Today, we'll look at a few airplanes I knew rather well. The first is a Douglas C-118A (DC-6A), Constructor's Number 44625, Constructor's Serial Number 560, USAF S/N 53-3254, N614CA. The company I worked for at the time acquired the aircraft to replace another C-118A we owned that was being withdrawn from use due to corrosion issues (coincidentally, the airplane she replaced was C/N 44624).
There's nothing like the sound of four Pratt and Whitney R-2800's at full song. Four Charlie Alpha makes a low pass.
Alas, both the airplane and the FBO are now gone--Associated Air Center closed and was razed sometime around 1991--it is now where the "Green Belt" is on the south side of KFLL.
Both of the above photos were taken at the Ft. Lauderdale Airshow in 1990, one of the few times Ft. Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport has hosted such an event. The pilot was chastised by the Air Boss that day--the pilot was told that he was never to fly a C-118 so low that the controller in the tower could get a clear view of the top of the airplane!
This was a good airplane for us, she flew a lot of hours and performed as you would expect a Douglas product to perform. I have approximately 10 hours of Flight Engineer training time in my long-lost logbook, and I believe that eight of those hours were in Four Charlie Alpha.
Four Charlie Alpha met her demise in the mid-1990's. She was down for a 'C' or 'D' check when one of the mechanics put his hand through one of the inspection holes in the wing and pulled out a handful of corrosion that was the wing spar cap. I left the company at about that time, but this photo shows the airplane in a partial American Airlines "Thunderbolt" scheme with the outer wing panels and tail removed. A sad end to a good ship...
The next airplane was one of my favorites to work on, simply because she never broke--and when she did, the fixes were fast and easy. Convair 440, Constructor's Number 391, N4826C, began life with Delta Airlines and ended it with Dodita Air Cargo. During the time I worked on her, she was flying for Florida Air Transport, and had spent most of her post-Delta life with the company. At the time, the company had a contract with Dow Jones to deliver "The Wall Street Journal" to several locations in the country. At one time, the company owned a bunch of ex-DL Convair-liners based in St. Louis, Oklahoma City, Riverside, and Ft. Lauderdale (by the time I got there, there were two airplanes in Riverside, two in OK City, and two in Ft. Lauderdale).
Not the greatest photo, I know, but it was taken sometime around 1989...
A few things to note--look carefully at the nose of Two-Six Charlie, and you can see the ghost of the "Dow Jones and Company" logo. Also, the C-118A (C/N 44597, S/N 501, AF 53-3226, N766WC) in the foreground has an interesting story that I might tell you some day...
Two-Six Charlie at the 1990 KFLL Airshow
Again, not the greatest quality, but in the background you can see another long-time resident of the south side's Corrosion Corner, Lockheed SP-2E (P2V-5) Neptune, BuNo 131410 N88487, one of the few Neptunes to escape the scrapper's torch. I would eventually work on this airplane, too...
The company sold Two-Six Charlie (along with another of our Convair-liners, N912AL) to Dodita right about the time I left the company in 1995. Two-Six Charlie met her demise in 2004. An engine caught fire and the crew ditched her 38 miles south of Beef Island in the British Virgin Islands. The co-pilot escaped and was rescued, but the captain died when the airplane sank in some 1,000 feet of water. She had 45,750 hours on the airframe when she went down. Another good ship, I'm sorry to see that she took someone with her at the end.
As I dig up more photos from my archives, I'll post them. I hope you enjoyed them.
Be good to one another. I bid you Peace.
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