What's Up by Leroy Cook
Between the wind, extreme cold and Thursday’s snowstorm, hardly any air traffic was observed during the past week, until the weekend warmth finished the job of clearing airport corners. At Butler, City street crews made short work of runway, taxiway and transient ramp surfaces, reopening the airport for traffic by Friday morning.
With some shovel work, a few training sorties were accomplished, and Matt Polland logged time in a Cessna Skyhawk. Lane Anderson was up in a Cessna 150 and I exercised a 150 for my own purposes. A brave Cessna Centurion pilot was observed on the VOR instrument approach on Wednesday, despite the wind gusts.
This coming Saturday is the monthly date for the Fliars Club to meet to discuss where to fly for breakfast. If interested, get together at 0730 hours on the Butler ramp, weather permitting.
Another icon from the Greatest Generation left us last week, with the death on Wednesday of 101-year-old Air Force Col., Gail Halvorsen, made famous as the “Candy Bomber” of the 1948 Berlin Airlift. As told first hand by former Butler resident Lee Paige, who also flew in the Airlift, the Soviet Union had no desire to leave a partitioned Berlin as a free enclave in its newly-established state of East Germany. In September 1948, it closed all roads, railroads and canals into the City, hoping to starve and freeze residents into submission. The other Allies retaliated by mounting a round-the-clock airlift of vital supplies, landing a continuous string of cargo aircraft at Templehoff airport inside the City.
Early on, Gail Halvorsen was taking a break while his Douglas C-54 cargo plane was being unloaded and passed two sticks of chewing gum to kids pressed against the airport fence. They desperately shared it in small pieces, even passing the wrappers for sniffing. Moved, Halvorsen told them he’d return tomorrow and drop candy for them as he landed. Other crews joined in, sprinkling hanky-parachute drops in non-official largess. When Russia capitulated nine months later, failing to eliminate free West Berlin, a total of 23 tons of candy had been tossed out. The righteous acts organized by Gail Halvorsen was never forgotten by the Berlin kids of that era.
In other aviation news, FAA Administrator Steven Dickson announced his retirement after a tumultuous year on the job, inheriting the Boeing 737 MAX mess, dealing with Covid-fueled unruly airline passengers, and an agency backed up with short-staffed processing of all the paperwork it requires. FAA Administrators have relatively short tenures in general; better luck with the next one. We were better off before the bloated Department of Transportation was created, swallowing up the Federal Aviation Agency.
For the weekly question, we asked the meaning of the aviation memory aid “port wine is red” that students are taught. It’s a way to remember that the left, or port, wing carries a red position light, while the right-hand (starboard) one is green and the tail light is white. For next week, tell us why U.S. pilot licenses don’t have a picture of the holder on them? Send your answers to kochhaus1@gmail.com
