Old Dakota

(#190)

They also say that the plane was so well-balanced that it seemed to anticipate the pilot's mistakes, ultimately correcting them itself.

I had never flown on an airplane before. It was in 1972, on the occasion of my older brother's wedding to a girl from another island, Terceira Island, while we are originally from São Miguel, in the Azores.

We had already been to the airport countless times. It was always an adventure going to the airport, which was located in the middle of a pasture, dotted with cows and sheep. Yes, because the planes landed on the grass, neatly trimmed to the perfect height. There was a tiny control tower and a gigantic hangar where the occasional plane might stay overnight.

I flew accompanied by my godmother, a kind, delightful, and very fun aunt: Aunt Natalia. I boarded, dressed in a light brown cardigan with checks. The moment was captured in one of the hundreds of photographs my godmother took throughout her life, with an old bellows camera that folded up to 1 cm thick.

But the hero of this story is not me, but rather the magnificent airplane that awaited me. To me, an airplane was a metallic bird, imposing with a serene gaze. Its eyes were the two windows through which the pilots peered.

Beneath its imposing 29-meter wingspan lay two wheels of respectable size. When stationary on the ground, the plane was tilted, its nose pointing towards the sky, with a tiny wheel under its tail. Inside, it was the houses and the landscape that seemed tilted, not us who were inside.

It was a model built in the USA in the mid-1930s. A fatal accident involving a plane with a wooden structure led the authorities to decree that all planes should have a metal structure. The Douglas Aircraft Company accepted the challenge of building a solid, robust plane that could safely carry about 20 passengers. What I didn't know was that the plane I was about to fly on for the first time in my life had pioneered countless technologies that would forever remain in aircraft engineering. It was the 3rd model approved for mass production, hence the name DC-3. During World War II, thousands of these planes were produced, used to transport troops and military equipment. The 30 planes that the Portuguese Air Force bought probably flew in World War II. SATA, the Azorean airline, may have received one or more of these planes. If I had known, perhaps on my way to my brother's wedding, I would still feel the presence of the soldiers sitting inside the plane, fearing I wouldn't return from the flight over the English Channel.

They were built to be highly resistant, perhaps playing it safe, since at the time the true limits of the mechanical resistance of materials were unknown. Just in case, better too much than too little.

In England they were known as “Dakotas,” and that’s how I knew them in the Azores. My older brother got married on Terceira Island because that’s where he did his mandatory military service, at Lajes Air Base. And that’s where he met my sister-in-law, with whom he fell in love. It seems my brother learned to be an aircraft mechanic during his five years in the army. The Dakota was probably a nice plane that he looked at with admiration.

During the Berlin Blockade in 1948/49, Dakotas transported thousands of tons of cargo on the airlift that was established between the besieged city and Great Britain.

After the Dakotas, a new, modern plane with almost 50 passenger seats arrived in the Azores islands: the English-made AVRO. Often, the two friendly planes were seen side-by-side: the old and imposing Dakota and the young AVRO. Each had a different sound in its engines. Years later, a new airport appeared, 3 km from my house, on the outskirts of Ponta Delgada. Sitting in my room, when the wind was favorable, I would hear the sound of the planes landing, but above all, I could distinguish the noise of the engines when they were working their hardest, accelerating to the maximum only to lift off nimbly, like a ballerina in a "pas de deux". And I, proud of my aeronautical knowledge, could distinguish them and say to myself: "It's a Dakota..."

It was said that, during World War II, there were planes returning from crossing the English Channel with a hole in their wing and only one engine working, and yet they continued to fly as if nothing had happened. Old pilots say that the wings oscillated vertically because they were so long, as if the plane wanted to flap its wings to fly faster. It didn't need to. It could fly at almost 300 km/h and for more than 2,500 km if necessary.

They also say that the plane was so well-balanced that it seemed to anticipate the pilot's mistakes, ultimately correcting them itself.

These planes entered service with SATA in the 1960s , with the company purchasing two aircraft. After many years of flying between the islands, at least one of them was sold to Honduras and then to Venezuela. Perhaps the plane I flew on (or the other one...) in 2007 was still flying regularly between Caracas and Los Roques. It is known that it is still airworthy today.

But the most fascinating story of a DC-3 happened in the summer of 1957 in the heart of Missouri. A US Air Force plane ran out of fuel. All the crew members parachuted out, convinced that the aircraft was going to crash. Surprisingly, or not, the plane ran out of fuel, and little by little, meter by meter, it lost altitude, with the engines shut down, and gently landed in a cornfield. It was, in fact, a plane that landed itself. It makes you wonder: what's the point of an autopilot? It can still malfunction...

May 21, 2019

© Eduardo Rui Alves