Rusty Saber: Prop-driven airliners a harrowing experience

A recent Smithsonian magazine article reminded me of a war story.

Not one of those "There I was, 10,000 feet over enemy territory, taking heavy ground fire, out of gas, and the automatic pilot had bailed out with the only parachute on the airplane" sort of war story.

No.

This is the kind of war story not necessarily about combat old military folks swap when they get together.

This story began when my four-year hitch in the Navy ended while I was aboard an aircraft carrier, the USS Bon Homme Richard. The ship is still in commission, and a participant in the war against terrorism.

I was bused to Tokyo to await a flight to San Francisco to receive my discharge. I was put on one of three prop-driven DC-3s, all loaded with military personnel. All three took off for Hawaii, then on to San Francisco. My plane was the only one that made it to San Francisco!

One plane lost an engine and crashed. Luckily, it crashed near a Coast Guard cutter that rescued the wet, scared, happy-to-be-alive survivors. The other plane experienced sufficient engine problems to send it back to Tokyo. The flight was canceled, and the passengers had to wait a couple of days before another airplane was available.

The plane I was on didn't escape the dreaded engine trouble. We had to land on Guam with engine trouble, which was repaired there. Also on the ground with, you guessed it, engine trouble, was a plane carrying the Brooklyn Dodgers baseball team, enroute to an exhibition baseball tour of Japan. I wrote about spending the afternoon talking with Jackie Robinson. Now, that's a great war story!

The Smithsonian article from the June 2002 issue of Smithsonian, titled "Comet's Tale" by Robert G. Pushkar, was about the first jet-powered airliner to carry passengers. That occurred on May 2, 1952.

Like me, you probably assume it was an American airplane that took off from an American airport. Not so. The first jet airliner was Comet 1, manufactured by De Havilland, a British company operated by British Overseas Airways. The initial flight was from London to Johannesburg, South Africa.

Pushkar reports that the jet flew 6,724 miles with five stops along the way. It flew at 35,000 feet with a speed of 460 mph, more than 100 mph faster than the fastest prop plane.

At the time, the British seemed to have accomplished the goal of beating the United States to the control of jet airline travel. Before and immediately after World War II, the United States had been the chief player in the airline travel industry. In 1939, a total of 90 percent of the world's air travelers flew on American DC-3's.

After the war, America assumed its mastery would continue; larger, faster prop airplanes were put into operation. But there is only so much that can be done with piston-driven engines.

Based on my experiences, I wouldn't want to again fly from Tokyo to San Francisco with pistons doing the heavy lifting. The 1952 jet engine was primitive in comparison to modern high-tech jet engines, but it was head and shoulders above the best prop planes of the day.

Had it not been for a series of mysterious crashes by the Comet 1, Britain might have gained supremacy in the airline industry. It took sophisticated testing to determine the cause of the crashes.

According to Smithsonian, the culprit was the pressurization of the cabin, necessitated by high-altitude flying. The repeated cycles of pressurization had so weakened the fuselages that the airplanes blew apart at high altitudes.

By the time the British had an improved De Havilland Comet 4 in operation, with pressurization problems solved, the United States had developed the Boeing 707 that was bigger and faster.

By 1958 the Boeing models were in the air. America assumed mastery of world air travel.

The Smithsonian article brought to mind a time, before the birth of the jet set, when a flight across the ocean could be the basis of a real war story.

(Joe McAdoo is former chairman of the communication department at Drury University.)