Had a wonderful lunch date today with 2 retired captains and was entertained with some fantastic aviation stories. My friend Bob Gordon was a career Flying Tigers captain, starting with converted C-46s in the late 50s going on to retire out of 747s with 23,000 hours in the 90s.
The other captain was Roger Sherron who started with Pan American Airways in the 30s as a radio operator (think morse code) in a Boeing 314 flying boat and retiring out of a 747 in 1977 with 31,000 hours.
While Bob's experiences are both amusing and extremely interesting, Roger has the most wonderful and fantastic stories of flying that rival some of St Exupery's tales in "Wind, Sand, and Stars". At age 90, Roger has the alert mind and clear memories of a man 40 years his junior and a sense of humor that makes your sides hurt.
He recounted flying passengers in a B-314 on the European-African-South American routes during WWII using dead reckoning and flying low altitude VFR up coastlines looking for landmarks to guide them to a destination. He recounted a time they were forced to land off Portugal's coast (I think--my memory's not as sharp as his) not knowing if the coastal defenses were friendly---how they had to spend the night moored in the bay but the flight officers getting invited to the local commandant's home for supper because St Exupery (who's book Roger was reading at the time) had made friends with the commandant a few years earlier.
He also recalled times like when he was training Cuban pilots in the DC-3 and requested permission to check out in a Ford tri-motor owned by the Cubans. The Cuban chief pilot told him to show up next wearing a uniform and tie, so Roger shows up as requested to find out he's checking himself out in the airplane on a revenue flight with a co-pilot who spoke no English and had no experience in a Tri-motor either while the chief pilot sat in the back with the passengers! Roger quit flying at age 86, sold his C172 and donated his Tiger Moth to a museum in Texas. This is a man who flew some of the most wonderful airplanes through some of the most wonderful times on some the most wonderful adventures---I was in the presence of greatness today and I am grateful for the experience.
