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T-Tail-Tall-Tail:
An Alert Loadmaster Saves the Day
David Millican
One of my friends in the 14th MAS related this story
that had happened a
couple of years before I showed up in 1973.
He was in Danang and had off-loaded and was picking
up a back-haul of some Marine
artillery ammo that was being repositioned to
Okinawa. When he showed up at the
aircraft after filing the flight plan the Load
pulled him aside and said, "Sir,
we have a problem here."
"What would that be?", queried the pilot.
The Load said "We have a probable overloaded
aircraft, and these aerial port
assholes won't listen to me."
"How do you know the plane is overloaded?", the
pilot asked.
The Load responded, "Step back away from the plane
and look at the struts."
My friend did and right away he could easily see
that the plane was "squatting"
way down on the struts---a real "low-rider". He told
the Load he'd take care of
it, and after being told by various locals that
there was no problem, that the
struts just needed servicing, etc, etc, he insisted
that they re-weigh the
cargo.
After some bitching and complaining, they did
eventually re-weigh the cargo and
it turns out the cargo weighed over 100,000 lbs.
In all probability the alert Loadmaster saved both
the crew and plane.
On September 5th, 2006, I got the following additional notes from Gail Meyer, who was one of the engineer's on this aircraft involved in the incident noted above.
Just a little addition and correction
to David Millican's
story.
I arrived at Norton a little ahead of Dave in
December of 1970, and did fly
some good trips with him in the 14th MAS after he
arrived. It was my third
over-water trip as a second engineer in early 1971.
My instructor was L.L.
Johnson and the other engineer was Tony Grant and
the Loadmaster was named
Bonaface. I used to know the pilots name, but I
forgot.
We were taking expired twenty millimeter ammunition
back to Kadena from Ubon or
Udorn. I was doing my thru-flight walk-around when I
noticed the nose tires
looked like radials. I did forget to check the nose
strut, but I went and got
my instructor and showed him. He checked the nose
strut and then went to inform
the loadmaster.
The loading crew already had three pallets on the
aircraft. They were marked
under five thousand pounds. Just then the forklift
driver came driving up with
another pallet. When he turned a corner the forklift
came off the rear wheels.
The driver had to get out of the seat and jump on
the rear of the forklift to
get it to go down.
The loadmaster asked him how much it weighed and he
stated what it said on the
pallet. The loadmaster made him go and weigh it
again. The pallets had two cans
high of 20mm covering the pallet, then wooden
pallets and two more cans high of
20mm on them.
The driver came back and said it weighed 10,100
pounds. The loadmaster then
made them download the three pallets.
The loadmaster said, "I thought it shouldn't take as
many load crew as it did
to push a pallet under 5000 pounds."
He also thought it was weird the forklift came off
the rear wheels in a turn.
The load would have totaled 101,000 pounds. We then
flew back to Kadena empty.
Gail H. Meyer, SMSgt (Ret)