Europe at 500 Feet and 70 Knots

As far as the long distance goes we did that quite a bit while I was over there. At that time we did most of the heavy maintenance (phase inspections and other TCTO and extended maintenance work on most of the other Detachment H-19's at Spangdahlem. We would ferry them back and fourth a lot.

I remember going to Maron on another trip with three other pilots and two crew chiefs to fly two H-19's back to Germany. That was following the flood mission and they were getting their H-43's from the states. We would fly them back and fourth to the Detachments in France and Germany.

On more than one occasion we would be flying one back with a 781 full of red X's and would have to make a forced landing in a field and then truck it the rest of the way to Spangdahlem.

We had them all painted at a German contractor up in northern Germany and we moved them back and forth to and from the paint contractor. Because of the status of forces agreement at the time we moved the aircraft around like checkers. That is one reason Johan Ragay is having trouble figuring out which aircraft came from which Det.

It was fun flying over there but I learned early on to never get out of range of a forced landing area especially in the H-19. When we got our H-43's they were a lot more reliable as far as engine problems went.

We really did have some interesting missions while there. We deployed to England and Saudi Arabia and some of the troops went to Ethiopia to help out the photo mapping H-3's. Seeing Europe at 500 feet and 70 knots was a great way to travel. (John Flournoy)