WAYNE. A late evening phone call brings a rather novel suggestion and challenge to me as my good friend Bob Seamount , formerly of the King’s Heralds and the Voice of Prophecy, asks if I would like to ferry a new Cessna 180H to New Guinea from USA. The question is one that requires a little thought, so I requested a few hours to think it over.
Flying was nothing new to me or Darrel, who joined me in the venture and proved to be an efficient navigator. We have done a lot of flying together and separately in perhaps most types of civil and military planes. At the time of the Pacific flight I owned a Grumman F6F Hellcat, a Douglas B-26, and an Aeronca Champion. I had more or less given up fire-bombing in the B-26 for my construction business (heavy equipment), and Darrel was flying for West Coast Airlines.
But the idea of flying over water for 2,400 miles at a time, with no landing spot in between, in an airplane normally capable of about 1,000-mile range, posed some minor problems that had to be solved, or at least considered, before I gave an answer to Bob’ question.
Immediately I gave an affirmative answer, things began to fall in place. The fuel system had been designed and built by Bob, and Mr. Emil Hesse of Corona, California, and the latter was responsible also for preparing the plane for the flight. The regular 80 US gallon wing tanks were supplemented by a 105 gallon fiberglass belly tank and a 55 gallon oil drum in the cockpit behind the front seats.
A fuel line came from each extra tank to a selector valve, then to an automotive type electric pump, which pumped the extra fuel into the right wing tank and then it was fed by gravity to the carburetor. The fuel now totaled 240 gallons. The planning for the navigation wasn’t really solved until Darrel joined the expedition.
DARREL. In the fall of 1965 I became interested in celestial navigation. It might be considered odd that I would want to take a course in this, because the type of domestic airline flying I do does not require it. We use radio entirely. In fact the overseas type of flying is using less and less celestial. What with Loran, Doppler, and Inertial Guidance, they sometimes don’t even carry navigators.
After much searching I obtained new textbooks and started studying on my own. Several weeks later I’d become so interested that several times when my roommate got up at 5 a.m. to take a flight, I was still studying. I bought an excellent sextant, still not knowing what I was going to do with it. I took hundreds of sun shots and star shots and computed them. I took the sextant with me on some of my flights and took shots through the windshield and side windows, seeing what effect refraction would have, not having an astrodome. For some months before getting the textbooks I used star charts on my night flights and would go back and forth across the sky naming the constellations and stars to myself.
About this time, around the first of 1966, Wayne called me and said he was going to fly a Cessna 180 to New Guinea. I asked him how he was going to navigate and what kind of equipment he had. Some time later I mentioned I might be willing to go along and navigate for him if there was the proper planning, survival briefing, survival gear, etc. He replied, “OK, you plan the navigation and gather up the survival gear.”
WAYNE. Upon checking the weather before filing a flight plan for the San Francisco-Honolulu flight, we were told that a weather system was in the area of Ocean Station November, a ship stationed half-way to Honolulu (140’W 30’N), and that if we would wait a day it would probably move out. We felt it was worth a day to have better weather, so we busied ourselves re-checking our emergency gear-raft, life- vests, Gibson Girl radio, food, water, fishing line etc.
DARREL. For a good three hours we were briefed by Lieut. Commander Kaiser and his assistant, on search and rescue procedures, what they could do for us and what we could do for ourselves. The instruction was primarily to call before the problem became too big and was too late. Judging by the thoroughness of the officers, it was not hard to imagine that they expected to look for us.
WAYNE. We decided that if we couldn’t locate and identify Ocean Station November, we should turn around and return to the mainland, as this would supply our only “landmark” between the U.S. and the Hawaiian Islands.
Thursday, April 24, we again checked weather, and were told that the system had not moved on! What to do? We were already 27% over legal gross weight. Could we take more gas in the event that the storm held us back with headwinds? We felt we should not wait any longer, so bought two plastic cans and one three gallon can and filled them with gas and put them on top of the other equipment behind us.
My navigator chose a 2 p.m. take-off time, as this would give us all night to navigate celestially. Even with 45 pounds of air in the tires they looked kind of flat on the bottom, so Darrel suggested he get a ride out to the take-off end of the strip while I taxied out the overloaded Cessna.
Since this was our first full-load take-off, we picked a spot about three thousand feet down the runway, at Half Moon Bay Airport, at which, if we weren’t airborne, we would abort the take-off.
The Continental engine began to roar, the plane picked up speed very slowly at first, then accelerated somewhat better as the tail came up. At 85 mph we were airborne well before the three thousand foot marker. We were on our way!
The ocean was cloud-covered, and the tops caused us to climb in order to stay visual. The time between the 2 p.m. take-off and dark went very fast. Things were going well, the engine was purring smoothly, which it was to do on the whole trip, and at night we would get our first fix celestially, so we looked forward to it.
The one thing that concerned me was the weather system that lay ahead of us.
Between our position reports, our radio came to life. It was San Francisco, now hundreds of miles behind us. This radio message was not quite as formal as the others. The fellow was asking if this was Wayne or Darrel. He said he used to be stationed with F.A.A. at Bellingham, Washington, which is near our home. We replied that we were both on the plane, whereupon he said he was going off work but would check with us in the morning, and see how we were going, which he did.
The storm began gradually, with a few bumps, some lightening and “hash” on the radio receiver. About midnight we were really in it. Up till then we had had good celestial fixes and knew where we were, but because of the storms we had to detour around the north edge to minimize the head winds.
The ADF (Automatic Direction Finder or Radio Compass} was useless, as it pointed in the direction of the latest lightning flash. The HF radio reception was a constant “hash” due to the electrical storm. We had reached the point where we should have picked radio signals from Ocean Station November, and now the storm made that impossible.
I’m not sure what Darrel was thinking, but I did not want to turn back as that would mean having to fly some extra 20 hours. I was tired and did not want to go through the discomfort of having to repeat the flight to that point. We held a little conference at which we decided we should continue, each feeling relieved that the other had agreed. Our reasoning was this. Although we had not been able to get a fix for a couple of hours, we knew we should be through the storm in another few hours at the most, and then we would be able to get another fix and continue on our way. Darrel’s navigation was very good and there was no worry about not being able to pinpoint the ocean station.
DARREL. Wayne held a magnetic heading of 231’. At 1445 I took a sun shot, using the line of position (L.O.P.) as a speed line. We had covered ninety nautical miles in the 57 minutes since take-off. Not too bad considering our heavy climb out.
At 15:45 I took another sun shot and found we had covered 115 miles in the preceding hour. The third hour we made 115 mph speed, fourth hour 113, and fifth hour 112. The sixth hour I was unable to take a fix because of cloud cover. At 20:45, through a break in the clouds I got a speed line and found we had averaged 109 knots for the sixth and seventh hours. It was obvious we were slowing down and entering the eastern edge of the storm area.
At 23:45 we had a good break, when the beautiful stars were seen. They sure looked good. My blood pressure dropped considerably. For this fix I used stars Regulus and Spica. It showed us to be 29’50 N, 142’ W, about 110 miles west of the ship and 47 miles north of our assumed course line. We had passed about 40 miles north of the ship. Sometime during the night Wayne had looked over at the chart and remarked, “At least all of our fixes show us on the right side of the course. It they (the fixes) jumped back and forth from one side to the other I’d start worrying.”
WAYNE. It isn’t the instrument flying or the rough air so much as the big bump that you might run into that worries me.
Some airplanes have a light switch labeled “Thunder Storm Light.” The technique is to turn on this bright white cockpit light so that the pupils of the eyes close. This minimizes the chance of being blinded by the lightning. We didn’t have this light, but we had a good dome light, and were able to avoid the cumulonimbus by watching the lightning.
Upon trying to climb above the clouds for a fix, our airspeed indicator went dead. I had forgotten to turn on the pitot heat. With a quick check of the flash light on the wings, Darrel discovered ice, which dictated a quick application of heat. This brought the airspeed indicator to life, and a change of altitude down, which melted the wing ice. Well, we were we were going to have to sit it out in the bumpy cloud.
Three hours later we broke out of the storm and were soon taking shots of some very important little stars in the sky, which would tell us where we were.
The “X” on the chart showed us that the storm had indeed delayed us, and had blown us somewhat north of our supposed position. But all that was necessary was a minor correction, and we were on our way to the Hawaiian Islands.
From somewhere out of the darkness we heard a C124 Globemaster plane calling for help. We tried several times to contact them to see if we could be of help, but were not able to raise them. We kept monitoring them, and later heard them talking to a Coast Guard rescue aircraft. We didn’t learn what their problem was, but the C124 was asking for an intercept, which is to say that for one reason or another the pilot wanted company for the rest of the trip.
The radio operator was rather apologetic about asking for help. The rescue aircraft answered that it was really nothing, that their plane was the third they had helped that night.
Things were going well in VH-SDB. The biggest problem of all, fatigue, was being successfully combated. When the sun rose out of the ocean Friday morning we were nearly too tired to appreciate the striking picture of tens of rainbows it made by shining on the heavy rain from what seemed like hundreds of small round white clouds many thousands of feet below us. We found it hard to believe that the clouds remained the same size while there was so much water pouring from them.
Now it was just a matter of a few more hours and we should be sighting land. It is really no surprise to see land when you know you are close to it. But it is still nice when it comes into view. You sit there and wonder how much oil you are going to have left after so long a flight, and how much gas will remain. We turned off all electrical equipment and emptied the three gallon plastic can of gas into the 55-gallon drum, not because we needed it, but for something to do. The transfer worked fine, but we did not empty the other cans.
We thought about eating, but were not very hungry. We each ate an orange and a candy bar, and settled down to the routine of flying again. As we watched for land, after mistaking some clouds for the same, we actually saw the island of Molokai.
Seeing land seemed to be as refreshing as a few hours sleep. As the island of Oahu came into view we remembered the camera and took more pictures in the next ten minutes than in the whole of the preceding day.
At 9:01 local time we touched down at the international airport at Honolulu, 21 hours 13 minutes after takeoff, and 2,400 statute miles on our way.
As we stepped out of the plane we reached for anything that would keep us from falling. Our legs seemed to have forgotten what they had to do.
A quick check of the oil revealed that we had used three quarts and we had ten left. Our remaining fuel was enough for more than six hours of flying. Our cruise control had paid off. By flying at an altitude at which we could use full throttle without exceeding 22 inches of manifold pressure, and the use of RPMs based on the necessary horsepower to achieve the desired air speed at any given weight/drag ratio, plus rather close leaning of the mixture, had given us an 8.9 GPH (US gal.) fuel consumption.
We spent the Sabbath with our sister and her family in Honolulu and then took off for the next fuel stop, Wake Island. Our proposed take-off time of 2 pm was delayed due to some misunderstanding with Customs. In fact I was told it would be impossible to get the paper work straightened out before next day, Monday. This was bad news. I headed for the weather office to give the information to Darrel. All he said was, "Well, let’s keep working on it.”
Two hours later, after very much appreciated help from a fellow in the freight office of Pan American and a nice fellow in the Customs office, we were able to make a 4 p.m. takeoff for Wake Island. We had filed an IFR flight plan and were directed by radar to a specific spot over the ocean that looked like all the other spots, and then we were on our own.
DARREL. I had worked out a much smoother routine for navigating, with more care in choosing stars about 90 degrees apart in azimuth, so that we could use two star fixes instead of three. The weather was expected to be better, and we would be on top all the way, with the stars in sight all the time.
We were able to get a fix every hour throughout the flight. It would take us at least 45 minutes out of every hour to sight, compute, plot, make the position report, and then estimate. Then I’d take some big breaths and it was time to start selecting the stars for the next sight. Consequently, Wayne had to do 99% of the flying, hanging on hour after hour.
By now we felt we were professionals in this business, and our confidence grew even though Wake Island was forecasting three mile visibility, light rain and haze.
It seemed that the farther we flew away from civilization the more of it we saw. During the night we spotted the lights of a ship heading west, and later, the rotating beacon of an aircraft came into view. It was nice to talk for a few moments with good friends we had never seen and in all probability never would meet. It was a MATS (military air transport service) C124 out of Wake Island for Honolulu. They said they had heard we were on our way and were wondering if they would see us. I feel that it is a real tribute to my navigator in that by his position reports the C124 was able to see us.
[It is indeed remarkable that this small aircraft with no radio aids worth mentioning should be on course and within hailing distance, so to speak, of a large aircraft equipped with a full array of land range electronic navigational instruments. —Len Barnard.]
One hour out of Wake Island we penetrated the ocean cloud and cancelled our IFR flight plan breaking out of the cloud at 2,500 feet above sea level. At our IFR level of 8,000 feet altitude we were quite comfortable, but at the lower level we realized that we were in the tropics. We turned off the cabin heat and opened the cabin vents. It was not enough, but we had no other means of keeping cool so we gave up and stayed uncomfortable.
Wake’s homer was inoperative, and they were using a small standby homer. As we neared Wake they asked for our DME (distance measuring equipment) position. We answered, “We have no DME”. Then they asked for a radial off our VOR and we answered, “Negative Wake, we have no VOR receiver.”
This exchange obviously shook them up. They asked Darrel to hold down the mic button so they could get a radio bearing on us. After a couple of tries they said they had a bearing. We were south-west of Wake. If this were right, we had over-flown Wake and were headed for—well, who knows?
As I was busy flying, I hadn’t paid too much attention to what was going on. In fact, it was after we had landed that I learned of the “emergency.” My favorite navigator had spent too many years “up front” to get excited, and was sure of our position, as I was because of my confidence in him. I saw Darrel think a moment, then picked up the mike and say, “We’ll have to believe our instruments.”
About this time our ADF started picking up signals from Wake’s homer and confirmed our position. On our ETA, give or take a minute or two, the lights of Wakes Island appeared out of the light haze.
Victor Hotel Sierra Delta Bravo, you are number two to land. Your traffic is C-124 on final. “Roger Wake, have him in sight.”
At the break of day our wheels touched the runway, 15 hours 42 minutes out of Honolulu, 2,320 more statute miles behind us.
A place to park, food, and sleep, in that order, were our main thoughts as we taxied to the parking area. As I secured the Cessna, Darrel located the Pan American Hotel.
Having been interrupted at breakfast to move the plane, I was a little unhappy when during a fitful sleep I was called again to move it. The weather was too hot to sleep anyway, so I thought I may as well get the Cessna fueled for the flight to Rabaul.
Wake Meteorological Department was helpful in offering to get a forecast to cover our next flight route, although this was in an area not normally covered by them, as there was no traffic in that direction. This flight was planned with a new problem in mind – the “Permanent Storm Belt,” which we learned circles this part of the earth from 3’ to 8’ north of the equator, with a parallel belt of less intensity an equal distance south of the equator.
It was decided that we take-off about midnight, so that the hazards of the storm area would be confronted and minimized in daylight. After the preliminary planning, we thought we would try and get a little more sleep as evening was coming on and the heat was not so trying. In the two or three hours before the borrowed alarm clock would arouse us, we were to get the only real sleep of the stop on Wake.
Our last minute preparations took a little longer than we had anticipated, and it was 1 a.m. when we taxied out for take-off. It was a real pleasure to leave the problems behind, lift the overloaded plane into the night sky, and take up the new heading that would bring us to Rabaul on the New Britain Island of New Guinea and face new adventures south of the equator.
By deviating slightly from a straight-line course, we planned to cross over Eniwetok Atoll, Ponape Island, and another spot on the chart with the hard-to-pronounce name of Kapingamarangi. I say “cross over” because, with the possibility of cloud cover we didn’t expect to see all of them.
This part of the flight was over an area in which there are no shipping lanes, air lanes, or any other lanes for that matter, that might give comfort in the lonely vastness of the Pacific Ocean. This may have been one reason why we wanted to see a bit of land from time to time.
About ten minutes before we got to Eniwetok, our ADF picked a signal which indicated we were a little to the right of the atoll. Without changing course we were able to see the lights on the island through a break in the clouds, and it looked as though we were a mile to the west of it.
At this point we altered course to the right and settled down to the routine that would see us over the island of Ponape shortly after daybreak. Neither Darrel nor I had heard of this island before we used it as a check point, but we understood that the Japanese had a submarine base there during World War ll. We noted that Ponape was not an atoll, but an island of rather marked vertical development, the highest point being some 2,800 feet above sea level.
Another slight heading change and a few hours flying, this time through and around some bad weather of the storm belt, and then we flew into a clear area for several hundred miles. Many miles ahead we saw the tell-tale white ring of a coral atoll that we knew was Kapingamarangi. It couldn’t have been anything else, as the nearest other land was a long way off.
We had never heard of this place either, and our marine chart showed it as a circle of broken lines, something like a reef. As we flew closer I told Darrel that our eyes were no doubt the first to see the place since some lost aviator in World War II had been looking for a place to land. Not three minutes later, I had my balloon deflated when the navigator indicated that he had spotted two canoes in the lagoon.
From our altitude of nearly two miles we couldn’t quite agree whether the coral ring was above or below the surface of the water. On the eastern rim there were several places where coconut palms were growing in areas perhaps as large as five acres. In looking over our pictures of the atoll later, I concluded that probably a hundred or so people lived there. Considering the small area of land, I would assume that they were facing a serious population problem.
At half a degree (thirty miles) south of Kapingamarangi, we crossed into the southern hemisphere, which was a first for both of us. The night of the flight to Wake Island we changed from Sunday to Monday in an instant, as we crossed the date line. Now we were to go from spring to fall in an instant. In either case, you can’t tell the difference unless you look at a calendar and then I am more confused!
Our good weather was fizzling out as we picked up two small islands just north of New Island. Ten minutes later we were at treetop level, trying to cross it and make our way to Rabaul. Our ADF flatly refused to work. It could have been comforting. But almost as soon as New Island faded into the mist, the three volcanoes guarding Rabaul Harbour came into view.
Of all the landings on this trip, I seemed to get most satisfaction from the landing at Rabaul. Perhaps it was the bad weather we had just been through, or the thought of landing in a far-distant country. Maybe it was the thought of being amongst friends this time in a place that figured so violently in World War II. No doubt my pleasure was compounded by many factors.
As we stepped out of the plane it was just 13 hours 35 minutes since we left Wake Island, 1910 statute miles to the north. It was hot at Rabaul, but there was a lot vegetation around that at least helped to make the place seem cooler than Wake, where the blinding glare of the sun reflected off the white coral.
We told the Customs official that the only reason we had stopped at Rabaul was that our information showed that Lae didn’t have Customs but Rabaul did. We were told that Lae did have a Customs office and Rabaul had had Customs for only two months. All we could do was to use the information we had, which in this case was not reliable. I am glad we stopped there, as it was an interesting place, and one I hope to visit again some day.
From the Customs end of the airport terminal we went to the DCA (Department 0f Civil Aviation), where we closed our flight plan and met two fine and very helpful gentlemen, Mr. George Hughes and Mr. Atkinson. When we mentioned that we were unable to pick up their homer, they said, “Oh, didn’t they tell you we were on a different frequency today?”. “No,” we replied, “but we really didn’t need it anyway.”
We were duly informed we were now operating under Australian flight rules, and that in this area there is no instrument flying, no night flying, and no single-engine aircraft flying over water. The answer from my navigator was predictable, that the type of flying prohibited here was all we had been doing for 6,600 miles. This statement brought smiles, but they had done their duty, and we were willing to accept their regulations, so there was no problem.
As the afternoon was wearing away, Mr. Hughes suggested that if we wanted to spend the night in town he would try to make arrangements for us to fly to Lae in company with a DC3 aircraft which would relay our position reports for us. This was the procedure that got us out of Rabaul the next morning, and we were appreciative of the fact that these people went out of their way to help us.
Mr. Atkinson was right on time to pick us up at 5 a.m., and in a few minutes we were at the airport preparing to leave for Lae. It took a while to figure out how to file a flight plan using the Australian forms. After we had struggled with them for a while, the pilots of the DC3 came over and gave us some help. Valuable help it was, and in a minute or two we were ready to go. As the propellers began to turn on the DC3 we taxied out and took off, as our escort would soon overtake us.
As we left we turned on our ADF to the Rabaul frequency of the day, and ten minutes later the signal was so weak that our ADF would not pick it up. The first reporting point, at Lolobau Island, passed beneath us. To our left we could see a volcanic mountain. It reminded me of Mount Fujiyama in Japan.
The vegetation on New Britain Island is heavy, but the most unusual sight of the trip was that of hundreds of small islands off its west coast. Some of these islets were no larger than an automobile, but on them were trees perhaps thirty feet tall. In fact we could not see the land at all, because of the thick foliage. For miles the ocean seemed to have small bits of green floating on it –very unusual. Later, we were to see trees growing in salt water, or whose roots were at times covered with salt water. I wondered if some of these “islands” were really under water, with the trees growing on them.
Weather forced us down to a few hundred feet above the water as we crossed the Bismarck Sea, but by the time our ADF was homing on Finschhaven, the visibility had started to improve. Finschhaven is a beautiful place, and looked all the better when the sun broke out of the cloud as we passed over it.
From here the weather was fine, and for navigation all we had to do was to follow the coast to Lae, so we relaxed and enjoyed ourselves for the first time on the trip, by taking pictures as we flew over native villages.
As we made our approach for the landing at Lae, we could see the bow of a boat protruding from the water a few hundred feet from the south end of the runway. Sights like this are not uncommon in this part of the world, but to us it was rather interesting, and a reminder of the violence of the war here 20 years ago. At Rabaul Mr. Hughes told us of three or four bombs being dug up when the airstrip was graded a few weeks previously.
 The landing at Lae terminated the delivery flight, which will never be forgotten by Darrel or me. The kind treatment we received by the Australian and New Zealand missionaries there will long be remembered. Darrel had to leave next morning to resume his work in the U.S., but I was able to spend a week in New Guinea.
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Pastor Tucker had the self-imposed responsibility of proclaiming the gospel in the home of millions of people by radio. For many years he has conducted a devotional program called The Quiet Hour. These Christ-filled messages, reaching out from more than a hundred radio stations in America and other lands, are making a notable contribution toward the fulfillment of Christ’s command to His followers to preach the gospel to the entire world. Even in his retirement from full-time church duties, Pastor Tucker’s zeal for the radio program continues unabated.
The hazards and problems of weather, navigation, and fuel they had to meet, can be fully appreciated only by other pilots. Through long experience, these men knew their own capabilities and limitations as well as that of modern light aircraft with limited instrumentation. But above this belief in themselves and in the machine, they had implicit trust in God.
