ON THE THIRD DAY IN Nation, Trevor's C-47-357 was back in the air and transporting rice, dahl, and atta, cereal grains, loaves of bread for U.S. troops, and canned hardtack and rum for the British troops. These supplies have been flown into Burma at the newly constructed runway at Myitkyina, pronounced mitch-eh-now. Trevor's crew consisted of the crew chief and engineer Cpl. Will Mooney, co-pilot 2nd Lt. Mac MacGregor, and of course 2nd Lt. Luke.
Just after just a handful of flights, Luke discussed a trouble with the crew. On just about every mission, their craft was normally overloaded, and it was complicated to handle the cargo carrier. Consequently, they necessary to find out a way to lower the vehicle's weight. Realizing that the cargo planes weren't pressurized, as evidenced by the crew's sinus complications, Trevor asked, "Why never we just get rid of the cargo door?" It was a significant, heavy door, and they'd found it was a lot easier to leave it open. It was in the way anyway, so Trevor unbolted the door slides, threw the door out, and from then on, they flew their C-47 with an open cargo kick door.
Trevor and his crew normally flew one or two missions per day, but in some cases they worked from pre-dawn previous nightfall as soon as they flew the occasional third mission. This was arduous and hazardous work. The climate was the important dilemma with heavy rains, ice storms, 70-mile-an-hour winds, and intense turbulence after flying over the 12,500-foot Naga Hills. Most of their flights took them to 20,000 feet above the Burmese jungles. In some cases they flew over glacier-covered passes of the Himalayas and into China. This was identified as the CBI Hump route. Climate was normally treacherous. After the propellers iced over, centrifugal force would sooner or later throw off heavy chunks of ice which crashed into the fuselage with a sudden explosive-sounding series of thuds. Anytime the wings became covered with ice, a rubber bladder on the major edge of each wing was inflated. That triggered the ice to crack, and the speed of the C-47 would bring about the ice to break no cost of the craft.
The C-47s have been created for heavy cargo transportation, but they had been clumsy, slow, and unarmed. Consequently the C-47s had been nicknamed the Gooney Birds. Trevor's craft had an even far more comical name. The co-pilot, 2nd Lt. MacGregor, had the peculiar habit of going back to the latrine when the craft was in the air. He spent a wonderful deal of time there. He possibly had giardiasis, diarrhea, or likely dysentery, but he did devote most of his time on the toilet. Consequently, 2nd Lieutenant Lukaszcyk named his C-47-357 the Laxative Elite! Even so, Luke would not enable the name or an icon painted on the nose of the craft. Trevor recalled that "Luke was superstitious about that and what would the icon appear like anyway?"
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Have a content 2015!
