big events in the Cold War was in 1968 their combat problems with North Korea but in 1968 North Korea captured a navy surveillance ship and captain butcher and Ali's crew were taken prisoner about $100 and that went on for quite a while but soon is that he didn't happen he started shipping a bunch of cargo stuff different things and I got a I got a call it the way the reserve works they start calling up you want to volunteer to go on a flight and you don't volunteer then they call somebody else there's always enough people to go so I said sure I'll go you know just on a days notice kind of thing and so we came out a crew met and we flew up to a car to pick up our McCord is up by Tacoma and to pick up our cargo and our cargo was just barbed wire they were was going to go to the DMZ to put up more karma so I have rolls rolls and rolls of Barbara so I picked up the cargo but just by chance at that time there was a huge storm out in the Pacific high winds and at Travis McCord everything is all full of planes on the ground no one these type of plainly they took a while even the 130s one throw so they high headwinds so we stayed overnight the next day and well we'll give it a try I mean we didn't inside the command post and said see how far see if he can bank it so he put on fuel and we flew out about seven hours they say normally it took twelve he took out around seven hours and the winds were getting stronger we weren't going to make it so we turned around and came back so we had 14 hours local flying didn't get anywhere so to get up the next day winds have died down a bit so they put on even cap it off more fuel we made it Hawaii so that's two days taking us now to get the lie so you always went to Hawaii so get up the next day and then you're rotating around where you fly at night most the time I guess but anyhow we were taken off at night out of Honolulu and this plane had a very slow climb ratio we took off not a barge over here on the runway and if we were flying out and to the north you had to make a wide sweep to even clear the mountains running Springs or Lake Arrowhead used to make that altitude it's our sometimes you'd have to make a circle so we were taking off out of Honolulu which is sea level one and they hadn't even just broke ground and compiled one of the engines blew up so and so I and we were fully loaded and just barely got off the ground and brought it back around remember looking out and they boats in the harbor which you the runway runs right along the harbor there you looked down and it looked like the masts were right up by the plane that's close but you know I circled around lambda it made it and so they always had when they were flying these they always have spare engines of course so he went in a crew rest and they changed the engine and the next day we are away it made it to Wake Island if you could make it to Wake Island you had it made because Wake Island wasn't a military base say it was all contract labor from the Philippines and all the mechanics were Filipinos the people that ran the orders and everything the cooks great cooks all Filipinos so then we get on and the backtrack just a little how things go on these flights the Navigator on the flight we were getting ready when we were down here at March leave and the lead Navigator was late and like we always fly with extra people so you're not going to wait so we were out almost ready to start the engines the Navigator showed up he lived in Los Angeles and he was driving in a hurry and got into a cloverleaf down in LA and told his car he would at that time he was managed to get back home get another car and get out made the flight so he was the same guy on Wake Island it and I'd never been there before either so I had to get up that except tonight to investigate the short everything or we for was and he was out getting coral they rammed the big spike through his foot I still kept going it ever slowed up so we get into Japan and we land at Tachikawa and have ever bought in there this is an airport that was right in the city it was closed back by 1970 that was right there and so you flew in and across the street the fence for the airport and then you have dropped down Atlanta and there was all these Japanese Communists that were on the other side of the street and they would see how big of a bamboo bamboo pole they could put up in the air morass the crew I guess and you have a red flag on it and I mean add some up they're probably 40 or 50 feet in there and so there is all these flags flying that she's a man and landed and again we happened to get there and evening so I spent the night went out the next day and we're on takeoff roll had to abort it because things weren't adding up for what it was supposed to be and called for it so they put us back in crew rest worked on the plane on I the next day they had it ready to go supposedly and they were they had a meantime had taken the cargo off so he never did fly him to Korea they put it on another plane to take it out there so they they ordered which we never did usually we flew back the same route but this time they weren't going to put anything on the plane and fill up full fuel and fly direct from Tokyo Lulu and so he was making out the paperwork and I looked out the window and the fire trucks were going by by this time I figured that must be us and they had called for fuel to fill it and the guy went out did it but they didn't cancel the order or something and another guy saw the order he went out and filled it and a burst the tanks on the plane a couple of them so there was fuel leaking all over the ground that's why the fire truck so that canceled us out again and while we're in the airport there there was another 124 headed back to the states and as reservists our time was up we were signed on for 10 days days so we could get on a plane and fly home but somebody else won't worry about it so he accrued us I will fly on that 124 get back to Honolulu so he got on it they got about three hours out and they lost an engine and had to go back to Japan and get back to Japan the next day our plane was ready again supposedly and everything so they get on it and we had that direct route spell to go to and it was an all-nighter he left Japan in the afternoon and we're coming into Honolulu that sunrise is just starting to get light and obviously the only one awake he's sitting up in the cockpit everybody else was sleeping and I could see an airliner coming out of Honolulu and West and he got even with us and he just got on the radio and was radioing flight control back in Louisa's tell that c-124 he's on fire and an engine on and there was no indication in the instrument that I had but the engineer was asleep remember I showed you on the thing there's a little window and he can look out the side so I got him awake and I said look out there and they don't have rearview mirrors in playing so you can see behind ya and sure enough it wasn't on fire or some flames but it was just boiling smoke and oil lines are broken so we shut the engine down I mean now we had another engine change back in it flies well on three even supposed to fly out to the same side yeah takes a little but it it will do it that's what says yeah you can trim a lot of it they could change an engine just overnight take about yeah about 15 hours the last flights out of March air and it was the there was the last of the last the last couple planes that went out sent him out with cargo they sent two planes one plane had a couple of spare engines in it because there wasn't any in the system anymore everything with jets no so that plane goes out on the album twenty mechanics on there and engines so if they need to change on either play and they got on spare engines Wow but you know I'm saying it this is what when you're flying an old plane with old engines and stuff is the simulator was more calm sometimes rides than what you actually did but the simulator you go through and that's what the instructors give you all that so you're prepared for it everything works out fine oh yeah that's just a little extra there so I'm through unless anybody has any questions any questions [Applause] you

Channel: March Field

Views: 24,588

Rating: 4.8571429 out of 5

Keywords: IEAR, Inland Empire Aviation Roundtable, March Field Air Museum, MFAM, C-124 Aircraft

Id: XNk9CsnMbgg

Length: 59min 44sec (3584 seconds)

Published: Tue Nov 21 2017