Dropped Object

Several of the missions I flew while with the 21st SOS at NKP was to air lift drums of fuel to a Forward Operating Location (FOL). We flew to Ubon RTAFB and loaded up several drums of fuel and headed for the FOL.

On this one mission I was on the lead ship landing at Ubon. When the landing gear was lowered we got an unsafe condition on the right main landing gear. I could see the gear was down and the only way to insure it was safe was to pin it.

I asked the pilot to hover taxi to one of the taxiways and I would get out and pin the gear. As we came to a hover I called for the pilot to settle the aircraft near to the ground and I would hop out and pin the gear.

Apparently my depth perception that day was crappy at best. When I jumped from the bird I found it was not as low as I thought it was. When I landed on my feet I was off balance and began to back pedal attempting to get my balance. As I moved backwards I came to the end of my interphone cord and it helped me regain my balance. Fortunately I was on the short cord or who knows how far I would have gone had I been on the long cord.

Acting, as if what had happened was normal I pinned the gear. I am not sure if the pilot seen what happened but about that time we got a call from the tower saying something had dropped from the aircraft.

Laughing the pilot replied, yeah that was my flight engineer.

Worse though was that Jerry Bucknall was on the bird behind us and witnessed the entire goat rope. Till this day he reminds me of it and has a good laugh at my expense. (Jim Moore)