Joe has had a great many experiences in his life, including a handful that were life-threatening. Although our family has heard a few of his “lucky to be alive” stories before now, this story about nearly ditching a Lockheed L1049G Super Constellation (Super Connie) with fuel injected engines was a new one to me when we first recorded it.
As anyone who has watched Deadliest Catch knows, survival in the icy waters off of the Aleutian Islands is possible for only a few brief minutes before severe hypothermia sets in and generally results in loss of life. This is why Joe explains he would rather have a crash landing on the land than a smooth on in the water.
View 1950′s Near Ditching in a larger map
This is a great story from a great pilot. I hope Joe will keep up building on a valuable archive of these fascinating tales. Looks to me like a very interesting book should be in the works.
Joe, you look like you are in your seventies! I hope you’ll make several more of these videos … perhaps a special one on your upcoming 100th birthday!!
Larry Weidkamp
NWA (retired)
What year was this. Rode on Korean Airlift DC4 NWA August 1951 NWA signed Joe’s name and he didn’t know they made him Chief Pilot for NWA’s International Dateline Club until now.
Kind of hard to hear the sound on youtube.com for me
on Joe’s video
Robert – It is true that some of these videos require having volume levels set pretty high to hear. And even so, Joe has trouble hearing them himself, so I’ve started looking into providing transcription subtitles too. I hope your patience can survive that process!
As to the year, I’ll see if Joe can show me the logbook entry for this incident to pin down the exact date, but am guessing around 1952 or thereabouts.
When Joe and I went to the museum of flight a couple years ago, he related that story. NWA had the first 1049G’s that used the power recovery turbines at low temps and they iced over until Lockheed discovered the design flaw and changed how the exhaust could be used to keep them free..they (the PRT’s) also had to be turned 180 degrees, he said.